Nixon’s newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.
Proof! How rare.
Now we need the same proof of what Reagan's people did to Carter in Iran. Or, perhaps better because I think we actually have proof, acknowledgement of it by conservatives. Hard to believe we will get acknowledgement, though, since so many of them deify Reagan and Bush Sr. played an integral role in it. He is, in his dementia years and by contrast to his son, being held up as a "statesman" by some people.
Yes, great statesman all right.
Said Nixon: “My, I would never do anything to encourage….Saigon not to come to the table….Good God, we’ve got to get them to Paris or you can’t have peace.”
But South Vietnamese President General Theiu—a notorious drug and gun runner—did boycott Johnson’s Paris peace talks. With the war still raging, Nixon claimed a narrow victory over Humphrey. He then made Kissinger his own national security advisor.
In the four years between the sabotage and what Kissinger termed “peace at hand” just prior to the 1972 election, more than 20,000 US troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed.
Just collateral damage. Their families should be proud that they died in the service of getting Nixon elected. [dark sarcasm alert] |
