Military/civilian Life

[billrunnels]

If you have viewed my previous posts you can tell I made every effort to maintain a balanced military/civilian life style while in uniform. Doing so enabled me to accept the daily challenges confronting me along the way. This balance was maintained in action and in the chambers of my mind. I really think this contributed to my departing the Air Force with out negative memories for which I am grateful.

 

[mikewint]

Bill, I'm so glad that you were able to accomplish that feat. In Vietnam everything was so alien and one never knew exactly who the enemy might be. The 8YO shoeshine boy might have a pound of C4 in his box or the young mother with the C4 under her baby or the grandmother selling Coke. The US and the life style of the mopes became increasingly remote and alien.
When I returned to the world it was more remote and alien than Vietnam had ever been and its residents just as hostile

 

[Zipper730]

In Vietnam everything was so alien and one never knew exactly who the enemy might be. The 8YO shoeshine boy might have a pound of C4 in his box or the young mother with the C4 under her baby or the grandmother selling Coke.

Which makes it very easy to understand why some people just soon adopted a "kill everything that moves mentality" -- that and the fact that McNamara set bodycount as a metric for progress.

 

[billrunnels]

Bill, I'm so glad that you were able to accomplish that feat. In Vietnam everything was so alien and one never knew exactly who the enemy might be. The 8YO shoeshine boy might have a pound of C4 in his box or the young mother with the C4 under her baby or the grandmother selling Coke. The US and the life style of the mopes became increasingly remote and alien.
When I returned to the world it was more remote and alien than Vietnam had ever been and its residents just as hostile

I certainly can understand. The challenges you faced were far more difficult than mine. The values learned in the first eighteen years of my life accompanied me into military service. By the same token the values learned in military service, there were many, stayed with me on departure. The combination of the two became the footing of my life's walk. I was very lucky.

 

[Gnomey]

Certainly a good way to manage your service Bill as as you've said much easier in your position than that of an infantryman in Ww2 and much more so Vietnam and subsequent wars as has been covered already.

 

[tyrodtom]

Which makes it very easy to understand why some people just soon adopted a "kill everything that moves mentality" -- that and the fact that McNamara set bodycount as a metric for progress.

Which is exactly the mentality the enemy wanted us to develop.

The Viet Cong was ruthless, they would kill your entire family, right down to the pets sometimes, if you were a Saigon supporter.
But their intelligence was usually good enough to know who supported them and who didn't.
Our intelligence, however, just seemed to never have a clue as to where, or who our supporters were.
So that resulted in the "kill them all, and let God sort them out " approach.
Once the neutral Vietnamese who just wanted to be left alone, ( and that was most, I think) saw that, they knew they had to get us out of their country.
So we united Vietnam through our own stupidity.
Now we try to blame our failure on Walter Cronkite, the press, or a bunch of whimpy students.
We can say we never lost a battle, but we still failed to destroy the Vietnamese people's will to get us out of their country.

 

[Zipper730]

Our intelligence, however, just seemed to never have a clue as to where, or who our supporters were.

Why were they so ineffective?

Now we try to blame our failure on Walter Cronkite, the press, or a bunch of whimpy students.

I'm curious about several things: Why the media were actively sabotaging the war-effort? Why they were allowed such unrestrained access that they never had before?

 

[tyrodtom]

Maybe the media didn't see a lot of sense in the Churchill saying " the truth has to be protected by a bodyguard of lies "
Maybe the media was just calling it as they saw it, you know, it's called " telling the truth"

And why was our intelligence services so poor ? I have no idea really, just my own theories , from my own observations.
Every military organization likes team players, team players are people who agree with, and re-enforce the official line, or narrative.
If you're not a team player, you, but not in any particular order.
1st , very likely will not see much success promotion wise.
2nd , what you report will very likely not get very far up the chain of command.
3rd, will get shuffled off to some duty you'd probably not find too career enhancing, or uplifting.

I can remember some bomb damage assessments I was in on, the final report had little relation to what I saw with my own eyes.

It was like I know this is a lie, and you know this a lie, but maybe if we act like it's true, it'll actually eventually become true.

 

[at6]

Bill, I'm so glad that you were able to accomplish that feat. In Vietnam everything was so alien and one never knew exactly who the enemy might be. The 8YO shoeshine boy might have a pound of C4 in his box or the young mother with the C4 under her baby or the grandmother selling Coke. The US and the life style of the mopes became increasingly remote and alien.
When I returned to the world it was more remote and alien than Vietnam had ever been and its residents just as hostile

Mike, You did what you were supposed to do. You, like the other returning veterans didn't get the respect and support that you should have.

 

[Zipper730]

Maybe the media didn't see a lot of sense in the Churchill saying " the truth has to be protected by a bodyguard of lies"

That's not what I meant: In the past the media had more restriction on what they could post in wartime...

Maybe the media was just calling it as they saw it, you know, it's called "telling the truth"

No, that's not it: Cronkite made it look like the Tet Offensive was a massive failure where we actually won...

And why was our intelligence services so poor? I have no idea really, just my own theories , from my own observations.

If they're not classified, can you venture a guess?

 

[tyrodtom]

What turned Cronkite around is up until the Tet offensive, if you listened to US Army press briefings, and releases. We were killing VC in such massive numbers there should have been almost no VC alive and organised enough to stage such a outbreak.
The Tet offensive might have been a failure for the VC , but it meant that they were replaced by NVA, which is probably what North Vietnam preferred and wanted in the first place. Which meant when Vietnam eventually fell to the north, there were fewer southerners with different ideas to gum up the works during reunification.
I thought I did venture a guess about our failures in intelligence. Did you not understand it ?

 

[Zipper730]

What turned Cronkite around is up until the Tet offensive, if you listened to US Army press briefings, and releases. We were killing VC in such massive numbers there should have been almost no VC alive and organised enough to stage such a outbreak.

Which was obviously a shock... but we did defeat them and he made it look like we lost though.
The Tet offensive might have been a failure for the VC , but it meant that they were replaced by NVA, which is probably what North Vietnam preferred and wanted in the first place.[/quote]Were they somehow harder to kill than the NLF?

Did you not understand it ?

I wasn't alive then...

 

[tyrodtom]

You asked me to venture a opinion , I already had, in my previous reply..
If you're going to ask me questions, at least read my replies.
Cronkite made that broadcast just a few days after we retook Hue, late Feb. or early Mar. A little too soon for anyone to sort out the facts as to deaths and other loses from the various participants.

I think you need to read the text of Cronkite's report before you throw him under the bus.

 

[mikewint]

While the American press has a tradition of national loyalty, it has a competing role as "watchdog" of government. While the press is constrained by economic interests, it is also motivated by a desire to inform the public as best it can. And finally, while the media traditionally stays close to the mainstream, it also thrives on the sensational, the dramatic, the controversial. The mixed message sent out by the press concerning Vietnam resulted from the interplay of these competing pressures. At different times different traditions dominated. At any given time, conflicts over how to cover the war arc evident, i.e.: between mediums, among reporters, and-because of journalists', editors', producers', and owners' different perspectives, even within single stories.

Prior to World War I, reporters either found their own way into a war zone, or, at the discretion of the commander, attached themselves to a military unit. If they were found in a war zone without permission, they were often arrested. The unprecedented scale of World War I, the press's increased ability to gather and transmit information, and the growing unhappiness of everyone with the resulting chaos in press coverage led to a more formal system in which the press was granted routine access to the front in exchange for formal accreditation and censorship by the military. The threat of losing accreditation or being jailed, their knowledge that copy and film would be censored anyway, and their underlying patriotism meant that journalists often engaged in self-censorship.

This system of accreditation, access, and censorship, remained largely in place through the Korean War. The mobilization of public support for a war is as critical as the mobilization of troops. From the government's perspective, the press needed enough freedom to report back frequently to the public, but enough control to assure that what was reported boosted rather than hurt morale. During the Korean conflict the press was forbidden to make any derogatory comments about United Nations troops.

The accrediting of journalists continued in Vietnam but formal censorship did not for a number of reasons:
(a) The military believed it gained more by limiting the access of journalists than by giving them complete access in exchange for censorship.
(b) Since the United States' involvement in Vietnam fell short of declared war, full censorship and its enforcement were politically and legally difficult.
(c) It was assumed that the combination of the threat of loss of accreditation, journalistic patriotism, the tradition of "neutrality and objectivity," and the dependence of the press on official sources of information would make voluntary guidelines workable in place of prior censorship.

This assumption proved correct for most of the war. Eventually, however, uncensored coverage, the limited nature of the war, and a growing, vocal opposition in the States, combined to shift the boundaries.
In late 1961, General Maxwell Taylor, the president's military advisor, had concluded that South Vietnam could not survive the Vietcong and North Vietnamese "insurgency" without the help of more than the 685 American advisors permitted by the 1954 Geneva agreement. While Kennedy reluctantly accepted Taylor's recommendation, he did not want public attention drawn to the escalation therefore the White House leaked misleading information suggesting that both Taylor and Kennedy opposed sending troops to Vietnam.

In December of 1961, with at least 2000 Americans in combat zones authorized to carry and fire weapons, the official count was still 685 advisors.
At a televised press conference in January 1962, in answer to the direct question, "Mr. President, are American troops now in combat in Vietnam?" Kennedy simply said no and went on to the next question. He was not challenged by the press. The first U. S. combat death in Vietnam had occurred three weeks earlier. By the time of his death nearly 17,000 American troops were stationed in Vietnam. Despite a few tense periods, Kennedy and his advisors were successful in guiding coverage of the war.

President Johnson also wanted Vietnam downplayed; the only war he wanted to be remembered for was the one against poverty. However, the political turmoil following Diem's assassination, coupled with the inability of the South Vietnamese army to conduct the war as envisioned by the U.S., led to an escalation of U.S. involvement. Between the end of 1963 and July of 1964, the number of advisors was increased from 17,000 to 75,000, and Americans began bombing North Vietnam, first as "retaliation for North Vietnamese aggression," and ultimately, in February of 1965, as a sustained activity. Finally, in July of 1965, at the insistence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Johnson dispatched 100,000 combat troops to South Vietnam. Vietnam was now an American war.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the key to the resolution was LBJ's brilliant manipulation of the press. It is, perhaps, the best example of how presidential news management can shape public policy. In early August 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats and a U.S. destroyer did battle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Other than those two facts virtually every other report was either misleading or even false. Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before. In fact, evidence suggests that the second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats never happened. Real or not, when heavily reported in the media, it became the public rationale for retaliation and increased U. S. involvement in Vietnam-a policy change decided upon before the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Increased U. S. military presence in Vietnam led to parallel increases in television's coverage of the war. Television gave the war an appearance of order and progress where often there was none. This image of progress, of an enemy on the run, was based on daily press briefings by the military in Saigon. Film footage was also government influenced, as TV crews were shunted by helicopter from one operation to another by military press officers who wanted to show off American initiative. When battle scenes were available, they were edited according to explicit guidelines barring the use of graphic film of wounded American soldiers or suffering civilians. However a conflict was brewing within the press corps. To a small but growing number of journalists, government and media accounts did not jibe with their own experiences in Vietnam. This view cut against the grain of "official policy" and so was met by subtle and not so subtle censorship by editors and producers. This internal censorship resulted from editors' suspicions of young reporters who were too committed to a cause to be objective. More disturbingly, it also reflected direct political intervention by the government. For example, President Johnson had intervened directly to stop a 1965 Time article by Frank McColloch revealing that U.S. troops were preparing to assume an active combat role. But even in this pre-Tet period cracks were beginning to appear.

In August 1965, Morley Safer's crew filmed U.S. marines destroying the village of Cam Ne. Safer's report threw CBS into turmoil. While no one wanted to air footage of American boys indiscriminately burning down houses, they had the film and the norms of journalism clearly said show it. The night it aired, CBS was swamped by phone calls from viewers who were outraged that CBS would" do something like this, portraying our boys as killers, American boys didn't do things like that. Many of the calls were obscene. The next day, CBS executive Frank Stanton was awakened by yet another phone call: "Frank, this is your President, and yesterday your boys shat on the American flag."
Crack #2 came from the government itself. William Fulbright was the senator who had, based on Jonson's promise that no U. S. ground troops would be committed to Vietnam, shepherded the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. By early 1966 he felt betrayed, as the administration's line on Vietnam received exclusive media coverage. Thus, in late January 1966 Fulbright used committee hearings on a supplemental foreign aid bill as a platform to attack the administration. When representatives of the administration appeared before the committee, he made Vietnam the issue.

Then came the Tet offensive and the house of cards came crashing down. The administration's view of the offensive was not ignored-papers and networks dutifully reported the official line, often as the lead of the story. On February 2, for example, the Washington Post's headline read: "LBJ CALLS UPRISING FAILURE-VIETCONG HOLDING ON IN HUE; THIEU ASKS MORE'BOMBING-PRESIDENT SEES REPULSE OF NEW DRIVE." Now, however, "upbeat" messages were presented in ways that led one to doubt their accuracy. For example, the New York Times reported on February 2 that the "latest propaganda line is that we are now seeing the enemy's 'last gasp'." Government optimism was being reported in a way that turned it on its head. The press remained dependent on government sources, but no longer fully believed them. The result was a style of reporting that presents "facts" in a way that says these are not facts. Television portrayed Tet even more bleakly. Again, reporters did not suggest Tet was a military defeat. Cronkite's statement of February 14, 1968-"First and simplest, the Vietcong suffered a military defeat" -was typical. Instead, the message was that such victories did not add up to winning the war.

The growing perception was that the U.S was unable to win the war. The percent of television stories in which journalists editorialized news jumped from 5.9 percent before Tet to 20 percent in the two months after. The most significant statement came from the "most trusted man in America", Walter Cronkite. In a CBS special, Cronkite concluded, 'To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in a bloody stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion". After the Tet Offensive and Cronkite's statement, coverage of American involvement in the war became predominantly negative. Before Tet, journalists described 62 percent of their stories as victories for the United States, 28 percent as defeats, and 2 percent as inconclusive. After Tet, 44 percent of the battles were deemed victories, 32 percent defeats, and 24 percent inconclusive. Combat scenes were also more graphic. Films of civilian casualties increased from a pre-Tet average of 0.85 times per week to an average of 3.9 times per week. Films of military casualties also jumped from 2.4 to 6.8 times per week. The most negative change in coverage was the portrayal of the U.S troops. Before the Tet Offensive, there were four television stories devoted entirely to the positive morale of the troops and zero negative stories. After Tet, two and a half stories mentioned positive morale while the number of negative morale stories increased to fourteen and a half. Most of these negative references included increasing drug use, racial conflict, and disobedience among the U.S soldiers.

 

[N4521U]

Maddening stuff, the Vietnam Conflict! As some would like it to be known.

I joined the USNavy while still in High School, in by 18 and out by 21, The Kitty Cruise in 1961, June. Nobody even knew what a Vietnam was, or where. BTW I did receive a draft notice while in boot camp. I was on the Yorktown in '63, watching Marines doing Embark and Debark exercises in Subic Bay.

After my discharge in '64, (April 1) I went to work in a factory. I watched some of my co-workers, good straight blokes go off to the Army in the lottery picks and return such different people. I lived in Berkeley during this time of Flower Power, and such disdane of returning servicemen. It made me pretty angry. Some of them Hippies just needed to be slapped. The number of homeless was on the increase. Soldiers not wanting to be known as Vietnam Vets. It was a freaky time when I look back on it. People's Park, the National Guard being called in, helicopters, tear gas.

When I started sign painting I worked with a vet, door gunner. He never mentioned the War. He was always trying to Find Himself. I know now he has some health problems. I salute you all and wish you some kind of inner peace. It was never Your Fault.

Bill

 

[ODonovan]

The Viet Cong was ruthless, they would kill your entire family, right down to the pets sometimes, if you were a Saigon supporter.
But their intelligence was usually good enough to know who supported them and who didn't.
Our intelligence, however, just seemed to never have a clue as to where, or who our supporters were.

That's pretty much why, right there. Even people who did support, or would have supported the Americans, would get turned by that type of pressure. Plus, I'm sure there were plenty of Vietnamese who would pretend to like us, just to get stuff from us.

Even though we thought of ourselves as "liberators," fighting the Commies and keeping the South free, a large majority of the Vietnamese just saw us as more westerners like the French they had FINALLY kicked out, after years of occupation. After the Japanese left in '45, the French took over but were never welcome. There was pretty much always a state of war between the French and the Vietnamese. Finally, in '54, the North declared independence from France, but kept fighting to free the South as well. When the Americans came into the picture, to replace the departing French in the South, at the "request" of the French-installed puppet government, most Vietnamese just saw more (mostly) white foreigners coming to run their country. It was tough to get loyalty from more than the small percentage who figured out they could have a better lifestyle by sucking up to the Yankees.



-Irish

 

[mikewint]

Uncle Ho both liked and admired Americans. He saw a large similarities between the two countries. Both had been occupied by a foreign power, both wanted freedom from foreign control, unification and self-government. He felt that the revolutionary Americans would understand that and support it. In 1945 He had written a declaration of independence that stated, "All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." It's likely this was partly sincere, and partly a play for US help in decolonization, based on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's anti-colonial rhetoric.
Ho had tried to meet with President Wilson at Versailles (1919) trying to enlist his and America's backing for "self-determination" (as in Wilson's 14 Points) for Vietnam. Wilson however refused to meet with him. Naturally the communists welcomed him with open arms. Ho turned to the communist bloc out of necessity not choice. By 1920 Ho was a firm communist. That's not to say he ended his admiration and emulation of America's Founding Fathers. Ho Chi Minh and his top general, Vo Nguyen Giap, modeled their war to some extent on George Washington's fight against the British: wear down the enemy, avoid catastrophic defeat, keep the army in being and simply make it too expensive for your superior enemy to continue the war. The same tactics they used against the US. While Ho was the "face" of North Vietnam. By 1959 he had been forced to surrender all political power to Le Duan. He was a figurehead leader with little or no actual power during the Vietnam war.
As to the Vietnam War we need to go back to July 1954 when the Geneva Accords were signed, Vietnam was to be temporarily split into approximately equal halves. The two halves were to be separated by a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) running along the 17th parallel. The northern half was to be governed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which had been proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh, and the southern half would be governed by the non-communist State of Vietnam until 1956, at which time the two zones were to be reunified following internationally supervised elections. Ngo Dinh Diem, who had become premier of the State of Vietnam in June, was a Catholic and staunchly anticommunist. Diem disliked the Geneva Accords and set about to consolidate his power in the south. By the middle of 1955, Diem had effectively gained control of most of South Vietnam, and in July of that year, he declared his refusal to permit the elections called for at Geneva. This announcement led to a stepped-up insurgency in the south and ultimately to the Second Indochina War.
The US became involved under the Domino Theory and supported Diem because of his anti-communist stance. Diem's autocratic government with all positions of any power headed by his own family members favored the Roman Catholic minority. Diem, assisted by U.S. military and economic aid, was able to resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Vietnam in the south, but his own Catholicism and the preference he showed for fellow Roman Catholics made him unacceptable to Buddhists, who were an overwhelming majority in South Vietnam. Diem never fulfilled his promise of land reforms, and during his rule communist influence and appeal grew among southerners as the communist-inspired National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, launched an increasingly intense guerrilla war against his government. The military tactics Diem used against the insurgency were heavy-handed and ineffective and served only to deepen his government's unpopularity and isolation.
Diem's imprisoning and, often, killing of those who expressed opposition to his regime—whom he alleged were abetting communist insurgents—further alienated the South Vietnamese populace, notably Buddhists, who increasingly protested Diem's discrimination against them. Matters with the Buddhists came to a head in 1963 when, after government forces killed several people at a May rally celebrating the Buddha's birthday, Buddhists began staging large protest rallies, and three monks and a nun immolated themselves. Those actions finally persuaded the United States to withdraw its support from Diem, and his generals assassinated him during a coup d'état.
Though various others took his place none ever were able to form an effective government with popular support.

 

[ODonovan]

"Uncle Ho" was a communist before Versailles. He was already giving communist speeches all over Asia and recruting French into the Comintern. The Wilson thing turning him communist is a myth, from everything I've read.



-Irish

 

[mikewint]

Uncle Ho has always remained somewhat of a mystery figure historically. I did not imply the Wilson had turned Ho into a communist.
The great Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 was simply the occasion for Ho's formal entry into politics. Excited by the prospect of a peace based on President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points — especially the point concerning national self-determination of peoples — Ho drafted a modest eight-point program for Vietnam and, renting a formal suit, sought an audience with leaders of the great powers. His proposals would not have meant independence for Vietnam, but instead called for greater equity, more basic freedoms, and Vietnamese representation in the colonial government.
Unable to gain a hearing at Versailles, Ho then pursued the colonial question in the French Socialist Party, of which he was a member. At the Party Congress at Tours on Christmas Day, 1920, Ho Chi Minh sided with the Communist wing of the party since the Communists advocated immediate independence for all colonial areas. "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me," he later explained.

 

[Zipper730]

While the American press has a tradition of national loyalty, it has a competing role as "watchdog" of government.

Yes

Prior to World War I, reporters either found their own way into a war zone, or, at the discretion of the commander, attached themselves to a military unit. If they were found in a war zone without permission, they were often arrested.

Makes sense, I wonder how many were executed as spies. Essentially, the media is basically a spy organization for the public (I don't like WikiLeaks because I don't trust Assange as a person and his loyalty, and I figure it's probably more to China than claims of Russia these days).

the press was granted routine access to the front in exchange for formal accreditation and censorship by the military. The threat of losing accreditation or being jailed, their knowledge that copy and film would be censored anyway, and their underlying patriotism meant that journalists often engaged in self-censorship.

I remember that George Orwell actually said that much of the censorship in WWII was voluntary interestingly.

This system of accreditation, access, and censorship, remained largely in place through the Korean War. The mobilization of public support for a war is as critical as the mobilization of troops. From the government's perspective, the press needed enough freedom to report back frequently to the public, but enough control to assure that what was reported boosted rather than hurt morale. During the Korean conflict the press was forbidden to make any derogatory comments about United Nations troops.

Makes sense

The accrediting of journalists continued in Vietnam but formal censorship did not for a number of reasons:
(a) The military believed it gained more by limiting the access of journalists than by giving them complete access in exchange for censorship.

Why?

(b) Since the United States' involvement in Vietnam fell short of declared war, full censorship and its enforcement were politically and legally difficult.

Korea wasn't a declared war either...

In late 1961, General Maxwell Taylor, the president's military advisor, had concluded that South Vietnam could not survive the Vietcong and North Vietnamese "insurgency" without the help of more than the 685 American advisors permitted by the 1954 Geneva agreement.

That I never knew...

the political turmoil following Diem's assassination, coupled with the inability of the South Vietnamese army to conduct the war as envisioned by the U.S.

How did we envision the war to be fought by them?

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam . . . Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before. In fact, evidence suggests that the second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats never happened.

That's right, the second attack was basically illusory. The weather, the hyper vigilance of the crew, and the radar systems basically lead to a fight in the dark with nothing. The Captain even figured that was the case and told LBJ. It didn't matter because LBJ wanted a war and that's what it took to get it going.

In politics, the argument is more important than the facts when it comes to gaining support for the cause: The facts only are important with implementation

Increased U. S. military presence in Vietnam led to parallel increases in television's coverage of the war. Television gave the war an appearance of order and progress where often there was none. . . . Film footage was also government influenced, as TV crews were shunted by helicopter from one operation to another by military press officers who wanted to show off American initiative. When battle scenes were available, they were edited according to explicit guidelines barring the use of graphic film of wounded American soldiers or suffering civilians. However a conflict was brewing within the press corps. To a small but growing number of journalists, government and media accounts did not jibe with their own experiences in Vietnam. This view cut against the grain of "official policy" and so was met by subtle and not so subtle censorship by editors and producers.

Why did these younger journalists feel this way? There were journalists throughout WWII to Vietnam that didn't act like this...

More disturbingly, it also reflected direct political intervention by the government. For example, President Johnson had intervened directly to stop a 1965 Time article by Frank McColloch revealing that U.S. troops were preparing to assume an active combat role. But even in this pre-Tet period cracks were beginning to appear.

I remember in a documentary (not long ago) about the Vietnam War, which showed USMC personnel burning down a village. I did not know it was called Cam Ne.

Crack #2 came from the government itself. William Fulbright was the senator who had, based on Jonson's promise that no U. S. ground troops would be committed to Vietnam, shepherded the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. By early 1966 he felt betrayed, as the administration's line on Vietnam received exclusive media coverage.

It's a sad fact that politicians often lie to gain power; then use said power in ways they said they wouldn't.

Thus, in late January 1966 Fulbright used committee hearings on a supplemental foreign aid bill as a platform to attack the administration.

How did it attack the administration?

Then came the Tet offensive and the house of cards came crashing down. . . "upbeat" messages were presented in ways that led one to doubt their accuracy. For example, the New York Times reported on February 2 that the "latest propaganda line is that we are now seeing the enemy's 'last gasp'." . . .The press remained dependent on government sources, but no longer fully believed them.

And they were, of course, correct.

The growing perception was that the U.S was unable to win the war

With the restraints imposed, it wasn't really winnable. I'm surprised we didn't do one of the following

• Replace the leader of North Vietnam with one the people were willing to accept. This was actually a proposal made by the U.K., and they had experience dealing with issues like this before.
• Treat the Vietnam War like a counter-insurgency operation: It would have been more effective. I'm not sure how proficient the US Army was in counter-insurgency operations, but the USMC did have some experience, admittedly pre-WWII
• Immediately go for the airfields. I'm not really sure what the odds the Chinese would have intervened were, though if I recall, I'm not sure they had a mutual defense treaty in place.