Ivan Gowch <gowch@SPAMTHEENOThotmail.com> wrote:

:On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 02:18:00 GMT, Fred J. McCall
:<fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
:
:[snip]
:
:==>The difference, as I said, was political will. How many American
:==>divisions did we use to carry the fight to the enemy in our drive on
:==>Hanoi?
:
: You clearly have little understanding of the
: war on Vietnam.

Well, one of us doesn't. I think it's obvious to anyone who can
recognize a clue when presented which one of us that is.

: America's "enemy" in Vietnam were the Vietnamese
: people -- virtually all of them, since the vast
: majority, above and below the 17th parallel, supported
: Ho Chi Minh and the war of liberation.

Nonsense! The majority of the Vietnamese people really didn't care
WHO ran things, so long as they were left alone. Unfortunately for
them, NEITHER side would leave them alone.

: That's why the U.S. reserved its greatest homicidal
: fury for the southern part of the country; why it bent
: its most strenuous efforts towards terrorizing and
: subduing the peasants in "south" Vietnam, even to
: the extent of trying to starve them into submission by
: poisoning their crops and the earth used to grow them.

The preceding is too silly to even respond to.

: The U.S. didn't try to carry the fight to "north"
: Vietnam because it realized that the "enemy" was all
: around them, and to try to expand the war would have
: been suicide.

Reality, this is Ivan. Ivan, reality.

I just thought it was time the two of you met.

By now. You're frankly too stupid to bother with.

<plonk>

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

Ivan Gowch <gowch@SPAMTHEENOThotmail.com> wrote in message news:<7aosgv09canrjsd3j9cd05pf2o0b2s4qen@4ax.com>. ..
> [newsgroups trimmed]
>
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 02:27:26 GMT, Fred J. McCall
> <fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> ==>:==>The loss in Vietnam was not a failure on the part of the troops. It
> ==>:==>was a failure in political will.
>
> IG:
> ==>: Nonsense.
>
> ==>Oh, nonsense, your ass.
> ==>
> ==>When did we invade North Vietnam? Never.
> ==>
> ==>Why not? Lack of political will.
>
> 1. There never was an entity in reality called
> "North Vietnam."
>
> 2. The U.S. administration knew damn well
> that if it sent troops above the 17th parallel
> few, if any, would return alive.

OH PLEASE, not even an idiot can beleve that. Yeesh! With
conventional munitions the US lost 63,000 some odd dead, mostly
because we fought a lingering action with one hand behind our back.
The Viet Cong and Viet Minh lost conservativly 1 million and some
credit closer to 2.

In heated battle, compare Khesahn causalty rates. Even the admitted
NV rates greatly exceed US combat causalties.

By the way, If the UN can't designate a country as North Vietnam, who
can?

Take your pills and try to remain calm.

--
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 05:22:10 -0400, Ivan Gowch
> America's "enemy" in Vietnam were the
> Vietnamese people -- virtually all of them

Then why did so many attempt to flee the communists?

America's enemy in Vietnam was the Soviet Union.

Ho Chi Minh was a KGB agent who spent decades behind a desk in
Moscow before being sent to rule Vietnam.

--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
et93TNipsjAJkoSgagqDu+9YFpueSBypfTQxuGQf
4DoY3HrNWZIQnbcXmnjKy2eV3BCdeP51bY//aQ2B8

--
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 05:22:10 -0400, Ivan Gowch
> 1. There never was an entity in reality
> called
> "North Vietnam."

North Vietnam was created by the allies during World War II.
Vietnam above the seventeenth parallel was assigned to China,
which occupied it. When China fell to the communists, the
chinese nationalist army in North Vietnam handed power over to
a Soviet KGB agent of Vietnamese origin, who at the start of
the war had been behind his Moscow desk.

The division was not intended to be permanent -- the allies had
bigger fish to fry at the time, but then the cold war set in,
and the division became permanent.

--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
f5tBP9AbQvFmOnXhQqslXskwVuglFDuqs8FRsp9f
4YClJId0jUhGofFX62koXYvPrabrFtcJKEZ7HhzCD

[newsgroups trimmed]


On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:45:41 GMT, Fred J. McCall
<fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:

[snip]

IG:
==>: America's "enemy" in Vietnam were the Vietnamese
==>: people -- virtually all of them, since the vast
==>: majority, above and below the 17th parallel, supported
==>: Ho Chi Minh and the war of liberation.

==>Nonsense! The majority of the Vietnamese people really didn't care
==>WHO ran things, so long as they were left alone.

How the **** would you know that? Did you
conduct a public opinion poll in Vietnam,
circa 1954? If not, please stop making claims
about what the Vietnamese did, or did not,
care about. It makes you look stupid as well
as dishonest.

IG:
==>: That's why the U.S. reserved its greatest homicidal
==>: fury for the southern part of the country; why it bent
==>: its most strenuous efforts towards terrorizing and
==>: subduing the peasants in "south" Vietnam, even to
==>: the extent of trying to starve them into submission by
==>: poisoning their crops and the earth used to grow them.

==>The preceding is too silly to even respond to.

TRANSLATION: I can't refute this, so I'll just call
it "silly" and run away, run away. . . .

IG:
==>: The U.S. didn't try to carry the fight to "north"
==>: Vietnam because it realized that the "enemy" was all
==>: around them, and to try to expand the war would have
==>: been suicide.

==>Reality, this is Ivan. Ivan, reality.
==>I just thought it was time the two of you met.

TRANSLATION: I can't refute this, either, so I'd
better try another dumb sarcastic remark and hope
no one notices I'm getting my ass kicked here.

==>By now. You're frankly too stupid to bother with.

TRANSLATION: Geez, my ass hurts. I'd better
call him a name and get the hell out of Dodge.

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:42:35 GMT, Fred J. McCall
<fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:

FM:
==>:==>When did we invade North Vietnam? Never.
==>:==>
==>:==>Why not? Lack of political will.

IG:
==>: 1. There never was an entity in reality called
==>: "North Vietnam."
==>:
==>: 2. The U.S. administration knew damn well
==>: that if it sent troops above the 17th parallel
==>: few, if any, would return alive.

==>1) Whatever you're taking that you shouldn't, you should stop.
==>
==>2) Whatever you're not taking that you should, you should start.
==>
==>Get back to me after 1 and 2 above are completed.

TRANSLATION: I can't refute a damn thing this guy
says, so I'd better make a childish sarcastic remark
and get the hell out of here before other readers
start to realize I've become his *****.

James A. Donald <jamesd@echeque.com> wrote in message
news:daf05fc682bbdd61f8a41b1a20b5f57f@news.mybinar ies.com...
> --
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 05:22:10 -0400, Ivan Gowch
> > 1. There never was an entity in reality
> > called
> > "North Vietnam."
>
> North Vietnam was created by the allies during World War II.
> Vietnam above the seventeenth parallel was assigned to China,
> which occupied it. When China fell to the communists, the
> chinese nationalist army in North Vietnam handed power over to
> a Soviet KGB agent of Vietnamese origin, who at the start of
> the war had been behind his Moscow desk.
>
> The division was not intended to be permanent -- the allies had
> bigger fish to fry at the time, but then the cold war set in,
> and the division became permanent.
>
> --digsig
> James A. Donald

Wow! A man bearing information. A rare breed indeed. Cheers.

Chupacabra...

[Newsgroups trimmed]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 19:12:17 GMT, James A. Donald <jamesd@echeque.com>
wrote:

IG:
==>> America's "enemy" in Vietnam were the
==>> Vietnamese people -- virtually all of them

==>Then why did so many attempt to flee the communists?

Thousands of Vietnamese in the south who had done
business with or collaborated with the Americans
were persuaded by U.S. propaganda that they
would be slaughtered if the nationalist forces took
control of the country. Understandably, once the
Americans ran for their lives, these collaborators
and war-profiteers (and others, who faced starvation
because their lands had been laid to waste by American
bombing and chemical defoliation and could no longer
support them) took to the boats to escape. Needless
to say, the propaganda was a lie, and the feared
reprisals never happened.

==>America's enemy in Vietnam was the Soviet Union.

Wrong. America's enemy in Vietnam was freedom
and democracy and the natural right of the Vietnamese
people to determine their own future and form of
government. That's not to say that the Soviets did
not help and support the Vietnamese. They did,
to their everlasting credit.

==>Ho Chi Minh was a KGB agent who spent decades behind a desk in
==>Moscow before being sent to rule Vietnam.

You're (partially) full of crap.

Ho (real name: Nguyen Tat Thanh) did spend
time in Moscow being trained in communist ideology,
but not "decades," and he was not sent to "rule"
Vietnam, which was still under foreign occupation.

He went to the USSR from France immediately after WWI
and left in 1924 for China, where he organized a
revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles that
contained the roots of the Vietminh and later, the
Viet Cong.

After spending two years (1931-33) as an unwilling
guest of the the British government in Hong Kong,
Ho returned to the USSR to recover from
tuberculosis. He went back to China in 1938 to
serve as an adviser to the communist armed
forces for three years, then formed the Vietminh
independence movement to fight the Japanese,
who had occupied Vietnam in 1941.

So, if it was your hope to paint Ho as some
faceless Soviet apparatchik being dispatched
hither and yon to do his masters' bidding, you have
failed miserably.

Ho, by all accounts, was a charismatic leader who was
in the founding group of the French communist party
(before he ever set foot in the Soviet Union) and the
Indochinese communist party later, and then almost
singlehandedly fashioned one of the fiercest and most
successful fighting forces the world has ever known.

If you don't believe me, ask the families of about
58,000 dead American guys and those of an uncounted
number of equally dead French and Japanese guys.