Asymmetrical Information

Glad you're feeling better (he said sheepishly/awkwardly, unsure about precisely how to welcome someone else when in THEIR house).

I bow before no man or womyn in my distaste for Mr. Raines, but I think you unfairly tar him.

1. Kerry should have known that question was coming. Hell, I knew that question was coming. The Republican war drums had been meming on this for at least a couple of weeks. He should have known this one was coming and had something much better prepared (though not what Raines wrote).

2. Yeah, I don't really get this point. For the most part, the Clinton economy was successful at both ends. I think we'd all be happy with that again, and everyone is leery of new big, gargantuan government projects (though screwing around with the tax code or block grants to put more money in the pockets of the working poor would be OK). And obviously, Kerry can’t run his agenda without agreement from Congress. Maybe this is just Howell establishing his leftist cred? Strange. I don't know that your criticism is particularly on point (I think you believe even you may be afflicted with certain stereotypical views about the Opposition), but I'll grant you that you're right on the point you made.

3. I don't think that he really said "answer the questions you'd like to answer"; that's Robert McNamara's advice in the Fog of War. I think he was advising Kerry follow the Republican's lead and make easy promises to the populace, and constantly repeat them. I don't know which parts of this are supposed to be controversial. Easy promises - well, Bush isn't exactly renowned for his nuanced views. Constantly repeat them - this ability to stay constantly on message is always cited as Bush's great strength and the secret to his electoral success. Maybe its wrong, but it isn't controversial.

Also, do you honestly believe that

[when] asked "What do you think about the Partial Birth Abortion ruling?" and he answers, as Uncle Howell suggests, "Here's my plan for getting us out of Iraq and defeating terrorism,"

isn't even faintly reminiscent of Bush ("It's about Terror. And War. And Terror. 9/11. War. Teerrrorr. Saddam evil. Evildoer. Evil. Evil. Evil. Terror.")? It's taken the public till now to call him on it. This is pretty good advice.

And Jane, most Dems don't think "everything's easy, as long as you're not blinded by Republican avarice and racism." We just think everything's more fulfilling. (smile).

More seriously, I am definitely in the Kerryisadouchebag camp, and there are any number of moderate Republicans I would prefer to vote for (as well as McCain, whatever he is). But what the Republicans have put up for election is an American apostasy, and that is the source any venom I (or some others) may occasionally spew.

[I can't believe I'm first! First!]

Welcome back Jane, you have been sorely missed.

1) I quite agree, Kerry got busted by his own lie but he should have known that it was coming since he and his cronies at the DNC decided that since he didn’t have anything in the way of a legislative record to run on it was going to be “I served in Vietnam.” How long did he think he could bring it up ad nausea and use it as a shield for any criticism before somebody would get around to asking about his anti-war activism. BTW: wouldn’t it have been great if Russert has asked “so Senator, when are you going to re-release The New Soldier?” or better still shown a picture of the cover on the screen. ;)

2) It might be just a tad difficult for Kerry who has one of the most left-leaning voting records in the Senate to try and reinvent himself as a “New Democrat.”

3) Isn’t he sort of doing that already since his answers seems to revolve around someone “questioning his patriotism.” ;)

Maybe this is nitpicking, but can we not call it "the Clinton economy"? Clinton was there when it happened, that's all. Naming the 90's boom after him implies he had something to do with it, which is of course utter nonsense (just as Bush has nothing to do with the current/recent recession, and calling same "the Bush Jr. economy" would be equally silly).

Hi Megan,

Glad you're back.

Fortunately (for me, anyway) this request is only slightly off topic...do please responsd to my email (the one I sent to you, Glenn, Roger, and Matt) when you get a chance. Thanks much!

Cheers.

"Make easy promises to the populace" - would that include promising us that "taxing the rich" - and no one else - will allow us to enjoy an unlimited bounty of social programs and government spending? I seem to recall hearing that easy promise long before either this campaign, or even the one in 2000.

The thing which struck me most about Raines' spewing was his contempt for the American people. He sees us as too stupid to know our own interests, and also too stupid to see the "disinformation" [his term] that he would have Kerry emit. What a lefty asshat.

Politicians already answer the questions they want to answer, not the questions they are asked. This is a pretty standard tactic. Good politicians make their answer seem to be related to the question.

Bolie IV

On a tangential note, if ever you take on the "David Brooks is full of crap" thesis advanced in Philadelphia Magazine (link: http://www.phillymag.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=350), I would be sorely interested in reading it.

"screwing around with the tax code or block grants to put more money in the pockets of the working poor would be OK"

The single change in the tax code which enabled me to move from working poor to middle class was the capital gains (AKA inflation) tax relief widely attacked at the time as a "tax cut for the rich".

Nice round of Kerry bashing here. I need to check out the Raines article and a transcript of the Tim Russert show. The only quotes I have seen in which Kerry disparaged Vietnam vets in the manner described in the post were taken from his testimony to congress. In his testimony, I believe, he stated that he had heard of or witnessed war crimes while in Vietnam. Why he did not reiterate that testimony on Tim's show, I don't know. Kerry is a notorious straddler, and I am not a big fan.

That having been said, I would like to see equal outrage directed towards the dissembling conducted by the Bush administration. These folks change their story repeatedly or make up facts when required (Bush served all his time in the air force reserve, except for when he wasn't there or decided not to go).

I am new to this blog, so perhaps such indignation has been expressed in the past. Given Megan's UofC background, I fear it has not.

"He should have said: 'Tim, what you see in that video clip is a young man fresh from the battlefield and incandescent with the horror he saw.'"

Which wouldn't work for Kerry, because he left combat in Vietnam in March 1969, and his testimony to the Senate and appearance on Meet the Press were two years later.

" 'I mourned deeply for my comrades who were killed and maimed. I felt moral conflict, as many of our soldiers and sailors did, about the civilian casualties all around us. I felt angry that our national leaders had put us into a war without an exit strategy or a way of defining victory.'"

Again, Raines hasn't thought about the chronology. In 1971, when Kerry was entertaining us with stories of atrocities in Vietnam, we HAD a plan for defining victory AND an exit strategy. It was Nixon's strategy of Vietnamization, and it was successful. At the time of Kerry's testimony we had only about half the number of American troops in Vietnam as we did in March 1969 (when Kerry exited the war).

A year later, when we had fewer than 100,000 troops there, the South Vietnamese military (with help from American airpower)beat back a North Vietnamese invasion force of 200,000 men. A defeat so devastating to the Communists that they replaced the legendary hero of Dien Bien Phu, Gen. Giap.

It was only after Nixon was weakened by Watergate that Kerry and friends were able to undermine the South Vietnamese military with the Church-Case bill that prohibited us from coming to their assistance again. So, when the North again invaded in 1975--with a smaller force than they mounted in 1972--our former allies had no one to turn to for help. And that's the story of our LOSS in Vietnam--it was the fault of John Kerry and like-minded politicians.

Scott wrote:

That having been said, I would like to see equal outrage directed towards the dissembling conducted by the Bush administration. These folks change their story repeatedly or make up facts when required (Bush served all his time in the air force reserve, except for when he wasn't there or decided not to go).

Bush wasn’t in the air force reserve.

Scott, this isn't Kerry bashing - this is Howell Raines bashing, an entirely different sport. I wasn't trying to imply that Kerry was the first politician to be caught fibbing, or that he should have come up with a better answer on Meet the Press. In fact, I think my commenters are incorrect that he should have forseen this: politicians tell all sorts of lies about their past, because very few people could ever get elected if they were called to account for every stupid thing they've ever said or done; Kerry was clearly unaware that there was film footage of him saying what he'd just denied saying, or he would have tried to spin it, rather than deny it. He may genuinely not have remembered saying it; I shudder to imagine what sorts of things might be dredged up from my youthful frolics as a dilettante activist, though I can't remember any of them offhand.

I didn't find his fib particularly galling, though I do think a better answer would have been "I was 25, and like a lot of 25 year olds, I made some heated remarks I now regret". I just thought Howell Raines' political advice was disturbingly inept for the former editor-in-chief of The New York Times.

And Tim -- I don't think that all Democrats think that way; just that Howell Raines does. Given that he was pushed out of the editorship of the NYT for, among other things, worries that his partisanship was damaging the paper, it seems not quite bright to revel so openly in the most unimaginative and pedestrian sort of anti-Republican rant.

Tim: Just a mixed-metaphor nitpick, but how do "war drums" "mem[ing]/meme" something?

OK - if you want to bash Raines, might you also take an equally hard look at the editorial staff of the WSJ?

As to Thorley's point, I stand corrected (that is I made a mistake - never admitted by this administration). To Thorley's unintended other point: I am somehwat unconvinced Bush was actually "in" the Air National Guard. I guess it depends on your definition of "in."

Can someone post a link to a) the Raines article, b) a transcript of the original quote by Kerry?

Oops, see th raines link to the guardian now. Still wouldn't mind transcripts of the '71 Kerry quote and context.

Scott made a grossly ad hominum and gratutiously defamatory remark in the first of his above comments. He said,

I am new to this blog, so perhaps such indignation has been expressed in the past. Given Megan's UofC background, I fear it has not.

In Scott's defense, I see that he was at the Chicago GSB as well; in fact, if he is who I think he is, he was in my class. (Hi Scott!) My impression of the student body was that it split about 50/50 Democrat/Republican (at least, that's what the noise in the cafeteria seemed to indicate during the election fiasco of 2000). But it's fair to say that there is a definite point of view to the Chicago business and economics faculties, which isn't so much political conservatism, but an attitude about markets that is often taken for political conservatism in the wider world. I hew fairly closely towards that attitude, though not in its purest form. Scott may not, and if he spent two years at the GSB, you can't say he doesn't understand the ideas he's rejecting.

But even drinking the UChicago Kool-Aid doesn't mean you have to vote for one party or another. Larry Summers really impressed me when he spoke at our school and said, yes, he thought that targeted tax cuts were a bad idea economically, but the political reality was that they were the only way to give money to people he thought needed it, and he thought that that was more important than the mild economic distortion of the Gore plan. You could be a perfectly good believer in the strong version of Chicago school economics, and still endorse that. Given that both political parties are engaged in spreading economic disinformation most of the time (Bush's tax cuts kept the recession from turning into a depression? Kerry's going to create 10 million jobs with his magic money machine? C'mon), it's fair to ask that Chicago students, who are supposed to be exquisitely attuned to this sort of bullshit when companies put it out, are as willing to apply their wrath to the liars in their own party, as well as the other guys. So for the record, though I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, I do think he fibs just like all the other politicians, and also, I think his deficts are an awful, awful idea. Though not necessarily any more awful than any of Gore's ideas. Really, being a libertarian means you never have to say you're sorry, since you never get any power.

Indeed, I am that Scott. And my sincerest apologies to Average Joe and any other current or former members of the undergraduate and graduate programs at the UofC - with the notable exception of the b-school. Though I may get flamed again for not apologizing to the MBA folks, I will stand by my belief that they lean pretty far right (though the only data point I have suggests that Meg-er, Jane is correct about the 50/50 split).

I didn't catch Larry Summer's discussion (good chance I was out of town or drunk). However, if he suggested that the Bush tax cut got money in the hands of the people who really needed it, then I would take issue with his analysis. And, yes, I don't know that I reject the Chicago School of economics particularly; rather I think that the whole field requires a bigger grain of salt than many at Chicago were willing to take with it.

BTW, nice blog. I have enjoyed reading it. Now I must finish a spreadsheet.

"And, yes," above should be "And, no-sort-of-yes,". I really must read these things fully before pressing post.

Here is a link to Kerry's Meet The Press interview

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4772030/

Jane claims

'after telling Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he had never called Vietnam soldiers war criminals, Tim Russert confronted him with a 1972 clip of himself calling vietnam soldiers war
criminals'

While Kerry definitely was flustered by the clip, Jane's statement is misleading at best and flat-out inaccurate at worst.

Russert FIRST plays Kerry's old clip:

'All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.'

then he asks Kerry about his statement on atrocities. Then he asks him about his war criminals statement.

Kerry says at that point '
It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier--I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way'

A little verbose as usual, but thats Kerry. I think its clear in the context of Kerry's earlier message that he was talking about 'the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas,'

So its not that (as Jane claims) that Kerry was caught in a fib here (although he may have been in other parts of the interview). He was asked to back up his earlier statement.

A lot of people came back from the Vietnam war with a great deal of anger. Some directed that anger against the administration as Kerry did, some in even more extreme ways. Others directed it against the peace marchers (and not just the disgusting Jane Fonda). I think Kerry's actions and words were honest and heartfelt, the words of an angry 25 year old.

Well welcome. Larry Summers was defending Gore's tax proposals, not Bush's -- the "8 billion deductions for everything I could think of last night" approach. Several of the professors hammered on him for it, and he basically said "look, I agree with you it's not ideal, but I think it's important enough to do things that aren't economically ideal". I don't think I agreed with him, but I respected it.

Good luck on your spreadsheet.

One quick addendum -- some of the people who designed the policies in Vietnam may have been senior officers and others serving in Vietnam, so on the most technical level, it may be accurate to say that Kerry was accusing Vietnam soldiers of being war criminals. However, when we think of senior officers who make these kinds of decisions on general rules of engagement and the iike, they are not the kind of people generally associated with being a Vietnam soldier in combat (which would typically refer to regular enlisted men, battlefield officers).

The WSJ's editorial page is clearly one of most biased and opionated and biased in the country. However, and this is the key point, Howell Raines was not the editorial page editor, he was the news editor. Not even strong opponents of the WSj editorial page object to its news coverage, which is as fair and balanced as you can get (in the real sense).

Incidentally, I remember watching that Meet The Press and I don't think that Kerry was caught out in any kind of fashion on this topic at least. .

I found Raines's original statement

Tim Russert of NBC News showed Kerry a clip of his 1972 Senate testimony to the effect that some of the promoters of the Vietnam war could be viewed as war criminals. Kerry started crawfishing right away. The pity is, he was right. He could have named people starting with Robert MacNamara and McGeorge Bundy, and everybody in the country would have understood the point.

Its crystal from this that the architects of the war are the ones being referred to (McNaamara, Bundy etc.), not the regular soldiers.

Thanks, Jon Juzlak, for posting the details. Kerry's answer delineates one of his bigger problems - his ability to utter nonsense when a straightforward answer would do him & his message far better. He should have said accurately that people who gave the orders for many of the actions in Vietnam may well have been guilty of breaking the Geneva convention.

On that topic, did someone above mention that Vietnamization worked? Is that why there is a North and South Vietnam today?

Also, thanks to mayank - good point about Raines and his role as news editor. I agree with you about the biases of the WSJ editorial page. I don't read it regularly - is there a sense that the news staff is equally tilted?

My personal experience has been that the WSJ news staff is extremely non-partisan. For instance, they had an article just today about how liberals think they can pick up more seats today. Also, they had an article a few months back about how Kerry is not exactly a typical liberal.

Suckkk.com referred to the WSJ as a paper that, if it here a human being, would have a personality order because of the vast difference between its excellent, throughly fact-checked News page and its editorial pages. The Washington Post and the NYT show a similar trait at times, but not as extreme

The WSJ news staff is, as far as I know, just like any other news staff -- overwhelmingly tilted left. At least, that's its reputation in the business, and all the WSJ reporters I know are Democrats. (All the WSJ editorial people I know are Republicans).

I think its a stretch to imply that Kerry was only referring to McNamara & co. Kerry was a lieutenant who spent slightly under four months in Vietnam, far too little time to be promoted. The chain of command giving him orders included a whole lot of soldiers. Moreover, my understanding of military operations is that any tactical orders, such as those to commit war crimes, would have come from local military commanders, not the defense department -- unless Kerry has information he hasn't revealed about a drafted policy of war crime commission.

I don't think that Kerry's statement was referring only to McNamara and company, but to senior officers who decided (not at the tactical level) to allow rules of engagement that allowed what Kerry said were war crimes. McNamara himself has admitted that in "Fog of War".

In any case, while this can be debated, your original statement

'When, after telling Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he had never called Vietnam soldiers war criminals, Tim Russert confronted him with a 1972 clip of himself calling vietnam soldiers war criminals'

seems to be clearly wrong from looking at the transcript, since Russert showed him the clip first and then asked him if he stood by it. Nor does it correctly reflect the statement Howell Raines made.

If one believes that the entire editorial staff on the WSJ is leftist and Democratic, while most of the editorial staff is Republican, then you would have to explain why the editorial staff (which after all, does select their reporters) would select only leftists and Democrats. You'd also have to explain how this New Comintern organ manages to sell to (generally) conservative businessmen -- surely not only on the basis of its editorial page ?

Incidentally, the WSJ's publisher praised all his news staff a few months back for their fact-checking and through reportage, as well as their willingness to immediatedly print corrections or retractions to errors. He made no such comment about the editorial page, which is itself telling :-).

I believe that Kerry actually served more than 4 months in Vietnam. He had 2 tours of duty, the first one lasting 5 months, the second one lasting 4-5 months.

Plunker, I'm pretty sure you're in error; he served one tour, and was rotated out after his third purple heart. Thus, the controversy over whether the first purple heart was self inflicted.

The editorial flks at the WSJ are as Republican as the day is long. I was referring only to the news people.

Mayank: As far as I know, the editorial staff of the paper does not much discretion over the hiring of news reporters. That is the job of the news editor. The editorial staff selects columnists for the editorial page, and does so with the expectation that they will bring a certain viewpoint to that portion of the paper.

The publisher's lack of comment regarding the accuracy and honesty of The Wall Street Joural's editorial page when he praised the paper's news staff means nothing. He was probably responding to the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg scandals at The New York Times, but those episodes involved NEWS REPORTERS, not editorial page writers or columnists.

He didn't feel the need to mention Journal's editorial page people because the scandal that started it all involved inaccurate and dishonest NEWS REPORTING, which is an entirely different animal from editorial page writing.

Jane:

I don't think that's right. I think the confusion may be that he was in Vietnam for four/five months, but on tour off the shore of Vietnam for four odd months as well.

It's not a perfect source, but it's quick and dirty, which is what I have time for at the moment.

"He served two tours of duty, four months on the USS Gridley frigate off Vietnam's shore and nearly five months as a swiftboat commander in the Mekong Delta. He volunteered for the second tour and earned all his medals during the second stint."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/20/205254.shtml

(I include the MSNBC source only because the other one is NewsMax, which I gather is like a cheaper Faux News).

"Kerry defended his own antiwar activism, which began after he returned from two tours of duty in Vietnam, as 'honorable and in the best values and traditions of America, and I'm proud of that.'"

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4846266/

Whatever. He put in more serious time than Bush, who may have risked serious injury from falling off a bar stool, but not much else.

"...did someone above mention that Vietnamization worked? Is that why there is a North and South Vietnam today?"

No requirement at U of Chicago for reading comprehension? I specifically explained that the reason we don't have a North and South Vietnam is that after the South successfully defeated an incursion of 200,000 Communist troops in 1972, American politicians (and would-be politicians) handed the South to the North on a silver platter.

One of those people responsible was John Kerry. That's the real "lesson of Vietnam". Do we really want him to have a second chance with Islamic terrorism?

"I think the confusion may be that he was in Vietnam for four/five months, but on tour off the shore of Vietnam for four odd months as well."

His first "tour" was a cruise of the Pacific. During which the Gridley stopped at ports in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Vietnam, and New Zealand. And even Doug Brinkley admits that the Gridley wasn't in any real danger of being attacked while cruising off the shores of Vietnam.

"His first "tour" was a cruise of the Pacific. During which the Gridley stopped at ports in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Vietnam, and New Zealand. And even Doug Brinkley admits that the Gridley wasn't in any real danger of being attacked while cruising off the shores of Vietnam."

Well, gosh, not all of us can serve heroically in protecting Okhlahoma and Texas from invasion while getting our teeth cleaned.

Kerry had 2 tours of duty. He may have not been in much real danger, but it was still very much a miltary tour of duty in a military ship in a combat zone. I wonder if you would call a navy crewman who served in GulfWar I or II as participating in "cruises", after all they were no danger of being attacked by the non-existent Iraqi navy or its buried air force.

In his second tour of duty, Kerry took on a very dangeous duty, and served heroically. Even if there is some question over his first purple heart, his other 2 purple hearts, and his silver star and bronze star are undisputed, as his is heroism and courage under fire. Trying to diminish it clearly indicates the bankdruptcy of your argument.

'No requirement at U of Chicago for reading comprehension? I specifically explained that the reason we don't have a North and South Vietnam is that after the South successfully defeated an incursion of 200,000 Communist troops in 1972, American politicians (and would-be politicians) handed the South to the North on a silver platter. One of those people responsible was John Kerry. '

Who was President in 1972 ? Was it John Kerry ? Gee no, it was someone called Nixon.

And whatever may be taught at UofC, clearly, UofC graduates learn far less revisionist history than you seem to have.

The reason we don't have a North and South Vietnam is that the basic idea for the war (the domino theory in SouthEast Asia) was dubious at best. The notion of Communism spreading out from Vietnam turned out to be a chimera (even the Pol Pot regime was later overthrown by the Vietnamese communists). Our allies (the corrupt government in South Vietnam) were only marginally better than the VietCong, if at all.

The actual fall of the South Vietnamese regime didn't happen till late 1974/1975. That was well after Kerry had stopped protesting politically. Certainly Gerald Ford could have tried doing what Nixon did in 1972 (carry out massive bombing of Hanoi to force the North to stop).

But there has to be a solid, winnable political objective for a war, not just bloody-mindedness ("I don't want to tbe first American President to lose a war"). Also, something that post-hoc-warhawks tend to forget is the devastating impact that Vietnam had on the draft army, on morale, on officer training. As professional soliders have pointed out, it took the US army till 1980 or so to recover from the effect of Vietnam and to rebuild the officer corps.

'That's the real "lesson of Vietnam". '

Maybe to people living on the Bizarro world.

2 US Presidents: Johnson and Nixon, concluded that the war was not really winnable. Our real enemy was not just communism, but Vietnamese nationalism, a far harder force to fight (and which communism had successfully co-opted). The basic rationale for the war was dubious.

The real military lesson from Vietnam can be summed up by the Powell doctrine. Have clearly defined military and political objectives, go in with overwhelming force, have a clear exit strategy.

OT, but:

Bush, who may have risked serious injury from falling off a bar stool, but not much else

F-102s were dangerous aircraft. Period. People died in training accidents.

And I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the importance of fighter-interceptors doing interdiction duty over North America while the Cold War was in full swing.

Back on topic: Kerry was terribly sloppy in his assertion that war crimes in Viet Nam were quotidian -- "on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." His little schtick about how America "has created a monster in the millions of men taught to deal in violence" remains galling to my Vet uncles, too. They didn't appreciated being tarred as ticking timebombs.

Finally I think I have every right to question the vision of a man who said in the early '70s that "we cannot fight Communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now." How many millions would he have condemned to live in Communist prison-states if his views had held sway?

"Even if there is some question over his first purple heart, his other 2 purple hearts, and his silver star and bronze star are undisputed, as his is heroism and courage under fire. Trying to diminish it clearly indicates the bankdruptcy of your argument."

I invite the author of the above emotional diatribe to provide a quote where I am guilty of "trying to diminish" Kerry's "courage under fire"

"Who was President in 1972 ? Was it John Kerry ? Gee no, it was someone called Nixon."

DUH!. That was my point. In 1972, when our side was clearly winning the war by driving the Northern invaders back (and killing some 100,000 by some reports), it was Nixon's strategy responsible. The Communists seemed to agree that they were losing, since they relieved their hero Gen. Giap from command after the debacle.

" The reason we don't have a North and South Vietnam is that the basic idea for the war (the domino theory in SouthEast Asia) was dubious at best."

Odd that you then follow with the following admission that the Communists DID topple the dominoes:

"The notion of Communism spreading out from Vietnam turned out to be a chimera (even the Pol Pot regime was later overthrown by the Vietnamese communists)."

Quite a syllogist you are:

Major Premise: Communism spread to Cambodia.
Minor Premise: Vietnamese Communists toppled Cambodian Communists.

Conclusion: Spreading Communism was a chimera.

And you haven't even mentioned Laos yet!

"Our allies (the corrupt government in South Vietnam) were only marginally better than the VietCong, if at all."

Which claim would seem to be belied by the millions of people who fled when the Communists took over the South.

"The actual fall of the South Vietnamese regime didn't happen till late 1974/1975."

April of 1975 (again, that was my point). After Congress had prohibitted Gerald Ford from calling in the B-52s to assist our allies. Even prohibitted our sending them arms.

" That was well after Kerry had stopped protesting politically."

Of course, what did he have to protest in 1975? His (and Ted Kennedy's) side was winning then. Unlike in 1971, when WE were winning.

" Certainly Gerald Ford could have tried doing what Nixon did in 1972 (carry out massive bombing of Hanoi to force the North to stop)."

No, he was prohibitted by law from doing that. AS I TOLD YOU. Thanks to Ted Kennedy, Frank Church, Clifford Case and other friends of JFK II.

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