Aletho News

3 Comments »

1. One False Flag in the Gulf of Tonkin….58,600 dead American soldiers….over 350,000 wounded American soldiers, and God only knows how many Vietnamese civilians, slaughtered by Carpet Bombing, Helicopter Gunships, Napalm, Agent Orange, and in the case of Cally’s Killers, whole villages, men women and children slaughtered, in the name of “Freedom and Democracy”.
   And no one was held to account, not the CIA/Pentagon/MIC, the President, no one.
   And it continues now, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Africa, and if the lunatics get their way Lebanon and Iran(7 countries in 5 years). Even in the USA, people are shot dead in the streets by American police.
   Something is terribly wrong in the USA.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

   Comment by brianharryaustralia | June 1, 2020 | Reply

2. I had time only to watch the 15-minute YouTube video (Erhard?). His reminiscence was cut short, but it’s very good (the YouTube seems to be dated 2017, but Erhard could hardly have been as young in 2017 as his face indicates; if I had to guess, I’d guess he recorded his reflections in 1980 or so…?).

   I was an Army GI in the era of the American War On Vietnam — 1963-67. Thank God I never got to Vietnam, but that was the Army’s level of incompetence: In the latter couple of months of 1965, I was trained as an “Interrogator of Prisoners of War” at Fort Holabird, Maryland, and was then shipped to Okinawa in 01-66. Okinawa was a major logistics/staging “base” for Vietnam activity. I expected to be shipped out to Vietnam immediately, but the Army lost track of me and I did odd jobs (finance, training…) for the next 16 months until I was discharged. Perhaps a principal recall, triggered by Erhard, of the stupidity of it all, might be this: I had conversations with other intel people coming back from Vietnam. One of them: “Yeah, interrogation is never easy over there…we’d take up a peasant in a helicopter [had no idea if he had usable intel] and ask him ‘Tell us all about your village, the leaders, what you’re doing during the day and at night, what the Viet Cong are telling you…’ If the poor fellow expressed total ignorance of the thrust of our questioning/interrogating over the next few minutes, the interrogator or his next-in-line would indicate by body language ‘Enough’…and the peasant would be bodily kicked through the open door of the helicopter…and the next of several other interrogatees would replace him…with the same eventual result.” In this 2020, I can only rejoice that I never had to “interrogate” in that or any other situation. But, like Erhard (from a far less “on the ground” view than his), I was caught up in the maw and didn’t know enough to think, reason, protest….

   No wonder Erhard still remembers “They all hated us!” Why would they not?

   (One good thing that came from my year-plus on Okinawa: I came across Edgar Snow’s massive tome “Red Star Over China.” It was an eye-opener for me, and I arrived at some halting awareness that something was (and remains) dreadfully wrong with our “exceptional” America…as well as, of course, with the Western Colonial World in general.)

   I hope that the writing of this short tale has not been a waste of my, and any readers’, time.

   FINAL NOTE: In what occurs to me as a supremely ironic twist along the lines of “Uhhh — which country is the ultimate ‘sh*thole’ country?,” has anyone on this forum learned that Vietnam has experienced no — 0 — ZERO — deaths from the CoVID-19 pandemic that has brought the US and much of the world to their knees? Check it out… Viva Vietnam!!

   LikeLiked by 1 person

   Comment by roberthstiver | June 2, 2020 | Reply

   • It sounds like you were one of the lucky GI’s. The American War in Vietnam was such a terrible waste of life, on both sides. My brother was drafted into the Australian army and had to fight in Vietnam. Luckily, he came home ‘in one piece’. I had to enter the ‘draft’, but luckily I wasn’t selected. It’s a pity we cant ask the dead American GI’s what they think of their government’s actions, all those years ago.

     I believe the American troops were “Fragging” their superior officers in the end, which prompted the Government to call the whole thing off. Such a waste.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

     Comment by brianharryaustralia | June 2, 2020 | Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »

Site info

Aletho News