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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    If memory serves, that's when the evening news started to report body counts as the "scorecard" of the war. Because the Army was also scoring things by body count, they had an incentive to inflate the numbers. Unfortunately, what that looked like on the homefront was that we were killing ever more NVA/VC but not really "winning" anything. Which had the effect of calling into question just how much we would have to do to finally win, and the public wasn't willing to do that for some rice paddies half-way around the world.
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  • Posted by xthinker88 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    The Viet Cong tried to move into the next phase of guerrilla warfare - open conflict - before they were ready. The VC infrastructure in the South was devastated when they came into the open during the Tet offensive. After the Tet offensive, it became almost entirely an NVA war with the VC playing a secondary role. Almost as though General Giap had planned it that way to eliminate VC political leadership competition to the NVA leadership when the South was finally captured.

    Of course it was touted as a great surprise (which it was) and loss (which it wasn't) in the US and provided momentum to the anti-war movement.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    The Iraqi civilian casualties seem a bit low... a bit higher and Al Qaeda wouldn't be taking the country over right now...

    It says a lot of bad about Congress that they would go to war over WMDs, but not over countless armistice violations, or as part of a strategy to pacify the middle east.
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  • Posted by gagliardiaj 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I have seen no evidence that Bush lied about the information delivered to congress. The info was from the so called intelligence community and not from Bush. Unless you think that he coerced the CIA and all the other agencies which really is getting out there; Remember that the whole congress including the smartest woman on earth, Hillary Clinton, believed the reports. So if they were not true, then she really is a dope or she and the others did not do their due dilligence in looking at the facts presented before they voted to go to war.
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  • Posted by gagliardiaj 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I have seen no evidence that Bush lied about the information delivered to congress. The info was from the so called intelligence community and not from Bush. Unless you think that he coerced the CIA and all the other agencies which really is getting out there; Remember that the whole congress including the smartest woman on earth, Hillary Clinton, believed the reports. So if they were not true, then she really is a dope or she and the others did not do their due dilligence in looking at the facts presented before they voted to go to war.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't believe that they were lies. I just don't believe that they truth has been fully discovered.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    People forget Cronkite lost us the Vietnam War. His slanted reporting of the Tet Offensive was the turning point in the whole war.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago
    Anybody getting the sarcastic reference to Walter Cronkite being compared with Andrea Mitchell?
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  • Posted by starguy 11 years ago
    It's getting harder to keep track of all the lies from the Obozo Administration.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Well, I was still in single digits at the time. However, my study of military history was that Tet was a military victory, but a moral defeat. This was the first time that the US public had near instant visual, and very un-censored reporting. It wasn't something that most households were capable of handling - mostly from the females, as a good portion of the male heads of households had been through this in WWII and Korea. There was also a new generation coming of age - one that was the off-spring of the WWII generation. Unfortunately, their fathers did not talk of the war, or maybe these children would have understood that war is terrible, but sometimes necessary.

    That said, I've also been on record as saying that Viet Nam didn't need to expand to what it became. Had JFK and subsequently Johnson de-escalated (and perhaps Ike even before then), a lot of social angst in the US could have been mitigated.
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  • Posted by Rocky_Road 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I was part of his audience, and the total evening news was presented by three networks that could be spelled out of an Campbell's Alphabet soup can (NBC, CBS, and ABC).

    There was no internet, and practically no way for the average listener to hear any opposing side....

    Besides, he reminded me of my Grandpa!

    His interpretation of the TET Offensive was 180 degrees off...and finished off any hopes of our victory.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Since I was rather young at the time, I can't judge quite as definitively. But it seemed to me that when he was on the evening news, he was pretty down the middle. Only after he left the nightly news did he really start showing his colors.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    And the fact that all e-mail is on a server, not merely a local hard-drive, and how those servers are required to be backed up and stored for several years.
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  • Posted by LetsShrug 11 years ago
    Amazing how they try to twist things to cover up their lies...but never EVER admit it. It's despicable!
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  • Posted by jimslag 11 years ago
    You know that if you tell the truth then you don't have to remember your lies. Well, the Obama Administration has problems keeping their lies straight. Like a computer crash just conveniently had all of Lois Lerner's emails on it. Wow, my computer crashed and all I did was put the hard drive into another computer and boom, I had all my data. Amazing how that works out. Oh wait, I forgot on how bad those guys are with computer related things like websites and such. Just dripping in sarcasm.
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  • Posted by Henry 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Someone needs to tell them the NSA has copies of everyone's emails and they might help them restore their "LOST" files!
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