Money and power corrupt the mind. That is well known. The United States is sinking farther into the mire they have created with money and power. Their plans to be the world's only hegemony are failing like dominoes in the wind. Lots of highly educated people around the world outside of the United States are predicting a fall. The America…
Money and power corrupt the mind. That is well known. The United States is sinking farther into the mire they have created with money and power. Their plans to be the world's only hegemony are failing like dominoes in the wind. Lots of highly educated people around the world outside of the United States are predicting a fall. The American dollar is predicted to be dedollarized soon as the world moves away from using American dollars to trade with. Once countries stop investing in U.S. bonds, the U.S. economy will disintegrate like a house of cards in a breeze. The debt load is too high and, despite Biden's attempts to bring it down, will choke the U.S. and bring it down.
Now, we have peaceful protestors being arrested, reminiscent of the Vietnam War days and civil rights movements from the 1960's. These are signs of the end, unless a radical shakeup of U.S. government institutions are initiated soon, as within the next couple of years. If things are allowed to continue as they are, we will be witness to the fall of the American Empire by the end of this decade, so they predict. It doesn't matter who is president at this point, changes in how the U.S. does things around the world need to happen, if the U.S. hopes to save itself from collapse.
Terrance, I suppose my question is not about money or the power as much as who wields it. This is not a nebulous force or abstraction we just can’t seem to understand. It is 85% attributable to Fascist loving far right billionaires, be they so called entrepreneurs or hedge fund owners.
As far as Vietnam protests and today’s protests in support of Hamas/Palestine, I would remind you that it took years before Nixon and his Dr. Strangelove decided that forming relations with Mao would somehow result in the Chinese convincing the North Vietnamese to come to the talks in Paris to negotiate a “peace with honor.” In the end the U.S. just pulled out and the entire artifice just collapsed like the proverbial house of cards it was. We just washed, rinsed and repeated in Afghanistan.
The Vietnam protestors achieved nothing, Nixon got out of VN because middle America was distressed seeing their sons, brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers come home in caskets.
Proof is in Dubya's command, that no aircraft arriving at Dover with caskets be photographed, and that military funerals not be video'd, photographed or shown on on the news.
Having critical reasoning skills helps, but when someone is invested in an ideology or event, critical reasoning skills go out the window.. because to acknowledge facts and reality is to negate one's identity.
I am a Vietnam vet, and way too many of us, especially those like me who lost team mates and friends, are too invested in that illicit venture to admit that it was a folly and a crime, that never should have happened.
I shudder to think that my team died, that McDonalds and KFC could have a franchise in Saigon err Ho Chi Minh City, and that Exxon would have a sole source contract with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to extract and process oil from the Gulf of Tonkin, where naval aircraft unloaded unused bombs to be used as seismic detectors for oil deposits.
I too am a Vietnam Vet, ARMY 69-71 (18 mos. in country) and I knew well before going that this was an immoral enterprise. That said, I could not gather the courage to flee to Canada (which for those who did took like 8 to 10 years to resolve.
Like the now political cartoonist Danziger I spent a lot of energy just trying to stay out of the line of fire and of course ended up on a RRF for like 180 days of perimeter guard at both Phu Loi and Quan Loi.
So, I ended up facing Sappers in the wire, coming under rocket and mortar fire and probably about 176 days of being soaked in monsoons. Wondering if the mosquitoes that were feasting on me would lead to malaria was always in the back of one’s mind.
Finally, when grunts tell you that they felt safer in the field than on the perimeter you were on then with, well you know you are not in the best of situations.
I've been to both Phu Loi and Quan Loi. 1967, red earth laterite runway, a PSP ramp at the end, across the ramp and viewable from it was the French Planters home. It was the home of Dracula, 2/2nd, Big Red one, and the Planter was a Frenchman, who permitted the grunts to use the swimmng pool, but they turned it red with the dust from the soil, they didn't shower first, so he drained the pool. near the ramp was the guarded entrance. The perimeter was sealed with a barbed wire fence, down a bit was a deuce and a half mount quad 50, pointed at the pop up village, just outside the gate.
It housed shacks made of bamboo and sheets of aluminum, where were actually uncut sheets of Budweiser beer cans.
I have some stories. There was a dirt road that led to the gate, follow the road and it took you to the old plantation workers quarters.
One night I almost wound up like Bergdahl
I have done some goggling and it changed quite a bit, When I was there the squad tents and HQ of the 2/2nd was stung along the runway, later it seems that it got built up quite a bit and all of the action was moved to the approach end of the runway
I don't remember being bothered by Mosquitos, my tent was under the barrels of the artillery battery, try to sleep with that going off., and the concussion of outgoing knocking youpff the canvas cot.
I have some pictures of Quan Li. including a sign which says Quan Loi International, constructed by the 1st Engineer Battalion, "Always First"
I have a picture of me and a monkey, The monkey was a pet of a PFC, kept him on a chain, the monkey liked me, but not others. Smart, he would pull up the chain and loop it to shorten it, and when a dude got within reach he would let go and jump on him. I wasn't assigned the 2/2nd, just supported them I eventually moved into the LRRP squad tent, and went on patrol with them a couple of times.not a foot patrol,but a motorized patrol in an M151, Crazy dudes, the would always let loose with their mounted M160.
For the civilian, the M151 was a Jeep manufactured by Ford, it had independent suspension and was dangerous if it hit a bump and went airborn, or if any wheels left the road.
A quad 50 is a 50 caliber machine gun, mounted and with four barrels, and M160 is a 7.62mm Squad weapon, a machine gun, you can fire it from the hip, not advised as it climbs and has awesome recoil. used quite a bit hung from slings in UH=1 (Huey) Helicopters as a door gunner
Quite good in the jungle though, because unlike the 5.56 M16, its round is not deflected by foliage and branches.
I saw and experienced some of the most surreal stuff at Quan Loi - 1969-1971 - I tried to sleep in a bunker under ground when I first got there… The sounds of like a dozen rats in the dark knocking over old C-Rat cans quickly inspired me to sleeping in an above ground hootch before dawn. I think this was the Quan Loi version of “Rocket Watch” for FNGs.
The Mosquitoes were associated in my memory with Phu Loi, given that rice paddies were adjacent to several sections of perimeter.
There were a number of sapper assaults at Quan Loi, primarily focused on destroying big guns and in one instance an assault on a mortar unit left about a dozen men dead from satchel charges as they slept.
I used to occasionally eat at a mess hall adjacent to a 175 that inevitably would get a fire mission while I was there. I remember my tray bouncing from the table clearly. So, given your proximity to these guns, I totally get being the shock wave knocking you from your cot.
I witnessed an E6 being accidentally crushed by a tank as he tried to shoo a mutt away. He slipped in that miserable fucking laterite red clay, which as you rightly recalled wither stuck to or dusted everything depending on the time of year.
After returning I decided in the early 70’s that one great way to eliminate Vietnam from my mind was to throw away dozens of B&Ws that I took there. A decision I regret deeply, becuase it is surprisingly hard to get quality visuals of over a decade shared by over 5 million men.
In any case, I’m thankful to be home and able to get treatment for Agent Orange when i did.
The underground sleeping quartes must have been built after I was there.
My unit was deployed where ever we were needed, I have been in over 30 places in that miserable country. Don't recall being pestered by mosquito though, I wore long sleeves the whole year I was there, I might have rolled up a cuff.
One mission I was deployed to Kontum, on the Cambodian border. it had been an NVA base camp, and they left behind all kind of surprises, booby traps, one almost got me.
The army had dug in, for sleeping quarters and used those aluminum pallets that are used for cargo and equipment as roofs, sandbags on top of the roofs. not enough room inside to stand up.
I was in the cot, catching Z's when I heard a gunshot, you can imagine how it reverbrates in that space, jumped up, hit my head on he pallet.
Some idiot shot a rat. That did it, I took my chances sleeping in the dirt.
I was at Dak To,when a company of the 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne) was ambushed and wiped out, I heard the whole thing over my PRC-25 (an FM manpack portable radio,as if you didn'tknow). The bodies, all 72 of them lay in bags outside the mortuary tent for three days, waiting for personal ID's, the NVA had scrambled their ID cards and dog tags, and it took personal ID to figure out who was who.
It was at that point, that the `173rd started to take ears and mutilate bodies, pay back, and rightly so, fight terror with terror. But the press said nothing of the customs association with the mutilation of that company.
It started to rain, and I undressed quick lathered up and got wet, then it stopped and I had to rinse off in a mud puddle, I swear Viet Nam, except for the Delta and the DMZ is nothing but red earth.
I learned to speak and Read Vietnamese and have the habit of writing Viet Nam, because in the language there was Nam Viet (South Viet) and Bach Viet (North Viet).
Bill, what you experienced especially reference the fate of those men of the 173rd makes the term nightmarish totally inadequate.
There are innumerable accounts of GI’s and atrocities committed over the decade we were in Vietnam. There was a clear tendency to paint soldiers as “baby killers” as you may well recall. My Lai, pushing prisoners from choppers, free fire zones, and Tiger Force only added to the conception that we were all behaving like Nazi occupation forces, rather than the upright, chocolate bar dispensing GIs of our father’s generation.
My father, a forward observer at the Bulge, made it clear to me that Americans got more than ample “payback” against German soldiers after the Malmedy massacre who were surrendering in droves.
My command of Vietnamese was limited to typical stuff like “go away now” or “come give me a kiss” - This reminds me of an E6 in my outfit that was a polyglot who live the life of Riley while stationed in Vietnam.
Laterite clay - got caught in the shower during a 122 attack trying to get that stuff off. Being nude under fire is like some sort of bad dream made real 😂
There was a dude on our team that extended 4 times, he was fluent in Vietnamese, and I think he was up to his arse in the black market, He had a Browning 9mm with no serial number that he was gifted by a CIA friend.. The CIA had their own airline, with Hueyes, Pilotus Porters, C47's and I think, not sure Chinooks.
I had a good friend whose Vietnamese was limited to "give me a kiss please" làm ơn cho tôi một nụ hôn
Shit happens in war. And temperatures flare, especially when your friends get murdered, or worse tortured and/ormutilated.
Bleeding heart ass hats on Campus or back home, don't get it. War is not civilized and you can't expect civilized behavior, the fact that we couldn't shoot, but had to wait till we were shot (at) was bad enough.
And most troops, even the regular forces didn't want to be there.
Imagine you were drafted, found yourself surrounded in the jungle or a fire support base camp, like Khe Sanh, and fighting for your life, and back home the campus idiots and home grown Marxists demand that you be civilized.
It is one thing to be in a firefight and watching your buddies die, and to get wounded,and another thing to deal with the aftermath of.
I was supporting the Marines at Dong Ha, when a battalion that was patrolling or whatever, I don't know the orders, was caught in a valley in the DMZ, the NVA closed off the entrance and exit and then wiped them out,virtually, in a kill zone.
There were only 11 unwounded, and they were repatriated on a C-130 flight. The rest of the battalion was dead and wounded.
I and my team mate, were basically the only one's on the airfield, and we unloaded the H-19 choppers that flew in, carried the wounded to the field ambulance, along with the medics, and later carried the body bags and loaded them aboard a C-130.
There was this big black dude, built like a brick shit house, that was sitting holding his insides in, and I picked up one end of a poncho,and an arm fell out.. I went to the side of the pierced steel planking that was the ramp, puked and went back to work. my team mate Perry Kyser wanted to take pictures and our team leader slapped down the camera.
At Bong Son I saw what a bee hive round (a cannister of fleschettes) shot from the depressed barrel of a 105 mm howitzer can do to a company of NVA, a sight that you never forget.
These self obsessed, self indulgent, moralizing campus idiots, have no idea of what it is like to be under attack and have your family and friends slaughtered.
I will finish my rant with a claim that those who protest will take umbrage to.
The Chicago 7 (or 8), and the 1968 riots during the Democratic convention, had the consequence of electing Richard Milhaus Nixon.
These self righteous, self indulgent, obsessed assholes didn't stop the war, but they did discredit the Democratic party,and are responsible for the right wing extremism that follows, including Reagan and Trump.
And the fools haven't learned a thing, in their righteous outrage, and that includes Muslims and young black males, they are going to be responsible for electing Trump and his theocratic, racist, homophobic, anti immigrant thugs and they will regret their asinine stupidity, and so will you and I.
But like all stupid and immature people(Trump as an example) they want accept responsibility and will blame it on the Democrats and Biden, because the poor little things didn't get their way.
There is one thing that defines our society and that is the unwillingness to accept personal responsibility. It is always "you made me do it".
Whoever is in power. Wasn't Obama notorious for hounding whistleblowers to the max? But Gaza. I don't see where images of the horror there at this point wouldn't equal The Holocaust. What's the quibble? "Only 30 or 40 thousand?"
They have all been at the mercy of the U.S. military industrial complex since the end of the Korean War. We need to stop feeding the war machine and spend a little of that massive military budget on our own issues.
Terry, terry terry, read the UN Convention on prevention of genocide, Article II.
To charge genocide you must prove intent, all else all other articles follow.
Now it is up to you to prove that the state of Israel has an intention to genocide Arabs, especially when they have Arab citizens in their own borders.
And how can a nation of 12 million, 10 million of which are Jews, secular and sectarian, even embark upon a genocide of billions of Arabs, much less a billion Muslims.?
Playing loose with words is dishonest propaganda, and may make you feel good, but it does violence when real genocide occurs.
You should learn the parable of the boy that cried wolf.
Not genocide against the Arabs, just the Palestinians living in Gaza. The idea is to make Gaza uninhabitable so the Israelis can move in and develop it. Dig out all of the oil underneath and off the coast, and build their Ben Gurion canal. This they have publicly stated back in November. Netanyahu has already taken bids from the fossil fuel industry on the premise that he and his coalition will control the land. I don't see where I posted about a 'genocide' against the Arabs in general. Sorry if I did. That was not my intention.
Where is the intent to obliterate the "Palestinians". There is none, and you can't obliterate that which does not exist.
There is no state called Palestine. What lives there are Arabs, Bedouins of the Muslim faith.
If they are trying to make the area unihabitable for the Arabs, then they are making it uninhabitable for themselves. If you mean that there are right wing Jews in Israel, that are trying to drive the Arabs out, I agree. but at this juncture we are talking of Gaza not the west bank, for that is where the fighting is.
I am aware of Netanyahu's attitude and intentions towards the Arabs, it is that of the Likkud, the right wing and the orthodox settlers, but they are not all Israel either. Anymore than MAGAts and Trump are all America.
I am also aware that . During the past half-century, the Israeli government has drilled approximately 470 wells in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
And I am aware that there is a developer scam selling Gaza land to Israeli's, and that Jared Kushner has plans to build seaside condo's in Gaza.
The best laid plans of mice and men go afoul, and are of naught unless one is given an impetus and excuse and HAMAS did that on Oct 7th.
Driven by Insane hatred of the Jews, (and it is religiously motivated, don't make me quote them, the Quran and hadith again) they cowards have shot themselves in the foot.
Israel is not going anywhere. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.
Well the Arabs are insane, they tried to genocide the Jews in 1948, 1956,1967, 1973, 2006 and again on Oct 7th, and they failed each time, and each time they fail they lose more territory.
Yahya Sinwar said that they won't stop, because they are a nation of martyrs (well the fools and tools are, not the leadership) and will keep coming back again and again.
All they are doing is assuring that there will never be a Palestinian State.
Brilliant strategists, brilliant statesmen, the Arabs, they can't be they are fueled by religious righteousness and hatred.
Reelect Biden. Raise taxes on the very wealthy. Collect those taxes. Prosecute the high level criminals, insurrectionists, and traitors inside and outside the government. It is happening in AZ and MI. And should be happening in Georgia but they seem to have crippled that case.
That is what must be done, but as you say here, will it? It will take the collective will of the people around the country to effect these kinds of changes. There are some beginnings of that kind of revolution starting but will it be able to follow through to the end?
Sorry Terry, those are not peaceful protestors, They are hurling anti semitic threats at Jewishstudents, they are obstructing the right of people to travel, a fundamental right. The right to proceed and by doing so they are causing people to lose jobs, and even injury. an ambulance that can't proceed because of "peaceful" protestors is causing harm.
all they are is a bunch of spoiled, self indulgent, self obsessed idiots looking for relevance and peer approval, high fiving each other at coffee klatches and kegges.
I read that many outsiders suddenly appeared & they were the instigators of the violence, it was not the students themselves. Presumably the same thing happened with the BLM protests after George Floyd died. Just another way to undermine the libs.
Yep, and sometimes the government is involved in left wing that actually threaten the establishment.
The notorious men in black in Seattle that broke windows during the WTO riots,and in Portland during the BLM demonstrations, and then there is the infamous Umrella Man, carried an umbrella to shield his face and broke windows to ump start the loters.
This time it is not the government, and I don't think that the outsiders are trying to discredit the libs, but you never know. Discredit the libs and you pry away votes for Biden, so mybe you are corect.
The same was said about the 'hippies' back during the Vietnam war days. These are the new generation of hippies protesting a war. And it will get bloody before it's over, one way or another as we are starting to see.
Money and power corrupt the mind. That is well known. The United States is sinking farther into the mire they have created with money and power. Their plans to be the world's only hegemony are failing like dominoes in the wind. Lots of highly educated people around the world outside of the United States are predicting a fall. The American dollar is predicted to be dedollarized soon as the world moves away from using American dollars to trade with. Once countries stop investing in U.S. bonds, the U.S. economy will disintegrate like a house of cards in a breeze. The debt load is too high and, despite Biden's attempts to bring it down, will choke the U.S. and bring it down.
Now, we have peaceful protestors being arrested, reminiscent of the Vietnam War days and civil rights movements from the 1960's. These are signs of the end, unless a radical shakeup of U.S. government institutions are initiated soon, as within the next couple of years. If things are allowed to continue as they are, we will be witness to the fall of the American Empire by the end of this decade, so they predict. It doesn't matter who is president at this point, changes in how the U.S. does things around the world need to happen, if the U.S. hopes to save itself from collapse.
Terrance, I suppose my question is not about money or the power as much as who wields it. This is not a nebulous force or abstraction we just can’t seem to understand. It is 85% attributable to Fascist loving far right billionaires, be they so called entrepreneurs or hedge fund owners.
As far as Vietnam protests and today’s protests in support of Hamas/Palestine, I would remind you that it took years before Nixon and his Dr. Strangelove decided that forming relations with Mao would somehow result in the Chinese convincing the North Vietnamese to come to the talks in Paris to negotiate a “peace with honor.” In the end the U.S. just pulled out and the entire artifice just collapsed like the proverbial house of cards it was. We just washed, rinsed and repeated in Afghanistan.
The Vietnam protestors achieved nothing, Nixon got out of VN because middle America was distressed seeing their sons, brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers come home in caskets.
Proof is in Dubya's command, that no aircraft arriving at Dover with caskets be photographed, and that military funerals not be video'd, photographed or shown on on the news.
It’s reaffirming to see that other people have a clear recall about history for more than 20 minutes post the events of the past 🤣
Having critical reasoning skills helps, but when someone is invested in an ideology or event, critical reasoning skills go out the window.. because to acknowledge facts and reality is to negate one's identity.
I am a Vietnam vet, and way too many of us, especially those like me who lost team mates and friends, are too invested in that illicit venture to admit that it was a folly and a crime, that never should have happened.
I shudder to think that my team died, that McDonalds and KFC could have a franchise in Saigon err Ho Chi Minh City, and that Exxon would have a sole source contract with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to extract and process oil from the Gulf of Tonkin, where naval aircraft unloaded unused bombs to be used as seismic detectors for oil deposits.
I too am a Vietnam Vet, ARMY 69-71 (18 mos. in country) and I knew well before going that this was an immoral enterprise. That said, I could not gather the courage to flee to Canada (which for those who did took like 8 to 10 years to resolve.
Like the now political cartoonist Danziger I spent a lot of energy just trying to stay out of the line of fire and of course ended up on a RRF for like 180 days of perimeter guard at both Phu Loi and Quan Loi.
So, I ended up facing Sappers in the wire, coming under rocket and mortar fire and probably about 176 days of being soaked in monsoons. Wondering if the mosquitoes that were feasting on me would lead to malaria was always in the back of one’s mind.
Finally, when grunts tell you that they felt safer in the field than on the perimeter you were on then with, well you know you are not in the best of situations.
Oh, Welcome Home!
I've been to both Phu Loi and Quan Loi. 1967, red earth laterite runway, a PSP ramp at the end, across the ramp and viewable from it was the French Planters home. It was the home of Dracula, 2/2nd, Big Red one, and the Planter was a Frenchman, who permitted the grunts to use the swimmng pool, but they turned it red with the dust from the soil, they didn't shower first, so he drained the pool. near the ramp was the guarded entrance. The perimeter was sealed with a barbed wire fence, down a bit was a deuce and a half mount quad 50, pointed at the pop up village, just outside the gate.
It housed shacks made of bamboo and sheets of aluminum, where were actually uncut sheets of Budweiser beer cans.
I have some stories. There was a dirt road that led to the gate, follow the road and it took you to the old plantation workers quarters.
One night I almost wound up like Bergdahl
I have done some goggling and it changed quite a bit, When I was there the squad tents and HQ of the 2/2nd was stung along the runway, later it seems that it got built up quite a bit and all of the action was moved to the approach end of the runway
I don't remember being bothered by Mosquitos, my tent was under the barrels of the artillery battery, try to sleep with that going off., and the concussion of outgoing knocking youpff the canvas cot.
I have some pictures of Quan Li. including a sign which says Quan Loi International, constructed by the 1st Engineer Battalion, "Always First"
I have a picture of me and a monkey, The monkey was a pet of a PFC, kept him on a chain, the monkey liked me, but not others. Smart, he would pull up the chain and loop it to shorten it, and when a dude got within reach he would let go and jump on him. I wasn't assigned the 2/2nd, just supported them I eventually moved into the LRRP squad tent, and went on patrol with them a couple of times.not a foot patrol,but a motorized patrol in an M151, Crazy dudes, the would always let loose with their mounted M160.
For the civilian, the M151 was a Jeep manufactured by Ford, it had independent suspension and was dangerous if it hit a bump and went airborn, or if any wheels left the road.
A quad 50 is a 50 caliber machine gun, mounted and with four barrels, and M160 is a 7.62mm Squad weapon, a machine gun, you can fire it from the hip, not advised as it climbs and has awesome recoil. used quite a bit hung from slings in UH=1 (Huey) Helicopters as a door gunner
Quite good in the jungle though, because unlike the 5.56 M16, its round is not deflected by foliage and branches.
I saw and experienced some of the most surreal stuff at Quan Loi - 1969-1971 - I tried to sleep in a bunker under ground when I first got there… The sounds of like a dozen rats in the dark knocking over old C-Rat cans quickly inspired me to sleeping in an above ground hootch before dawn. I think this was the Quan Loi version of “Rocket Watch” for FNGs.
The Mosquitoes were associated in my memory with Phu Loi, given that rice paddies were adjacent to several sections of perimeter.
There were a number of sapper assaults at Quan Loi, primarily focused on destroying big guns and in one instance an assault on a mortar unit left about a dozen men dead from satchel charges as they slept.
I used to occasionally eat at a mess hall adjacent to a 175 that inevitably would get a fire mission while I was there. I remember my tray bouncing from the table clearly. So, given your proximity to these guns, I totally get being the shock wave knocking you from your cot.
I witnessed an E6 being accidentally crushed by a tank as he tried to shoo a mutt away. He slipped in that miserable fucking laterite red clay, which as you rightly recalled wither stuck to or dusted everything depending on the time of year.
After returning I decided in the early 70’s that one great way to eliminate Vietnam from my mind was to throw away dozens of B&Ws that I took there. A decision I regret deeply, becuase it is surprisingly hard to get quality visuals of over a decade shared by over 5 million men.
In any case, I’m thankful to be home and able to get treatment for Agent Orange when i did.
The underground sleeping quartes must have been built after I was there.
My unit was deployed where ever we were needed, I have been in over 30 places in that miserable country. Don't recall being pestered by mosquito though, I wore long sleeves the whole year I was there, I might have rolled up a cuff.
One mission I was deployed to Kontum, on the Cambodian border. it had been an NVA base camp, and they left behind all kind of surprises, booby traps, one almost got me.
The army had dug in, for sleeping quarters and used those aluminum pallets that are used for cargo and equipment as roofs, sandbags on top of the roofs. not enough room inside to stand up.
I was in the cot, catching Z's when I heard a gunshot, you can imagine how it reverbrates in that space, jumped up, hit my head on he pallet.
Some idiot shot a rat. That did it, I took my chances sleeping in the dirt.
I was at Dak To,when a company of the 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne) was ambushed and wiped out, I heard the whole thing over my PRC-25 (an FM manpack portable radio,as if you didn'tknow). The bodies, all 72 of them lay in bags outside the mortuary tent for three days, waiting for personal ID's, the NVA had scrambled their ID cards and dog tags, and it took personal ID to figure out who was who.
It was at that point, that the `173rd started to take ears and mutilate bodies, pay back, and rightly so, fight terror with terror. But the press said nothing of the customs association with the mutilation of that company.
It started to rain, and I undressed quick lathered up and got wet, then it stopped and I had to rinse off in a mud puddle, I swear Viet Nam, except for the Delta and the DMZ is nothing but red earth.
I learned to speak and Read Vietnamese and have the habit of writing Viet Nam, because in the language there was Nam Viet (South Viet) and Bach Viet (North Viet).
A skill I lost, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Bill, what you experienced especially reference the fate of those men of the 173rd makes the term nightmarish totally inadequate.
There are innumerable accounts of GI’s and atrocities committed over the decade we were in Vietnam. There was a clear tendency to paint soldiers as “baby killers” as you may well recall. My Lai, pushing prisoners from choppers, free fire zones, and Tiger Force only added to the conception that we were all behaving like Nazi occupation forces, rather than the upright, chocolate bar dispensing GIs of our father’s generation.
My father, a forward observer at the Bulge, made it clear to me that Americans got more than ample “payback” against German soldiers after the Malmedy massacre who were surrendering in droves.
My command of Vietnamese was limited to typical stuff like “go away now” or “come give me a kiss” - This reminds me of an E6 in my outfit that was a polyglot who live the life of Riley while stationed in Vietnam.
Laterite clay - got caught in the shower during a 122 attack trying to get that stuff off. Being nude under fire is like some sort of bad dream made real 😂
There was a dude on our team that extended 4 times, he was fluent in Vietnamese, and I think he was up to his arse in the black market, He had a Browning 9mm with no serial number that he was gifted by a CIA friend.. The CIA had their own airline, with Hueyes, Pilotus Porters, C47's and I think, not sure Chinooks.
I had a good friend whose Vietnamese was limited to "give me a kiss please" làm ơn cho tôi một nụ hôn
Shit happens in war. And temperatures flare, especially when your friends get murdered, or worse tortured and/ormutilated.
Bleeding heart ass hats on Campus or back home, don't get it. War is not civilized and you can't expect civilized behavior, the fact that we couldn't shoot, but had to wait till we were shot (at) was bad enough.
And most troops, even the regular forces didn't want to be there.
Imagine you were drafted, found yourself surrounded in the jungle or a fire support base camp, like Khe Sanh, and fighting for your life, and back home the campus idiots and home grown Marxists demand that you be civilized.
It is one thing to be in a firefight and watching your buddies die, and to get wounded,and another thing to deal with the aftermath of.
I was supporting the Marines at Dong Ha, when a battalion that was patrolling or whatever, I don't know the orders, was caught in a valley in the DMZ, the NVA closed off the entrance and exit and then wiped them out,virtually, in a kill zone.
There were only 11 unwounded, and they were repatriated on a C-130 flight. The rest of the battalion was dead and wounded.
I and my team mate, were basically the only one's on the airfield, and we unloaded the H-19 choppers that flew in, carried the wounded to the field ambulance, along with the medics, and later carried the body bags and loaded them aboard a C-130.
There was this big black dude, built like a brick shit house, that was sitting holding his insides in, and I picked up one end of a poncho,and an arm fell out.. I went to the side of the pierced steel planking that was the ramp, puked and went back to work. my team mate Perry Kyser wanted to take pictures and our team leader slapped down the camera.
At Bong Son I saw what a bee hive round (a cannister of fleschettes) shot from the depressed barrel of a 105 mm howitzer can do to a company of NVA, a sight that you never forget.
These self obsessed, self indulgent, moralizing campus idiots, have no idea of what it is like to be under attack and have your family and friends slaughtered.
I will finish my rant with a claim that those who protest will take umbrage to.
The Chicago 7 (or 8), and the 1968 riots during the Democratic convention, had the consequence of electing Richard Milhaus Nixon.
These self righteous, self indulgent, obsessed assholes didn't stop the war, but they did discredit the Democratic party,and are responsible for the right wing extremism that follows, including Reagan and Trump.
And the fools haven't learned a thing, in their righteous outrage, and that includes Muslims and young black males, they are going to be responsible for electing Trump and his theocratic, racist, homophobic, anti immigrant thugs and they will regret their asinine stupidity, and so will you and I.
But like all stupid and immature people(Trump as an example) they want accept responsibility and will blame it on the Democrats and Biden, because the poor little things didn't get their way.
There is one thing that defines our society and that is the unwillingness to accept personal responsibility. It is always "you made me do it".
And we will do so again in Ukraine and maybe Gaza. Gaza to save themselves from being incriminated by the ICJ for complicity in a genocide.
Whoever is in power. Wasn't Obama notorious for hounding whistleblowers to the max? But Gaza. I don't see where images of the horror there at this point wouldn't equal The Holocaust. What's the quibble? "Only 30 or 40 thousand?"
They have all been at the mercy of the U.S. military industrial complex since the end of the Korean War. We need to stop feeding the war machine and spend a little of that massive military budget on our own issues.
Terry, terry terry, read the UN Convention on prevention of genocide, Article II.
To charge genocide you must prove intent, all else all other articles follow.
Now it is up to you to prove that the state of Israel has an intention to genocide Arabs, especially when they have Arab citizens in their own borders.
And how can a nation of 12 million, 10 million of which are Jews, secular and sectarian, even embark upon a genocide of billions of Arabs, much less a billion Muslims.?
Playing loose with words is dishonest propaganda, and may make you feel good, but it does violence when real genocide occurs.
You should learn the parable of the boy that cried wolf.
Not genocide against the Arabs, just the Palestinians living in Gaza. The idea is to make Gaza uninhabitable so the Israelis can move in and develop it. Dig out all of the oil underneath and off the coast, and build their Ben Gurion canal. This they have publicly stated back in November. Netanyahu has already taken bids from the fossil fuel industry on the premise that he and his coalition will control the land. I don't see where I posted about a 'genocide' against the Arabs in general. Sorry if I did. That was not my intention.
Where is the intent to obliterate the "Palestinians". There is none, and you can't obliterate that which does not exist.
There is no state called Palestine. What lives there are Arabs, Bedouins of the Muslim faith.
If they are trying to make the area unihabitable for the Arabs, then they are making it uninhabitable for themselves. If you mean that there are right wing Jews in Israel, that are trying to drive the Arabs out, I agree. but at this juncture we are talking of Gaza not the west bank, for that is where the fighting is.
I am aware of Netanyahu's attitude and intentions towards the Arabs, it is that of the Likkud, the right wing and the orthodox settlers, but they are not all Israel either. Anymore than MAGAts and Trump are all America.
I am also aware that . During the past half-century, the Israeli government has drilled approximately 470 wells in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
And I am aware that there is a developer scam selling Gaza land to Israeli's, and that Jared Kushner has plans to build seaside condo's in Gaza.
The best laid plans of mice and men go afoul, and are of naught unless one is given an impetus and excuse and HAMAS did that on Oct 7th.
Driven by Insane hatred of the Jews, (and it is religiously motivated, don't make me quote them, the Quran and hadith again) they cowards have shot themselves in the foot.
Israel is not going anywhere. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.
Well the Arabs are insane, they tried to genocide the Jews in 1948, 1956,1967, 1973, 2006 and again on Oct 7th, and they failed each time, and each time they fail they lose more territory.
Yahya Sinwar said that they won't stop, because they are a nation of martyrs (well the fools and tools are, not the leadership) and will keep coming back again and again.
All they are doing is assuring that there will never be a Palestinian State.
Brilliant strategists, brilliant statesmen, the Arabs, they can't be they are fueled by religious righteousness and hatred.
Reelect Biden. Raise taxes on the very wealthy. Collect those taxes. Prosecute the high level criminals, insurrectionists, and traitors inside and outside the government. It is happening in AZ and MI. And should be happening in Georgia but they seem to have crippled that case.
That is what must be done, but as you say here, will it? It will take the collective will of the people around the country to effect these kinds of changes. There are some beginnings of that kind of revolution starting but will it be able to follow through to the end?
Don't know. "Things seem impossible until they happen." -- Nelson Mandela
Sorry Terry, those are not peaceful protestors, They are hurling anti semitic threats at Jewishstudents, they are obstructing the right of people to travel, a fundamental right. The right to proceed and by doing so they are causing people to lose jobs, and even injury. an ambulance that can't proceed because of "peaceful" protestors is causing harm.
all they are is a bunch of spoiled, self indulgent, self obsessed idiots looking for relevance and peer approval, high fiving each other at coffee klatches and kegges.
I read that many outsiders suddenly appeared & they were the instigators of the violence, it was not the students themselves. Presumably the same thing happened with the BLM protests after George Floyd died. Just another way to undermine the libs.
Yep, and sometimes the government is involved in left wing that actually threaten the establishment.
The notorious men in black in Seattle that broke windows during the WTO riots,and in Portland during the BLM demonstrations, and then there is the infamous Umrella Man, carried an umbrella to shield his face and broke windows to ump start the loters.
This time it is not the government, and I don't think that the outsiders are trying to discredit the libs, but you never know. Discredit the libs and you pry away votes for Biden, so mybe you are corect.
The same was said about the 'hippies' back during the Vietnam war days. These are the new generation of hippies protesting a war. And it will get bloody before it's over, one way or another as we are starting to see.
Yeh, and I fear that it will be me who is bloodied.
There is a difference between the hippies and the current crop of protestors, and that is religion.
Religion is the driver of violence, and the most vicious.