Do you really get all your history from Howard Zinn? What was John Adams, a dogcatcher? Forget the Sedition Act – Abraham Lincoln must have closed half the newspapers in the North at one time or another. Try this Google search. Or this Wikipedia page. And don’t even start me on FDR.

I don’t know where you’re getting your history from, Yves. But I think you really ought to consider switching providers.

I am not saying that the Washington Times, the John Birch Society, the ARVN, Commentary, ExxonMobil, etc, are purveyors of nothing but the pure, sweet truth. If only it were as easy as that! What I’m saying is that all these stories have about fifteen sides, and you are barely getting one.

Um, where do you think they got their arms from? Bolivia? Sure, many were shipped directly from the Soviet Union.

When McNamara managed to arrange to meet his old enemies (I believe over a dinner in Hanoi), it was very awkward and the worst moment was when he mentioned the role of the Chinese in supporting the Vietnamese. His hosts nearly jumped across the table, furious. They said that that showed how little the US knew about Vietnam. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese, who had been occupiers, and were not going to put themselves in a position to be under their thumb again.

I love that “had been occupiers.” Yeah, what – 500 years ago?

As La Wik puts it:

“From at least 1965 onwards, both China and the Soviet Union provided aid to North Vietnam in support of its military activities.”

Of course, Wikipedia is a hotbed of Birchers. You can’t trust it at all.

Here’s a simpler explanation: the Hoists and the Maoists were both a bunch of Orwellian gangsters. They worked together for a while. Then they fell out. They were mad at McNamara because he was saying that Eastasia had not always been at war with Oceania.

He was also assigned for two weeks to a platoon that was sent into a VC controlled area (Rach Ken) to demonstrate that the US could take and pacify such an areas. He was with them at all times, took and (despite his civilian standing) returned fire.

He returned fire! Yeah, so did Michael Yon.

Ellsberg is to Bob Hope as the people who were actually running the war were to Ellsberg.

Any reports of VC presence or absence came from the same South Vietnamese government that had consistently demonstrated a pattern of lying in order to maintain our sponsorship, so I take the claim that South Vietnam was pacified as of 1972 with a pound of salt.

Really? You don’t think there were any Americans in Vietnam between 1972 and 1975? All those Times reporters, all those State people, whom you trust the way a Catholic trusts the Pope, they just went home? Talk about the dog that didn’t bark.

Think about what you know about the Vietnam War. Think about how much of it predates 1969. Ask yourself why.

As for your belief that the government is controlled by the press, that is delusional.

Really? Because you go on for several miles about the press’s misdeeds, I assume you at least agree that the press is very influential. Otherwise, why would you care? I’ll also give you the credit of assuming you read that Tony Blair speech.

The question is then: who has the most influence over what appears in the press? Gee, let me guess: (a) journalists? (b) Punch Sulzberger? (c) the White House? (d) the Freemasons, Skull & Bones, etc?

Occam’s razor, people.

I live in San Francisco and am a regular reader of the SF Bay Guardian, which is about as Maoist as it gets these days.

As for “vote scrubbing,” I heard about it constantly. But maybe this was just SF osmosis.

Which do you consider worse: “vote scrubbing” (removing felons from the voter rolls) or the addition of illegal voters to the rolls? Is it worse to drop a legal voter, or add an illegal one? Why? How much of the latter do you think is going on, which party do you think is responsible, and when was the last time your beloved press mentioned it to you?

As for Communism, I will have to agree – I get a very Pravda feeling off our official press. But not in the same way.

There are two kinds of Orwellian state: in one, the government controls the press, and in the other it’s the other way around. In both cases, the two are permanently and irrevocably on the same page. Whether or not you agree that our system is actually a case of the second type, I hope you’ll agree that they are both creepy as hell.

You are at risk here. The extreme, utter baloney you’re peddling with your credulous promotion of ideological revisionism will, if it continues to characterize your comments, lead readers to skip your entries.

You’re branding yourself. And, the brand, unfortunately, announces this: Ideological, fact free, manure. Not worth the time.

It’s easy to attack Ellsberg when you have no regard for facts. Oh, and BTW, the Pentagon Papers were first published in the Times, which was then subject to a temporary restraining order (the first time any Administration had tried to challenge the freedom of the press). the the Post, then the Boston Globe and the St. Louis Dispatch. Twenty papers ran installments, of which four were enjoined.

Ellsberg had been a Marine rifle company commander. He was in Vietnam 20 months, and unlike almost every other American, traveled almost entirely by car (the norm was helicopter). He visited every province, and in some provinces, traveled every passable road, often on routes considered to be dangerous. This was twenty months of on the ground fact-gathering that sometimes put him in physical danger.

He was originally there for the DOD under Landsdale, but based on his reputation for fieldwork, Deputy Ambassador Porter wanted him to make an independent assessment of the ARVN, and so he was reassigned to State.

He was also assigned for two weeks to a platoon that was sent into a VC controlled area (Rach Ken) to demonstrate that the US could take and pacify such an areas. He was with them at all times, took and (despite his civilian standing) returned fire.

And you compare this to a Bob Hope visit?

When Ellsberg reviewed the ARVN operations, he found a consistent pattern dating back to Diem and continued under the junta of considerably exaggerating their degree of control of the countryside. The ARVN also had a nasty habit of torching hamlets suspected of harboring VCs. This had no effect on the VC, who simply left, and alienated the population against the government.

Any reports of VC presence or absence came from the same South Vietnamese government that had consistently demonstrated a pattern of lying in order to maintain our sponsorship, so I take the claim that South Vietnam was pacified as of 1972 with a pound of salt.

As for Herman’s article, I note he claims that Ho Chi Minh was an ally of the Chinese. When McNamara managed to arrange to meet his old enemies (I believe over a dinner in Hanoi), it was very awkward and the worst moment was when he mentioned the role of the Chinese in supporting the Vietnamese. His hosts nearly jumped across the table, furious. They said that that showed how little the US knew about Vietnam. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese, who had been occupiers, and were not going to put themselves in a position to be under their thumb again.

I’m not so naive to believe that they didn’t barter intelligence and favors around the margin, but the two governments were not allied.

As for your belief that the government is controlled by the press, that is delusional.

How, pray tell, do you explain the fact that vote scrubbing in Florida in the 2000 election was reported widely in the UK? This was during that period when the outcome was in play. Yet the press that I am certain you believe is overly liberal didn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

And the math is compelling: at least 90,000 black votes scrubbed. 90,000 x 30% turnout x 90% propensity of blacks to vote Democrat = 27,000 more votes for Gore, far more than the hanging chads at issue.

Similarly, I was in Australia during the run-up to the Iraq war and during the war. Virtually daily, stories would run there, in prime time news, that were either not reported in the US (I would e-mail friends to tell them) or buried in the back pages of the newspaper.

We do not have a free press in this country, Friends of mine who lived in Eastern Europe when it was Communist and know what a controlled press looks like say the same thing.

What happened is that there were two factions within DoD – the actual military (who wanted to fight a normal war against North Vietnam, a weak and easily defeatable adversary), who were Republicans, Birchers, etc; and McNamara’s people, the wonks, who wanted to try out the preposterous and unrealistic ideas of graduated conflict they had developed at places like RAND. (You’ve heard of “mark-to-model.” This was “war-by-model.”)

When the wonks’ limited war failed to achieve the results their theories were predicting, they shifted to plan B: the war was militarily unwinnable. Because the North Vietnamese were fanatical supermen, or whatever. Thus, they were not at fault for preventing the military from winning it.

In order to shop this line, they constructed a study to fit the result. When the military, quite rightly as it later turned out, ignored them, they fought back by leaking their study to the press.

This is something that happens every fifteen minutes in DC.
At least, it is standard operating procedure now. Perhaps less so in the day. But it was especially unusual at the time, because the study was marked “Top Secret.” Under, say, FDR, Ellsberg would have spent the rest of his life in Leavenworth.

When the Supreme Court failed to enjoin publication of the PPs, they came to no legal conclusion about whether the offence could be prosecuted. But it never was. Why?

Because the Court, in reality, was deciding who was stronger: the Times or the US military. I certainly am no under illusions that the latter is perfect. But neither is the former. DC is a world of power, not hugs and kisses and puppy dogs and “change.”

The result of this power play was the current precedent that no secrets are off-limits to the Times and the Post. Which allows them to more or less run the government. But perhaps you won’t believe it from me – in that case, try it from Tony Blair.

I was wrong about one thing, actually, which you don’t mention: the PPs were leaked to the Times, not the Post. Not that it matters.

Ellsberg had been a soldier, He was a Marine. a company commander for two years.

“Had been.” Listen to the spin. This is coming out of your own mouth. You are so brilliantly skeptical on financial matters, and so utterly credulous on everything else.

Ellsberg was a veteran, but not a soldier (or a sailor). He was a civilian in OSD, in McNamara’s policy shop. He was one of the DoD “whiz kids,’ with people like Alain Enthoven, etc. These were the people who thought they could beat North Vietnam with game theory and body counts. If anyone was responsible for the screwups, they were.

Yeah. He visited the troops. So did Bob Hope.

None of these Harvard types was in any way part of the organizational chain responsible for the war. They were not, in other words, military commanders. What they had was guanxi with people like Neil Sheehan.

Am I saying Westmoreland was perfect? Heck, no. (Though Abrams was a lot closer.) But to suggest that this glorified management consultant – who, considering his “hard left” connections, was probably not too many degrees of separation from the actual people who were actually fighting against American troops – knew more about the war than its actual commanders, reflects a level of antimilitarism that defies belief.

Similarly, what he leaked was not his own work, it was a compilation. I forget the circumstances under which Ellsberg came to have access to it, but his role in producing it was minor.

Here is a good summary of the creation of the PPs. Ellsberg was special assistant to McNaughton, whose project it was.

(Disclaimer: my stepfather, who certainly does not endorse these or any of my opinions, was a student and protege of McGeorge Bundy, one of McNaughton’s cronies.)

Finally, I don’t know how you can say US defeated the FLN and NVA. Yes, we won the Tet offensive, but it was so ferocious compared to what the US military had led the public to believe re the weakness of the enemy that it wound up serving their ends.

You didn’t even click on the link I posted, did you? You probably looked at the source and thought “Commentary bad, New York Review of Books good,” like a good servant of the powerful. An attitude which, I hasten to reiterate, does not mar your financial reporting at all.

From Herman:

As we have seen, however, the withdrawal had actually been under way since 1969; by August 1972, there were no more U.S. combat forces left in Vietnam and a year later there were no U.S. military personnel at all. The reason, in Sorley’s words, was that by then “the South Vietnamese countryside had been widely pacified, so much so that the term ‘pacification’ was no longer even used.” Once again, this was not the picture presented by the media, to Congress, or to the American public.

Are you saying that there were US combat forces in Vietnam between 1972 and 1975? Or that the Viet Cong (NLF) were not defeated? If so, these are some of the best kept secrets in history.

You write:

Rand interviews of NVA prisoners were like none others they had conducted, including those during WWII, North Korea, and various Cold War skirmishes. They concluded that the Vietnamese, unlike other opponents, could not be coerced. The only way to defeat then would be to exterminate them, and given their integration into the Vietnamese population, that meant exterminating the Vietnamese, which was not a viable course of action. It took the Vietnamese 100 years to expel the Chinese, but they succeeded. Few populations have that sort of tenacity.

Yup. This is exactly the sort of material that appeared in the Pentagon Papers.

Did it turn out to be true? See the above.

Did it make any sense whatsoever? Weren’t the Germans and Japanese a little fanatical, too? Did the US Army have to exterminate them? Listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. They are cant, drivel, propaganda. They are not worthy of your keen and skeptical mind.

When you do financial reporting, do you ascribe infinite credibility to the WSJ, the FT, the NYT? Heck, no. You mock them on a regular basis, and this is as it should be. But somehow, you accept their first drafts of history, published 40 years ago and never revised, as if they came straight from the Vatican. I just don’t get it.

To be honest, both fantasies make be really sick!

I think it’s both the skill set and the ideology of the Republicans, frankly. They don’t believe in the competence of government, and they don’t “do” competence in government, either.

I don’t know where you get your information from, it is just about entirely wrong. Ellsberg had been a soldier, He was a Marine. a company commander for two years.

When Kissinger became head of the NSC, he interviewed Ellsberg. Ellsberg was recommended to Kissinger precisely because Ellsberg WAS considered to be the most knowledgeable person re Vietnam.

When with the he was with Department of State and the DOD in Vietnam, unlike the vast majority of operatives, he spent a substantial amount of time in the field, often at considerable physical risk. He not only joined some platoons as a supposed observer, actually wound up having to give guidance to the commander as he was about to take actions that would have exposed his troops to fire. Ellsberg also wound up taking up arms and acting as a member of the troop.

Similarly, what he leaked was not his own work, it was a compilation. I forget the circumstances under which Ellsberg came to have access to it, but his role in producing it was minor. However, by virtue of having the highest level of security clearances, he was one of the few who had access to all the documents. Per Wikipedia:

The study was commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. McNamara appointed Leslie Gelb, director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Pentagon, to oversee the project. Gelb hired 36 military officers, civilian policy experts, and historians to write the monographs that constituted the content of the project. The ‘Papers’ included 4,000 pages of actual documents from the 1945–67 period.

Again from Wikipedia, this re Ellsberg:

He further believed that nearly everyone in the Defense and State Departments felt, as he did, that the United States had no realistic chance of achieving victory in Vietnam, but that political considerations prevented them from saying so publicly.

Finally, I don’t know how you can say US defeated the FLN and NVA. Yes, we won the Tet offensive, but it was so ferocious compared to what the US military had led the public to believe re the weakness of the enemy that it wound up serving their ends.

Rand interviews of NVA prisoners were like none others they had conducted, including those during WWII, North Korea, and various Cold War skirmishes. They concluded that the Vietnamese, unlike other opponents, could not be coerced. The only way to defeat then would be to exterminate them, and given their integration into the Vietnamese population, that meant exterminating the Vietnamese, which was not a viable course of action. It took the Vietnamese 100 years to expel the Chinese, but they succeeded. Few populations have that sort of tenacity.

It’s an astounding feat of revisionist history to call Ellsberg “the best informed person in the US” about the Vietnam War. He wasn’t even a soldier, for cripes sake! It’s like saying that Gil Amelio was the best informed person in Cupertino about the System 7 scheduler.

Ellsberg was a civilian staffer at OSD. He wrote and compiled a set of documents that said the US military could not defeat the FLN and NVA. No one listened. So he leaked his own work illegally to the Post, opening our present era of government by journalist. And look at the wonderful results!

Later, the US military defeated the FLN and NVA. Hardly anyone knows. Hardly anyone cares. Welcome to Ingsoc. If at first you don’t succeed, just lie and say you did.

The rest of the post is good, though…