You are wrong but no apology needed, I already knew I was right. Eisenhower was responsible.

I wonder how you would react if someone called you a liar and they were proven to be wrong...and from your previous displays of lack of control it probably wouldn't be pretty...

My dear dragon:


John Fitzgerald Kennedy
35th President of the United States
In office
January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson
Succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson
United States Senator
from Massachusetts
In office
January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960
Born May 29, 1917(1917-05-29)
Brookline, Massachusetts
Died November 22, 1963 (aged 46)
Dallas, Texas
Political party Democratic
Spouse Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy
Alma mater Harvard College
Religion Roman Catholic
Signature John F. Kennedy's signature

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

After Kennedy's military service as commander of the USS PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political, with the encouragement and grooming of his father. Kennedy represented the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1961. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. He is the youngest man and the only practicing Roman Catholic to be elected President. To date he is also the only President to have won a Pulitzer Prize.[1] Events during his administration include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the American Civil Rights Movement and early events of the Vietnam War.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas

My dear, kindly admit when you are wrong. I do.

Lindyy

Oh, oh controversy..politely backing out.

The United States government was severely concerned about the success of communism in South East Asia. Between 1950 and 1953 they had lost 142,000 soldiers in attempting to stop communism entering South Korea. The United States feared that their efforts would have been wasted if communism were to spread to South Vietnam. President Eisenhower was aware that he would have difficulty in persuading the American public to support another war so quickly after Korea. He therefore decided to rely on a small group of Military Advisers' to prevent South Vietnam becoming a communist state.

Under the leadership of Colonel Edward Lansdale, a twelve-man team of American soldiers and intelligence agents was sent to Saigon in June, 1954. The plan was to mount a propaganda campaign to persuade the Vietnamese people in the south not to vote for the communists in the forthcoming elections.

In the months that followed, this small team of men distributed targeted documents that claimed the Vietminh and Chinese communists had entered South Vietnam and were killing innocent civilians. The Ho Chi Minh government was also accused of slaying thousands of political opponents in North Vietnam.

Colonel Lansdale also recruited mercenaries from the Philippines to carry out acts of sabotage in North Vietnam. This was unsuccessful and most of the mercenaries were arrested and put on trial in Hanoi.

It Sounds like COlonel lansdale recruited can we say terrorists? but again my Dear Lyddy you are twisting facts to suit your world view

I was incorrect in one of my posts correction= Eisenhower started the "conflict" or our participation in it so you are wrong also.

No apology needed for me though I am a better person than that.

yes you are Dragoness

LINDYY'S RESEARCH FOUND THAT US INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM GOES BACK TO DEMOCRAT HARRY S. TRUMAN:

First Indochina War, International Control Commission, The United States and the Vietnam War#Timeline: Harry S. Truman and the Vietnam War (1945–1953), and The United States and the Vietnam War#Timeline: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Vietnam War (1953–1961)

In 1950, the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) arrived to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy and train Vietnamese soldiers.[10] By 1954, the U.S. had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent one billion dollars in support of the French military effort. The Eisenhower administration was shouldering 80% of the cost of the war (NO troops).[11] The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Chinese support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from China into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.[12]The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina.


But South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.[46] Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did."[47] By mid-1962, the number of U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam had risen from 700 to 12,000.

Kennedy had introduced helicopters to the war and created a joint U.S.-South Vietnamese Air Force, staffed with American pilots. He also sent in the Green Berets. He was succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who reaffirmed America's support of South Vietnam. By the end of the year Saigon had received $500 million in military aid.

In February, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked an American military base near Pleiku. Using the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, President Johnson sent in 3,500 Marines, the first official troops, to South Vietnam. By the end of the year, there were 200,000 US troops in Vietnam.


The U.S. never officially declared war. About the closest thing you can point to is the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" passed in August 1964, which gave President Johnson free reign to escalate the war in Vietnam. U.S. military advisors had been training & advising the South Vietnamese Army since 1955.

rambill,

Stating that the actor Carroll O'Conner was once president of the communist party of the United States is by far one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever seen posted by you.



State your source and it had better be a reliable one.

Might be a good time to remind everyone that the gulf of Tonkin was another scam ...............................................................Washington, D.C., 1 December 2005 - The largest U.S. intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, today declassified over 140 formerly top secret documents -- histories, chronologies, signals intelligence [SIGINT] reports, and oral history interviews -- on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Included in the release is a controversial article by Agency historian Robert J. Hanyok on SIGINT and the Tonkin Gulf which confirms what historians have long argued: that there was no second attack on U.S. ships in Tonkin on August 4, 1964. According to National Security Archive research fellow John Prados, "the American people have long deserved to know the full truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The National Security Agency is to be commended for releasing this piece of the puzzle. The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence." Last year, Prados edited a National Security Archive briefing book which published for the first time some of the key intercepts from the Gulf of Tonkin crisis.

The National Security Agency has long resisted the declassification of material on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, despite efforts by Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Carl Marcy (who had prepared a staff study on the August 4 incident); former Deputy Director Louis Tordella, and John Prados to push for declassification of key documents. Today's release is largely due to the perseverance of FOIA requester Matthew M. Aid, who requested the Hanyok study in April 2004 and brought the issue to the attention of The New York Times when he learned that senior National Security Agency officials were trying to block release of the documents. New York Times reporter Scott Shane wrote that higher-level officials at the NSA were "fearful that [declassification] might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq." The glaring light of publicity encouraged the Agency's leaders finally to approve declassification of the documents.

Hanyok's article, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964," originally published in the National Security Agency's classified journal Cryptologic Quarterly in early 2001, provides a comprehensive SIGINT-based account "of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin." Using this evidence, Hanyok argues that the SIGINT confirms that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, on August 2, 1964, although under questionable circumstances. The SIGINT also shows, according to Hanyok, that a second attack, on August 4, 1964, by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. ships, did not occur despite claims to the contrary by the Johnson administration. President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara treated Agency SIGINT reports as vital evidence of a second attack and used this claim to support retaliatory air strikes and to buttress the administration's request for a Congressional resolution that would give the White House freedom of action in Vietnam.

Hanyok further argues that Agency officials had "mishandled" SIGINT concerning the events of August 4 and provided top level officials with "skewed" intelligence supporting claims of an August 4 attack. "The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack occurred." Key pieces of evidence are missing from the Agency's archives, such as the original decrypted Vietnamese text of a document that played an important role in the White House's case. Hanyok has not found a "smoking gun" to demonstrate a cover-up but believes that the evidence suggests "an active effort to make SIGINT fit the claim of what happened during the evening of 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin." Senior officials at the Agency, the Pentagon, and the White House were none the wiser about the gaps in the intelligence. Hanyok's conclusions have sparked controversy among old Agency hands but his research confirms the insight of journalist I.F. Stone, who questioned the second attack only weeks after the events. Hanyok's article is part of a larger study on the National Security Agency and the Vietnam War, "Spartans in Darkness," which is the subject of a pending FOIA request by the National Security Archive.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm

SMO:

You need to stay away from thoe motorcycle funmes

Lindyy

Excuse me -'motorcycle fumes'

Lindyy

By 1961 the steady progress of the insurgency was near crisis levels. The new Kennedy administration increased American support for the Diem regime to prevent a collapse. By December of 1961, 3,200 U.S. military personnel were in Vietnam as advisors, supported by $65 million in military equipment and $136 million in economic aid. Military assistance was reorganized as the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), formed under the command of General Paul D. Harkins in February 1962. MACV was there to support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to defend the country. MACV included Army Special Forces (Green Beret) instructors and CIA personnel organizing the Montagnards in the mountains.

The U.S. led counterinsurgency effort was based on the strategic hamlet program. The plan was to consolidate 14,000 villages in South Vietnam into 11,000 secure hamlets, each with its own houses, schools, wells, and watchtowers, to isolate the villages from the guerrillas. As the program got underway, there were not only frequent attacks on the hamlets by guerrilla units, but the self-defense units for the hamlets were often poorly trained, and ARVN support was inadequate. Corruption, favoritism, and resentment of the forced resettlement undermined the program. Of the 8,000 hamlets actually established, only 1,500 were viable.

U.S. Special Forces Deployment 15 October 1962
U.S. Special Forces Deployment in Vietnam, 15 October 1962. Click for larger image.

As the U.S. involvement increased, the Communists responded in 1961 by reorganizing all armed units in the south into the People's Liberation Armed Force (PLAF), with about 15,000 troops. Many in this force were from South Vietnam, trained in the North and then reinfiltrated, often in political roles as liaison with the southern population. By late 1962, the PLAF was large and capable enough to mount battalion-size attacks. At the same time, the NLF expanded to include 300,000 members and an estimated one million sympathizers while they instituted land reform and other popular measures in controlled areas.

As the NLF grew stronger, Diem reacted with more repression, especially against Buddist's, led by his brother and chief adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu. On 8 May 1963, ARVN troops fired into a crowd of protesters in Saigon, killing nine. Hundreds of Buddhist priests (bonzes) staged peaceful demonstrations and fasted to protest. In June a bonze set himself on fire in Saigon as a protest, and, by the end of the year, six more bonzes had committed self-immolation. Violence escalated on August 21 when special forces under Ngo Dinh Nhu raided pagodas in major cities, killing many bonzes and arresting thousands of others. Demonstrations at Saigon University on August 24 were crushed with the arrest of an estimated 4,000 students and the closing of universities in Saigon and Hue.

By 1963, U.S. military advisors in Vietnam had grown to 16,000 and the Americans were firmly identified with the oppressive Diem regime. Outrage over the Diem regime in Washington was communicated to South Vietnamese military leaders, indicating U.S. support for a new government. The Kennedy administration, through the CIA and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, encouraged a coup in early November 1963 in which Diem and Nhu were assassinated. General Duong Van Minh took over the government and the U.S. was obligated to support him and the series of weak governments that followed. Later than same month, President Kennedy was himself assassinated in Dallas, TX and President Johnson assumed office. Hanoi thought that the new President might be looking to exit Vietnam and calculated that an increase in violence would be the lever to push the U.S. out.



...............................

On 21 September 1961 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was officially activated.



One year after the 5th Group was organized, elements of the 5th Special Forces Group began serving temporary duty tours in the Republic of Vietnam.


Hence why the Beret Flash of the 5th is the colors of the Republic of South Viet-Nam in a diagonal slash.

Here's why we went to war my child.....
Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves


Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

they didnt prove accurate by the way, many of the bodies were from the Iran/Iraq war.

We believe that more than half of the Iraqi population have someone who is missing in their family," Bakhtiar Amin, outgoing Iraqi Human Rights Minister and a Kurd. About 26 million people live in Iraq.

Investigators working at the grave since early April have recovered the remains of 113 people. With the exception of five, all are women and children



There are many graves that contain women and children and old men. The reality is that WE got rid of Saddam. He was evil. Brutal regimes need to go when the best opportunity arrives. Saddam was stupid - all he had to do was to let the international inspectors in with total access. It was as simple as that. It doesn't matter that we supported him in the past. It came down to the lesser of two evils when we supported him and then we made the choice again of the lesser of two evils - go to war with Iraq. The reality is that democracy and freedom has a chance in Iraq. The people of Iraq have had a taste of what that means. Even if we pull out, the Iraqi people will be empowered to continue their struggle for freedom because the US has showed them that some things are worth standing up to. Soldiers coming home from Iraq tell me how the look in the children eyes have changed. It is a look of hope. And it's such a small taste of what freedom brings. Shouldn't we stay for them? If freedom stands in Iraq it will be a building block for freedom to spread. History teaches us that. and that with a few blocks in place it spreads without a war. Too bad the United Nations is such a pitiful waste of money on tough issues!!!

would a better person not apologize for calling someone a lier?....

we chapter guys out of the army every day who cant hack it, and we give them an honorable discharge to,,, its a piece of paper that is pretty meaningless to me, unless you got it after firing your weapon with the hostile intent of killing a SOB who firing one at you or your buddies to the right and left....
mad I always read on here your blowhard crap, and Im pretty sure that for the most part you believe only about half of it. its pretty sad to have to act up in class just to get attention. You know low self esteem problems can lead to more serious issues and could stem from a past that is fostering its own type of PTSD, you very well could be the next crazed gun man, personally i think that woiuld not be a good thing and only hope that you seek professional counciling as soon as humanly possible before yourself or someoneelse gets hurt.