President Johnson lied to the American people about why he sent 50,000 brave Americans to their deaths in Viet Nam - the Gulf of Tonkin attack on American ships, as we now know, never happened.
Viet Nam was not about Communist North Viet Nam attempting to conquer the democratic South - it was a revolt to expel French colonialists and their artificial division of their country.
A Communist Viet Nam is certainly not the government we would choose, but was a Communist Viet Nam ever a grave danger to America? No.
Nothing Kerry said extended the war. The doctrine of supporting a corrupt South Vietnamese government via a "gradual escalation" and subsequent decisions not to quickly take the ground war into the North were flawed and doomed the war effort from the start. Even a ground invasion of the North, while the right doctrine, would not have guaranteed success against an enemy that saw itself fighting against foreign imperialism.
Remember President Eisenhower's warnings against involving American soldiers in a ground war in Asia? America should have listened - as the younger George Bush should have listened when the elder George Bush decided not to involve American troops in an extended occupation of Iraq in 1991.
You never directly answered my contention that it took courage for Kerry to speak out against the Viet Nam war. You simply call it BS and go on with the usual Judas and Arnold comparisons. If that is true, and Kerry should still be in jail as you say, so should millions of other Americans who saw the tragedy unfolding and tried to stop it. You blindly refuse to see that the Viet Nam war was flawed from the start - and nothing short of killing every Vietnamese would have ensured "victory" for America.
Colin Powell learned the lessons of Viet Nam well and set forth his "Powell Doctrine" that guided American use of force for a decade - until George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld broke with it by, among other things, using "minimum forces" in Iraq and failing to outline clear goals for the occupation. Remember the early estimates that a quarter million troops would be required to occupy Iraq? These initial requirements, along with the $200 billion price tag, were squashed by the neocons in the administration who figured they could do it on the cheap, install Chalabi and leave. They
have been proven horribly wrong.
If Kerry is so vile and so evil, why is the election a statistical dead heat - too close to call, despite the bitter attacks and vilifications by those who cannot find a single good thing to say of Kerry? Pretty much half the Americans who will vote in November see something positive in Kerry - or a lot of negatives in the incumbent.
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