The Lies of Tet

[trailboss49]

The below article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 2-6-08 &

The Lies of Tet

By ARTHUR HERMAN
February 6, 2008; Page A19

On January 30, 1968, more than a quarter million North Vietnamese soldiers and 100,000 Viet Cong irregulars launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. But the public didn't hear about who had won this most decisive battle of the Vietnam War, the so-called Tet offensive, until much too late.

Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes -- such as the Petraeus surge -- minimized and glossed over.

In truth, the war in Vietnam was lost on the propaganda front, in great measure due to the press's pervasive misreporting of the clear U.S. victory at Tet as a defeat. Forty years is long past time to set the historical record straight.

The Tet offensive came at the end of a long string of communist setbacks. By 1967 their insurgent army in the South, the Viet Cong, had proved increasingly ineffective, both as a military and political force. Once American combat troops began arriving in the summer of 1965, the communists were mauled in one battle after another, despite massive Hanoi support for the southern insurgency with soldiers and arms. By 1967 the VC had lost control over areas like the Mekong Delta -- ironically, the very place where
reporters David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan had first diagnosed a Vietnam
'quagmire' that never existed.

The Tet offensive was Hanoi's desperate throw of the dice to seize South Vietnam's northern provinces using conventional armies, while simultaneously triggering a popular uprising in support of the Viet Cong. Both failed. Americans and South Vietnamese soon put down the attacks, which began under cover of a cease-fire to celebrate the Tet lunar new year. By March 2, when U.S. Marines crushed the last North Vietnamese pockets of resistance in the northern city of Hue, the VC had lost 80,000-100,000 killed or wounded without capturing a single province.

Tet was a particularly crushing defeat for the VC. It had not only failed to trigger any uprising but also cost them 'our best people,' as former Viet Cong doctor Duong Quyunh Hoa later admitted to reporter Stanley Karnow. Yet the very fact of the U.S. military victory -- 'The North Vietnamese,' noted National Security official William Bundy at the time, 'fought to the last Viet Cong' -- was spun otherwise by most of the U.S. press.

As the Washington Post's Saigon bureau chief Peter Braestrup documented in his 1977 book, 'The Big Story,' the desperate fury of the communist attacks including on Saigon, where most reporters lived and worked, caught the press by surprise. (Not the military: It had been expecting an attack and had been on full alert since Jan. 24.) It also put many reporters in physical danger for the first time. Braestrup, a former Marine, calculated that only 40 of 354 print and TV journalists covering the war at the time had seen any real fighting. Their own panic deeply colored their reportage, suggesting that
the communist assault had flung Vietnam into chaos.

Their editors at home, like CBS's Walter Cronkite, seized on the distorted reporting to discredit the military's version of events. The Viet Cong insurgency was in its death throes, just as U.S. military officials assured the American people at the time. Yet the press version painted a different picture.

To quote Braestrup, 'the media tended to leave the shock and confusion of early February, as then perceived, fixed as the final impression of Tet' and of Vietnam generally. 'Drama was perpetuated at the expense of information,' and 'the negative trend' of media reporting 'added to the distortion of the real situation on the ground in Vietnam.'

The North Vietnamese were delighted. On the heels of their devastating defeat, Hanoi increasingly shifted its propaganda efforts toward the media and the antiwar movement. Causing American (not South Vietnamese) casualties, even at heavy cost, became a battlefield objective in order to reinforce the American media's narrative of a failing policy in Vietnam.

Yet thanks to the success of Tet, the numbers of Americans dying in Vietnam steadily declined -- from almost 15,000 in 1968 to 9,414 in 1969 and 4,221 in 1970 -- by which time the Viet Cong had ceased to exist as a viable fighting force. One Vietnamese province after another witnessed new peace and stability. By the end of 1969 over 70% of South Vietnam's population was under government control, compared to 42% at the beginning of 1968. In 1970 and 1971, American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker estimated that 90% of Vietnamese lived in zones under government control.

However, all this went unnoticed because misreporting about Tet had left the image of Vietnam as a botched counterinsurgency -- an image nearly half a decade out of date. The failure of the North's next massive invasion over Easter 1972, which cost the North Vietnamese army another 100,000 men and half their tanks and artillery, finally forced it to sign the peace accords in Paris and formally to recognize the Republic of South Vietnam. By August 1972 there were no U.S. combat forces left in Vietnam, precisely because, contrary to the overwhelming mass of press reports, American policy there
had been a success.

To Congress and the public, however, the war had been nothing but a debacle. And by withdrawing American troops, President Nixon gave up any U.S. political or military leverage on Vietnam's future. With U.S. military might out of the equation, the North quickly cheated on the Paris accords.
When its re-equipped army launched a massive attack in 1975, Congress refused to redeem Nixon's pledges of military support for the South. Instead, President Gerald Ford bowed to what the media had convinced the American public was inevitable: the fall of Vietnam.

The collapse of South Vietnam's neighbor, Cambodia, soon followed. Southeast Asia entered the era of the 'killing fields,' exterminating in a brief few years an estimated two million people -- 30% of the Cambodian population. American military policy has borne the scars of Vietnam ever since.

It had all been preventable -- but for the lies of Tet.

Mr. Herman is the author of 'Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That
Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age,' to be published by Bantam Dell in
April.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

NEVER FOGET


After America's Media lies about our fight for Freedom in Vietnam came a most horrid:


.."JOURNEY from the FALL"..

http://www.JourneyFromTheFall.com

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts


NEVER ever AGAIN..!!!


NEVER FORGET

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

NEVER FORGET


The very same WALTER CRONKITE that called our TET Victory "a Failure" in Year 1968...

...went on to publically call for America's 11 Southern States to secede from our Union. This at a heavily media-covered Year 2000 World Conference in London, England. This in the same London, England that saw Oxford Student WILLIAM CLINTON organize 3 Anti-U.S. Demonstrations outside our U.S. Embassy during the Vietnam War, after his personally going to the Soviet Union for Communist funding for those demonstrations. This while College Student HILLARY RODHAM was doing the very same thing, before the American media, back at home. Vipers, both.

This is also the same WALTER CRONKITE that is now backing HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON for President of the United States in a new time of war against Terrorism, with our own Freedom now directly at stake here at home.

A HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON that backed Communist North Vietnam's Terrorist takeover of a then Free South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.


For you see, we Vietnam Veterans were RIGHT then fighting for the Freedom of others far away, right from the very start:


'WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...& YOUNG'...4 FREEDOM **

http://www.Freerepublic.com/forum/a39626542519c.htm

** See Postings on WALTER CRONKITE


It's their day on Veterans Day **

http://www.ocregister.com/slideshow/...y-marine?pos=2

** See Year 2008 Veterans Day Photo



NEVER FORGET

[jelay14]

...What does any of that have to do with anything?

[trailboss49]

Originally Posted by jelay14

...What does any of that have to do with anything?

New to the boards or are you simply unaware that most Vietnam veterans put Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite stickers together in urinals?

[DeltaOne]

Aloha Ronnie and TB -

Anyone who sought help from the Soviets should have been charged and sentenced for TREASON!!!!
As far as Walter Cronkite, he should have been stripped of his American citizenship along with the other pricks who lied outright. They ASSISTED the enemy. THEY were the turning point of the war, Tet was not. I would still kick Cronkite in b@lls if I had the chance.

Walter speaking on Tet.

D1

[five4]

There was a very good article in ACG back on March 2007 by Ralph Peters about how the media manipulates and dictates the outcomes of battles and wars by following thier own agenda[anti-American]Freeom of speech is not freedom of stupidity or freedom of irresponsibility.It is freedom of speaking the truth and not being persicuted.Those media types and so called reporters who hid behind the 1st Ammendment in order to propagate lies for thier own personnal gain and fame should be shot for treason.It is always harder to disprove a falsehood that has been published than to prove a truth after the fact

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

NEVER FORGET


How the CIA Lost Vietnam **

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1969948/posts

** Great stuff on the Enemy Within WALTER CRONKITE


NEVER FORGET

[DeltaOne]

Thanks Ron, great post. Interesting stuff on our buddies at the agency. I worked with a number of spooks and trusted NOT ONE of them.

[PatBC]

The statements made by the press about Afghanistan are the same. What if the press had started demanding to know what is the end date in the summer of 41?

[Miss Saigon]

Originally Posted by PatBC

The statements made by the press about Afghanistan are the same. What if the press had started demanding to know what is the end date in the summer of 41?

Norman Davies, a respected European historian has written several books on European history. I have read a few of his on Poland. But right now I am listening to his history of WWII on CD as I drive across the country (not my choice but I am learning a great deal). This book is huge and covers many aspects of the war.

One thing is clear from this book. The Allied comand routinely misguessed the length of small actions, big actions, and routinely guessed wrong about when the war would end. Yet today we expect our military to have an infallable crystal ball.

One other thing. .I was stunned to hear about just who the US declared war on in WWII. All too often I hear about "undeclared" wars in arguments about Vietnam (and others). Well, now I know that even most of WWII was undeclared too.

The "Good War" wasn't as clear cut as we like to act and Davies points out an awful lot interesting things that will not become part of my reference list for arguments about Vietnam. I am glad I was cajoled into listening to this book because it is not one I would have picked myself.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

Originally Posted by PatBC

The statements made by the press about Afghanistan are the same. What if the press had started demanding to know what is the end date in the summer of 41?

.

NEVER FORGET


Well, that's it then ..isn't it..?

Those who do not want us to fight a war always end up pressing hard for a war's end date after one starts..?

Problem for us today is ..this particular war isn't going to end until a sea change takes place with our terrorist enemies.

And that only comes when people are...
...FREE..!!!

It may well be that the entire future of the whole human race may well hinge on our finally, during this new 21st Century of ours,

FREEing all the women of the world...

into being all that they already are in GOD's Eyes...

and all that they can be while here on the Earth..?

And like Presidential Candidate JOHN McCAIN is telling us, it may just take 100 years to do.

So ..THE Question of the 2008 Presidential Campagin for us seems to be boiling down to:

FIGHT or FLIGHT..?


NEVER FORGET

[Schwerepunkt]

It is always the press that is to blame. Their mistruths, misrepresentations and distortions defeat us, and not our policies, mistakes and misplaced assumptions.
Get real, McNamara, Johnson, et. al in 1966, and Dubya and the SOD and Cheney badly miscalculated the ways in which the VN and Iraqui wars would be handled.
Your remarks would be pitiful except for the fact that you actually believe them. We will be out of Iraq by January 1, 2010 unless a Repub neocon wins. Then we will be stuck there for a century, Iran will have the bomb and we will all be atoms in the atmosphere.

[Sgt. Rock]

Originally Posted by Schwerepunkt

It is always the press that is to blame. Their mistruths, misrepresentations and distortions defeat us, and not our policies, mistakes and misplaced assumptions.
Get real, McNamara, Johnson, et. al in 1966, and Dubya and the SOD and Cheney badly miscalculated the ways in which the VN and Iraqui wars would be handled.
Your remarks would be pitiful except for the fact that you actually believe them. We will be out of Iraq by January 1, 2010 unless a Repub neocon wins. Then we will be stuck there for a century, Iran will have the bomb and we will all be atoms in the atmosphere.

Tet was a military defeat for the VC and NVA. They didn't achieve their objectives. The way Cronkite and the media portrayed it was not accurate. Can you show us where the VC or NVA achieved their goals during the Tet Offensive? That is the subject of this thread. During WWII the Germans launched a surprise attack similar to Tet to start the Battle of the Bulge. Prior to this attack the Allies believed the Germans were pretty much finished as the Germans were suffering major defeats on the Western and Eastern Front. The Germans also moved a large number of troops and supplies from the Eastern Front without the knowledge of the Allies prior to this attack. In the end, the Allies responded to the German attack and defeated them. This is very similar to the way the Americans, the S. Vietnamese and their allies reacted to the early successes of the Tet Offensive. At the end of the Tet Offensive, the VC was virtually finished and only the NVA was left to fight.

[PatBC]

Originally Posted by Schwerepunkt

It is always the press that is to blame. Their mistruths, misrepresentations and distortions defeat us, and not our policies, mistakes and misplaced assumptions.
Get real, McNamara, Johnson, et. al in 1966, and Dubya and the SOD and Cheney badly miscalculated the ways in which the VN and Iraqui wars would be handled.
Your remarks would be pitiful except for the fact that you actually believe them. We will be out of Iraq by January 1, 2010 unless a Repub neocon wins. Then we will be stuck there for a century, Iran will have the bomb and we will all be atoms in the atmosphere.

I never said anything about Iraq did I?