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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Wharf Rat who wrote (341888)7/4/2017 12:56:10 PM
From: Alex MG  Respond to of 541403
 
JFK started the Vietnam war? and Nixon ended it?? that's such bullshit

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oe-goldstein22-2008nov22-story.html

Kennedy realized that the inability of the United States to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail -- the lines of infiltration and resupply from North Vietnam -- would make it impossible to defeat the insurgency. "Those trails are a built-in excuse for failure," Kennedy told an aide in the spring of 1962, "and a built-in argument for escalation." Kennedy was so dubious he declared to White House aide Michael Forrestal that the odds against defeating the Viet Cong were 100 to 1.

In early 1963, Kennedy told Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who opposed increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam, that he would begin withdrawing advisors from South Vietnam at the beginning of his second term in 1965. Kennedy disclosed the same plan to Roswell Gilpatric, his deputy secretary of Defense. But the tragedy in Dallas in November 1963 changed everything.

nytimes.com
A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.