Why are politians such ignorant, self-important idiots. Now, after nearly 30ty years Robert S. McNamara come to conclusion that engagin´ in the Nam was a "terrible mistake", so sorry bla bla, as you can see in his magic book. A mistake done by politians, which cost 58.000 american GI´s, 223.000 ARVN, 1,1 NVA and 4.000.000 civilians. Who bring them back, McNamara, Nixon, they had quite a comfortable life, while young GI´s, my age, lost there brothers, sufferin´ terrible deaths. Just write a goddamned book and guess everything is allright now. Regards, Che.
Yes but these are the people we elect. Bush is a piss poor excuse for a President. Blair has always been spin over substance and where I am (Ireland) we've just given a state funeral to a ex Prime Minister who was blatantly corrupt. Yet the US, the UK and Ireland are all solid democracies. We put these gobs****s in power so what does that say about us? :-?
About Blair, dosent he run a leftist party ?. Yet it seems like he implements a lot of "rightest" policies.
Blair changed 'Labour' (a leftist party) into 'New Labour' - which was essentially a clone of the Conservative Party but with Left-wing people in it, and a left-wing name. So he cashed in on both left & right support, as well as gaining support due to opponant's 'sleeze'. Which, oddly enough, his party is now up to its ears in. Plus la change...
Hence the Tory party's problem. Saying "We'd do everything they'd do errr... except we'd do it better!" is not the most inspiring message. :roll: :neutral: :roll:
Vietnam was a predictable response in the United States' war on communism... the policy was to challenge each "domino" or country that embraced the Russian bear. Where did this mentality come from? Probably Kruschev when he boldly stated "We will bury you." Easy to look back now and see the flaws in policy, but we believed the Russians were serious. Chinese too. Biggest mistake the US made in Vietnam was allowing the civilian leadership to be in the war-room. Once you decide to go to war, you let the military pick and choose targets, not Congress. Soldiers and aviators were hamstrung with ridiculous policies and "rules of engagement." I've read accounts of Navy pilots flying missions to Hanoi with no bombs on the wing-racks. They were told to "sortie" regardless of whether they had bombs to deliver or not. Pretty stupid to put all the most valuable targets as "hands-off" as well. I can only hope those lessons were ones we never forget... the veterans of Vietnam gave their best, but the White House couldn't decide if it wanted to win this war or not... Tim
On the topic of McNamara's biography, in it he has admitted that he believed the Vietnam War was a war that could not be won. He was asked if he would like to donate his profits from the book to veterans of the Vietnam conflict, seeing how he opted for them to fight a war he knew they could not win. Naturally, he refused.
macnamara was the new ceo of ford and one of the worlds highest paid executives...when he took the sec def job offer by jfk his salarie dropped to $20000 per year..a pay cut of about 95% i belive....we elect leaders then they do what they see as in the best intrest of the country...blair ,bush ,clinton and nixon all would have made WAY more money in the private sector ...blameing pm.s and presdents for a fekked up world is silly and sophnmoric... (if only my man had been elected...sigh ,the world would be aok..)
