Results 1 to 23 of 23

Thread: Anybody else watching the PBS Vietnam War special?

  1. #1

    Anybody else watching the PBS Vietnam War special?

    Part 5 just aired. It resumes on Sunday night with Part 6.

    There's some very riveting interview footage and other footage.

    Short interview excerpts:


    Short interview excerpts from multiple people, 2 1/2 minutes
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR3jOYzZCnM


    Karl Marlantes, US Marine vet
    60 second video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoWUwFv1-cU


    30 second video North Vietnamese soldier (they insert his name in the show)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWRGPZkATlE


    30 second video S Vietnamese marine (they insert his name in the show)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywlp0hru5pI


    Conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, February 1964
    2 1/2 minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myWfWk1IQrw
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members



  2. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  3. #2
    They use this footage in the show.


    Lyndon Johnson Expresses Doubts About Vietnam War (2min) tv-pg

    Speaking to his special assistant for national security, McGeorge Bundy, in a May 27, 1964, recorded telephone conversation, President Lyndon B. Johnson expresses his worry that the war in Vietnam is turning into another Korea.
    http://www.history.com/speeches/lynd...ut-vietnam-war


    Partial text:

    Washington, May 27, 1964, 11:24 a.m.

    [Here follows discussion of the Seaborn mission to Hanoi and plans for Ambassador Stevenson to meet with the President.]

    Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I donʼt know what in the hell, it looks like to me that weʼre getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I donʼt see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once weʼre committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I donʼt think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I donʼt think itʼs worth fighting for and I donʼt think we can get out. And itʼs just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.

    Bundy: It is an awful mess.

    Johnson: And we just got to think about it. Iʼm looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and heʼs got 6 little old kids over there, and heʼs getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? Weʼve got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and theyʼre not doing a thing about it.

    Bundy: Yeah, yeah.

    Johnson: Of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.

    Bundy: Yeah, thatʼs the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. Thatʼs the dilemma, thatʼs exactly the dilemma.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  4. #3
    JFK discusses Diem and S Vietnamese support with Walter Cronkite, September 1963
    90 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSjTNpyJMUo

    John McCain interviewed as POW, 1967
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhXCc3X0KTw

    JFK dictates audio memo after Diem's assassination, Nov 4 1963. Kennedy, himself, would be assassinated less than three weeks later.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQX4cBV5Kfw
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  5. #4
    Obviously you have been watching it. What is your opinion thus far? Would you be willing to provide a brief summary? Do you have to watch it when initially aired or are they repeating episodes?
    Last edited by Schifference; 09-23-2017 at 04:52 AM.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Schifference View Post
    Obviously you have been watching it. What is your opinion thus far? Would you be willing to provide a brief summary? Do you have to watch it when initially aired or are they repeating episodes?
    Likely for people that never lived through it.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Schifference View Post
    Obviously you have been watching it. What is your opinion thus far? Would you be willing to provide a brief summary? Do you have to watch it when initially aired or are they repeating episodes?

    There are plenty of repeats and various ways to watch (see here: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-viet...r/watch/#clips).

    Episodes are presented chronologically. I missed the first one, but you don't (of course) need to watch these consecutively to follow it. There are many interviews from various people and perspectives. The first link I posted is just a tiny sample of the different points of view.

    There is plenty of original footage. They skillfully intersperse recreation with actual footage. A big focus is the detail of individual battles, including many satellite maps. If you like military history, then the show is definitely for you. There is however, a lot of other kinds of history: political, social, cultural, etc. The show, again, approaches the subject from many different angles.

    I think the show is very well done. It's different from other shows on the same subject because it's more in-depth (18 hours) and very, very thoughtful. I know people don't always like public television and its producers, but the quality is there. I don't like certain things about PBS and its creators, but it's not an either/or proposition. For example, I find the PBS animal show Nature second-to-one. The Vietnam War series follows this lead in that they let the audience actually reflect on what they're watching. This is opposed to other shows that hurry through the dialogue and speed through the footage. The narrator of the Vietnam series is very crisp and clear. The script he reads is outstanding. I am actually coming away with a different perspective.

    Ha ha; I guess I should be a salesman for this show, but that's how much I like it. Here is the website description of this Sunday night's episode:

    Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968)
    On the eve of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks throughout the south, suffering devastating losses but casting grave doubt on Johnson's promise that there is "light at the end of the tunnel." The president decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest.
    http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-viet...h/#clipsountry
    Last edited by NorthCarolinaLiberty; 09-23-2017 at 04:36 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  8. #7
    A couple more outstanding 30 second videos:



    "Profound sense of humanity"
    "A Viet Cong soldier realizes his American enemy is not unlike his own countrymen."

    30 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55jBuIWTmzY


    Here's one where a mother is having a conversation with the post office worker.

    "A mother wonders how she'll be informed if her son is injured in combat."
    30 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mKqED4sjfE
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  9. #8
    "The Fear Went Away"
    "A navy pilot describes being shot down on his first combat mission."
    30 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1cIfTPkhXg
    Last edited by NorthCarolinaLiberty; 09-23-2017 at 04:50 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members



  10. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  11. #9
    "Shot Right Here"
    "A South Vietnamese soldier is shot but fights on."
    30 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywlp0hru5pI
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  12. #10
    "Expanding The Draft"
    "With the Vietnam War ramping up, college students begin to worry about the draft."

    30 seconds:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D5OqG2RDuU
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  13. #11
    America’s amnesia

    Thomas A. Bass

    They don't want anybody copying/pasting.... https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/
    "The Patriarch"

  14. #12
    I really had no expectations about the show digging into detailed causes of the conflict. They did not do it with The Civil War series. I view these docu-drams as somewhere between actual history and a movie. You take it for what it is, and supplement with other sources.


    I've been looking at the Pentagon Papers. Here's a couple of passages that refer to the opium trade.

    Page 4 of this document discusses the "French controlled monopolies on salt, alcohol, and opium..." The next page (5) discusses Binh Xuyen, the gang that evolved from the Black Flag pirates. The CIA agent, Edward Lansdale, cited how the gang's leader, Le Van Bay Vien, colluded with the French and Bao Dai to control gambling and prostitution. He ran an opium factory and ran a distribution system.
    https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws....art-IV-A-5.pdf

    Here is a Truman administration document discussing Vietnam. There is a section discussing foreign trade, part of which reads: "The central government has derived its chief income from custom fees, excise taxes and monopolies, of which the opium monopoly is the most lucrative." (page 185)
    [Part V. B. 2. a.] Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Truman Administration. Volume I: 1945 - 1949
    https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws....art-V-B-2a.pdf
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  15. #13
    I have a cousin (Mom's side),, that went to Vietnam after we left.

    She teaches school, or did last I knew.. And a Local Theater group.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  16. #14

    Selling a Bill of Goods on PBS about the Vietnam War

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09...e-vietnam-war/

    SEPTEMBER 26, 2017 by HOWARD LISNOFF

    Burns and Novick want viewers to believe that the Vietnam War was a mistake undertaken by those with noble intentions in the U.S. government. We had good intentions going into Vietnam, but The Vietnam War, which aired on PBS, would like viewers to believe that the grotesque consequences of that war… millions dead and wounded… were never really intended. They were in the vernacular, unintended consequences of men with good intentions.

    It’s the same kind of justification and rationalization that then secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made in The Fog of War and it’s all bull$#@! plain and simple. These opinion molders want people to believe that we occasionally stumble on the way to the nirvana that is American Exceptionalism and national purity.

    But they didn’t stumble and we are most certainly not exceptional. If readers want to gauge how unexceptional our “leaders” are, then look to Trump and Congress and their neoliberal facilitators. The duopoly planned the anti-communist crusade from the beginning of the Cold War until there were so many dead bodies and so much protest that the government had to walk away. It wasn’t a matter of dollars and cents, as some would like readers to believe, as this predatory system leaves lots of spare pocket change to throw away on immoral wars.

    Here’s student/civil rights leader Mario Savio, of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, only a few short months before the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson carte blanche in waging his genocidal, anti-communist crusade in Southeast Asia.

    There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!

    Those in power and their talking heads have to sanitize their past wars to make new wars palatable. Mass murder is not the natural or normal state of humankind. George Orwell grasped this concept in 1984 when his character Winston is tortured because of his individualism and humanism, and at the end of the novel he’ll say anything that the government wants him to and that includes rewriting history to agree to whichever foreign enemy the government targets. It’s the same hogwash that the neofascists and neo-Nazis are pumping out from the Trump administration in support of the trillions of dollars being stolen by the military-industrial complex. Trillions of dollars that otherwise could go to unmet human needs.

    In relation to how the Vietnam War is portrayed, the left has not been asleep at the wheel. On the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, people like the late protester, politician, and writer, Tom Hayden, spearheaded an attempt to correctly document the Vietnam War in the face of the Pentagon’s propaganda.

    The group Veterans for Peace has produced the resource Vietnam: Full Disclosure to tell the truth about what the U.S. carnage was all about in Vietnam. Full Disclosure takes its rightful place in a long line of history like that disseminated by Daniel Ellsberg in the The Pentagon Papers.

    This from VFP’s Vietnam Full Disclosure:

    Despite the counter-cultural veneer, however, and admirable efforts to provide a Vietnamese perspective, Burns and Novick’s film in its first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak and can be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial. (“Ken Burns’s Vietnam Documentary Promotes Misleading History,” Veterans For Peace, September 18, 2017).

    Full Disclosure continues: “A voice-over by Peter Coyote subsequently claims that the Vietnam War was ‘started in good faith by decent men.’”

    Go to the primary and secondary sources about the war: there are enough volumes to fill a medium-size library on the war. View the 1971 Winter Soldier testimonials of Vietnam veterans in Chicago and their testimony before the U.S. Congress. Read Born on The Fourth Of July by Ron Kovic, A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan, A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, Dispatches by Michael Kerr, Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow, and Four Hours in My Lai by Michael Bilton, among the many illuminating volumes of writing about the carefully planned catastrophe that was the Vietnam War.

    These books will illuminate how colonialism by France and anti-communism on the part of the U.S. and its allies led to the thwarting of the Geneva Accords that called for free elections in Vietnam. They will tell how the U.S. backed murderous and unpopular regimes that tore Vietnam apart for 30 years until North Vietnam drove the forces of the South to defeat. The U.S. knew that Ho Chi Minh, leader of the North, would have won the election mandated by the Accords.

    Read about the atrocities that took place in My Lai and by the rogue Tiger Force and numerous other examples of war crimes in which the military took part. The latter does not mean that a majority of soldiers took part in atrocities, but enough did to make atrocities the hallmark of the Vietnam War. Military training was fine-tuned to cast the Vietnamese people as “gooks” and “Charlie,” thus dehumanizing them and facilitating their slaughter.

    Read to learn how untold numbers of veterans were thrown into the apparatus of the Veterans Administration and how the care many of those veterans received was shameful.

    Learn about how tens of thousands of men and women sought refuge and sanctuary from the war in places like Canada and Sweden, where thousands remain today. Learn how the American Veterans of Foreign Wars led a campaign in 2004 to deny the people of Canada the right to erect a monument to the heroic acts of war resistance in their country by war resisters.

    Dig into the history of the defoliant Agent Orange to learn how both the Vietnamese people and U.S. veterans were made to suffer the dreadful and deadly consequences of its use during the war.

    Pay attention to how the Trump administration’s militarists have expanded contemporary warfare (“‘Blank Check to Kill With Impunity’: Trump to Quietly Slap Drone Restrictions,” Common Dreams, September 22, 2017). Then pay close attention when documentary makers try to sell the public a bill of goods and pass off mass atrocities and immorality as simply being careless mistakes that were carried out by well-intentioned leaders. Those “good” intentions took place during the Vietnam War and they’re taking place today. They threaten the life of every living being on Earth.

    The antiwar movement has been largely inactive in the first months of the Trump administration despite the fact that this is the most bellicose administration, with the exception of the administration of George W. Bush, since the Vietnam War. Although Senator Bernie Sanders gave a speech that addressed war and the military-industrial complex at Westminster College on September 21, 2017, it wandered into assertions about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, an issue that only serves to further deteriorate relations between Russia and the U.S., and in fact feeds the very military-industrial complex that Sanders criticized in his speech.

    The antiwar movement suffered self-inflicted wounds when it caught the faux hope and change rhetoric of the Obama administration and largely left the expansion of drone warfare, including targeting U.S. citizens for death without due process of the law, while expanding war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Perhaps it was narrow self-interest, ignorance, and the effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks that were at play here, but society-wide malaise may be another factor for this inaction. Perhaps war is so prevalent and unreported that it became an excepted part of life in the U.S. Only a small segment of the population fight U.S. wars and it is almost never the man or woman next door or in a community as it was during the Vietnam War.

    Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Black Panther Party leader Jamil Abdullah Al- Amin (a.k.a. H. Rap Brown) said “violence is as American as cherry pie.” It is also as American as apple pie. Now, we face the prospect of the very real threat of Armageddon because the far right has placed a bellicose moron in the White House.

  17. #15
    Insiders nicknamed it "Cardinal Spellman's War" <--- (Google that) ................... For good reason


  18. #16
    Yeah, been watching... brought back memories of when I was in high school & would tune in to the news coverage... & yes, they would report the body count, hence the kill ratio... went on for years... made me wonder why it never seemed close to ending. I got my draft notice just before they we pulled out & ended the draft... had premonitions of going & not coming back. What the hell ever happened to the anti-war spirit of that era?

    Last edited by shakey1; 09-27-2017 at 09:23 AM.

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows



  19. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by shakey1 View Post
    What the hell ever happened to the anti-war spirit of that era?
    The government learned not to allow body bags to be shown on TV.

  21. #18
    How were the media critics of the show criticizing a program that hadn't even aired? As far as I can tell, these critics were not people who got advanced screenings. And there are still two more episodes that haven't even aired.

    Other critics are being disingenuous. For example, this Tulsa University professor says in his critique of the show: "Despite the counter-cultural veneer, however, and admirable efforts to provide a Vietnamese perspective, Burns and Novick’s film in its first episode provides conventional analysis about the war’s outbreak and can be understood as a sophisticated exercise in empire denial." (http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagela...61bd05b0b.html).

    The problem with those words is they're not even from the professor. You can see that he lifted the words that are in the Counterpunch article (post #14 in this thread), which came from the Veterans for Peace website. The Tulsa professor does not even credit the words and passes them off as his own.

    The same Counterpunch article suggests that audiences check out more reliable sources like A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan and A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo. Those two guys are actually on the PBS show giving extensive interviews. The PBS Vietnam War web page actually suggests those two books in their additional reading list (see here: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-viet.../reading-list/).

    The show actually does discuss many things claimed not discussed in the show. They discuss My Lai and Tiger Force. They discuss the Geneva Accords. They discuss Ike's knowledge about how Ho would win 80% of the vote, therefore it was necessary to stop him. They discuss Diem and other puppets, and specifically use the word "puppet" many multiple times They discuss the lies of Johnson, JFK, and Nixon, and I heard them specifically use the word "lie." They discuss the military's dehumanization techniques. The show not only cites the word "gook" used in the Counterpunch article, they also cites words like "slope" and "dink." The show discusses a lot of other things critics claim aren't even in the show. And, the program is loaded with primary source footage. If one is unwittingly influenced by context, then that is the fault of the nonthinking viewer.

    Criticisms of the show are certainly fair. I don't much care for the bill of goods in the local companion Jacksonville, North Carolina (location of Camp Lejeune) show. I am not watching that and I think criticisms of that angle are fair. Any criticism however, should at least be accurate criticisms based on the actual content. I don't even much care for Ken Burns, but it seems to me some of the criticisms are disingenuous and/or from people who are just parroting what they heard without watching the show.
    Last edited by NorthCarolinaLiberty; 09-27-2017 at 12:44 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  22. #19
    I think a lot of young people would actually benefit from watching this show. They have so many misconceptions about today's military. I'm on Yahoo Answers Military (https://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index/...?sid=396545449). I sometimes answer high school kids and college students seeking to join the military for reasons that appear misguided to me. I hear reasons like this for wanting to enlist or commission (paraphrased):

    I want to help people
    I want to serve
    I want to do something bigger than myself
    I want the MOS (military job) that helps build villages, schools, and churches
    I want to see combat
    I want to fight for freedom
    I want to fight with my brothers
    I want camaraderie
    I want to get discipline
    I want my parents to be proud
    I hate college
    I hate studying
    I want to get in shape
    I want to pursue my hobby of captaining a sailboat


    I give them my opinion. Sometimes I get a Best Answer, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I get blocked.



    ****

    The other disconcerting thing is people who think all this bad policy, corruption, etc. does not happen any more. They treat it nostalgically. For example, the document from the Truman administration showed the opium connection to Vietnam. I am sure that is happening in Afghanistan, but people ignore it. The very people doing it now will acknowledge it by declassifying those documents and doing interviews in 30 years. Nobody will care thirty years hence, and will think that is something from the past only.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  23. #20
    Supporting Member
    North Korea



    Blog Entries
    2
    Posts
    2,919
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
    I can't watch this documentary in my country.

  24. #21
    Somewhat interesting remarks by Eisenhower to governors, 1953. It always comes back to money.



    President Eisenhower's Remarks on the Importance of Indochina at the Governors' Conference, August 4, 1953
    ________________________________________
    President Eisenhower's Remarks at Governors' Conference, August 4, 1953, Public Papers of the Presidents, 1953, p. 540:
    * * *

    "I could go on enumerating every kind of problem that comes before us daily. Let us take, though, for example, one simple problem in the foreign field. You have seen the war in Indochina described variously as an outgrowth of French colonialism and its French refusal to treat indigenous populations decently. You find it again described as a war between the communists and the other elements in southeast Asia. But you have a confused idea of where it is located--Laos, or Cambodia, or Siam, or any of the other countries that are involved. You don't know, really, why we are so concerned with the far-off southeast corner of Asia.

    "Why is it? Now, first of all, the last great population remaining in Asia that has not become dominated by the Kremlin, of course, is the sub-continent of India, including the Pakistan government. Here are 350 million people still free. Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible--and tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming. But all India would be outflanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense. Now, India is surrounded on that side by the Communist empire. Iran on its left is in a weakened condition. I believe I read in the paper this morning that Mossadegh's move toward getting rid of his parliament has been supported and of course he was in that move supported by the Tudeh, which is the Communist Party of Iran. All of that weakening position around there is very ominous for the United States, because finally if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. That is what the French are doing.

    "So, when the United States votes $400 million to help that war, we are not voting for a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance for the United States of America--our security, our power and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indonesian territory, and from southeast Asia."


    https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/ps7.htm
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Lamp View Post
    I can't watch this documentary in my country.
    Not available there?
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




    Disrupt, Deny, Deflate. Read the RPF trolls' playbook here (post #3): http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...eptive-members

  26. #23
    anyway to watch these episodes for free anywhere?

    I got to the last few episodes on pbs.org, and then they converted them to require "Passport" or something where I have to become a monthly "donating" paying member.

    Sweet business model - public broadcasting - living off tax dollars, donations, and now paid monthly membership for "premium content". My every orifice is raw.

    To the OP - watched past episode 8 - really learned a lot, well worth watching. Amazing that after that, so many Americans are still so in love with war and eat the propaganda.
    Last edited by georgiaboy; 10-18-2017 at 04:31 PM.
    The bigger government gets, the smaller I wish it was.
    My new motto: More Love, Less Laws



Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 13
    Last Post: 01-27-2016, 10:46 PM
  2. SPECIAL EDITION Debate-Watching Party (11/12/2011)
    By muzzled dogg in forum Massachusetts
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-27-2011, 03:04 PM
  3. Replies: 29
    Last Post: 05-02-2009, 01:17 AM
  4. So Who's Watching the John Stossel Special Tonight?
    By powerofreason in forum Grassroots Central
    Replies: 27
    Last Post: 03-13-2009, 07:43 PM
  5. Vietnam-era Rudy: Vietnam not "just war" per Catholicism
    By bbachtung in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 11-25-2007, 04:25 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •