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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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 Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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Wow! Should be a blockbuster. Thanks for the heads up on this one.
Dusty
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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BuffaloJack
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 1637
Location: Buffalo, New York
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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McCain and Kerry will keep this one silent; like they did before.
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Swift Boats - Qui Nhon (12/69-4/70), Cat Lo (4/70-5/70), Vung Tau (5/70-12/71) |
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1991932
Lance Corporal
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 381
Location: Massachusetts
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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What about this?
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Former "War Criminal" |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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| 1991932 wrote: | | What about this? |
Immediately under the 'The Facts:' section I find conflicting statements.
| Quote: | The Facts:
bullet All U.S. POWs captured during the Vietnam War were released, either at Operation Homecoming (spring, 1973) or earlier.
bullet The only men captured and not released are 113 who died in captivity; their identities and the circumstances of their deaths are known; some of their remains have been recovered/returned..
bullet No U. S. prisoners of war have been abandoned by the U. S. government.
bullet No U.S POWs remained in captivity after the conclusion of Operation Homecoming.
bullet There is no conspiracy within the U. S. government to conceal the abandonment of prisoners of war (who were not abandoned in the first place).
bullet No U.S. POWs from Indochina were taken to the Soviet Union, China, or any other third country.
bullet The U.S. government has been -- since well before the end of the Vietnam War -- exerting all possible efforts to recover or account for missing men. That effort continues today and is unprecedented in the history of warfare. |
So if all the guys were returned and accounted for and there are no missing men why is there this unprecedented ongoing effort to find or account for missing men?
Not trying to disparage the writer but this jumped out at me.
Also, from further down in the page there is this;
| Quote: | | August 21, 2004. The 2004 U. S. Presidential campaign is underway and the Republicans are launching vicious attacks on John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. In the main, the attacks focus on Kerry's record in Vietnam -- a war that George W. Bush avoided by using his father's connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard. Some of the attacks on Kerry are coming from the same individual who has been instrumental in spreading false claims about missing Americans and about Senator John McCain. Read about this individual here. Here is a link to several articles that debunk the lies being told about John Kerry. |
Does this paragraph give any indication as to where this writer is coming from?
Dusty
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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USMCWayne
Lt.Jg.
Joined: 12 Oct 2004
Posts: 117
Location: Montana
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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As much as I, or anyone, would like to believe there are still American POW's in SE Asia, awaiting a Chuck Norris-type rescue operation, it's a sad fact that there are probably no POW's to rescue.
Books such as the one cited above will appeal to a certain segment of the population, but you'd probably be better able to come up with "truth", from whatever perspective you support, with a minimal www search.
Here's the PBS perspective...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/mia.html
| Quote: | Little Hope
Since the war's end, official U.S. government investigations have consistently concluded that no military personnel remain alive in Vietnam.
In 1988, after hearing testimony from more than 20 witnesses, including former P.O.W.s, intelligence officials, and members of the families of M.I.A.s, a panel from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Veterans' Affairs found "no evidence to support the belief that some Americans were still held captive in Indochina," adding that there was "only a small hope that a small number of Americans might be alive."
In January 1993, a Senate committee released similar findings, but added that Americans could have been left alive after the war and since died. |
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kate
Admin
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 3:49 am Post subject: |
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Are there POWs there now - we may never know. Were there then -- Nixon, Kissinger, et all, felt so.
As the Paris talks were stalling, and Kissinger was not getting the accounting of MIAs he was pressing for, at the midnight hour, they went ahead and signed the accords - hoping they would get further information in return for the billions they promised to the communists. Congress however cut off funds, and that didn't happen (SSC sec6 see below link)
Many references on this forum threadPOW/MIA > References & Links
Especially this post, with links to 250+pgs related toThe Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs
The parts related to the Paris talks (sections 6, 7, 8 ) give insight into the negotiations, and the communications from Kissinger & Nixon to the other sides, re their frustration about the lack of proper accounting of POWs....especially in Laos.
from the MIA Facts link above
| Quote: | The Facts:
bullet >>All U.S. POWs captured during the Vietnam War were released, either at Operation Homecoming (spring, 1973) or earlier. |
and the PBS link..
| Quote: | Both the Nixon administration and the Vietnamese government concluded that all living P.O.W./M.I.A.s had been returned.
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not quite, according to the SSC ( section7)
| Quote: | President Nixon's Cable to Pham Van Dong. The official U.S reaction to the Laos list was conveyed in a cable from President Nixon to Prime Minister Pham Van Dong on February 2nd:
| Quote: | The list of American prisoners held in Laos which was presented in Paris on February 1, 1973 is unsatisfactory. U.S. records show that there are 317 American military men unaccounted for in Laos and it is inconceivable that only ten of these men would be held prisoner in Laos.
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| Quote: | Dr. Kissinger recalls in his memoirs:
We knew of at least 80 instances in which an American serviceman had been captured alive and subsequently disappeared. The evidence consisted either of voice communications from the ground in advance of capture or photographs and names published by the Communists. Yet none of these men was on the list of POWs handed over after the Agreement. Why? Were they dead? How did they die? Were they missing? How was that possible after capture? I called special attention to the 19 cases where pictures of the captured had been published in the Communist press. Pham Van Dong replied noncommittally that the lists handed over to us were complete. . .
We have never received an explanation of what could possibly have happened to prisoners whose pictures had appeared in communist newspapers, much less the airmen we knew from voice communications had safely reached the ground.
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SSC, section8
| Quote: | Secretary of Defense Richardson sent a memorandum to the White House in April 1973 urging Dr.Kissinger to lean hard on the North Vietnamese on the subject of POWs in Laos. Secretary Richardson remained very concerned about the possibility that live American POWs were still being held captive by the Pathet Lao, and he wanted Dr. Kissinger to do everything he could to obtain additional information concerning that possibility.
In testimony before the Select Committee, Dr. Kissinger said that the POW/MIA issue played an important role in these meetings:
We never accepted the proposition that they (U.S. POWs) are all dead, continued to express our dissatisfaction with respect to the accounting for MIAs, and pressed as hard as we could for an execution of their commitments. Between May and June, 1973, I conducted 12 days of talks with the North Vietnamese. I reviewed in detail the North's violations, including the failure to account for all of the MIAs, but Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding. A host of Congressional resolutions made it clear that we would have no support for military action. On May 31st, the Senate rejected a Republican sponsored amendment which would have made the cutoff of American military activity in Laos and Cambodia contingent upon the North Vietnamese making a good faith effort to account for the MIAs.
In response to my presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record. . .
<>
Despite Dr. Kissinger's request, Le Duc Tho refused to say publicly that no live U.S. POWs remained in Laos. As during the pre-Accords negotiations, Le Duc Tho would not agree to make any public statements which indicated either explicitly or implicitly North Vietnam's control of the Pathet Lao.
Dr. Kissinger was asked about this exchange during a hearing before the Select Committee:
| Quote: | Sen. Kerry:. . . So here you are in May with Le Duc Tho saying not. . . we need an accounting, but saying, give us a sentence that says there's nobody alive in Laos, it will be helpful to us.
Dr. Kissinger: You know, Mr. Chairman, it is a really bizarre situation when the people who were parading and keeping us from doing the things we needed to do are now telling us what sentences we should have used after all our leverage was taken away from us.
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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very doubtful there are any alive now
they would have been done away with just for the press alone.
ironic that every now and then some south korean pow's still escape and make it thru china and get back home so many years later. every couple of years someone makes it out of there. |
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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For any who were kept back against their will to be found alive today would be a major embarrassment for both Viet Nam and past administrations.
We will never know what happened to many, but I seriously doubt any are alive today.
It seems every war has left too many unaccounted for.
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