Text 20501, 61 rader
Skriven 2006-05-28 07:31:02 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 20495 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
Ärende: Iraq news
=================
Bob Ackley -> VERN HUMPHREY wrote:
 BA> Replying to a message of VERN HUMPHREY to JOHN HULL:

 GL>>>>>    If the USA would have followed the Geneva Convention Accords of
 GL>>>>> 1954 which divided Vietnam but also set up provisions in ref to
 GL>>>>> the futures of the two Vietnams, the USA would have NEVER needed
 GL>>>>> to get involved with Vietnam.

 VH>>>> When did you graduate from the Command and General Staff College?
 VH>>>> :-)

 JH>>> It's real convenient that he forgets about SEATO, never mind the fact
 JH>>> that w were involved there long before '54 by backing the French in
 JH>>> regaining Indochine after the war.

 BA> It was more of acquiescence than support.  Truman believed he needed
 BA> deGaulle
 BA> in order to make the UN float.  He probably didn't but he thought he
 BA> did, so he
 BA> did not recognize Ho Chi Minh's functioning government in Hanoi
 BA> (something that
 BA> the US advisers and liaison people who had worked with Ho fighting the
 BA> Japanese
 BA> strongly recommended that he do) and did not object (publicly, anyway)
 BA> when France
 BA> retook possession of its Southeast Asia colonies.  Neither did he send
 BA> B-29s to help
 BA> the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, something the French were
 BA> frantically requesting
 BA> at the time.

 VH>> It's also convenient that he assumes WE violated all the agreements.
 VH>> Like North Viet Nam was allowed to send troops into the south.

 BA> Many people claim that the west (read: US) didn't live up to the 1954
 BA> Geneva
 BA> Accords by holding the free elections that were supposed to have been held
 BA> in about 1956.  They ignore the fact that those same free elections were
 BA> not
 BA> held in the north, either.  And they ignore the fact that Vo Nguyen Giap
 BA> had to
 BA> put down - and rather bloodily - a peasants' revolt that occurred in North
 BA> Vietnam in 1957.

 BA> I'd like to point out that the US did not live up to its obligations
 BA> under the
 BA> 1973 peace treaty between North and South Vietnam.  It took no action when
 BA> the North blatantly violated that agreement in 1975.

Did you really expect them to?  After all, the reason South Vietnam fell was
because the Democratically controlled Congress cut off their logistical
support.  When we left Vietnam, ALL of South Vietnam was under control of the
ARVN forces.  My ship was involved in the last big offensive along the DMZ just
prior to the pullout.  Even after the Democrats pulled the rug out from under
them, they held on for nearly two years.  I talked to numerous former ARVN
soldiers that escaped with the boat people who confirmed all that.  Despite
being betrayed, they still had nothing but thanks for the US military personnel
who tried to help them save their country.

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