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Walter Cronkite killed 48,000 GIs

Eagle_ViewEagle_View Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
edited September 2012 in US Military Veteran Forum
This morning I was watching Sunday morning and of course they were honoring Mr Cronkite, telling how he reported that we could not win the war after the '68 TET Offensive. It is the first time that I had actually heard the reports because I was in Basic Training when it happened.

Anyway I had seen references to those stories while researching Commanding General Vo Nguyen Giap NVA.

In the translation of his book "How We Won the War" Giap credits the American peace movement and Media for taking the war into the homes of America. (page 17-18 Item 9 "How We Won The War" 1976

Cronkite's personal opinion at the end of a news broadcast after his return from the '68 TET Offensive, played a major part in the turn of America against the war and it soldiers. The NVA and VC had lost all of the military battles duing TET but Walter did not report it that way.

At the time of the '68 TET offensive, the US had lost 10,000 personnel.

I say that the American Peace movement, CBS and Walter Cronkite have a responsibility for the remaining 48,000 GI killed and our defeat.

A bitter fellow today
Lowell

Comments

  • dheffleydheffley Member Posts: 25,000
    edited November -1
    quote:Originally posted by Eagle_View
    I say that the American Peace movement, CBS and Walter Cronkite have a responsibility for the remaining 48,000 GI killed and our defeat.

    This is always the case. When the media gets the publics opinion against a war, and the liberal politicians begin to feed off of that for political gain, the rules of engagement change and fine, brave good soldiers begin to die while politicians make hay of the situation.

    Politicians need to tell gemerals to win wars, then step out of the way and let them do it. Politicians should be hung or shot, or at least tried for the deaths of the soldiers who's blood is on their hands for political gain.
  • River RatRiver Rat Member Posts: 9,022
    edited November -1
    I agree 100 percent. Cronkite was a great man in his field, but he began today's tradition of liberal media: driven to CHANGE public opinion, not simply report the news. In doing so, Cronkite probably has done more to destroy America than Jane Fonda and John Kerry combined.
  • River RatRiver Rat Member Posts: 9,022
    edited November -1
    And, while crediting him with the GI kills, don't forget the millians of civilians in Vietnam and Laos who were murdered after we quit. Their blood is on the hands of all who preached failure, and Cronkite was the worst of them. Good riddance.
  • Eagle_ViewEagle_View Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    RiverRat

    That is so correct. I have talked sith some of the boat people that made it out. Our press and john Kerry refuse to talk about what happened after we left.

    Have a nice Day

    Lowell
  • elubsmeelubsme Member Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The sheeple believe T.V. news, John Kerry should drown in a sea of Heinz ketchup, Eddie 777-75-07
  • pwilliepwillie Member Posts: 20,253 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Cronkite was reporting the news,then he became a commentator!Television helped the North Vietnamese as much as anything else.Have you noticed in the Iraq war,anything different?
  • CapnMidnightCapnMidnight Member Posts: 8,520
    edited November -1
    The sheeple TRUSTED Cronkite, just like they turned a blind eye to Jane Fonda, I'm still pissed.
    W.D.
    2/1 Cav 68-69
  • 70-10170-101 Member Posts: 1,006
    edited November -1
    Mr. Cronkite helped open America's eyes to the horror that was Vietnam.

    And the war was ended by a democratically controlled congress when it cut-off funding under President Ford, and not by protesters or the CBS evening news. But the anti-war movement certainly played a role in changing Americas perception of the war.

    In fact, until Tet of 68 a majority of Americas still supported our efforts there.

    The My Lai and My Lai massacres in March of 1968 did more harm to Americas credibility in Vietnam then any other moment in the war.

    Theses two tragic innocents marked the turning point in Americas perception, and ultimately support for the war.
  • Eagle_ViewEagle_View Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    70-101
    You prove my point, Conkrite and the media turned the public against the effort in Viet Nam that could have ended in very little time after TET '68 if he had not stepped in with his opinions and there would not have been a My Lia.

    Gen. Giap was looking for the best surrender options until he heard Conkrite's news and realized that the US Media and public opinion could do what the NVA and VC could not and that was to defeat the US and South Viet military.

    The american press refused to cover the horrible attacks that the VC and NVC did to their own people during the war and still do not tell what happened to the people in South Viet Nam after the take over in '75. The photo of a ARVN killing a VC with his snubnose was full page coverage but tortured death of a captured american was a sub-paragraph if it was covered at all.

    At the end of my second tour(1st tour 11B, 2nd tour 84B) in '69 I interviewed for a job as a photographer with Time-Life in Saigon and while they liked my techincal skill, (My photos had appeared world wide as US ARMY PHOTO) I was told that they would not print any positive reports on American or ARVN military actions, they said the Americans did not want to read about heros just xxxx-ups. I was not offered the job that I had been invited to apply for and I would not have taken it if it had been offered.

    Lowell
  • 70-10170-101 Member Posts: 1,006
    edited November -1
    quote:Originally posted by Eagle_View
    70-101
    You prove my point, Conkrite and the media turned the public against the effort in Viet Nam that could have ended in very little time after TET '68 if he had not stepped in with his opinions and there would not have been a My Lia.

    Gen. Giap was looking for the best surrender options until he heard Conkrite's news and realized that the US Media and public opinion could do what the NVA and VC could not and that was to defeat the US and South Viet military.

    The American press refused to cover the horrible attacks that the VC and NVC did to their own people during the war and still do not tell what happened to the people in South Viet Nam after the take over in '75. The photo of a ARVN killing a VC with his snubnose was full page coverage but tortured death of a captured american was a sub-paragraph if it was covered at all.

    At the end of my second tour(1st tour 11B, 2nd tour 84B) in '69 I interviewed for a job as a photographer with Time-Life in Saigon and while they liked my techincal skill, (My photos had appeared world wide as US ARMY PHOTO) I was told that they would not print any positive reports on American or ARVN military actions, they said the Americans did not want to read about heros just xxxx-ups. I was not offered the job that I had been invited to apply for and I would not have taken it if it had been offered.

    Lowell



    Mr. Cronkite played a role in changing American conscience about the war, most certainly.

    But Gen. Giap's role in all this is mostly urban legend.

    Vietnam War historian: Giap made no such statement

    "According to Clemson University history professor Edwin Moise, General Giap never wrote or stated any such thing. From Moise's comprehensive Vietnam War Bibliography (emphasis added):
    Supposedly, General Giap had written in How We Won the War that in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive of 1968, the Communist leaders in Vietnam had been ready to abandon the war, but that a broadcast by Walter Cronkite, declaring the Tet Offensive a Communist victory, persuaded them to change their minds and fight on. This rumor was entirely false. Giap had not mentioned Cronkite, and had not said the Communists had ever considered giving up on the war."

    "Several variants of this rumor appeared in 2004. In these, Giap is supposed to have credited either the American anti-war movement in general, or John Kerry's organization (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) in particular, for persuading the Communist leaders to change their minds and not give up on the war. Giap is sometimes said to have made this statement in How We Won the War, sometimes in an unnamed 1985 memoir. All versions of the rumor are false. Neither in How We Won the War, nor in any other book (the 1985 memoir is entirely imaginary), has Giap mentioned Kerry or Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or said that the Communist leaders had ever considered giving up on the war."


    "The most relevant statement I could find that is actually attributable to General Giap was uttered in a 1989 interview with Morley Safer, as excerpted in The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations by Howard Langer (Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 318):



    In Gen.Giaps own words:

    "We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans]... not only in lives and materiel.... Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory."


    So, in reality Eagle_View, Gen.Giap is mearly claiming victory, as one would expect from a loyal soldier, regardless of rank.


    http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_general_giap.htm
  • Eagle_ViewEagle_View Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    I have read all of these statements but they are linked to the MSM and universities. In part they are true, Giap's statement are not as clear and bold as reported, but the summation is there when read fully.

    I have Giap's books and will dig them out to quote them later by page and paragraph, there was some license and simplication with what he wrote reported during kerry's run but if I remember right in Giap's 1976 book in several places, he indicates that my statements are in general true, they are very difficult books to read.

    I am not sure I would trust a college professor to report the truth anymore than a MSM source. they are all trained by the same sources. To site them is to go to the censored sources that have been prevailed on the american public.

    I don't think that you will find either the press or a majority of universities doing anything but defending their biased opinion and protecting their youthful misdirection.

    We will probally never agree about this but I have spent a life time defending our actions and what happened to america because our Free press was redirected by liberal professors and foreign financed peace movement.
    Lowell
  • 70-10170-101 Member Posts: 1,006
    edited November -1
    In that case, Welcome Home.
  • Eagle_ViewEagle_View Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Thank you and Welcome home Screaming Eagle too

    Lowell
  • pwilliepwillie Member Posts: 20,253 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The picture on the front cover of Life Magazine,of Gen. Loan executing a viet cong insurgent on the day of the start of the "Tet" offensive,was one of the most avid expressions of war as its most brutal conflict. I was close by when the shot was fired.
  • lee shermanlee sherman Member Posts: 405 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Hell, the media will get'cha killed quick'ern anything else that I can think of. God help us!![:(!][xx(]
  • kimikimi Member Posts: 44,723 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Wasn't the American KIA total after the Tet of 68 closer to half of what we lost during the war?
    What's next?
  • Jim RauJim Rau Member Posts: 3,550
    edited November -1
    Funny how history repeats it's self!!!
    If the military would have been allowed to prosecute the war after Tet 68 we would have had a totally different (better) out come.
    If McArthur had been allowed to clean out North Korea we not have even had a Vietnam war.
    If they would have listened to the military at the end of WWII (Patton in particular) and not trusted the USSR the world would have been a much better place. Look what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan today!!!![V]
    WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN???[xx(]
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