Bright Start Advisor Letter Of Intent Form: Fill & Download for Free

Dear All Sir-How would you realize the greatest power of America to have approved the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam by Foreign Affairs EMBASSY OF THE UNrrED STATES OF AMERCA No. 152 Saigon, April 4, 1961? which is why the United States Congress has denied the settlement case of prisoners of war of Bright Quang. Why did the United States Congress has to discriminate with the Southern officers when we, were side by side fighting against communism with the American Armed Forces in the Vietnam war?+(,121/,1( Citation: 12.1 U.S.T. Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org) Wed Jan 28 15:26:25 2009 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at Welcome to HeinOnline -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. VIET-NAM Exchange of Official Publications Agreement effected by exchange of notes Signed at Saigon April 4, 1961; Entered into force April 4, 1961. The American Ambassador to the Vietnamese Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs EMBASSY OF THE The UNrrED STATES OF AMERCA No. 152 Saigon, April 4, 1961. EXCELLENCY: I have the honor to refer to the conversations which have taken place between representatives of the Government of the United States of America and representatives of the Government of Viet-Nam in regard to the exchange of official publications, and to inform Your Excellency that the Government of the United States of America agrees that there shall be an exchange of official publications between the two Governments in accordance with the following provisions: 1. The Government of the United States of America shall furnish regularly a copy of each of the official publications in its Standard Partial Depository Set of United States Government Publications, and the Government of Viet-Nam shall furnish regularly a copy of each of its official publications. 2. The official exchange office for the transmission of publications of the Government of the United States of America shall be the Smithsonian Institution. The official exchange office for the transmission of publications of the Government of Viet-Nam shall be The National Library of Viet-Nam. 3. The publications shall be received on behalf of the United States of America by the Library of Congress and on behalf of the Government of Viet-Nam by The National Library of Viet-Nam. 4. The present agreement does not obligate either of the two Governments to furnish blank forms, circulars which are not of a public character, or confidential publications. 5. Each of the two Governments shall bear all charges, including postal, rail and shipping costs, arising under the present agreement in connection with the transportation within its own country of the TIAS 4717 (310) HeinOnline -- 12.1 U.S.T. 310 2 12 UST] Viet-Nam-Exch., Official Publications-Apr. 4, 1961 publications to a port, or other appropriate places reasonably convenient to the exchange office of the other Government. 6. The present agreement shall not be considered as a modification of any existing agreement between a department or agency of one of the Governments and a department or agency of the other Government. Upon receipt of a note from Your Excellency indicating that the foregoing provisions are acceptable to the Government of Viet-Nam, the Government of the United States of America will consider that this note and your reply constitute an agreement between the two Governments on this subject, the agreement to enter into force on the date of your note in reply. Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration. ELmn Dunmow His Excellency VU VAN MAU, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Saigon. " The Vietname8e Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the American Ambassador RIPUBLIQUE DU VIETNAM DfPARTEMENT DES AFFAIRES MTRANG]RES Le Secrdtaire d'Etat SAIGON, April 4, 1961 EXCELLENCY, With reference to Your Excellency's note of April 4, 1961, and to the conversations between representatives of the Government of Viet-Nam and representatives of the Government of the United States of America in regard to the exchange of official publications, I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that the Government of Viet-Nam agrees that there shall be an exchange of official publications between the two Governments in accordance with the following provisions 1. The Government of the United States of America shall furnish regularly a copy of each of the official publications in its Standard Partial Depository Set of United States Government Publications, and the Government of Viet-Nam shall furnish regularly a copy of each of its official publications. 2. The official exchange office for the transmission of publications of the Government of the United States of America shall be the TIAS 4717 HeinOnline -- 12.1 U.S.T. 311 2 U.S. Treaties and Other International Agreements Smithsonian Institution. The official exchange office for the transmission of publications of the Government of Viet-Nam shall be The National Library of Viet-Nam. 3. The publications shall be received on behalf of the United States of America by the Library of Congress and on behalf of the Government of Viet-Nam by The National Library of Viet-Nam. 4. The present agreement does not obligate either of the two Governments to furnish blank forms, circulars which are not of a public character, or confidential publications. 5. Each of the two Government shall bear all charges, including postal, rail and shipping costs, arising under the present agreement in connection with the transportation within its own country of the publications to a port, or other appropriate place reasonably convenient to the exchange office of the other Government. 6. The present agreement shall not be considered as a modification of any existing agreement between a department or agency of one of the Governments and a department or agency of the other Government. The Government of Viet-Nam considers that your note and this reply constitute an agreement between the two Governments on this subject, the agreement to enter into force on the date of this note. Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration. [SEAL] VU VAN MAU Vfi-Vin-Mfi His Excellency ELBEIGE DuRBRow Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United State8 of America. TIAS 4717 [12 USTShow original messageBright Quang <[email protected]>To:Chuck Schumer,ALM,Ngoc Emerald,Alan J Vaughn,ChauLong Nguyenand 115 more...Sun, Jul 5 at 8:43 PMDear Sir-I would share with Sir this is: How would the Vietnamese prisoners of war live matters?President Nixon Appoints Henry Cabot Lodge the Chief American Negotiator to the Paris Peace Talks to End the War in VietnamThe only official, public negotiations to end the War, and Lodge the sole chief negotiator to meet with the N. Vietnamese in a plenary 404 February 1953, Henry Cabot Lodge was named U.S.Ambassador to the United Nations by President Eisenhower, with his office elevated to Cabinet level rank. The position then was high profile, and Lodge often engaged in debates with the UN representatives of the Soviet Union that were broadcast or covered on television. On the front lines in the Cold War, in 1959 he escorted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a highly-publicized tour of the United States. Lodge left the ambassadorship during the election of 1960 to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket headed by Richard Nixon. Nixon selected Lodge because the latter had made a name for himself at the United Nations as a foreign-policy expert.President Kennedy appointed Lodge to the position of Ambassador to South Vietnam, which showed the import U.S. policymakers were coming to place on that nation. Lodge held the post from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1965 to 1967. As ambassador there, Lodge supported President Johnson’s decision to escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War, believing that a Communist takeover in the South would be disastrous for U.S. foreign policy goals.The original appointment of “Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts” as “Ambassador to head the United States Delegation at the Paris Meetings on Vietnam”President Johnson and American military leaders had long insisted that the Vietnam War was going well, and that they could see the light at the end of the tunnel. But in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in February 1968, when the Communists were able to initiate coordinated attacks on all the regional capitals throughout Vietnam, even in the American compound in Saigon itself, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford issued a report to the President in mid-March that the United States could not win the war. Johnson was stunned, and he in turn stunned a nationwide audience on March 31, 1968, announcing he would cease bombing north of the 20th parallel, initiate peace talks to end the war, and not seek denomination or reelection in 1968. The peace talks commenced in Paris on May 10, 1968, with W. Averell Harriman leading the U.S. delegation.From the outset, the talks were fraught with difficulties. The U.S. insisted on mutual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese forces, which would leave the Saigon government in control. The North Vietnamese refused to negotiate anything until all bombing of North Vietnam was halted. When the U.S. finally agreed to that condition, the Johnson administration was unable to persuade, cajole, or coerce South Vietnam and its leader President Thieu to participate unless it was recognized as a legitimate party by its foes. It was alleged at the time that both candidates in the 1968 election were using the talks as a political football, with Hubert Humphrey seeking to appeal to pro-peace voters by insisting that the South Vietnamese participate, and more germane, with Nixon leading the South Vietnamese to understand that his administration would give them a better deal if they would continue to delay. Formal negotiations would not begin until January 18, 1969, two days before Nixon took http://office.In the immediate aftermath of the 1968 election, it seems that Lodge was Nixon’s foremost advisor on Vietnam. He urged Nixon to appoint a man of stature to negotiate in Paris, and warned him away from a trip to Saigon for strategic reasons. Nixon adopted these suggestions. In fact, on January 5, 1969, fifteen days before his inauguration, President-elect Nixon named Lodge himself to succeed Harriman as chief U.S. negotiator at the Paris talks. This signaled that Nixon was likely to take a hard line in the talks, considering Lodge’s background as a proponent of American policy in Vietnam as promulgated by President Johnson and his chief military commander, Gen. William Westmoreland. Document Signed as President, Washington, January 22, 1969, just two days after his inauguration, being the original appointment of “Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts” as “Ambassador to head the United States Delegation at the Paris Meetings on Vietnam.” The wording here is highly politically indicative, showing that Nixon avoided using the terms “peace,” “talks,” “negotiations,” or “war.” These were simply “Meetings on Vietnam,” nothing more to be implied. The document is countersigned by Secretary of State William P. Rogers.On January 25, the first fully attended meeting of the formal Paris peace talks was held. Ambassador Lodge urged an immediate restoration of a genuine Demilitarized Zone as the first “practical move toward peace.” He also suggested a mutual withdrawal of “external” military forces and an early release of prisoners of war. Tran Buu Kiem and Xuan Thuy, heads of the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese delegations respectively, refused Lodge’s proposals and condemned American “aggression.”Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s National Security Advisor, developed a two-track policy where under the Paris negotiators would discuss military matters, while the real political decisions would be made privately, out of the public eye, by the leadership in Washington and Hanoi directly. This would avoid public pressure from all directions, while also preventing the junior partners on either side, South Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, from exercising power to preclude a deal from happening. Nixon liked the idea, and determined that political negotiations would emanate from the White House. So as Lodge continued treating with the North Vietnamese in Paris, starting in early August, Kissinger was secretly meeting with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho. As the summer turned to fall, however, Kissinger’s approaches to Hanoi failed to elicit an acceptable response, and Nixon adopted a get tough policy to force an accommodation on his terms. In early October the President told Lodge to break off the talks by staging a walk-out at the October 23 plenary session. On the appointed day, Lodge insisted that the talks be adjourned, which they were immediately. Lodge himself had not favored this action, and he suggested that the President use him as a personal intermediary to Hanoi’s leaders who were frequently in Paris. Nixon declined.The only official, public negotiations to end the Vietnam War were over, never to resume. Nixon went directly to Camp David to work on a foreign policy address to the nation which he delivered on November 3. Dubbed the Silent Majority speech, in it he asked the American people to support his decision to continue the war until the North Vietnamese would accept “honorable” peace terms. On November 20, 1969, seeing no role remaining for a peace negotiator, Lodge resigned. The war did not end until January 23, 1973, four years and one day after Nixon had appointed Lodge to help end the conflict. Again, the petitioner proves the Vietnam War;This file contains selected documents regarding the signing of the "Paris Peace Accord" to end the hostilities in South Vietnam. The file contains the following items: These are to be in laws of the United States of America. (1) Letter from President Nixon to President Nguyen Van Thieu of the Republic of Vietnam, January 5, 1973.[Reassuring Vietnam of US support.] (2) "Peace With Honor": Radio-television broadcast, President Nixon re: initialing of the Vietnam Agreement, 23 Jan. 1973 (3) News conference statement by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger,Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs,January 24, 1973.[Chapter-by-Chapter analysis of the Paris Agreement, excerpts.] (4) Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam signed in Paris and entered into force January 17, 1973. (5) Act of the International Conference on Vietnam, Signed at Paris and entered into force March 2, 1973 (6) Complaints of Violations of the Cease-fire: United StatesNote Verbale transmitted April 10, 1973 for delivery to participants in the International Conference on Vietnam. We, the Southern Officers’ prisoners of war, would like to carry out the ICJ Article 38, paragraph c in which says, “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;” Therefore, we do prove that the orders of American presidents have spoken out that's particular as American law.(170) on the other hand, Bright Quang, he’d like to prove for the US Senate that Second Amendment to the United States Constitution when Constitution says, “CONTENTS:1. Right to Bear Arms2. State Militias3. Well-Regulated Militia4. District of Columbia v. Heller5. McDonald v. Chicago6. Gun Control Debate7. Mass Shootings8. SourcesThe Second Amendment, often referred to as the right to bear arms, is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. __________ (170) Q. No. 1. (Unclassified) From what provisions of the Constitution or treaty or statute does President Kennedy derive the right to order United States military personnel to transport South Vietnamese troops into combat, to return the fire of North Vietnamese, to patrol the sea approaches to South Viet-Nam and to drop propaganda leaflets over areas held by the guerrillas opposing the Government of South Viet-Nam? Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the rights of individual citizens to buy, own and carry firearms.Right to Bear ArmsThe text of the Second Amendment reads in full: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The framers of the Bill of Rights adapted the wording of the amendment from nearly identical clauses in some of the original 13 state constitutions.During the Revolutionary War era, “militia” referred to groups of men who banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and eventually states, once the United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776Many people in America at the time believed governments used soldiers to oppress the people, and thought the federal government should only be allowed to raise armies (with full-time, paid soldiers) when facing foreign adversaries. For all other purposes, they believed, it should turn to part-time militias, or ordinary civilians using their own weapons.State MilitiasBut as militias had proved insufficient against the British, the Constitutional Convention gave the new federal government the power to establish a standing army, even in peacetime. According to Second Amendment that the United States Senate has ordered President Kennedy that his right to send the America Armed Forces to the Republic of Vietnam in order to defeat against communism, but no matter overthrown Government of the Republic of Vietnam, sold the Republic of Vietnam, and imprisoned all of the Southern Officers. In Prove, this Second Amendment has reminded the all of American soldiers who protected their nation like “During the Revolutionary War era, “militia” referred to groups of men who banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and eventually states, once the United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776” which is why the United States Senate has built neo-colonies for the Republic of Vietnam, but no compensated any pennies of prisoners of war. When the United States Senate s the modern civilized and progressive America, the United States Senate has been understood about the Republic of Vietnam that’s nation is less modern civilized trillion fold than America. That is why the United States Senate has abused the exploitation’s labor of us in the invaded war. In fact, the foods of the United States of America when the use of the foods of the American people ate one half, but threw one half. During the Southern people were lost the foods by the invaded war, we starved together with burden of sufferings in the invaded war. In fact, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution has not ordered any American Presidents to do the inhuman war like the Vietnam War. That is why when America interestingly invaded the Republic of Vietnam, but America did not compensate any pennies of the damages, deaths, and prisoners of war by the Government of the United States has been built in the Republic of Vietnam, the ethical consequences of your great power pushed where? In condition, 22 U.S. Code § 2151 - Congressional findings and declaration of policy - (Pub. L. 87–195, pt. I, § 101, formerly § 102, Sept. 4, 1961, to follow with this statutes and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in which no one American leaderships had invaded any foreign nations to against Human rights like the United States of America has occupied the Republic of Vietnam. However, the US Senate has allowed Executive Organ that it was freely violated the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam. When the American Armed Forces had come to the Republic of Vietnam, they were freely assassinated the innocent people by the American modern weapons. And then, the American Government was freely torn shreds the multilateral, bilateral treaties, and the American laws, and international relations of protocols. After that, the US has sold the Republic of Vietnam to communism, so the second amendment to the United States Constitution has never had ordered for Executive branch to do this. For the reason, the Executives organ sent the American troop to the foreign nations without had against any allied partnerships of America like the United States of America had did in the Republic of Vietnam. On the other hand, when the United States of America has struggled against the colonial who is why the United States of America has gone on the oldest path in the past, the America did not respect the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam, but America has occupied the Republic of Vietnam to be neo-colonial. That is why the US Senate has approved Executive organ to violate Constitution. In view of America that the United States of America is modern civilized and progressive science trillion fold than the Republic of Vietnam which is why America did not only occupy the Republic of Vietnam but also fooled the Southern officers of prisoners of war because on the play war yard is equal for each other. The United States of America can not abuse of the great power to exploit labor of a weak nation. That is why America has discriminated national color with the Southern officers of prisoners of war. Equally, we together live in modern civilized age when America has abuse of modern civilized and progressive power to deprive the rights of our life that is why the United States Senate has enacted the law to occupy the Republic of Vietnam, but no the United States Congress compensated damage, death, prisoners of war for him. What does modern civilized and progressive America do for human beings? Uncertainty, the great power has occupied a weak nation when America is freely violating war crime in proud of a modern civilized nation. First, President Kennedy has sent his secret letter to the American ambassador in the Republic of Vietnam-so his order recorded and said, “On one tape recorded November 4, 1963, Kennedy (171 dictates a memo seeming to regret the assassination of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem, following a coup Kennedy endorsed.” So President Kennedy went against his Constitution one’s self. Second, President Nixon did not only distort his constitution but also violated this nation's human rights. In fact, President Richard Nixon threatened to behead off President Nguyen Van Thieu in a private letter if his refusal to sign any negotiated peace agreement would render it impossible for the United States to continue assistance to South Vietnam.Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had been working behind the scenes in secret negotiations with North Vietnamese representatives in Paris to reach a settlement to end the war. However, Thieu stubbornly refused to even discuss any peace proposal that recognized the Viet Cong as a viable participant in the post-war political solution in South Vietnam because of President Thieu is one of among patriotic Vietnamese leaders. When he does not only respect his self-determination but also has protected the national core of interests and sovereignty.____________(170) See 96 or CNN - Kennedy White House tapes offer new insight ...CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos/ALLPOLITICS/Stories/1998/11/25/Kennedy.tapes/Index.htmlNov 25, 1998 · Kennedy White House tapes offer new insight By Bill Delaney/CNN. BOSTON (November 24) -- The Kennedy Library has released 37 hours of tapePresident Nixon threatens President Thieu - HISTORYhttps://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-threatens-president-thieuPresident Richard Nixon warns South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in a private letter that his refusal to sign any negotiated peace agreementPresident GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, it's a big gamble on my part.O'REILLY: No, it isn't, not really though. You, we talked four and a half years ago... BUSH: I'm teasing...O'REILLY: The South Vietnamese didn't fight for their freedom, which is why they don't have it today.Nixon and Kissinger have been posted these words into the Paris Peace Accords to why a great power's America has fooled the small Republic of Vietnam in war, in the United States treaties, and in the International Agreements?As it turned out, the secret negotiations were not close to reaching an agreement because the North Vietnamese launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam in March 1972. With the help of U.S. airpower and advisers on the ground, the South Vietnamese withstood the North Vietnamese attack, and by December, Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives were back in Paris and close to an agreement. As a result, the arrogance of America did not respect South Vietnam sovereignty and self-determination, but President Nixon also calls for respecting the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam and self-determination. Ironically, among Thieu’s demands was the request that all North Vietnamese troops had to be withdrawn from South Vietnam before he would agree to any peace settlement. The North Vietnamese walked out of the negotiations in protest. In response, President Nixon initiated Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing campaign against Hanoi, to force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. After 11 days of intense bombing, Hanoi agreed to return to the talks in Paris. When Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the main North Vietnamese negotiator, met again in early January, they quickly worked out a settlement. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23 and a cease-fire went into effect five days later. To exactly prove the super commander- in -chief of the American Army Forces and at the head of the United States Constitution, and behalf of the American people, President Nixon has been confirmed the Paris Peace Accords with his colleague's President of the Republic of Vietnam's Nguyen Van Thieu. Especially, President Nixon has guarantee been sent his letters to President Nguyen Van Thieu, and here are:(To be read by Ron Nessen at the Press Briefing - April 9, 1975)(171)Assurances to the Republic of Viet Nam as to both U.S. assistance and U.S.___________(171) See attachments of the whole letters’ President Nixon sent to President Nguyen Van Thieuenforcement of the Paris agreement were stated clearly and publicly by President Nixon. The publicly stated policy and intention of the United States government to continue to provide adequate economic and military assistance and to react vigorously to major violations of the Paris agreement reflected~ confidential exchanges between the Nixon Administration and President Thieu at the time. In substance, the private exchanges do not differ from what was stated publicly. The law of 1973, of course, ruled out the possibility of American military reaction to violations of the agreement.(Citations from U.S.-South Vietnamese communique, President Nixon's news conference, and President Nixon's foreign policy report to be distributed to the press.)Again, President Thieu refused to sign the Accords, but Nixon promised to come to the aid of South Vietnam if the communists violated the terms of the peace treaty, and Thieu agreed to sign. Unfortunately for Thieu and the South Vietnamese, Nixon was forced from office by the Watergate scandal in August 1974, and no U.S. aid came when the North Third, President Gerald R. Ford has broken a promise when his letter on October 24, 1974, has confirmed with President Nguyen Van Thieu in which he promised to protect the Republic of Vietnam if North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Accords, but when North Vietnam strongly attacked South Vietnam. He didn't protect the Republic of Vietnam. Fourth, President Bush's son defamed the Southern officers after America betrayed the Republic of Vietnam. He said, “The South Vietnamese didn't fight for their freedom, which is why they don't it today.”The self-evident truths of the proxy war's America when Advisor Kissinger of masterminds self-confessed wrongful actions. Because America did not only respect self-determination but also approved Vietnamese National rights, but no one shall be imprisoned, nationalized, and murdered by each other. When a modern civilized nation has played a war game in the Republic of Vietnam, let’s prove Advisor Kissinger who did not only represent a modern civilized America but also had behalf the American justice and super values of American dignity and said:News conference statement by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, January 24, 1973. (Presidential Documents, Vol. 9 (1973), pp. 64-70) (Excerpts) DR. KISSINGER. Ladies and gentlemen, the President last evening presented the outlines of the agreement and by common agreement between us and the North Vietnamese we have today released the texts. And I am here to explain, to go over briefly what these texts contain, and how we got there, what we have tried to achieve in recent months and where we expect to go from here. Let me begin by going through the agreement, which you have read. PROVISIONS OF THE AGREEMENT Chapter 1: Vietnamese National Rights The agreement, as you know, is in nine chapters. The first affirms the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam, agreements which established two zones, divided by a military demarcation line. Chapter II: Ceasefire and Withdrawal Chapter II deals with the cease-fire. The cease-fire will go into effect at 7 o'clock Washington time on Saturday night[January 27]. The principal provisions of Chapter II deal with permitted acts during the cease-fire and with what theObligations of the various parties are with respect to the cease-fire. Chapter II also deals with the withdrawal of American and all other foreign forces from Vietnam within a period of 60 days.And it specifies the forces that have to be withdrawn. These are in effect all military personnel and all civilian personnel dealing with combat operations. We are permitted to retain economic advisers and civilian technicians serving in certain of the military branches. Chapter II further deals with the provisions for re-supply and for the introduction of outside forces. There is a flat prohibition against the introduction of any military force into South Vietnam from outside of South Vietnam, which is to say that whatever forces may be in South Vietnam from outside South Vietnam, specifically North Vietnamese forces, cannot receive reinforcements replacements or any other form of augmentation by any means whatsoever. With respect to military equipment, both sides are permitted to replace all existing military equipment on a one-to-one basis under international supervision and control. There will be established, as I will explain when I discuss the protocols, for each side, three legitimate points of entry through which all replacement equipment has to move. These legitimate points of entry will be under international supervision. Chapter III: Return of POWsAccording to Paris Peace Accords when the United States Senate has enacted H.R 7885 Pub.L 88-205 Approved December 16, 1963, Let President Kennedy have sent the American Armed Forces to the Republic of Vietnam to defeat communism because communism is enemy of Americanism which is why America did not keep this law, but America has betrayed its American law and its constitution because the US Senate has enforced the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in which the US Senate has allowed President Kennedy has quickly sent the American Armed Forces to the Republic of Vietnam. On the other hand, the proxy war of America has brought out one true face of the great power to show a neo colonial of the United States of America in which is the Republic of Vietnam. Of course, when America has been forced the Republic of Vietnam, America wanted to the Republic of Vietnam to sign the Paris Peace Accords to let America bring the American troop to go home. Especially, the international protocol of America did respect the prisoners of war that are why America has pushed the Southern Officers to imprison to exchange the American prisoners of war to go home. In spite of that no one the great powers of the worldwide played this hoax game, the only have the Government of the United States of America played this. Because the United States of America has changed the horse between on the road, the America has exchanged the white to the black. In fact, the blood discrimination of America has thought other foreign people who are the lowest cattle when American is the first class. Therefore, the US Senate has enacted the law to occupy the Republic of Vietnam when the United States Congress has discriminated the Southern officers, Congress thought about us to neo-slave because the United States Congress has used us to the neo-slaves of the proxy war of America without had any benefits of the prisoners of war why do we live in modern civilized and progressive Age to make neo-slave war for the great power of America? Even though, we, the Southern Officers of prisoners of war are not fluent the English language, but we have realized where is right and where is wrong because we can not make neo-slave war for any great powers of the worldwide. When America has used the modern civilized and progressive science to brainwash us, America does not keep any promises with a weak people who are ruled by the powerful America. Why does America fight against terrorism when the Government of the United States has terrorized more things to us? Why did America defeat the colonial when America has built neo-colonial? Where is the ethical conscience of America showing on the worldwide? Why does America abuse of the great power to oppress the rights of our self-determination and the rights of our patriot when we are poor trillion fold than the American people? What does the United States Congress enforce American law and Constitution when Congress has used the law to fool us? For example, H. Res 309 Recognizing the 44th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 to let him petition for prisoners of war benefits, but the United States Congress is self-walk on its rules and its Constitution, when, Congress has quoted, " No one and none of us is above the law and Constitution." That is why the US Congress has enacted the law in order to fool him because bureaucratizes and racism of the United States Congress are high more than human rights. Why did the United States Congress enact the law to force us to service war for the United States of America? Why did the Government of the United States of America have shred all of multilateral and bilateral treaties, the American law, and international relations of protocols with the Republic of Vietnam to imprison him? How would the Vietnamese prisoners of war live matters?Chapter III deals with the return of captured military personnel and foreign civilians as well as with the question of civilian detainees within South Vietnam. This, as you know, throughout the negotiations, presented enormous difficulties for us. We insisted throughout that the question of American prisoners of war and of American civilians captured throughout Indochina should be separated from the issue of Vietnamese civilian personnel detained-partly because of the enormous difficulty of classifying the Vietnamese civilian personnel by categories of who was detained for reasons of the civil war and who was detained for criminal activities, and secondly, because it was foreseeable that negotiations about the release of civilian detainees would be complex and difficult and because we did not want to have the issue of American personnel mixed up with the issues of civilian personnel in South Vietnam. This turned out to be one of the thorniest issues that was settled at some point and kept reappearing throughout the negotiations. It was one of the difficulties we had during the December negotiations. As you can see from the agreement, the return of American military personnel and captured civilians is separated in terms of obligation, and in terms of the time frame, from the return of Vietnamese civilian personnel. The return of American personnel and the accounting of missing in action is unconditional and will take place within the same time frame as the American withdrawal. The issue of Vietnamese civilian personnel will be negotiated between the two Vietnamese parties over a period of 3 months, and as the agreement says, they will do their utmost to resolve this question within the 3 month period. So I repeat, the issue is separated, both in terms of obligation and in terms of the relevant time frame from the return of American prisoners, which is unconditional. We expect that American prisoners will be released at intervals of 2 weeks or fifteen days in roughly equal installments. We have been told that no American prisoners are held in Cambodia. American prisoners held in Laos and North Vietnam will be returned to us in Hanoi. They will be received by American medical evacuation teams and flown on American airplanes from Hanoi to places of our own choice, probably Vientiane. There will be international supervision of both this provision and of the provision for the missing in action. And all American prisoners will, of course, be released, within 60 days of the signing of the agreement. The signing will take place on January 27, in two installments, the significance of which I will explain to you when I, have run through the provisions of the agreement and the associated protocols. Chapter IV: Self-determination for South Vietnam Chapter IV of the agreement deals with the right of the South Vietnamese people to self-determination. Its first provision contains a joint statement by the United States and North Vietnam in which those two countries jointly recognize the South Vietnamese people's right to self-determination, in which those two countries jointly affirm that the South Vietnamese people shall decide for themselves the political system that they shall choose and jointly affirm that no foreign country shall impose any political tendency on the South Vietnamese people. The other principal provisions of the agreement are that in implementing the South Vietnamese people's right to self-determination, the two South Vietnamese parties will decide, will agree among each other, on free elections, for offices to be decided by the two parties, at a time to be decided by the two parties. These elections will be supervised and organized first by an institution which has the title of National Council for National Reconciliation and Concord, whose members will be equally appointed by the two sides, which will operate on the principle of unanimity, and which will come into being after negotiation between the two parties, who are obligated by this agreement to do their utmost to bring this institution into being within 90 days. Leaving aside the technical jargon, the significance of this part of the agreement is that the United States has consistently maintained that we would not impose any political solution on the people of South Vietnam. The United States has consistently maintained that we would not impose a coalition government or a disguised coalition government on the people of South Vietnam. If you examine the provisions of this chapter, you will see, first, that the existing government in Saigon can remain in office; secondly, that the political future of South Vietnam depends on agreement between the South Vietnamese parties and not on an agreement that the United States has imposed on these parties; thirdly, that the nature of this political evolution, the timing of this political evolution, is left to the South Vietnamese parties, and that the organ that is created to see to it that the elections that are organized will be conducted properly, is one in which each of the South Vietnamese parties has a veto. The other significant provision of this agreement is the requirement that the South Vietnamese parties will bring about a reduction of their armed forces, and that the forces being reduced will be demobilized. Chapter V: Reunification and the DMZ The next chapter deals with the reunification of Vietnam and the relationship between North and South Vietnam. In the many negotiations that I have conducted over recent weeks, not the least arduous was the negotiation conducted with the ladies and gentlemen of the press, who constantly raised issues with respect to sovereignty, the existence of South Vietnam as a political entity, and other matters of this kind. I will return to this issue at the end when I sum up the agreement, but it is obvious that there is no dispute in the agreement between the parties that there is an entity called South Vietnam, and that the future unity of Vietnam, as it comes about, will be decided by negotiation between North and South Vietnam, that it will not be achieved by military force, indeed, that the use of military force with respect to bringing about unification, or any other form of coercion, is impermissible according to the terms of this agreement. Secondly, there are specific provisions in this chapter with respect to the Demilitarized Zone. There is a repetition of the agreement of 1954 which makes the demarcation line along the 17th Parallel provisional, which means pending reunification.There is a specific provision that both North and South Vietnam shall respect the Demilitarized Zone on either side of the provisional military demarcation line, and there is another provision that indicates that among the subjects that can be negotiated will be modalities of civilian movement across the demarcation line, which makes it clear that military movement across the Demilitarized Zone is in all circumstances prohibited. Now, this may be an appropriate point to explain what our position has been with respect to the DMZ. There has been a great deal of discussion about the issue of sovereignty and about the issue of legitimacy, which is to say which government is in control of South Vietnam, and, finally, about why we laid such great stress on the issue of the Demilitarized Zone. We had to place stress. On the issue of the Demilitarized Zone because the provisions of the agreement with respect to infiltration, with respect to replacement, with respect to any of the military provisions, would have made no sense whatsoever if there was not some demarcation line that defined where South Vietnam began. If we had accepted the preposition that would have in effect eroded the Demilitarized Zone, then the provisions of the agreement with respect to restrictions about the introduction of men and materiel into South Vietnam would have been unilateral restrictions applying only to the United States and only to our allies. Therefore, if there was to be any meaning to the separation of military and political issues, if there was to be any permanence to the military provisions that had been negotiated, then it was essential that there was a definition of where the obligations of this agreement began. As you can see from the text of the agreement, the principles that we defended were essentially achieved. Chapters VI and VII: International Machinery; Laos and Cambodia Chapter VI deals with the international machinery, and we will discuss that when I talk about the associated protocols of the agreement. Chapter VII deals with Laos and Cambodia. Now, the problem of Laos and Cambodia has two parts. One part concerns those obligations which can be undertaken by the parties signing the agreement-that is to say, the three Vietnamese parties and the United States-those measures that they can take which affect the situation in Laos and Cambodia. A second part of the situation in Laos has to concern the nature of the civil conflict that is taking place within Laos and Cambodia and the solution of which, of course, must involve as well the two Laotian parties and the innumerable Cambodian factions. Let me talk about the provisions of the agreement with respect to Laos and Cambodia and our firm expectations as to the future in Laos and Cambodia. The provisions of the agreement with respect to Laos and Cambodia reaffirm, as an obligation to all the parties, the provisions of the 1954 agreement on Cambodia and of the 1962 agreement on Laos, which affirm the neutrality and right to self-determination of those two countries. They are, therefore, consistent with our basic position with respect also to South Vietnam. In terms of the immediate conflict, the provisions of the agreement specifically prohibit the use of Laos and Cambodia for military and any other operations against any of the signatories of the Paris Agreement or against any other country. In other words, there is a flat prohibition against the use of base areas in Laos and Cambodia. There is a flat prohibition against the use of Laos and Cambodia for infiltration into Vietnam or, for that matter, into any other country. Finally, there is a requirement that all foreign troops be withdrawn from Laos and Cambodia, and it is clearly understood that North Vietnamese troops are considered foreign with respect to Laos and Cambodia. Now, as to the conflict within these countries which could not be formally settled in an agreement which is not signed by the parties of that conflict, let me make this statement, without elaborating it: It is our firm expectation that within a short period of time there will be a formal cease-fire in Laos which, in turn, will lead to a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Laos and, of course, to the end of the use of Laos as a corridor of infiltration. Secondly, the situation in Cambodia, as those of you who have studied it will know, is somewhat more complex because there are several parties headquartered in different countries. Therefore, we can say about Cambodia that it is our expectation that a de facto cease-fire will come into being over a period of time relevant to the execution of this agreement. Our side will take the appropriate measures to indicate that it will not attempt to change the situation by force. We have reason to believe that our position is clearly understood by all concerned parties, and I will not go beyond this in my statement. Chapters VIII and IX: Normalizing Relations; Implementation Chapter VIII deals with the relationship between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As I have said in my briefings on October 26 and on December 16, and as the President affirmed on many occasions, the last time in his speech last evening, the United States is seeking a peace that heals. We have had many armistices in Indochina. We want a peace that will last. And, therefore, it is our firm intention in our relationship to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to move from hostility to normalization and from normalization to conciliation and cooperation. And we believe that under conditions of peace we can contribute throughout Indochina to a realization of the humane aspirations of all the people of Indochina, and we will, in that spirit, perform our traditional role of helping people realize these aspirations in peace. Chapter IX of the agreement is the usual implementing provision. So much for the agreement. PROVISIONS OF THE PROTOCOLS Prisoners of War Now, let me say a word about the protocols. There are four protocols or implementing instruments to the agreement: on the return of American prisoners, on the implementation and institution of an international control commission, on the regulations with respect to the cease-fire and the implementation and institution of a joint military commission among the concerned parties, and a protocol about the deactivation and removal of mines. I have given you the relevant provisions of the protocol concerning the return of prisoners. They will be returned at periodic intervals in Hanoi to American authorities and not to American private groups. They will be picked up by American airplanes, except for prisoners held in the southern part of South Vietnam, which will be released at designated points in the South, again, to American authorities. We will receive on Saturday, the day of the signing of the agreement, a list of all American prisoners held throughout Indochina. And both parties, that is to say, all parties have an obligation to assist each other in obtaining information about the prisoners, missing in action, and about the location of graves of American personnel throughout Indochina. The International Commission has the right to visit the last place of detention of the prisoners, as well as the place from which they are released. International Commission of Control and Supervision [ICCS] Now, to the International Control Commission, you will remember that one of the reasons for the impasse in December was the difficulty of agreeing with the North Vietnamese about the size of the International Commission, its function, or the location of its teams. On this occasion, there is no point in rehashing all the differences. It is, however, useful to point out that at that time the proposal of the North Vietnamese was that the International Control Commission have a membership of 250, no organic logistics or communication, dependent entirely for its authority to move on the party it was supposed to be investigating; and over half of its personnel were supposed to be located in Saigon, which is not the place where most of the infiltration that we were concerned with was likely to take place. We have distributed to you an outline of the basic structure of this Commission. Briefly stated, its total number is 1,160, drawn from Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland. It has a headquarters in Saigon. It has seven regional teams, 26 teams based in localities throughout Vietnam which were chosen either because forces were in contact there or because we estimated that these were the areas where the violations of the cease-fire were most probable. There are 12 teams at border crossing points. There are seven teams that are set aside for points of entry, which have yet to be chosen, for the replacement of military equipment. That is for Article 7 of the agreement. There will be three on each side and there will be no legitimate point of entry into South Vietnam other than those three points. The other border and coastal teams are there simply to make certain that no other entry occurs, and any other entry is by definition illegal. There has to be no other demonstration except the fact that it occurred. This leaves one team free for use, in particular, at the discretion of the Commission. And, of course, the seven teams that are being used for the return of the prisoners can be used at the discretion of the Commission after the prisoners are returned. There is one reinforced team located at the Demilitarized Zone and its responsibility extends along the entire Demilitarized Zone. It is in fact a team and a, half. It is 50 percent larger than a normal border team and it represents one of the many compromises that were made, between our insistence on two teams and their insistence on one team. By a brilliant stroke, we settled on a team and a half. With respect to the operation of the International Commission, it is supposed to operate on the principle of unanimity, which is to say that its reports, if they are Commission reports, have to have the approval of all four members. However, each member is permitted to submit his own opinion, so that as a practical matter any member of the Commission can make a finding of a violation and submit a report, in the first instance to the parties. The International Commission will report for the time being to the four parties to the agreement. An international conference will take place, we expect, at the Foreign Ministers' level within a month of signing the agreement. That international conference will establish a relationship between the International Commission and itself, or any other international body that is mutually agreed upon, so that the International Commission is not only reporting to the parties that it is investigating. But, for the time being, until the international conference has met, there was no other practical group to which the International Commission could report. Cease-fire and Joint Military Commissions In addition to this international group, there are two other institutions that are supposed to supervise the cease-fire. There is, first of all, an institution called the Four-Party Joint Military Commission, which is composed of ourselves and the three Vietnamese parties, which is located in the same place as the International Commission, charged with roughly the same functions, but, as a practical matter, it is supposed to conduct the preliminary investigations, its disagreements are automatically referred to the International Commission, and, moreover, any party can request the International Commission to conduct an investigation regardless of what the Four-Party Commission does and regardless of whether the Four-Party Commission has completed its investigation or not. After the United States has completed its withdrawal, the Four-Party Military Commission will be transformed into a Two-Party Commission composed of the two South Vietnamese parties. The total number of supervisory personnel, therefore, will be in the neighborhood of 4,500 during the period that the Four-Party Commission is in existence, and in the neighborhood of about 3,000 after the Four-Party Commission ceases operating and the Two-Party Commission comes into being. Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border, in March of http://1965.In conclusion, the proxy war of America has the self-evident truths does not only archive in the American treasure nation but also summarized the eventful truths of the proxy war's America in the Republic of Vietnam when these archived in the American national treasure - as those exact truths are to be American laws to have occupied the Republic of Vietnam expressly without had denied in no disputed the American compensation of the Southern Officer’s prisoners of war when America does not only have a modern civilized nation but also ruled the Republic of Vietnam by the great power's America. On the other hand, we, the Southern Officers' prisoners of war, have been a burden of suffering for a long time of the American war policy in the Republic of Vietnam-therefore; we do need equality of the law of war and the supreme law of the land. In fact, the much evidence America freely undertakes a war in the Republic of Vietnam when America always solemnly declares and says that we always respect self-determination and sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam which is why America freely occupied, freely negotiated with the foreign opposition and freely cut and run out off the Republic of Vietnam, so we would like to summarize the self-evident truths of America to operate illegal war in the Republic of Vietnam. Whenever American official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration (173) that any achievements proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall begin to be the legal American law to let’s prove the legal documents below:On May 07, 1954, Viet Minh forces won the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and ended French involvement in Indochina. This victory led to the Geneva Conference where the French and Viet Minh negotiated a ceasefire agreement. Under the terms of Geneva Accords, France agreed to withdraw its troops from Indochina while Vietnam was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai respectively, at the 17th parallel. Civilians were able to move freely between two states for a 300-day period. General elections were to be held within two years, by July 1956, to unify the country.However, the accords apparently did not please the United States. First, they feared that the general elections would not be fair and free under the communists’ influence. Second and most importantly, if the communists won in Vietnam, communism could spread throughout Southeast Asia and become a greater threat to the U.S. In a letter to Ngo Dinh Diem – the new Prime Minister of the Bao Dai government on October 23, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower promised American support to his government to ___________ (173) 1 U.S. Code § 106b.Amendments to ConstitutionWhenever official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration that any amendment proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published, with his certificate, specifying the States by which the same may have been adopted, and that the same has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States. ensure a non-communist Vietnam. Following through on that commitment, American aid to South Vietnam began as early as in January, 1955. The Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Indochina was also re-organized into MAAG, Vietnam to train South Vietnamese http://army.An American officer serving with the South Vietnam forces poses with group of Montagnards in front of one of their provisionary huts in a military camp in central Vietnam on November 17, 1962. They were brought in by government troops from a village where they were used as labor force by communist Viet Cong forces. The Montagnards, dark-skinned tribesmen numbering about 700,000, live in the highlands of central Vietnam. The government was trying to win their alliance in its war with the Viet http://Cong.By early 1955, Diem had consolidated his power and control over South Vietnam. He also launched many political repression and anti-communist campaigns across the country, in which 25,000 anti-government activists and communists were arrested and more than 1,000 killed as claimed by the communists. In return, communist insurgents also assassinated hundreds of South Vietnamese officials. In July 1955, Diem rejected the national election, claiming South Vietnam was not bound by the Geneva Accords. In October, he easily ousted Bao Dai and became President of the new Republic of Vietnam (ROV).Nevertheless, Diem’s political repression and attacks on Buddhist community made him more and more unpopular among ordinary South Vietnamese people. Realizing the increasingly unpopularity of Diem regime, Hanoi established the National Liberation Front (NLF), better known as the Viet Cong, on December 20, 1960, which consisted of all anti-government activists – both communists and non-communists, as a common front to fight against Diem.Vietnamese airborne rangers, their two U.S. advisers, and a team of 12 U.S. Special Forces troops set out to raid a Viet Cong supply base 62 miles northwest of Saigon, on August 6, 1963. As the H-21 helicopters hovered six feet from the ground to avoid spikes and wires and under sniper fire, the troops jumped out to attack.in Coming Soon Template May 1961, Kennedy sent 400 U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) troops into South Vietnam’s Central Highlands to train Montagnard tribesmen in counterinsurgency tactics. He also tripled the level of aid to South Vietnam. A steady stream of airplanes, helicopters, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and other equipment poured into the South. By the end of 1962, there were 9,000 U.S. military advisers under the direction of a newly‐created Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), commanded by U.S. Army Gen. Paul Harkins. Under U.S. guidance, the Diem government also began construction of “strategic hamlets.” These fortified villages were intended to insulate rural Vietnamese from Vietcong intimidation and propaganda.U.S. and South Vietnamese leaders were cautiously optimistic that increased U.S. assistance finally was enabling the Saigon government to defend itself. On 2 January 1963, however, at Ap Bac on the Plain of Reeds southwest of Saigon, a Viet Cong battalion of about 320 men inflicted heavy damage on an ARVN force of 3,000 equipped with troop‐carrying helicopters, new UH‐1 (“Huey”) helicopter gunships, tactical bombers, and APCs.Ap Bac represented a leadership failure for the ARVN and a major morale boost for the anti government forces. The absence of fighting spirit in the ARVN mirrored the continuing inability of the Saigon regime to win political support. Indeed, many South Vietnamese perceived the strategic hamlets as government oppression, not protection, because people were forced to leave their ancestral homes for the new settlements.A South Vietnamese Marine, severely wounded in a Viet Cong ambush, is comforted by a comrade in a sugar-cane field at Duc Hoa, about 12 miles from Saigon, on August 5, 1963. A platoon of 30 Vietnamese Marines was searching for communist guerrillas when a long burst of automatic fire killed one Marine and wounded four others.While Viet Cong guerrillas scored military successes, leaders of Vietnam’s Buddhist majority protested against what they saw as the Diem regime religious persecution. In June, a monk dramatically burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection. The “Buddhist crisis” and dissatisfaction with Diem by top Vietnamese Army leaders made U.S. officials receptive to the idea of a change in South Vietnam’s leadership. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not interfere as a group of ARVN officers plotted a coup.On 1 November 1963, the generals seized power, and Diem and his unpopular brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were murdered. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated, and U.S. policy in Vietnam was again at a crossroads. If the new government in Saigon failed to show progress against the insurgency, would the United States withdraw its support from a lost cause, or would it escalate the effort to preserve South Vietnam as an anti communist outpost in Asia?Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Vietnam dilemma. As Senate majority leader in the 1950s and as vice‐president, he had supported Eisenhower and Kennedy’s decisions to aid South Vietnam. Four days after Kennedy’s death, Johnson, now president, reaffirmed in National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 273 that the U.S. goal was to assist South Vietnam in its “contest against the externally directed and supported communist conspiracy.” U.S. policy defined the Vietnam War as North Vietnamese aggression against South Vietnam.Napalm air strikes raise clouds into gray monsoon skies as houseboats glide down the Perfume River toward Hue in Vietnam on February 28, 1963, where a battle for control of the old Imperial City ended with a Communist defeat. Firebombs were directed against a village on the outskirts of Hue.North Vietnam infiltrated troops and matériel into South Vietnam by sea and along the so‐called Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Throughout his administration, Johnson insisted that the only possible negotiated settlement of the conflict would be one in which North Vietnam recognized the legitimacy of South Vietnam’s government. Without such recognition, the United States would continue to provide Saigon as much help as it needed to survive.The critical military questions were how much U.S. assistance was enough and what form it should take. By the spring of 1964, the Vietcong controlled vast areas of South Vietnam, the strategic hamlet program had essentially ceased, and North Vietnam’s aid to the southern insurgents had grown. In June, Johnson named one of the army’s most distinguished officers, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, then commandant of West Point, as commander U.S. MACV.Westmoreland immediately asked for more men, and by the end of 1964 U.S. personnel in the South exceeded 23,000. Increasingly, however, the U.S. effort focused on the North. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and other key White House aides remained convinced that the assault on South Vietnam originated in the ambitious designs of Hanoi backed by Moscow and Beijing.Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, burns himself to death on a Saigon street on June 11, 1963, to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. President Ngo Dình Diem, part of the Catholic minority, had adopted policies that discriminated against Buddhists and gave high favor to Catholics.Throughout 1964, the United States assisted South Vietnam in covert operations to gather intelligence, disseminate propaganda, and harass the North. On the night of 2 August, North Vietnamese gunboats fired on the USS Maddox, a destroyer on an intelligence‐collecting mission, in the same area of the Gulf of Tonkin where South Vietnamese commandos were conducting raids against the North Vietnamese coast. Two nights later, under stormy conditions, the Maddox and another destroyer, the Turner Joy, reported a gunboat attack.Although doubts existed about these reports, the president ordered retaliatory air strikes against the North Vietnamese port of Vinh. The White House had expected that some type of incident would occur eventually, and it had prepared the text of a congressional resolution authorizing the president to use armed force to protect U.S. forces and to deter further aggression from North Vietnam. On 7 August 1964, Johnson secured almost unanimous consent from Congress (414–0 in the House; 88–2 in the Senate) for his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became the principal legislative basis for all subsequent military deployment in Southeast Asia.Flying low over the jungle, an A-1 Skyraider drops 500-pound bombs on a Viet Cong position below as smoke rises from a previous pass at the target, on December 26, 1964.Johnson’s decisive but restrained response to the Gulf of Tonkin incidents helped him win the 1964 election, but Saigon’s prospects continued to decline. The president wanted to concentrate on his ambitious domestic program, the Great Society, but his political instincts told him that his leadership would be damaged fatally if America’s client state in South Vietnam succumbed. Instability mounted in South Vietnam as rival military and civilian factions vied for power and as Vietcong strength grew.A consensus formed among Johnson’s advisers that the United States would have to initiate air warfare against North Vietnam. Bombing could boost Saigon’s morale and might persuade the North to cease its support of the insurgency. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) favored a massive bombing campaign, but civilians in the State and Defense Departments preferred a gradual escalation.Using as a pretext a Vietcong attack on 7 February 1965 at Pleiku that killed eight American soldiers, Johnson ordered retaliatory bombing north of the Demilitarized Zone along the 17th parallel that divided North and South Vietnam. Within a week, the administration began ROLLING THUNDER, a gradually intensifying air bombardment of military bases, supply depots, and infiltration routes in North Vietnam. Flying out of bases in Thailand, U.S. Air Force fighter‐bombers—primarily F‐105 Thunder chiefs and later F‐4 Phantoms—joined U.S. Navy Phantoms and A‐4 Skyhawks from a powerful carrier task force located at a point called Yankee Station, seventy‐five miles off the North Vietnamese coast in the Gulf of Tonkin.Partially covered, a dying Viet Cong guerrilla raises his hands as South Vietnamese Marines search palm groves near Long Binh in the Mekong Delta, on February 27, 1964. The guerrilla died in a foxhole following a battle between a battalion of South Vietnamese Marines and a unit of Viet cong.in is available for purchase 1965, U.S. aircraft flew 25,000 sorties against North Vietnam, and that number grew to 79,000 in 1966 and 108,000 in 1967. In 1967 annual bombing tonnage reached almost a quarter million. Targets expanded to include the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and factories, farms, and railroads in North Vietnam.From the beginning of the bombing, American strategists debated the effectiveness of air power in defeating a political insurgency in a predominantly agricultural country. Despite the American bombs, dollars, and military advisers, the Vietcong continued to inflict heavy casualties on the ARVN, and the political situation in Saigon grew worse. By June 1965, there had been five governments in the South since Diem’s death, and the newest regime, headed by General Nguyen Van Thieu and Air Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky, inspired little http://confidence.As U.S. “Eagle Flight” helicopters hover overhead, South Vietnamese troops wade through a rice paddy in Long An province during operations against Viet Cong guerrillas in the Mekong Delta, in December of 1964. The “Eagle Flight” choppers were loaded with Vietnamese airborne troops who were dropped in to support ground forces at the first sign of enemy http://contact.To stave off defeat, the JCS endorsed Westmoreland’s request for 150,000 U.S. troops to take the ground offensive in the South. When McNamara concurred, Johnson decided to commit the forces. The buildup of formal U.S. military units had begun on 8 March 1965, when two battalions of Marines landed at Da Nang. In June, Marine and army units began offensive unit operations—“search and destroy” missions. On 28 July, Johnson announced that 50,000 U.S. troops would go to South Vietnam immediately. By the end of the year, there were 184,300 U.S. personnel in the South.Although Johnson’s actions meant that the United States had crossed the line from advising the ARVN to actually fighting the war against the Vietcong, the president downplayed the move. The JCS wanted a mobilization of the reserves and National Guard, and McNamara proposed levying war taxes. Such actions would have placed the United States on a war footing. With his ambitious social reform program facing crucial votes in Congress, the president wanted to avoid giving congressional conservatives an opportunity to use mobilization to block his domestic agenda. Consequently, he relied on other means. Monthly draft calls increased from 17,000 to 35,000 to meet manpower needs, and deficit spending, with its inherent inflationary impact, funded the escalation.A father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers to look down from their armored vehicle on March 19, 1964. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border.With U.S. bombs pounding North Vietnam, Westmoreland turned America’s massive firepower on the southern insurgents. Johnson’s choice of gradual escalation of bombing and incremental troop deployments was based upon the concept of limited warfare. Risks of a wider war with China and the Soviet Union meant that the United States would not go all out to annihilate North Vietnam. Thus, Westmoreland chose a strategy of attrition in the South. Using mobility and powerful weapons, the MACV commander could limit U.S. casualties while exhausting the enemy that is, inflicting heavier losses than could be replaced.Escalation of the air and ground war in 1965 provoked Hanoi to begin deploying into the South increasing units of the regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA), or People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), as it was called. In October, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the PAVN commander, launched a major offensive in the Central Highlands, southwest of Pleiku. Westmoreland responded with the 1st Air Cavalry Division (Air Mobile). Through much of November, in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, U.S. and North Vietnamese forces engaged each other in heavy combat for the first time.Marines wade ashore with heavy equipment at first light at Red Beach near Da Nang in Saigon on April 10, 1965.The Americans ultimately forced the NVA out of the valley and killed ten times as many enemy soldiers as they lost. Westmoreland used helicopters extensively for troop movements, re-supply, medical evacuation, and tactical air support. USAF tactical bombers and even huge B‐52 strategic bombers attacked enemy positions. The battle convinced the U.S. commander that “search and destroy” tactics using air mobility would work in accomplishing the attrition strategy. Soon, after the PAVN departed the battlefield- however, so too did the American air “cavalry.” Clearly, control of territory was not the U.S. military objective.During 1966 Westmoreland requested more ground troops, and by year’s end the U.S. ground force level “in country” reached 385,000. These were organized into seven divisions and other specialized airborne, armored, Special Forces, and logistical units. With U.S. aid, the ARVN also expanded to eleven divisions, supplemented by local and irregular units. While MACV was getting men and munitions in place for large‐unit search and destroy operations, army and marine units conducted smaller operations. Although the “body count”—the estimated number of enemy killed—mounted, attrition was not changing the political equation in South Vietnam. The NLF continued to exercise more effective control in many areas than did the government, and Viet Cong guerrillas, who often disappeared when U.S. forces entered an area, quickly reappeared when the Americans left.in -&nbspThis website is for sale! -&nbspleft Resources and Information. 1967, Westmoreland made his big push to win the war. With South Vietnam’s forces assigned primarily to occupation, pacification, and security duties, massive U.S. combat sweeps moved to locate and destroy the enemy. In January, Operation Cedar Falls was a 30,000‐man assault on the Iron Triangle, an enemy base area forty miles north of Saigon. From February through April, Operation Junction City was an even larger attack on nearby War Zone C. There was major fighting in the Central Highlands, climaxing in the battle of Dak To in November 1967.With the persuasion of a Viet Cong-made spear pressed against his throat, a captured Viet Cong guerrilla decided to talk to interrogators, telling them of a cache of Chinese grenades on March 28, 1965. He was captured with 13 other guerrillas and 17 suspects when two Vietnamese battalions overran a Viet Cong camp about 15 miles southwest of Da Nang air force base.U.S. forces killed many enemy soldiers and destroyed large amounts of supplies. MACV declared vast areas to be “free‐fire zones,” which meant that U.S. and ARVN artillery and tactical aircraft, as well as B‐52 “carpet bombing,” could target anyone or anything in the area. In Operation RANCH HAND, the USAF sprayed the defoliant Agent Orange to deprive the guerrillas of cover and food supplies. Controversy about the use of Agent Orange erupted in 1969 when reports appeared that the chemical caused serious damage to humans as well as to plants.Late in 1967, with 485,600 U.S. troops in Vietnam, Westmoreland announced that, although much fighting remained, a cross‐over point had arrived in the war of attrition; that is, the losses to the NVA and Vietcong were greater than they could replace. This assessment was debatable, and there was considerable evidence that the so‐called “other war” for political support in South Vietnam was not going well. Corruption, factionalism, and continued Buddhist protests plagued the Thieu‐Ky government.Despite incredible losses, the Vietcong still controlled many areas. A diplomatic resolution of the conflict remained elusive. Several third countries, such as Poland and Great Britain, offered proposals intended to facilitate negotiations. These formulas typically called upon the United States and DRV to coordinate mutual reduction of their military activities in South Vietnam, but both Washington and Hanoi firmly resisted even interim compromises with the other. The war was at a stalemate.Thousands attend a rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington on April 17, 1965, to hear Ernest Gruening, a Democratic senator from Alaska, and other speakers discuss U.S. policy in Vietnam. The rally followed picketing of the White House by students demanding an end to Vietnam fighting.A nurse attempts to comfort a wounded U.S. Army soldier in a ward of the 8th army hospital at Nha Trang in South Vietnam on February 7, 1965. The soldier was one of more than 100 who were wounded during Viet Cong attacks on two U.S. military compounds at Pleiku, 240 miles north of Saigon. Seven Americans were killed in the attacks. Flag-draped coffins of eight American Servicemen killed in attacks on U.S. military installations in South Vietnam, on February 7, are placed in transport plane at Saigon, February 9, 1965, for return flight to the United States. Funeral services were held at the Saigon Airport with U.S. Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor and Vietnamese officials attending. Injured Vietnamese receive aid as they lie on the street after a bomb explosion outside the U.S. embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, on March 30, 1965. Smoke rises from wreckage in background. At least two Americans and several Vietnamese were killed in the bombing. Four “Ranch Hand” C-123 aircraft spray liquid defoliant on a suspected Viet Cong position in South Vietnam in September of 1965. The four specially equipped planes covered a 1,000-foot-wide swath in each pass over the dense vegetation. A Vietnamese battalion commander, Captain Thach Quyen, left, interrogates a captured Viet Cong suspect on Tan Dinh Island, Mekong Delta, in 1965. A strategic air command B-52 bomber with externally mounted, 750-pound bombs heads toward its target about 56 miles northwest of Saigon near Tay Ninh on November 2, 1965. General William Westmoreland talks with troops of first battalion, 16th regiment of 2nd brigade of U.S. First Division at their positions near Bien Hoa in Vietnam in 1965. Flares from planes light a field covered with the dead and wounded of the ambushed battalion of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division in the Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam, on November 18, 1965, during a fierce battle that had been raging for days. Units of the division were battling to hold their lines against what was estimated to be a regiment of North Vietnamese soldiers. Bodies of the slain soldiers were carried to this clearing with their gear to await evacuation by helicopter. A Viet Cong fighter in Vietnam in an undated photo A U.S. Marine newly arrived in South Vietnam on April 29, 1965, drips with perspiration while on patrol in search of Viet Cong guerrillas near Da Nang air base. American troops found 100-degree temperatures a tough part of the job. General Wallace M. Greene Jr., a Marine Corps commandant, after a visit to the area, authorized light short-sleeved uniforms as aid to troops’ comfort. In Berkeley-Oakland City, California, demonstrators march against the war in Vietnam in December of 1965.A Vietnamese litter bearer wears a face mask to keep out the smell as he passes the bodies of U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers killed in fighting against the Viet Cong at the Michelin rubber plantation, about 45 miles northeast of Saigon, on November 27, 1965.Pedestrians cross the destroyed Hue Bridge in Hue, Vietnam, in an undated photo.Wounded and shocked civilian survivors of Dong Xoai crawl out of a fort bunker on June 6, 1965, where they survived murderous ground fighting and air bombardments of the previous two days.A U.S. Air Force Douglas A-1E Skyraider drops a white phosphorus bomb on a Viet Cong position in South Vietnam in 1966.A Vietnamese girl, 23 years old, was captured by an Australian patrol 30 feet below ground at the end of a maze of tunnels some 10 miles west of the headquarters of the Australian task force (40 miles southeast of Saigon). The woman was crouched over a World War II radio set. About seven male Viet Cong took off when the Australians appeared—but the woman remained and appeared to be trying to conceal the radio set. She was taken back to the Australian headquarters where she told under sharp interrogation (which included a “water probe”; see her wet clothes after the interrogation) that she worked as a Viet Cong nurse in the village of Hoa Long and had been in the tunnel for 10 days. The Australians did not believe her because she seemed to lack any medical knowledge. They thought that she may have possibly been the leader of the political cell in Long Hoa. She was being led away after interrogation, clothes soaked from the “water probe” on October 29, 1966.Left: Pilot Leslie R. Leavoy in flight with other jets in the background above Vietnam in 1966. Right: Army nurse 2nd Lieutenant Roberta “Bertie” Steele in South Vietnam, on February 9, 1966.Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, on January 1, 1966. Paratroopers, background, of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade escorted the South Vietnamese civilians through a series of firefights during the U.S. assault on a Viet Cong stronghold.A napalm strike erupts in a fireball near U.S. troops on patrol in South Vietnam in 1966.A Marine, top, wounded slightly, when his face was creased by an enemy bullet, pours water into the mouth of a fellow Marine suffering from heat during Operation Hastings along the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam on July 21, 1966.Left: A Vietnamese child clings to his bound father who was rounded up as a suspected Viet Cong guerrilla during “Operation Eagle Claw” in the Bong Son area, 280 miles northeast of Saigon on February 17, 1966. The father was taken to an interrogation camp with other suspects rounded up by the U.S. 1st air cavalry division. Right: The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter in War Zone C, Vietnam, in 1966. The singing group the “Korean Kittens,” appear on stage at Cu Chi, Vietnam, during the Bob Hope USO Christmas show, to entertain U.S. troops of the 25th Infantry Division.A grim-faced U.S. Marine fires his M60 machine gun, concealed behind logs and resting in a shallow hole, during the battle against North Vietnamese regulars for Hill 484, just south of the demilitarized zone, on October 10, 1966. After three weeks of bitter fighting, the 3rd battalion of the 4th Marines took the hill the week of October 2.Lieutenant Commander Donald D. Sheppard, of Coronado, California, aims a flaming arrow at a bamboo hut concealing a fortified Viet Cong bunker on the banks of the Bassac River, Vietnam, on December 8, 1967.A U.S. Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter comes down in flames after being hit by enemy ground fire during Operation Hastings, just south of the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam, on July 15, 1966. The helicopter crashed and exploded on a hill, killing one crewman and 12 Marines. Three crewmen escaped with serious burns.A man brews tea while a U.S. Marine examines a pinup in Vietnam in September of 1967.A trooper of the U.S. 1st cavalry division aims a flamethrower at the mouth of cave in An Lao Valley in South Vietnam, on April 14, 1967, after the Viet Cong groups hiding in it were warned to emerge.Sergeant Ronald Payne, 21, of Atlanta, Georgia, emerges from a Viet Cong tunnel holding his silencer-equipped revolver with which he fired at guerrillas fleeing ahead of him underground. Payne and others of the 196th light infantry brigade probed the massive tunnel in Hobo Woods, South Vietnam, on January 21, 1967, and found detailed maps and plans of the enemy. The infantrymen who explored the complex are known as “Tunnel Rats.” They were called out of the tunnels on January 21, and nauseating gas was pumped in. Military police, reinforced by Army troops, throwback anti-war demonstrators as they tried to storm a mall entrance doorway at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967.Rick Holmes of C Company, 2nd battalion, 503rd infantry, 173rd airborne brigade, sits down on January 3, 1966, in Vietnam.U.S. Navy Douglas A-4E Skyhawk from Attack Squadrons VA-163 Saints and VA-164 Ghost Riders attack the Phuong Dinh railroad bypass bridge, 10 kilometers north of Thanh Hoe, North Vietnam, on September 10, 1967. Note the attacking Sky hawk in the lower right and one directly left of the explosions on the bridge.U.S. troops of the 7th and 9th divisions wade through marshland during a joint operation on South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, in April of http://1967.In the protocols International relations are between the Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Vietnam that have never had sold the Republic of Vietnam to communism herein: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume II, Vietnam, 1962108. Letter From the Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations (Dutton) to the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Fulbright)1Washington, March 14, 1962.Dear Mr. Chairman: In Governor Harrimanʼs absence, I am forwarding the Departmentʼs replies to the questions which were presented to him as a result of the executive session of the Foreign Relations Committee concerning Viet-Nam.2 The questions were those put by Senator Morse at the meeting and then by letter subsequently.The enclosed material is provided with the understanding that those portions which are classified are for the sole information of the Committee.If I may be of further assistance, I will appreciate you letting me know.Respectfully,Frederick G. Dutton3[Page 222][Enclosure]Actually, this Southeast Asia organization is abused the great power by America because all of these memberships are wholly supported by the American Government from the military equipment, food-stuff, and salaries through the foreign assistance Aid of the Government of the United States of America. These Armed Forces came to the Republic of Vietnam only shot and killed when they do not worry about the violated war crime. In the meanwhile, America has created a campaign phoenix program (174)so-called "seek shot and murdered" For example, the police operation gathers all villagers. Their ages are from sixteen years old to sixty years old. We cannot distinguish female or male, rich or poor. We impound some objects like the Communist infrastructures, criminals, deserters, and those who dodge military service. My police operation begins at 4:00 a.m. when the village police soldier platoon surrounds my village. The police soldiers do not let any villagers go in and out. My employees divide into a few groups. They come house by house. They arrest some men on the list. For example, a Communist propagandist understands about a south infantryman, who has a poor family, but he should join in the South Army when he has been in service four years in the divisional infantry. His division encamps in Chu Lai Post in Middle Vietnam. He was born in the hamlet #7 in Nghia Loc village in Quang Ngai province. From the day he joins the divisional infantry, he always visits his parents. When the heavy rain and wind of the darkest nightfall on his village, the south infantryman visits his parents, so the Communist personnel of propaganda leads a group ___________(174) Quoted paragraph Page 289 Campaign Phoenix by Author Bright Quang - Road to the United States: ISBN: 1- 4295 -1332 - 6 of Communist propagandists. They secretly surround his home, knock on his door, and arrest the south infantryman to kill him. The south infantryman and his family are trembling because they fear the Communist personnel might kill him. But the Communist propagandists realize between the south infantryman and his parents that they are fully sympathetic. The Communist propagandist comforts him and his family. Before the Communist propagandist donates twenty rice kilograms for the south infantryman, the Communist propagandist says: We, the Vietnamese Communist revolutionaries, understand that your family is poor. Since your parents are the oldest; they could not find any food for a living when they worry about you fighting with us on the battlefield. Because the puppet of the South government and the American empire do not love you and your family, they give an order to you to be a gun-folder for them. Ultimately, the Communist propagandist comforts the south infantryman, releases him, and promises to help the south infantryman’s family in the future. But the Communist propagandist tells the south infantryman that he cannot tell anything with his fellows, or he will be back to his divisional infantry.Second, on other days, the south infantryman escapes his divisional infantry, and he visits his parents. The Communist propagandist watches him closely. They wait for the night which falls. They visit the south infantryman, donate a little medicine to his parents, and talk with the south infantryman. While they are touching upon his duties, division, and his weapon, they gradually pretend to find out the total divisional infantry, weapons, and operations. Then, the south infantryman reveals his total division for the Communisthttp://propagandist.Insome cases, the Communist propagandist gives an order to the south infantryman. For example, the Communist propagandist tells him to put dioxide into the water system or food in order to kill the south soldiers. If the south infantryman refuses, the Communist propagandist could report to the South police to arrest him, or the Communist spies could kill him. Therefore, the south infantryman must do something for the Communist propagandist, who gives an order to him. However, when my spy network has been taking this news for six months, I have known of the south infantryman, who pretends to report his secret information to our enemy. We organize the Campaign’s Phoenix operation to arrest them. When the Campaign Phoenix operates in my village, I impound fifty-two men. My employees distribute them to be five dangerous kinds: the first kind is one Communist infrastructure; the second kind is the south infantryman who is to be a Communist spy; the third kind is twenty-four men who have been deserters; the fourth kind is twenty-two men who dodge military service, and the fifth kind violated murdered crime for only two men. All of them are sent to the Bureau Police justice in Quang Ngai province and the province court, but I would not send them to my police district because there they could corrupt them and might get released. The previous time that I sent a few men to the police district office, who have deserted and dodged military service to my police district, all of them were released by the district chief because the ghost soldiers are protected by a group of high officers in this district. According to the young men who dodged military service, they were interviewed by my policemen after they confessed something to my police justice. Because they were corrupted by a group of village presidents and a group of district offices, their important documents were sent to the prosecutor in Quang Ngai. For example, the South government of the Republic of Vietnam has declared the decisive law that, who is the only son in a family, would not join in any military service. If one family has three children that join in the army of South Vietnam, a little son would not join in the military. In contrast, my village has some cases which are opposite to the statutory of South Vietnam. In fact, one young man, whose father is a Vietnamese Communist and his brothers are guerillas, is exempted from joining the army when he should be corrupted $250,000.00 Vietnamese dollars to his village president. On the on other hand, one family has three members who join the army; its little son is exempted from the military service by the statutory, but the village president does not receive any application forms because this man does not corrupt the village chair. For the district chief, the dodged military servicemen are protected by the vice-district chief and the village chairman. Therefore, I send them to Quang Ngai province; I note to the prosecutor in Quang Ngai province, so the corruption cases in the villages and district could not release them when I do to depend on Republic of Vietnam laws, and then, I would not fear any powers because my sphere of influence is allowed by the prosecutor in Quang Ngai. I, the chair of the inventory board program, being eliminated or received the re-settled people in my village. When I carry out the inventory program, all of the villagers are ardently welcomed. For example, when I investigate house by house, I introduce my duty to the villagers before I interview them. Then, I describe the resettlement program and let them understand and truly report to me. Even though, with my professional eyes looking around, I have to know their dwellings which are new or old. I say, “This budget of the re-settlement program is offered by the American people. They offer you to re-settle because your property is destroyed by the United States war with Vietnam. Therefore, the American people provide their budget to you within twelve months. They determine for each person who might receive $36,000.00 Vietnamese dollars for six months with a condition that you have been in your own house for these times, but you could build a little hovel and you have never left here. When the inventory program begins, you return here. Lets you get money from this program that's illegal, so you ought to jail. In any case, when I have been investigating 50,000.00 villagers to follow the list names of the nine hamlets in my village, I see that hovels are sparse without any furniture while they contain nine members of a family. When I check in their certificate of families, I see them have three or four members of the family that they return to military service. When I interview the household, I ask, “Where did your children go?” The household replies, “Dear Lieutenant, my family only has two members. My wife and I live here, but when I applied to this re-settle program, my hamlet chair tells me to add more ghost names; he promises to divide the money into several parts when I could receive compensation money. For example, I get $36.000.00 Vietnamese dollars, so I will take $3,000.00 Vietnamese dollars when I write my name on my documents.” Ironically, when I investigate a family, I see in this family that four members have been joining the Communist guerillas, but the local government of the infrastructure of South Vietnam pays the salary for them through this re-settle program. Specifically, their children are members of the Communist guerillas; they have been operating in this village. For example, they have a son, so their son joins the people’s militia. He is equipped with a carbine M.II gun. After two-weeks he was training for fighting on the battlefield, he returned home; his brother is Communist personnel who gave an order to him through their parents. The Communist personnel says, “You should bring your gun, and join in the Vietnamese Communist revolution.” When their father goes into the mountain, he picks up the firewood. His Communist son hands out his secret letter. This secret letter is put inside a bamboo hole. His father comes home; he secretly hands this letter to his little son. His little son depends on the darkest night without star and moon. He comes to a special target area when they make a date with a special time. He, a member of people’s militia, brings his carbine M.II gun to meet his Communist brother. However, the government of the village, who does not find out this, it is the case, but now, the government of the village indirectly, supports Communist soldiers. In contrast, the public employees of village infrastructure have been working for the South government of Vietnam, but they secretly nourish the Communist personnel. In other words, they corrupt honest people. They should sow the bad political ideology in the South Vietnamese people, so the south government of Vietnam reaps it. When I work here, I seem to sit on a hot flame because I gradually go deeper into the tunnel of Vietnam Republic regime, which is too dark without a little light because its infrastructure looks like a high stool where its legs are vibrating and I am a carpenter without experience to repair it. After the final inventory of the re-settle program, I have eliminated forty thousand members of the ghost families because they did not settle in their homes, or they had not applied their names, but their government infrastructures of hamlets posted them, or their names had registered in the South Vietnam of government. Some of them joined the Communist guerillas in the mountains. They have been fighting with the South Army. Therefore, all of them were eliminated out of the list name of the re-settle program by my duties and responsibilities. I seal and sign my name on all of the documents, enclose and send it to Quang Ngai Office, District office, and send a notice to my district chief of police. After three months of working hard, I want to take my vacation for two weeks when my Happy Birthday will come. Today, the cool autumn weather and the blue firmament is beautiful when a slight wind is thinly blowing. I am slowly driving the police car when I go home, but my soul, mind, and eyes are thinking, enjoying, and feeling the wonderful landscapes that seem to run and follow me. I do not have any outcries, but my eyes fill the tears which run on my cheekbones; I feel sad, so my left eyes lid twitches for three times. I imagine someone who beats my eyes, and then I do not consider any landscapes— I step on the brake pedal to go home soon…Again, Campaign Phoenix Program has been taking place in the Republic of Vietnam when the Multilateral Armed Forces came to the Republic of Vietnam. Those entirely combined each other, so the North Armed Forces quickly retreated to escape to the highland of South Vietnam. When so many crowds have been returned for their former villages within their song pleasure that the situation of the Republic of Vietnam likely seemed the same as 1963 - even though, their villages were tumbled piece by piece. Ironically, America and its alliance just cut gradually run out of the Republic of Vietnam without had trumpet and drum, but after that, the North Armed forces have begun attacking the South Armed Forces. At this time, President Nguyen Van Thieu has an ordered Minister Foreign Affairs, Bac Van Vuong to the United States of America. Let him discuss the South Vietnam situation with the United States Department of States and during discusses with an American president Ford, which has six paragraphs, but we quote paragraph # 3 says: an American president Gerald R. Ford sent his confirmed letter to President Nguyen Thieu that America has guaranteed to protect for the Republic of Vietnam if North Armed Forces should overthrow South Vietnam. For President Nguyen Van Thieu sent his letter to the assembly security of the United Nations: I fully understand your concern about the current situation in the Republic of Vietnam, particularly the growing communist military threat which you now face. I am also well aware of the critical necessity of American military and economic aid for your country. I give you my firm assurance that this Administration will continue to make every effort to provide the assistance you need.Show original message

Bright Quang, he has been creative for the seventeen books; whilst, he’s a poet, sculptor and specialist painter.He’s an inmate of the proxy war of the United States of America without pays benefits, come to America on November 23, 1993, graduated Bachelor Degree and Nonprofit Management in C.S.U Hayward, East Bay. His doctrine Noble Truth is the Five Right Ways in which are Happiness, Source of Life and Sorrow (distress) and the Five Right Ways are Right Thoughtfulness, Right Love, Right Forgiveness, Right Struggle and Right Independence. These are so-called surveying compass to push him to the orientation one’s purpose of the true value of one's life. Because he always highly esteems the good, the true and the beautiful, and then, he must be able to donate part of the rest of his life to mankind because of its happiness looked like his own. Its source of life is as important as his life and its sorrow looked like his own. His Five Right Ways the Right Thoughtfulness, the Right Love, the Right Forgiveness. These belong to the ethic conduct of his heart; the Right Struggle and the Right Independence have belonged to mental discipline or so-called is wisdom. The base on the Vietnam War has taken place from China, France, and America invaders did not only have the whole Vietnamese people but also had him to be a war victim of them. His family and he have been the burden of sufferings for the long run by the barbarous wars. Therefore, he composes this doctrine in order to remind many Great Powers on the world that they should transfer wars to peace.In conclusion, the rest of his life fights for the America Justice, because performs justice, which is peaceful as anti-justice is demagogic. As human knowledge is limited, but human life is limitless of ambition.--------We, the American citizens, ought to look back Vietnam when President Nixon and the Kissinger have nodded their heads in order to beg the Soviet Union and China to let them cut and run out of the Republic of Vietnam. When they sold off the Republic of Vietnam to Communism, the American soldiers were not had trumpet and drum by the American standards. According to a great America did beg communism to let them play their proxy war and in the end, they betrayed their partnership that the Republic of Vietnam without kept the American face.On the last days of South Vietnam, did South Vietnamese soldiers successfully defend Saigon Bridge?Exposing Nixon’s Vietnam LiesAugust 10, 2015 • 21 CommentsSaveExclusive: After resigning over the Watergate political-spying scandal, President Nixon sought to rewrite the history of his Vietnam War strategies to deny swapping lives for political advantage, but newly released documents say otherwise, writes James DiEugenio.By James DiEugenioRichard Nixon spent years rebuilding his tattered reputation after he resigned from office in disgrace on Aug. 9, 1974. The rehabilitation project was codenamed “The Wizard.” The idea was to position himself as an elder statesman of foreign policy, a Wise Man. And to a remarkable degree through the sale of his memoirs, his appearance with David Frost in a series of highly rated interviews, and the publication of at least eight books after that Nixon largely succeeded in his goal.There was another aspect of that plan: to do all he could to keep his presidential papers and tapes classified, which, through a series of legal maneuvers, he managed to achieve in large part. Therefore, much of what he and Henry Kissinger wrote about in their memoirs could stand, largely unchallenged.President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.It was not until years after his death that the bulk of the Nixon papers and tapes were opened up to the light of day. And Kissinger’s private papers will not be declassified until five years after his death. With that kind of arrangement, it was fairly easy for Nixon to sell himself as the Sage of San Clemente, but two new books based on the long-delayed declassified record one by Ken Hughes and the other by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball undermine much of Nixon’s rehabilitation.For instance, in 1985 at the peak of President Ronald Reagan’s political power Nixon wrote No More Vietnams, making several dubious claims about the long conflict which included wars of independence by Vietnam against both France and the United States.In the book, Nixon tried to insinuate that Vietnam was not really one country for a very long time and that the split between north and south was a natural demarcation. He also declared that the Vietnam War had been won under his administration, and he insisted that he never really considered bombing the irrigation dikes, using tactical nuclear weapons, or employing the strategy of a “decent interval” to mask an American defeat for political purposes.Nixon’s StoryIn No More Vietnams, Nixon said that after going through a series of option papers furnished to him by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, he decided on a five-point program for peace in Vietnam. (Nixon, pgs. 104-07) This program consisted of Vietnamization, i. e., turning over the fighting of the war to the South Vietnamese army (the ARVN); pacification, which was a clear-and-hold strategy for maintaining territory in the south; diplomatic isolation of North Vietnam from its allies, China and the Soviet Union; peace negotiations with very few preconditions; and gradual withdrawal of American combat troops. Nixon asserted that this program was successful.But the currently declassified record does not support Nixon’s version of history, either in the particulars of what was attempted or in Nixon’s assessment of its success.When Richard Nixon came into office he was keenly aware of what had happened to his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who had escalated the war to heights that President Kennedy had never imagined, let alone envisaged. The war of attrition strategy that LBJ and General William Westmoreland had decided upon did not work. And the high American casualties it caused eroded support for the war domestically. Nixon told his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman that he would not end up like LBJ, a prisoner in his own White House.Therefore, Nixon wanted recommendations that would shock the enemy, even beyond the massive bombing campaigns and other bloody tactics employed by Johnson. As authors Burr and Kimball note in their new book Nixon’s Nuclear Specter, Nixon was very much influenced by two modes of thought.First, as Vice President from 1953-61, he was under the tutelage of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight Eisenhower, who advocated a policy of nuclear brinksmanship, that is the willingness to threaten nuclear war if need be. Dulles felt that since the United States had a large lead in atomic weapons that the Russians would back down in the face of certain annihilation.Nixon was also impressed by the alleged threat of President Eisenhower to use atomic weapons if North Korea and China did not bargain in good faith to end the Korean War. Nixon actually talked about this in a private meeting with southern politicians at the 1968 GOP convention. (Burr and Kimball, Chapter 2)Dulles also threatened to use atomic weapons in Vietnam. Burr and Kimball note the proposal by Dulles to break the Viet Minh’s siege of French troops at Dien Bien Phu by a massive air mission featuring the use of three atomic bombs. Though Nixon claimed in No More Vietnams that the atomic option was not seriously considered (Nixon, p. 30), the truth appears to have been more ambiguous, that Nixon thought the siege could be lifted without atomic weapons but he was not against using them. Eisenhower ultimately vetoed their use when he could not get Great Britain to go along.Playing the MadmanLater, when in the Oval Office, Nixon tempered this nuclear brinksmanship for the simple reason that the Russians had significantly closed the gap in atomic stockpiles. So, as Burr and Kimball describe it, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to modify the Eisenhower-Dulles brinksmanship with the “uncertainty effect” or as Nixon sometimes called it, the Madman Theory. In other words, instead of overtly threatening to use atomic bombs, Nixon would have an intermediary pass on word to the North Vietnamese leadership that Nixon was so unhinged that he might resort to nuclear weapons if he didn’t get his way. Or, as Nixon explained to Haldeman, if you act crazy, the incredible becomes credible:“They’ll believe any threat of force that Nixon makes because it’s Nixon. I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button.’”Nixon believed this trick would work, saying “Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”Kissinger once told special consultant Leonard Garment to convey to the Soviets that Nixon was somewhat nutty and unpredictable. Kissinger bought into the concept so much so that he was part of the act: the idea was for Nixon to play the “bad cop” and Kissinger the “good cop.”Another reason that Nixon and Kissinger advocated the Madman Theory was that they understood that Vietnamization and pacification would take years. And they did not think they could sustain public opinion on the war for that long. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers both thought they could, their opinions were peripheral because Nixon and Kissinger had concentrated the foreign policy apparatus in the White House.Playing for TimePrivately, Nixon did not think America could win the war, so he wanted to do something unexpected, shocking, “over the top.” As Burr and Kimball note, in 1969, Nixon told his speechwriters Ray Price, Pat Buchanan and Richard Whalen: “I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course. In fact we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage.”In a phone call with Kissinger, Nixon said, “In Saigon, the tendency is to fight the war for victory. But you and I know it won’t happen it is impossible. Even Gen. Abrams agreed.”These ideas were expressed very early in 1969 in a document called NSSM-1, a study memorandum as opposed to an action memorandum with Kissinger asking for opinions on war strategy from those directly involved. The general consensus was that the other side had “options over which we have little or no control” which would help them “continue the war almost indefinitely.” (ibid, Chapter 3)Author Ken Hughes in Fatal Politics agrees. Nixon wanted to know if South Vietnam could survive without American troops there. All of the military figures he asked replied that President Nguyen van Thieu’s government could not take on both the Viet Cong and the regular North Vietnamese army. And, the United States could not help South Vietnam enough for it to survive on its own. (Hughes, pgs. 14-15)As Hughes notes, Nixon understood that this bitter truth needed maximum spin to make it acceptable for the public. So he said, “Shall we leave Vietnam in a way that by our own actions consciously turns the country over to the Communists? Or shall we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance to survive as a free people? My plan will end American involvement in a way that will provide that chance.” (ibid, p. 15)If the U.S. media allowed the argument to be framed like that, which it did, then the hopeless cause did have a political upside. As Kissinger told Nixon, “The only consolation we have is that the people who put us into this position are going to be destroyed by the right. They are going to be destroyed. The liberals and radicals are going to be killed. This is, above all, a rightwing country.” (ibid, p. 19)Could anything be less honest, less democratic or more self-serving? Knowing that their critics were correct, and that the war could not be won, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to portray the people who were right about the war as betraying both America and South Vietnam.Political WorriesJust how calculated was Nixon about America’s withdrawal from Vietnam? Republican Sen. Hugh Scott warned him about getting out by the end of 1972, or “another man may be standing on the platform” on Inauguration Day 1973. (ibid, p. 23) Nixon told his staff that Scott should not be saying things like this in public.But, in private, the GOP actually polled on the issue. It was from these polls that Nixon tailored his speeches. He understood that only 39 percent of the public approved a Dec. 31, 1971 withdrawal, if it meant a U.S. defeat. When the question was posed as withdrawal, even if it meant a communist takeover, the percentage declined to 27 percent. Nixon studied the polls assiduously. He told Haldeman, “That’s the word. We say Communist takeover.” (ibid, p. 24)The polls revealed another hot button issue: getting our POW’s back. This was even more sensitive with the public than the “Communist takeover” issue. Therefore, during a press conference, when asked about Scott’s public warning, Nixon replied that the date of withdrawal should not be related to any election day. The important thing was that he “didn’t want one American to be in Vietnam one day longer than is necessary to achieve the two goals that I have mentioned: the release of our prisoners and the capacity of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves against a Communist takeover.” He then repeated that meme two more times. The press couldn’t avoid it. (Hughes, p. 25)Still, although Nixon and Kissinger understood they could not win the war in a conventional sense, they were willing to try other methods in the short run to get a better and quicker settlement, especially if it included getting North Vietnamese troops out of South Vietnam. Therefore, in 1969, he and Kissinger elicited suggestions from inside the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and Rand Corporation, through Daniel Ellsberg. These included a limited invasion of North Vietnam and Laos, mining the harbors and bombing the north, a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, and operations in Cambodia.Or as Kissinger put it, “We should develop alternate plans for possible escalating military actions with the motive of convincing the Soviets that the war may get out of hand.” Kissinger also said that bombing Cambodia would convey the proper message to Moscow.If anything shows that Kissinger was as backward in his thinking about Indochina as Nixon, this does. For as Burr and Kimball show — through Dobrynin’s memos to Moscow — the Russians could not understand why the White House would think the Kremlin had such influence with Hanoi. Moscow wanted to deal on a variety of issues, including arms agreements and the Middle East.So far from Kissinger’s vaunted “linkage” theory furthering the agenda with Russia, it’s clear from Dobrynin that it hindered that agenda. In other words, the remnants of a colonial conflict in the Third World were stopping progress in ameliorating the Cold War. This was the subtotal of the Nixon/Kissinger geopolitical accounting sheet.Judging Kissinger on VietnamJust how unbalanced was Kissinger on Vietnam? In April 1969, there was a shoot-down of an American observation plane off the coast of Korea. When White House adviser John Ehrlichman asked Kissinger how far the escalation could go, Kissinger replied it could go nuclear.In a memo to Nixon, Kissinger advised using tactical nuclear weapons. He wrote that “all hell would break loose for two months”, referring to domestic demonstrations. But he then concluded that the end result would be positive: “there will be peace in Asia.”Kissinger was referring, of course, to the effectiveness of the Madman Theory. In reading these two books, it is often hard to decipher who is more dangerous in their thinking, Nixon or Kissinger.In the first phase of their approach to the Vietnam issue, Nixon and Kissinger decided upon two alternatives. The first was the secret bombing of Cambodia. In his interview with David Frost, Nixon expressed no regrets about either the bombing or the invasion. In fact, he said, he wished he had done it sooner, which is a puzzling statement because the bombing of Cambodia was among the first things he authorized. Nixon told Frost that the bombing and the later invasion of Cambodia had positive results: they garnered a lot of enemy supplies, lowered American casualties in Vietnam, and hurt the Viet Cong war effort.Frost did not press the former president with the obvious follow-up: But Mr. Nixon, you started another war and you helped depose Cambodia’s charismatic ruler, Prince Sihanouk. And because the Viet Cong were driven deeper into Cambodia, Nixon then began bombing the rest of the country, not just the border areas, leading to the victory of the radical Khmer Rouge and the deaths of more than one million Cambodians.This all indicates just how imprisoned Nixon and Kissinger were by the ideas of John Foster Dulles and his visions of a communist monolith with orders emanating from Moscow’s Comintern, a unified global movement controlled by the Kremlin. Like the Domino Theory, this was never sound thinking. In fact, the Sino-Soviet border dispute, which stemmed back to 1962, showed that communist movements were not monolithic. So the idea that Moscow could control Hanoi, or that the communists in Cambodia were controlled by the Viet Cong, this all ended up being disastrously wrong.As Sihanouk told author William Shawcross after the Cambodian catastrophe unfolded, General Lon Nol, who seized power from Prince Sihanouk, was nothing without the military actions of Nixon and Kissinger, and “the Khmer Rouge were nothing without Lon Nol.” (Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 391)But further, as Shawcross demonstrates, the immediate intent of the Cambodian invasion was to seek and destroy the so-called COSVN, the supposed command-and-control base for the communist forces in South Vietnam supposedly based on the border inside Cambodia. No such command center was ever found. (ibid, p. 171)Why the Drop in Casualties?As for Nixon’s other claim, American casualties declined in Indochina because of troop rotation, that is, the ARVN were pushed to the front lines with the Americans in support. Or as one commander said after the Cambodian invasion: it was essential that American fatalities be cut back, “If necessary, we must do it by edict.” (ibid, p. 172)But this is not all that Nixon tried in the time frame of 1969-70, his first two years in office. At Kissinger’s request he also attempted a secret mission to Moscow by Wall Street lawyer Cyrus Vance. Part of Kissinger’s linkage theory, Vance was to tell the Soviets that if they leaned on Hanoi to accept a Nixonian framework for negotiations, then the administration would be willing to deal on other fronts, and there would be little or no escalation. The negotiations on Vietnam included a coalition government, and the survival of Thieu’s government for at least five years, which would have been two years beyond the 1972 election. (As we shall see, this is the beginning of the final “decent interval” strategy.)The Vance mission was coupled with what Burr and Kimball call a “mining ruse.” The Navy would do an exercise to try and make the Russians think they were going to mine Haiphong and five other North Vietnamese harbors. Yet, for reasons stated above, Nixon overrated linkage, and the tactic did not work. But as Kissinger said, “If in doubt, we bomb Cambodia.” Which they did.As the authors note, Nixon had urged President Johnson in 1967 to extend the bombing throughout Indochina, into Cambodia and Laos. Johnson had studied these and other options but found too many liabilities. He had even studied the blockading of ports but concluded that Hanoi would compensate for a blockade in a relatively short time by utilizing overland routes and off-shore unloading.But what Johnson did not factor in was the Nixon/Kissinger Madman Theory. For example, when a State Department representative brought up the overall military ineffectiveness of the Cambodian bombing, Kissinger replied, “That doesn’t bother me we’ll hit something.” He also told an assistant, “Always keep them guessing.” The problem was, the “shock effect” ended up being as mythical as linkage.In 1969, after the failure of the Vance mission, the mining ruse, the warnings to Dobrynin, and the continued bombing of Cambodia, which went on in secret for 14 months, Nixon still had not given up on his Madman Theory. He sent a message to Hanoi saying that if a resolution was not in the works by November, “he will regretfully find himself obliged to have recourse to measures of great consequence and force.”What were these consequences? Nixon had wanted to mine Haiphong for a long time. But, as did Johnson, he was getting different opinions about its effectiveness. So he considered massive interdiction bombing of the north coupled with a blockade of Sihanoukville, the Cambodian port that was part of the Ho Chi Minh trail apparatus on the west coast of Cambodia.Plus one other tactic: Kissinger suggested to his staff that the interdiction bombing use tactical nuclear weapons for overland passes near the Chinese border. But the use of tactical nukes would have created an even greater domestic disturbance than the Cambodian invasion had done. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird objected to the whole agenda. He said it would not be effective and it would create too much domestic strife.Backing Up ThreatsSo Nixon and Kissinger decided on something short of the nuclear option. After all, Nixon had sent a veiled ultimatum to Hanoi about “great consequence and force.” They had to back it up. The two decided on a worldwide nuclear alert instead, a giant nuclear war exercise that would simulate actual military maneuvers in attempting to mimic what the U.S. would do if it were preparing for a nuclear strike.As Burr and Kimball write, this was another outmoded vestige of 1950s Cold War thinking: “It was intended to signal Washington’s anger at Moscow’s support of North Vietnam and to jar the Soviet leaders into using their leverage to induce Hanoi to make diplomatic concessions.” (Burr and Kimball, Chapter 9)It was designed to be detected by the Soviets, but not detectable at home. For instance, the DEFCON levels were not actually elevated. The alert went on for about three weeks, with all kinds of military maneuvers at sea and on land. Finally, Dobrynin called for a meeting. Kissinger was buoyant. Maybe the ploy had worked.But it didn’t. The ambassador was angry and upset, but not about the alert. He said that while the Russians wanted to deal on nuclear weapons, Nixon was as obsessed with Vietnam as LBJ was. In other words, Dobrynin and the Soviets were perceptive about what was really happening. Nixon tried to salvage the meeting with talk about how keeping American fatalities low in Vietnam would aid détente, which further blew the cover off the nuclear alert.Burr and Kimball show just how wedded the self-styled foreign policy mavens were to the Madman Theory. After the meeting, Nixon realized he had not done well in accordance with the whole nuclear alert, Madman idea. He asked Kissinger to bring back Dobrynin so they could play act the Madman idea better.The authors then note that, although Haiphong was later mined, the mining was not effective, as Nixon had been warned. In other words, the Madman idea and linkage were both duds.Nixon and Kissinger then turned to Laird’s plan, a Vietnamization program, a mix of U.S. troop withdrawals, turning more of the fighting over to the ARVN, and negotiations. The November 1969 Madman timetable was tossed aside and the long haul of gradual U.S. disengagement was being faced. Accordingly, Nixon and Kissinger started sending new messages to the north. And far from isolating Hanoi, both China and Russia served as messengers for these new ideas.The White House told Dobrynin that after all American troops were out, Vietnam would no longer be America’s concern. In extension of this idea, America would not even mind if Vietnam was unified under Hanoi leadership.Kissinger told the Chinese that America would not return after withdrawing. In his notebooks for his meeting with Zhou En Lai, Kissinger wrote, “We want a decent interval. You have our assurances.” (Burr and Kimball, Epilogue)Timing the DepartureBut when would the American troops depart? As Ken Hughes writes, Nixon at first wanted the final departure to be by December of 1971. But Kissinger talked him out of this. It was much safer politically to have the final withdrawal after the 1972 election. If Saigon fell after, it was too late to say Nixon’s policies were responsible. (Fatal Politics, p. 3)Kissinger also impressed on Nixon the need not to announce a timetable in advance. Since all their previous schemes had failed, they had to have some leverage for the Paris peace talks.But there was a problem. The exposure of the secret bombing of Cambodia began to put pressure on Congress to begin to cut off funding for those operations. Therefore, when Nixon also invaded Laos, this was done with ARVN troops. It did not go very well, but that did not matter to Nixon: “However Laos comes out, we have got to claim it was a success.” (Hughes, p. 14)While there was little progress at the official negotiations, that too was irrelevant because Kissinger had arranged for so-called “secret talks” at a residential home in Paris. There was no headway at these talks until late May 1971. Prior to this, Nixon had insisted on withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam.But in May, Kissinger reversed himself on two issues. First, there would be no American residual force left behind. Second, there would be a cease-fire in place. That is, no withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops. As Kissinger said to Nixon, they would still be free to bomb the north, but “the only problem is to prevent the collapse in 1972.” (ibid, pgs. 27-28) The Decent Interval strategy was now the modus operandi.And this strategy would serve Nixon’s reelection interests, too. As Kissinger told Nixon, “If we can, in October of ’72 go around the country saying we ended the war and the Democrats wanted to turn it over to the communists then we’re in great shape.” To which Nixon replied, “I know exactly what we’re up to.” (ibid, p. 29) Since this was all done in secret, they could get away with a purely political ploy even though its resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. All this was done to make sure Nixon was reelected and the Democrats looked like wimps.Kissinger understood this linkage between the war’s illusionary success and politics. He reminded Nixon, “If Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam go down the drain in September of 1972, they they’ll say you went into those … you spoiled so many lives, just to wind up where you could have been in the first year.” (ibid, p. 30)In fact, the President’s February 1972 trip to China was directly related to the slow progress on Vietnam. Kissinger said, “For every reason, we’ve got to have a diversion from Vietnam in this country for awhile.” To which Nixon replied, “That’s the point isn’t it?” (ibid, p.32)A Decent IntervalIn preparations for China, Kissinger told Zhou En Lai that Nixon needed an interval of a year or two after American departure for Saigon to fall. (ibid, p. 35) He told Zhou, “The outcome of my logic is that we are putting a time interval between the military outcome and the political outcome.” (ibid, p. 79)But aware of this, Hanoi made one last push for victory with the Easter Offensive of 1972. Remarkably successful at first, air power managed to stall it and then push it back. During this giant air operation, Nixon returned to his Foster Dulles brinksmanship form, asking Kissinger, should we “take the dikes out now?”Kissinger replied, “That will drown about 200,000 people.”Nixon said, “Well no, no I’d rather use a nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?”When Kissinger demurred by saying Nixon wouldn’t use it anyway, the President replied, “I just want you to think big Henry, for Christ’s sake.” (Burr and Kimball, Epilogue)The American press took the wrong message from this. What it actually symbolized was that Saigon could not survive without massive American aid and firepower. (Hughes, p. 61) But even with this huge air campaign, the Pentagon figured that the north could keep up its war effort for at least two more years, even with interdiction bombing.The political ramification of the renewed fighting was that it pushed the final settlement back in time, which Nixon saw as a political benefit, a tsunami for his reelection.Nixon: “The advantage, Henry, of trying to settle now, even if you’re ten points ahead, is that that will ensure a hell of a landslide.”Kissinger: “If we can get that done, then we can screw them after Election Day if necessary. And I think this could finish the destruction of McGovern” [the Democratic presidential nominee].Nixon: “Oh yes, and the doves, which is just as important.”The next day, Aug. 3, 1972, Kissinger returned to the theme: “So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which, after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater no one will give a damn.” (Hughes, pgs. 84-85)All of this history renders absurd the speeches of Ronald Reagan at the time: “President Nixon’s idealism is such that he believes the people of South Vietnam should have the opportunity to live under whatever form of government they themselves choose.” (Hughes, p. 86) While Reagan was whistling in the dark, the Hanoi negotiator Le Duc Tho understood what was happening. He even said to Kissinger, “reunification will be decided upon after a suitable interval following the signing.”Kissinger and Nixon even knew the whole election commission idea for reunification was a joke. Kissinger called it, “all baloney. There’ll never be elections.” Nixon agreed by saying that the war will then resume, but “we’ll be gone.” (ibid, p. 88)Thieu’s ComplaintThe problem in October 1972 was not Hanoi; it was President Thieu. He understood that with 150,000 North Vietnamese regulars in the south, the writing was on the wall for his future. So Kissinger got reassurances from Hanoi that they would not use the Ho Chi Minh Trail after America left, though Kissinger and Nixon knew this was a lie. (ibid, p. 94)When Thieu still balked, Nixon said he would sign the agreement unilaterally. How badly did Kissinger steamroll Thieu? When he brought him the final agreements to sign, Thieu noticed that they only referred to three countries being in Indochina: Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. Kissinger tried to explain this away as a mistake. (Hughes, p. 118)When Kissinger announced in October 1972 that peace was at hand, he understood this was false but it was political gold.Nixon: “Of course, the point is, they think you’ve got peace. . . but that’s all right,. Let them think it.” (ibid, p. 132)Nixon got Senators Barry Goldwater and John Stennis to debate cutting off aid for Saigon. This got Thieu to sign. (ibid, p. 158)In January 1973, the agreement was formalized. It was all a sham. There was no lull in the fighting, there were no elections, and there was no halt in the supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As the military knew, Saigon was no match for the Viet Cong and the regular army of North Vietnam. And Thieu did not buy the letters Nixon wrote him about resumed bombing if Hanoi violated the treaty.But Nixon had one more trick up his sleeve, which he pulled out as an excuse for the defeat in his 1985 book, No More Vietnams. He wrote that Congress lost the “victory” he had won by gradually cutting off aid to Indochina beginning in 1973. (Nixon, p. 178)It’s true that the Democratic caucuses did vote for this, but anyone can tell by looking at the numbers that Nixon could have sustained a veto if he tried. And, in fact, he had vetoed a bill to ban American bombing in Cambodia on June 27 with the House falling 35 votes short in the override attempt.Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Michigan, rose and said, “If military action is required in Southeast Asia after August 15, 1973, the President will ask congressional authority and will abide by the decision that is made by the House and Senate.”The Democrats didn’t buy Ford’s assurance. So Ford called Nixon and returned to the podium to say Nixon had reaffirmed his pledge. With that, the borderline Republicans joined in a shut-off vote of 278-124. In the Senate the vote was 64-26. (Hughes, p. 165)Having Congress take the lead meant that Nixon did not have to even think of revisiting Vietnam. He could claim he was stabbed in the back by Congress. As Hughes notes, it would have been better for Congress politically to double the funding requests just to show it was all for show.As Hughes writes, this strategy of arranging a phony peace, which disguised an American defeat, was repeated in Iraq. President George W. Bush rejected troop withdrawals in 2007 and then launched “the surge,” which cost another 1,000 American lives but averted an outright military defeat on Bush’s watch. Bush then signed an agreement with his hand-picked Iraqi government, allowing American troops to remain in Iraq for three more years and passing the disaster on to President Barack Obama.Hughes ends by writing that Nixon’s myth of a “victory” in Vietnam masks cowardice for political courage and replaces patriotism with opportunism. Nixon prolonged a lost war. He then faked a peace. And he then schemed to shift the blame onto Congress.As long as that truth is masked, other presidents can play politics with the lives hundred of thousands of innocent civilians, and tens of thousands of American soldiers.At Nixon’s 1994 funeral, Kissinger tried to commemorate their legacy by listing their foreign policy achievements. The first one he listed was a peace agreement in Vietnam. The last one was the airing of a human rights agenda that helped break apart the Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. These two books make those declarations not just specious, but a bit obscene.James DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming Parkland.image_pdfWhat does he somehow understand about to Rule of law or Rule by the law of the government of the United States of America because Distort justice is a national traitor?Bright Quang, he has been creative for the seventeen books; whilst, he’s a poet, sculptor and specialist painter.He’s an inmate of the proxy war of the United States of America without pays benefits, come to America on November 23, 1993, graduated Bachelor Degree and Nonprofit Management in C.S.U Hayward, East Bay. His doctrine Noble Truth is the Five Right Ways in which are Happiness, Source of Life and Sorrow (distress) and the Five Right Ways are Right Thoughtfulness, Right Love, Right Forgiveness, Right Struggle and Right Independence. These are so-called surveying compass to push him to the orientation one’s purpose of the true value of one's life. Because he always highly esteems the good, the true and the beautiful, and then, he must be able to donate part of the rest of his life to mankind because of its happiness looked like his own. Its source of life is as important as his life and its sorrow looked like his own. His Five Right Ways the Right Thoughtfulness, the Right Love, the Right Forgiveness. These belong to the ethic conduct of his heart; the Right Struggle and the Right Independence have belonged to mental discipline or so-called is wisdom. The base on the Vietnam War has taken place from China, France, and America invaders did not only have the whole Vietnamese people but also had him to be a war victim of them. His family and he have been the burden of sufferings for the long run by the barbarous wars. Therefore, he composes this doctrine in order to remind many Great Powers on the world that they should transfer wars to peace.In conclusion, the rest of his life fights for the America Justice, because performs justice, which is peaceful as anti-justice is demagogic. As human knowledge is limited, but human life is limitless of ambition.--------We, the American citizens, ought to look back Vietnam when President Nixon and the Kissinger have nodded their heads in order to beg the Soviet Union and China to let them cut and run out of the Republic of Vietnam. When they sold off the Republic of Vietnam to Communism, the American soldiers were not had trumpet and drum by the American standards. According to a great America did beg communism to let them play their proxy war and in the end, they betrayed their partnership that the Republic of Vietnam without kept the American face.On the last days of South Vietnam, did South Vietnamese soldiers successfully defend Saigon Bridge?Exposing Nixon’s Vietnam LiesAugust 10, 2015 • 21 CommentsSaveExclusive: After resigning over the Watergate political-spying scandal, President Nixon sought to rewrite the history of his Vietnam War strategies to deny swapping lives for political advantage, but newly released documents say otherwise, writes James DiEugenio.By James DiEugenioRichard Nixon spent years rebuilding his tattered reputation after he resigned from office in disgrace on Aug. 9, 1974. The rehabilitation project was codenamed “The Wizard.” The idea was to position himself as an elder statesman of foreign policy, a Wise Man. And to a remarkable degree through the sale of his memoirs, his appearance with David Frost in a series of highly rated interviews, and the publication of at least eight books after that Nixon largely succeeded in his goal.There was another aspect of that plan: to do all he could to keep his presidential papers and tapes classified, which, through a series of legal maneuvers, he managed to achieve in large part. Therefore, much of what he and Henry Kissinger wrote about in their memoirs could stand, largely unchallenged.President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.It was not until years after his death that the bulk of the Nixon papers and tapes were opened up to the light of day. And Kissinger’s private papers will not be declassified until five years after his death. With that kind of arrangement, it was fairly easy for Nixon to sell himself as the Sage of San Clemente, but two new books based on the long-delayed declassified record one by Ken Hughes and the other by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball undermine much of Nixon’s rehabilitation.For instance, in 1985 at the peak of President Ronald Reagan’s political power Nixon wrote No More Vietnams, making several dubious claims about the long conflict which included wars of independence by Vietnam against both France and the United States.In the book, Nixon tried to insinuate that Vietnam was not really one country for a very long time and that the split between north and south was a natural demarcation. He also declared that the Vietnam War had been won under his administration, and he insisted that he never really considered bombing the irrigation dikes, using tactical nuclear weapons, or employing the strategy of a “decent interval” to mask an American defeat for political purposes.Nixon’s StoryIn No More Vietnams, Nixon said that after going through a series of option papers furnished to him by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, he decided on a five-point program for peace in Vietnam. (Nixon, pgs. 104-07) This program consisted of Vietnamization, i. e., turning over the fighting of the war to the South Vietnamese army (the ARVN); pacification, which was a clear-and-hold strategy for maintaining territory in the south; diplomatic isolation of North Vietnam from its allies, China and the Soviet Union; peace negotiations with very few preconditions; and gradual withdrawal of American combat troops. Nixon asserted that this program was successful.But the currently declassified record does not support Nixon’s version of history, either in the particulars of what was attempted or in Nixon’s assessment of its success.When Richard Nixon came into office he was keenly aware of what had happened to his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who had escalated the war to heights that President Kennedy had never imagined, let alone envisaged. The war of attrition strategy that LBJ and General William Westmoreland had decided upon did not work. And the high American casualties it caused eroded support for the war domestically. Nixon told his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman that he would not end up like LBJ, a prisoner in his own White House.Therefore, Nixon wanted recommendations that would shock the enemy, even beyond the massive bombing campaigns and other bloody tactics employed by Johnson. As authors Burr and Kimball note in their new book Nixon’s Nuclear Specter, Nixon was very much influenced by two modes of thought.First, as Vice President from 1953-61, he was under the tutelage of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight Eisenhower, who advocated a policy of nuclear brinksmanship, that is the willingness to threaten nuclear war if need be. Dulles felt that since the United States had a large lead in atomic weapons that the Russians would back down in the face of certain annihilation.Nixon was also impressed by the alleged threat of President Eisenhower to use atomic weapons if North Korea and China did not bargain in good faith to end the Korean War. Nixon actually talked about this in a private meeting with southern politicians at the 1968 GOP convention. (Burr and Kimball, Chapter 2)Dulles also threatened to use atomic weapons in Vietnam. Burr and Kimball note the proposal by Dulles to break the Viet Minh’s siege of French troops at Dien Bien Phu by a massive air mission featuring the use of three atomic bombs. Though Nixon claimed in No More Vietnams that the atomic option was not seriously considered (Nixon, p. 30), the truth appears to have been more ambiguous, that Nixon thought the siege could be lifted without atomic weapons but he was not against using them. Eisenhower ultimately vetoed their use when he could not get Great Britain to go along.Playing the MadmanLater, when in the Oval Office, Nixon tempered this nuclear brinksmanship for the simple reason that the Russians had significantly closed the gap in atomic stockpiles. So, as Burr and Kimball describe it, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to modify the Eisenhower-Dulles brinksmanship with the “uncertainty effect” or as Nixon sometimes called it, the Madman Theory. In other words, instead of overtly threatening to use atomic bombs, Nixon would have an intermediary pass on word to the North Vietnamese leadership that Nixon was so unhinged that he might resort to nuclear weapons if he didn’t get his way. Or, as Nixon explained to Haldeman, if you act crazy, the incredible becomes credible:“They’ll believe any threat of force that Nixon makes because it’s Nixon. I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button.’”Nixon believed this trick would work, saying “Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”Kissinger once told special consultant Leonard Garment to convey to the Soviets that Nixon was somewhat nutty and unpredictable. Kissinger bought into the concept so much so that he was part of the act: the idea was for Nixon to play the “bad cop” and Kissinger the “good cop.”Another reason that Nixon and Kissinger advocated the Madman Theory was that they understood that Vietnamization and pacification would take years. And they did not think they could sustain public opinion on the war for that long. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers both thought they could, their opinions were peripheral because Nixon and Kissinger had concentrated the foreign policy apparatus in the White House.Playing for TimePrivately, Nixon did not think America could win the war, so he wanted to do something unexpected, shocking, “over the top.” As Burr and Kimball note, in 1969, Nixon told his speechwriters Ray Price, Pat Buchanan and Richard Whalen: “I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course. In fact we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage.”In a phone call with Kissinger, Nixon said, “In Saigon, the tendency is to fight the war for victory. But you and I know it won’t happen it is impossible. Even Gen. Abrams agreed.”These ideas were expressed very early in 1969 in a document called NSSM-1, a study memorandum as opposed to an action memorandum with Kissinger asking for opinions on war strategy from those directly involved. The general consensus was that the other side had “options over which we have little or no control” which would help them “continue the war almost indefinitely.” (ibid, Chapter 3)Author Ken Hughes in Fatal Politics agrees. Nixon wanted to know if South Vietnam could survive without American troops there. All of the military figures he asked replied that President Nguyen van Thieu’s government could not take on both the Viet Cong and the regular North Vietnamese army. And, the United States could not help South Vietnam enough for it to survive on its own. (Hughes, pgs. 14-15)As Hughes notes, Nixon understood that this bitter truth needed maximum spin to make it acceptable for the public. So he said, “Shall we leave Vietnam in a way that by our own actions consciously turns the country over to the Communists? Or shall we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance to survive as a free people? My plan will end American involvement in a way that will provide that chance.” (ibid, p. 15)If the U.S. media allowed the argument to be framed like that, which it did, then the hopeless cause did have a political upside. As Kissinger told Nixon, “The only consolation we have is that the people who put us into this position are going to be destroyed by the right. They are going to be destroyed. The liberals and radicals are going to be killed. This is, above all, a rightwing country.” (ibid, p. 19)Could anything be less honest, less democratic or more self-serving? Knowing that their critics were correct, and that the war could not be won, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to portray the people who were right about the war as betraying both America and South Vietnam.Political WorriesJust how calculated was Nixon about America’s withdrawal from Vietnam? Republican Sen. Hugh Scott warned him about getting out by the end of 1972, or “another man may be standing on the platform” on Inauguration Day 1973. (ibid, p. 23) Nixon told his staff that Scott should not be saying things like this in public.But, in private, the GOP actually polled on the issue. It was from these polls that Nixon tailored his speeches. He understood that only 39 percent of the public approved a Dec. 31, 1971 withdrawal, if it meant a U.S. defeat. When the question was posed as withdrawal, even if it meant a communist takeover, the percentage declined to 27 percent. Nixon studied the polls assiduously. He told Haldeman, “That’s the word. We say Communist takeover.” (ibid, p. 24)The polls revealed another hot button issue: getting our POW’s back. This was even more sensitive with the public than the “Communist takeover” issue. Therefore, during a press conference, when asked about Scott’s public warning, Nixon replied that the date of withdrawal should not be related to any election day. The important thing was that he “didn’t want one American to be in Vietnam one day longer than is necessary to achieve the two goals that I have mentioned: the release of our prisoners and the capacity of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves against a Communist takeover.” He then repeated that meme two more times. The press couldn’t avoid it. (Hughes, p. 25)Still, although Nixon and Kissinger understood they could not win the war in a conventional sense, they were willing to try other methods in the short run to get a better and quicker settlement, especially if it included getting North Vietnamese troops out of South Vietnam. Therefore, in 1969, he and Kissinger elicited suggestions from inside the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and Rand Corporation, through Daniel Ellsberg. These included a limited invasion of North Vietnam and Laos, mining the harbors and bombing the north, a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, and operations in Cambodia.Or as Kissinger put it, “We should develop alternate plans for possible escalating military actions with the motive of convincing the Soviets that the war may get out of hand.” Kissinger also said that bombing Cambodia would convey the proper message to Moscow.If anything shows that Kissinger was as backward in his thinking about Indochina as Nixon, this does. For as Burr and Kimball show — through Dobrynin’s memos to Moscow — the Russians could not understand why the White House would think the Kremlin had such influence with Hanoi. Moscow wanted to deal on a variety of issues, including arms agreements and the Middle East.So far from Kissinger’s vaunted “linkage” theory furthering the agenda with Russia, it’s clear from Dobrynin that it hindered that agenda. In other words, the remnants of a colonial conflict in the Third World were stopping progress in ameliorating the Cold War. This was the subtotal of the Nixon/Kissinger geopolitical accounting sheet.Judging Kissinger on VietnamJust how unbalanced was Kissinger on Vietnam? In April 1969, there was a shoot-down of an American observation plane off the coast of Korea. When White House adviser John Ehrlichman asked Kissinger how far the escalation could go, Kissinger replied it could go nuclear.In a memo to Nixon, Kissinger advised using tactical nuclear weapons. He wrote that “all hell would break loose for two months”, referring to domestic demonstrations. But he then concluded that the end result would be positive: “there will be peace in Asia.”Kissinger was referring, of course, to the effectiveness of the Madman Theory. In reading these two books, it is often hard to decipher who is more dangerous in their thinking, Nixon or Kissinger.In the first phase of their approach to the Vietnam issue, Nixon and Kissinger decided upon two alternatives. The first was the secret bombing of Cambodia. In his interview with David Frost, Nixon expressed no regrets about either the bombing or the invasion. In fact, he said, he wished he had done it sooner, which is a puzzling statement because the bombing of Cambodia was among the first things he authorized. Nixon told Frost that the bombing and the later invasion of Cambodia had positive results: they garnered a lot of enemy supplies, lowered American casualties in Vietnam, and hurt the Viet Cong war effort.Frost did not press the former president with the obvious follow-up: But Mr. Nixon, you started another war and you helped depose Cambodia’s charismatic ruler, Prince Sihanouk. And because the Viet Cong were driven deeper into Cambodia, Nixon then began bombing the rest of the country, not just the border areas, leading to the victory of the radical Khmer Rouge and the deaths of more than one million Cambodians.This all indicates just how imprisoned Nixon and Kissinger were by the ideas of John Foster Dulles and his visions of a communist monolith with orders emanating from Moscow’s Comintern, a unified global movement controlled by the Kremlin. Like the Domino Theory, this was never sound thinking. In fact, the Sino-Soviet border dispute, which stemmed back to 1962, showed that communist movements were not monolithic. So the idea that Moscow could control Hanoi, or that the communists in Cambodia were controlled by the Viet Cong, this all ended up being disastrously wrong.As Sihanouk told author William Shawcross after the Cambodian catastrophe unfolded, General Lon Nol, who seized power from Prince Sihanouk, was nothing without the military actions of Nixon and Kissinger, and “the Khmer Rouge were nothing without Lon Nol.” (Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 391)But further, as Shawcross demonstrates, the immediate intent of the Cambodian invasion was to seek and destroy the so-called COSVN, the supposed command-and-control base for the communist forces in South Vietnam supposedly based on the border inside Cambodia. No such command center was ever found. (ibid, p. 171)Why the Drop in Casualties?As for Nixon’s other claim, American casualties declined in Indochina because of troop rotation, that is, the ARVN were pushed to the front lines with the Americans in support. Or as one commander said after the Cambodian invasion: it was essential that American fatalities be cut back, “If necessary, we must do it by edict.” (ibid, p. 172)But this is not all that Nixon tried in the time frame of 1969-70, his first two years in office. At Kissinger’s request he also attempted a secret mission to Moscow by Wall Street lawyer Cyrus Vance. Part of Kissinger’s linkage theory, Vance was to tell the Soviets that if they leaned on Hanoi to accept a Nixonian framework for negotiations, then the administration would be willing to deal on other fronts, and there would be little or no escalation. The negotiations on Vietnam included a coalition government, and the survival of Thieu’s government for at least five years, which would have been two years beyond the 1972 election. (As we shall see, this is the beginning of the final “decent interval” strategy.)The Vance mission was coupled with what Burr and Kimball call a “mining ruse.” The Navy would do an exercise to try and make the Russians think they were going to mine Haiphong and five other North Vietnamese harbors. Yet, for reasons stated above, Nixon overrated linkage, and the tactic did not work. But as Kissinger said, “If in doubt, we bomb Cambodia.” Which they did.As the authors note, Nixon had urged President Johnson in 1967 to extend the bombing throughout Indochina, into Cambodia and Laos. Johnson had studied these and other options but found too many liabilities. He had even studied the blockading of ports but concluded that Hanoi would compensate for a blockade in a relatively short time by utilizing overland routes and off-shore unloading.But what Johnson did not factor in was the Nixon/Kissinger Madman Theory. For example, when a State Department representative brought up the overall military ineffectiveness of the Cambodian bombing, Kissinger replied, “That doesn’t bother me we’ll hit something.” He also told an assistant, “Always keep them guessing.” The problem was, the “shock effect” ended up being as mythical as linkage.In 1969, after the failure of the Vance mission, the mining ruse, the warnings to Dobrynin, and the continued bombing of Cambodia, which went on in secret for 14 months, Nixon still had not given up on his Madman Theory. He sent a message to Hanoi saying that if a resolution was not in the works by November, “he will regretfully find himself obliged to have recourse to measures of great consequence and force.”What were these consequences? Nixon had wanted to mine Haiphong for a long time. But, as did Johnson, he was getting different opinions about its effectiveness. So he considered massive interdiction bombing of the north coupled with a blockade of Sihanoukville, the Cambodian port that was part of the Ho Chi Minh trail apparatus on the west coast of Cambodia.Plus one other tactic: Kissinger suggested to his staff that the interdiction bombing use tactical nuclear weapons for overland passes near the Chinese border. But the use of tactical nukes would have created an even greater domestic disturbance than the Cambodian invasion had done. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird objected to the whole agenda. He said it would not be effective and it would create too much domestic strife.Backing Up ThreatsSo Nixon and Kissinger decided on something short of the nuclear option. After all, Nixon had sent a veiled ultimatum to Hanoi about “great consequence and force.” They had to back it up. The two decided on a worldwide nuclear alert instead, a giant nuclear war exercise that would simulate actual military maneuvers in attempting to mimic what the U.S. would do if it were preparing for a nuclear strike.As Burr and Kimball write, this was another outmoded vestige of 1950s Cold War thinking: “It was intended to signal Washington’s anger at Moscow’s support of North Vietnam and to jar the Soviet leaders into using their leverage to induce Hanoi to make diplomatic concessions.” (Burr and Kimball, Chapter 9)It was designed to be detected by the Soviets, but not detectable at home. For instance, the DEFCON levels were not actually elevated. The alert went on for about three weeks, with all kinds of military maneuvers at sea and on land. Finally, Dobrynin called for a meeting. Kissinger was buoyant. Maybe the ploy had worked.But it didn’t. The ambassador was angry and upset, but not about the alert. He said that while the Russians wanted to deal on nuclear weapons, Nixon was as obsessed with Vietnam as LBJ was. In other words, Dobrynin and the Soviets were perceptive about what was really happening. Nixon tried to salvage the meeting with talk about how keeping American fatalities low in Vietnam would aid détente, which further blew the cover off the nuclear alert.Burr and Kimball show just how wedded the self-styled foreign policy mavens were to the Madman Theory. After the meeting, Nixon realized he had not done well in accordance with the whole nuclear alert, Madman idea. He asked Kissinger to bring back Dobrynin so they could play act the Madman idea better.The authors then note that, although Haiphong was later mined, the mining was not effective, as Nixon had been warned. In other words, the Madman idea and linkage were both duds.Nixon and Kissinger then turned to Laird’s plan, a Vietnamization program, a mix of U.S. troop withdrawals, turning more of the fighting over to the ARVN, and negotiations. The November 1969 Madman timetable was tossed aside and the long haul of gradual U.S. disengagement was being faced. Accordingly, Nixon and Kissinger started sending new messages to the north. And far from isolating Hanoi, both China and Russia served as messengers for these new ideas.The White House told Dobrynin that after all American troops were out, Vietnam would no longer be America’s concern. In extension of this idea, America would not even mind if Vietnam was unified under Hanoi leadership.Kissinger told the Chinese that America would not return after withdrawing. In his notebooks for his meeting with Zhou En Lai, Kissinger wrote, “We want a decent interval. You have our assurances.” (Burr and Kimball, Epilogue)Timing the DepartureBut when would the American troops depart? As Ken Hughes writes, Nixon at first wanted the final departure to be by December of 1971. But Kissinger talked him out of this. It was much safer politically to have the final withdrawal after the 1972 election. If Saigon fell after, it was too late to say Nixon’s policies were responsible. (Fatal Politics, p. 3)Kissinger also impressed on Nixon the need not to announce a timetable in advance. Since all their previous schemes had failed, they had to have some leverage for the Paris peace talks.But there was a problem. The exposure of the secret bombing of Cambodia began to put pressure on Congress to begin to cut off funding for those operations. Therefore, when Nixon also invaded Laos, this was done with ARVN troops. It did not go very well, but that did not matter to Nixon: “However Laos comes out, we have got to claim it was a success.” (Hughes, p. 14)While there was little progress at the official negotiations, that too was irrelevant because Kissinger had arranged for so-called “secret talks” at a residential home in Paris. There was no headway at these talks until late May 1971. Prior to this, Nixon had insisted on withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam.But in May, Kissinger reversed himself on two issues. First, there would be no American residual force left behind. Second, there would be a cease-fire in place. That is, no withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops. As Kissinger said to Nixon, they would still be free to bomb the north, but “the only problem is to prevent the collapse in 1972.” (ibid, pgs. 27-28) The Decent Interval strategy was now the modus operandi.And this strategy would serve Nixon’s reelection interests, too. As Kissinger told Nixon, “If we can, in October of ’72 go around the country saying we ended the war and the Democrats wanted to turn it over to the communists then we’re in great shape.” To which Nixon replied, “I know exactly what we’re up to.” (ibid, p. 29) Since this was all done in secret, they could get away with a purely political ploy even though its resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. All this was done to make sure Nixon was reelected and the Democrats looked like wimps.Kissinger understood this linkage between the war’s illusionary success and politics. He reminded Nixon, “If Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam go down the drain in September of 1972, they they’ll say you went into those … you spoiled so many lives, just to wind up where you could have been in the first year.” (ibid, p. 30)In fact, the President’s February 1972 trip to China was directly related to the slow progress on Vietnam. Kissinger said, “For every reason, we’ve got to have a diversion from Vietnam in this country for awhile.” To which Nixon replied, “That’s the point isn’t it?” (ibid, p.32)A Decent IntervalIn preparations for China, Kissinger told Zhou En Lai that Nixon needed an interval of a year or two after American departure for Saigon to fall. (ibid, p. 35) He told Zhou, “The outcome of my logic is that we are putting a time interval between the military outcome and the political outcome.” (ibid, p. 79)But aware of this, Hanoi made one last push for victory with the Easter Offensive of 1972. Remarkably successful at first, air power managed to stall it and then push it back. During this giant air operation, Nixon returned to his Foster Dulles brinksmanship form, asking Kissinger, should we “take the dikes out now?”Kissinger replied, “That will drown about 200,000 people.”Nixon said, “Well no, no I’d rather use a nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?”When Kissinger demurred by saying Nixon wouldn’t use it anyway, the President replied, “I just want you to think big Henry, for Christ’s sake.” (Burr and Kimball, Epilogue)The American press took the wrong message from this. What it actually symbolized was that Saigon could not survive without massive American aid and firepower. (Hughes, p. 61) But even with this huge air campaign, the Pentagon figured that the north could keep up its war effort for at least two more years, even with interdiction bombing.The political ramification of the renewed fighting was that it pushed the final settlement back in time, which Nixon saw as a political benefit, a tsunami for his reelection.Nixon: “The advantage, Henry, of trying to settle now, even if you’re ten points ahead, is that that will ensure a hell of a landslide.”Kissinger: “If we can get that done, then we can screw them after Election Day if necessary. And I think this could finish the destruction of McGovern” [the Democratic presidential nominee].Nixon: “Oh yes, and the doves, which is just as important.”The next day, Aug. 3, 1972, Kissinger returned to the theme: “So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which, after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater no one will give a damn.” (Hughes, pgs. 84-85)All of this history renders absurd the speeches of Ronald Reagan at the time: “President Nixon’s idealism is such that he believes the people of South Vietnam should have the opportunity to live under whatever form of government they themselves choose.” (Hughes, p. 86) While Reagan was whistling in the dark, the Hanoi negotiator Le Duc Tho understood what was happening. He even said to Kissinger, “reunification will be decided upon after a suitable interval following the signing.”Kissinger and Nixon even knew the whole election commission idea for reunification was a joke. Kissinger called it, “all baloney. There’ll never be elections.” Nixon agreed by saying that the war will then resume, but “we’ll be gone.” (ibid, p. 88)Thieu’s ComplaintThe problem in October 1972 was not Hanoi; it was President Thieu. He understood that with 150,000 North Vietnamese regulars in the south, the writing was on the wall for his future. So Kissinger got reassurances from Hanoi that they would not use the Ho Chi Minh Trail after America left, though Kissinger and Nixon knew this was a lie. (ibid, p. 94)When Thieu still balked, Nixon said he would sign the agreement unilaterally. How badly did Kissinger steamroll Thieu? When he brought him the final agreements to sign, Thieu noticed that they only referred to three countries being in Indochina: Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. Kissinger tried to explain this away as a mistake. (Hughes, p. 118)When Kissinger announced in October 1972 that peace was at hand, he understood this was false but it was political gold.Nixon: “Of course, the point is, they think you’ve got peace. . . but that’s all right,. Let them think it.” (ibid, p. 132)Nixon got Senators Barry Goldwater and John Stennis to debate cutting off aid for Saigon. This got Thieu to sign. (ibid, p. 158)In January 1973, the agreement was formalized. It was all a sham. There was no lull in the fighting, there were no elections, and there was no halt in the supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As the military knew, Saigon was no match for the Viet Cong and the regular army of North Vietnam. And Thieu did not buy the letters Nixon wrote him about resumed bombing if Hanoi violated the treaty.But Nixon had one more trick up his sleeve, which he pulled out as an excuse for the defeat in his 1985 book, No More Vietnams. He wrote that Congress lost the “victory” he had won by gradually cutting off aid to Indochina beginning in 1973. (Nixon, p. 178)It’s true that the Democratic caucuses did vote for this, but anyone can tell by looking at the numbers that Nixon could have sustained a veto if he tried. And, in fact, he had vetoed a bill to ban American bombing in Cambodia on June 27 with the House falling 35 votes short in the override attempt.Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Michigan, rose and said, “If military action is required in Southeast Asia after August 15, 1973, the President will ask congressional authority and will abide by the decision that is made by the House and Senate.”The Democrats didn’t buy Ford’s assurance. So Ford called Nixon and returned to the podium to say Nixon had reaffirmed his pledge. With that, the borderline Republicans joined in a shut-off vote of 278-124. In the Senate the vote was 64-26. (Hughes, p. 165)Having Congress take the lead meant that Nixon did not have to even think of revisiting Vietnam. He could claim he was stabbed in the back by Congress. As Hughes notes, it would have been better for Congress politically to double the funding requests just to show it was all for show.As Hughes writes, this strategy of arranging a phony peace, which disguised an American defeat, was repeated in Iraq. President George W. Bush rejected troop withdrawals in 2007 and then launched “the surge,” which cost another 1,000 American lives but averted an outright military defeat on Bush’s watch. Bush then signed an agreement with his hand-picked Iraqi government, allowing American troops to remain in Iraq for three more years and passing the disaster on to President Barack Obama.Hughes ends by writing that Nixon’s myth of a “victory” in Vietnam masks cowardice for political courage and replaces patriotism with opportunism. Nixon prolonged a lost war. He then faked a peace. And he then schemed to shift the blame onto Congress.As long as that truth is masked, other presidents can play politics with the lives hundred of thousands of innocent civilians, and tens of thousands of American soldiers.At Nixon’s 1994 funeral, Kissinger tried to commemorate their legacy by listing their foreign policy achievements. The first one he listed was a peace agreement in Vietnam. The last one was the airing of a human rights agenda that helped break apart the Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. These two books make those declarations not just specious, but a bit obscene.James DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming Parkland.image_pdfWhat does he somehow understand about to Rule of law or Rule by the law of the government of the United States of America because Distort justice is a national traitor?

teve Mariotti is the founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and an advocate for entrepreneurs worldwide.Remembering Ayn RandI am the founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and I would like to share my personal memories of Ayn Rand and the effect she and her work had on my life, which provide interesting sidelights on the legendary founder of Objectivism.It took me two months to read all 1069 pages of Atlas Shrugged in 1967, as a 14-year-old. Rand’s famous novel was sent to me by my grandfather, Lowell B. Mason, who was Ayn’s friend and advisor. Reading it was what made me want to be an entrepreneur.Featuring an inspirational hero who was independent and could get things done, Atlas Shrugged was the first work of fiction I had ever read that talked positively about entrepreneurs and the wealth they created. It eventually motivated me — as a 9th grader in Flint, Michigan — to move to New York and start a business.So here is my story. I met with Ayn Rand three times, beginning on Memorial Day of 1980, and our correspondence continued through mid-January of 1982, two months before she passed away, on March 6th. Our last meeting was right before her trip to New Orleans, in the fall of 1981, where she spoke at my friend Jim Blanchard’s convention on investments. Jim was the top expert in the world on gold investment, and he got Ayn to be the featured speaker by arranging for a private train car for her trip.My appointment on Memorial Day in 1980 was at 11 in the morning. I was overdressed for the weather, and sweat streamed down my face as I walked around the block at 34th Street and Lexington Avenue, putting off the meeting with my role model. Despite her well-known inaccessibility, Ayn Rand had agreed to meet me, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, through a connection with my grandfather, a famous libertarian lawyer who had worked with Clarence Darrow in the Depression.Now, procrastinating, I could barely breathe. I was exhilarated and terribly nervous. She was a great hero of mine; I had memorized large parts of Atlas Shrugged. However, I would find out that the Ayn Rand I had fantasized about was not the Ayn Rand I was about to meet.I finally went into the lobby of the Tudor-style building at 128 East 34th Street, and rang the bell for apartment 6D. (The name on the directory was O’Connor — Frank O’Connor, her husband, had recently passed away.)“I never agree to meet with anyone,” were her first words. And then: “You’re right on time. That tells me something about you. Your grandfather Lowell has been my close friend since I started writing The Fountainhead. He gave me good advice on some legal issues. His Language of Dissent was brilliant,” she continued, pointing to the copy on a bookshelf. “Otherwise I would never have agreed to see you. I am old and do not have the energy.”She wore a black dress that came to just below her knees, and her hair was pulled back and up. She made a point of standing beneath a topless portrait of herself painted 40 years before, when she was in her thirties.She examined me intently, wearing the same sly smile she had in the portrait. She was beautiful and, standing directly below the picture, she seemed to be saying: “And I am still this sexy?” She was. With her high cheekbones, full bosom and bright green eyes, she looked like an earthly goddess who had stepped out of one of her novels. I called her “Dominique,” and then “Dagney,” and she smiled and touched my arm. She knew I meant it when I told her how beautiful I thought she was, and laughed a loud, Russian laugh.” I was in love.She showed me around the apartment — everything but the bedroom; she said it was too untidy for me to see. She showed me the massive drafting table on which she’d written every page of Atlas Shrugged by hand. She mentioned how she’d outlined various thoughts and ideas from Part Three of Atlas Shrugged: “A is A” — on the table in ink. When I asked where she had outlined parts One and Two, she laughed and said she would tell me later. (She never did.)It was amazing to think that she had laid out the handwritten pages of her masterwork on this very table every night. She showed me some handwritten pages of an unpublished article about the impact of Atlas Shrugged, as well as ten or so pages from a draft of the manuscript of Part One of Atlas Shrugged, “Non-Contradiction.”We talked for about an hour in her apartment — over the noise of a maid, who was cleaning. Then we headed out for lunch. The maid, a soft-spoken African-American woman, said: “Ms. Rand, please do not be long, and absolutely no smoking.” (I didn’t know at the time that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer.) As we walked down Lexington Avenue, I quoted my favorite passages from both her novels, and also from the Objectivist Newsletter.At the corner of 33rd and Lex, I happened to mention King Vidor being the director of King of Kings. It was Cecil B. DeMille. Ayn said: “Now that you’ve gotten one wrong, can you be quiet and let me talk?” Of course I had been rattling on, as we walked from her apartment to the restaurant. I wanted to impress upon her just how significant she had been to me growing up, and that I knew she had met her husband on the set of King of Kings, in 1927. But, because of that one slip, I had to pretty much suppress my urge to talk further and, over the next four hours, let her have the lion’s share of the conversation.The restaurant was closed because of the holiday. As we walked on, looping back around towards her apartment, I remember thinking, “This is going to be a short meeting; we are going to end up back at her front door and that will be it. She won’t invite me up because the maid is cleaning.”Luckily we found a diner a block further on, back on 34th Street, and settled in. Ayn ordered cereal and I got a hamburger. She lit a cigarette and didn’t stop smoking and blowing smoke in my face for the next four hours. She did not eat at all. When it was apparent that I was uncomfortable with her smoking, Ayn shrugged and said, “I can’t do this in front of my housekeeper because it’s bad for my health. Do not be such a complainer.”The time went by in an instant. We talked about philosophy and economics and her work and career, and the love of her life, Frank O’Connor. In our time together I understood how she could have created a worldwide movement against totalitarianism just through force of will. But, sadly, she was also an adherent of atheism, a point of view I so strongly disagreed with that I could not keep silent about it, and the debate was on. In her words, I was a “mystic fool,” but I pushed back with Pascal’s argument that this world is so complex that some higher power must have created it.She was fearless and said exactly what she thought, in short, perfectly formed sentences. She was extremely judgmental, and every remark was dissected and commented upon. But earlier in my life I had faced off with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the famous American atheist, and I too was fearless, at least on this subject.But she also spoke about her childhood, her father the pharmacist, growing up in and then leaving Russia, and about her sister, who came to live with her in the 1960’s. Throughout the conversation she would laugh often — loudly and joyously. I listened intensely to her every word, sensing that being with this beautiful woman would impact my life forever.As our visit was coming to an end, she said, “You listen and talk well but too much sometimes. You would make a good teacher. I’ve been taking math lessons in arithmetic; can you show me how to do this problem?”It was a simple procedure of dividing fractions and I showed her how to do it, feeling the pleasure of knowing something she did not. (Years later, in one of life’s great coincidences, I was in the same class with her math teacher.)I paid the check, we walked back to her apartment building, and said goodbye. I told her: “You are a great teacher, Ms. Rand.” She walked into her building and that was the end of our first meeting.A few days later, I sent her a book about Hollywood that she was mentioned in, along with a hand-written thank-you note. She didn’t reply, so a few weeks later I sent another gift — Russian candy — meant humorously, with another note.She sent them back. The returned gifts were accompanied by a letter from Ayn’s secretary, saying that Ms Rand had only seen me out of courtesy to my grandfather. I was devastated. This incident cut me deeply. I was so scarred by the rejection that I couldn’t even tell anyone about it for 15 years.Ayn had been so nice to me during those smoke-filled hours, which made the letter from her secretary all the more distressing. (I promised myself never to treat anyone like that, and I never have.) I felt then what others had told me: my idol was nothing more than an egotistical, self-absorbed recluse, and just as flawed as anyone else.Fifteen months later, in September of 1981, we both got another chance. Again my grandfather had intervened, calling Ayn and apologizing on my behalf. To me, he said: “You were too intellectually aggressive.” I was shocked, and didn’t say anything about my virtual silence for those four hours in the restaurant.My grandfather continued: “Because she hurt your feelings last year, she will see you one last time — for fifteen minutes. Don’t mess it up this time. She is a genius and you can learn a great deal from her. Do not talk or take issue with anything at all.”I met her in the lobby of her building in the early fall of 1981. I had been so shaken by her letter and the return of my gifts that I must have looked like a stunned little kid — beyond chagrined. She said, “Don’t be so weak. Weakness sickens me. Do not make me feel pity.” I knew she was quoting from The Fountainhead; I then quoted the preceding and following sentences. She laughed, and said, “OK, you’re forgiven.” She looked even more beautiful to me this year. Her intelligence shone from a face that was now over 76-years-old.Subscribe to The Morning Email.Wake up to the day's most important news.We went back to the restaurant on 33rd and Lexington that had been closed the previous Memorial Day. I gave her a bracelet my mother had given me when I left Flint. She put it on over a green shirt that was covered by an old blue sweater, with an elegant gold brooch pinned to the sweater. Her outfit was completed by a pair of baggy black pants.We sat at her favorite table by the door, exactly on the corner. She knew all the waiters, who were very respectful to her. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. On the way, I asked one of the waiters: “Do you know who that is?” “Of course,” he replied, “she’s a writer, right?”This time Ayn and I talked for at least five hours. She was still grieving over her husband Frank’s death. She smoked continuously, and said: “No one knows how sad I am. And this pain from Frank is killing me.” She blew a cloud of smoke in my face and said, “You should come to my funeral.” I laughed when she added: “And I mean it” — the four words that had guided her life.She told me in detail how she met Frank O’Connor on the set of King of Kings on a bus for the extras. She then did not see him for several months, until running across him by chance at the studio library, where he was reading about art history. She told me with a breaking voice what he was wearing on his tall frame. She had kidded him about his baggy pants and he had laughed at her accent. They both liked the poem “IF,” and she recited it to him from memory. For her, it was love at first sight. She told me many anecdotes about Frank and related how he had had a stroke before he died, which interfered with his ability to talk but not his ability to hear.Then she started to cry. I was shocked — everyone had told me she never cried, except once at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a think tank for the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, when Ludwig von Mises — the legendary free market economist — had yelled at her. Von Mises told her that she was a stupid ignorant Russian peasant woman, and she broke down.When I mentioned this story, she got upset. She said Von Mises, always a gentleman, would never have said such a thing, that he had a deep respect for her. As she tells it, William F. Buckley had made up the story to hurt her.To change the subject, I brought up God and spirituality. We had spent a good deal of time at our first meeting arguing about spirituality — my belief in God and her hatred of the concept. “You will see Frank again in a spiritual sense,” I said, “there is just too much energy for it all to disappear. There are over two billion calculations a second for the body to function. That is so incredible, someone had to create that. And if that is so, then anything is possible.”She nodded, half-sobbing, her face heavy with tears. “I hope so” she said. “I would do anything to see him one more time.” She showed me notes he had written to her after the stroke. They were in large letters in what looked like a third-grader’s printing.“I hope you are right, maybe you are. I think about it all the time. I do not know. I just do not know,” she said. After a long pause, she added: “I will find out soon enough.” “Let me know,” I said, and we both laughed.I pointed out her use of “God” on Phil Donohue (whom she adored). “You did say God bless America,” I teased. She laughed that wonderful laugh again — she was so charismatic. I said: “You should let the public know that, that you have doubts. So many people follow you.” She waved her hand dismissively: “So what. Let them find their own way, I cannot help them.”I told her about my interest in politics and my desire to help maximize people’s personal and professional freedom — particularly for poor children. (I had recently been mugged and was thinking about making a career change to work with the type of children that had humiliated me.) She agreed that that was laudable, “Provided they have a good philosophy of reason and that they are objective and face reality,” she added — in what sounded like a harbinger of the didacticism that would come soon after her death, and scar Objectivism for decades.“You should be a teacher. You have a knack for it,” she said, repeating her comment of fifteen months before. “If you could teach people that are born poor to create value and be capitalists, that would be good. Look at what I was able to do with nothing — I had no money or skills, just a vision of what I could become. I wanted to be a writer and philosopher.” Little did I know how those words would guide me in the very near future.I gave her copies of three papers I had written on economics. One of them has since become famous as the first statistical test of the Austrian Trade Cycle Theory; another was my attempt to bring a unity to the different methodologies of economics, a paper F.A Hayek — a Nobel Prize winner — had loved when I had studied with him in 1977. She promised to read them.In passing, I told her of my activism for gay rights, thinking she would be pleased. She was not pleased, and also made it clear that she hated Murray Rothbard who, along with Charles Koch and I, had just co-wrote the Libertarian Party Platform. “We made him leave our study group,” she said, referring to Rothbard’s excommunication from the Collective, a discussion group of intellectuals that met weekly in her apartment.When we left the restaurant, having let her do almost all the talking, I said nothing — but gave her a hug. We walked back to her building, just as the housekeeper was coming out: “Ms. Rand, I was just coming to find you.” A colleague of hers had come out too, and began yelling at me that I had kept Ayn out too long and that I was boring her. I think perhaps he felt threatened by her being with me.Ayn turned and said, “You made me feel better.” I laughed and replied, “I thought people were not supposed to feel.” She gave me a quick one-finger handshake and said: “One more meeting and that is it — I am tired.” She added: “Do not count on me for any more visits.” I answered: “OK, but you did say we could have coffee; I love being with a beautiful woman. Can I get a picture with you, please?” I handed my camera to the housekeeper, at the same time calming her colleague down.“No, absolutely not, I am too old! If I am alive next year, perhaps,” she said laughing. “If not, come to my funeral.” Over her objections, the housekeeper took a picture (which unfortunately I lost 20 years later). Ayn and I both laughed, and she went inside the building with her companions.This time I waited a month to call her and sent no notes or gifts. When I got her on the phone, she said, “I am too tired now,” and then: “I can see you for a cup of coffee, perhaps, but only for twenty minutes. You wear me out.”I was pleased and promised not to talk at all. I met her at the same restaurant, but she was grumpy, irritable, and tired. We left after twenty minutes.I had absentmindedly left my jacket at the restaurant and her housekeeper called to say that I could come over to the apartment and get it from the doorman, that I could say hello to Ms. Rand for a minute, then leave. My visit got postponed several times. The last time I called, Ayn got on the phone and we spoke for a minute, but she sounded tired. I never picked up the jacket.After her return from the trip to New Orleans, where she had spoken on the topic of Morality and Capitalism, I received a letter from out of the blue: “I had seen you out of respect for your grandfather. You turned out to be a terrible disappointment. The fact that you support the immoral acts of homosexuals shows me you are a second-hander who likes his heroes with clay feet. Do not call me again or contact me in any way. Here is the bracelet — I do not want it. I am burning your papers.” It was like someone had taken a hot knife to my stomach.But the letter so contradicted how our last encounter had played out, that I was unsure if it was even written by Ayn herself. She had made a point to “cc” this letter to several individuals, including Leonard Peikoff.And that was that.This final communication hurt so much that I have never talked about it until now.In my opinion, based on our last conversation, Ayn Rand died a deist or an agnostic, not an atheist.Sadly, her intense dislike of gays and the gay liberation movement led to our falling out, during that last meeting in January of 1982. I felt that she had replicated the world she had grown up in, where the Tsar — then Lenin — would ostracize (or worse) anyone who disagreed with official attitudes.I will forever reject Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, because it denigrates the importance of spirituality. It also overlooks the limits of a market economy in solving a variety of serious problems caused by the economics of externalities and public goods.I fully appreciate Ayn Rand’s influence in stopping the worldwide rise of totalitarianism, in encouraging the feminist movement, stimulating discussion of the legalization of victimless crimes, and the jump-starting of libertarian politics .And she was uncannily prescient. Inspired by her, I subsequently spent 30 years teaching at-risk youth and, in 1987, I founded NFTE, where I still teach.Sadly, many of the events she wrote about in Atlas Shrugged are coming to pass.Originally draft in Huffpost: april 23, 20011