Showing posts with label vietnam war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vietnam war. Show all posts

Friday, October 30, 2009

Parallels: Vietnam and Afghanistan...Soldiers and Heroin



It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan

2007 - Simultaneously stressed and bored, U.S. soldiers are turning to the widely available drug for a quick escape.

The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown.

The military has statistics on how many troops failed drug tests, but the best information on long-term addiction comes from the U.S. Veterans Administration. The VA is the world's largest provider of substance abuse services, caring for more than 350,000 veterans per year, of whom about 30,000 are being treated for opiate addiction.

Heroin "is everywhere." And although they haven't shown up in the statistics yet, reports from methadone clinics suggest the VA's future patients may already be back in the States in force. Much like the caskets that return to the Dover Air Force base in the dead of night, America's new addicts are returning undetected. {more}

Problems shooting up in Afghanistan
2009 - More than 100,000 people around the world are lost each year to heroin. Russia’s heroin crisis began after an occupation of Afghanistan. Our military presence must end in Afghanistan before we suffer the same fate and bring this epidemic back to the United States. {more}
2009 - In the end, no one knows exactly how many U.S. troops are using heroin, though it is unlikely that the military's acknowledged "none" is any reflection of reality. But with the military's outright refusal to acknowledge the reality of drug abuse and addiction among troops in the field, it's equally unlikely that military or VA health services are prepared for any onslaught of addiction patients requiring counseling and rehabilitation. {more]

What are the heroin addiction statistics for US troops in Afghanistan
Romancing the Afghan Dragon

Anyone who has followed the tales of the returning troops from Vietnam knows that the use of heroin was fairly common. The parallels to Afghanistan could be repeating...

The following is a Vanderbilt University academic report on drug use among soldiers in the Vietnam war and even earlier.
Higher and Higher: Drug Use Among U.S. Forces in Vietnam
by Peter Brush
In 1898 the United States acquired control of the Philippines. The following year it began a brutal fight to suppress a guerrilla uprising. It is basic to guerrilla war that combatants will be mingled with the civilian population. Social behaviors flow one to the other. Soon after their arrival American soldiers learned to smoke opium. This practice became sufficiently common that U.S. Opium Commissioner Hamilton Wright felt compelled to deny it, claiming in a report to the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission that "among the personnel of our Army and Navy [in the Philippines] there is not the slightest evidence that the use of opium or its derivatives has been introduced...."[1]

In reality, the drug habit among U.S. military personnel was "alarmingly increasing," so much so that its occurrence was an agenda item at the 1903 meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association. There the Report of the Committee on Acquirement of Drug Habits noted that soldiers acquired the practice from Chinese and native Filipinos and that a number of enlisted men had been discharged for being habitual drug users. The discharge rate was several hundred percent higher during the previous five years than for any ten years before that.[2] The history of drug use among U.S. military personnel is not limited to the Philippines insurrection. The next time American soldiers fought to suppress guerrillas, in Vietnam, the use of drugs by American soldiers reached epidemic proportions.

Although marijuana is legally considered a drug according to the federal Controlled Substances Act, its use was treated differently from other drugs by American commanders and military lawyers in Vietnam.[3] This distinction will be maintained here; use of marijuana will be related separately from use of other drugs.

Marijuana was present in Vietnam before the arrival of the Americans. Drug laws were not well defined and their enforcement had little priority in the Vietnamese criminal justice system. There was no central Vietnamese drug enforcement agency and no government control over marijuana. A survey made in 1966 by the U.S. military command in the Saigon area showed there were 29 fixed outlets for the purchase of marijuana.[4]

A comparison has been made between Vietnamese use of marijuana and the manner in which the French treat wine and sex: there are cultural regulations for use, sale, and protocol but no inherent sense of "illicitness" as in the United States.[5] Journalist Richard Boyle mentions its use by South Vietnamese soldiers. He even relates an incident where he smoked marijuana with the South Vietnamese consul in Cambodia. Craven "A" and Park Lane were the popular brands of grass available in Saigon. It was sold in the form of pre-rolled cigarettes in genuine Craven "A" and Park Lane packages.

Former North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldier Bao Ninh reports that smoking a marijuana-like substance became so pervasive that use spread throughout his entire regiment.[6] American soldiers note that the Vietnamese used marijuana openly. One saw it growing wild in Central Vietnam. Another discovered a sizeable quantity in the knapsack of a dead NVA soldier at Khe Sanh.[7]

Soldiers began using marijuana in Vietnam as early as 1963, during the advisory period, and before its use became widespread in the United States. Its popularity grew steadily.[8] In 1967 a Congressional investigation discovered 16 instances of marijuana use inside the Marine brig at Da Nang. The source was Vietnamese who gave it to prisoners on working parties, often throwing it into passing vehicles in which prisoners were riding.

Inmates not eligible for working parties did not necessarily have to go without marijuana. Marine lawyer Captain Robert W. Wachsmuth described how:

Members of working parties would obtain marijuana seeds [which were] planted in rows of dirt above the shower stalls which were opened to the outside by the gap between the tin roof and the wall....Spray from the prisoners' showers would water the plants. When the plants reached a sufficient size, plastic...would be placed between the shower spray and the plant, causing the plant to die. The plants would then be crushed and rolled in toilet paper to make joints.[9]

Other Marines found easy access from street vendors as their vehicles passed through urban areas.

For most of the Vietnam War, prosecution for even a slight trace of marijuana was a court-martial offense for Marines. The lack of a crime laboratory in Vietnam before 1968 was a major handicap to efforts to punish marijuana offenders. Drug samples were sent to Japan for testing, a process that took 45 days to complete. That same year marijuana detecting dogs were pressed into service to search for marijuana among Marines returning to Vietnam from R&R trips abroad.[10]

While the Marines were subjecting all marijuana offenders to courts-martial, the Army took only dealers and users of hard drugs to trial. The more severe Marine approach was a failure: in 1969, nearly half the cases tried by the Marine Corps in Vietnam involved marijuana possession. Marijuana use was no longer confined to rear area units. A drug rehabilitation center was established at Cua Viet for drug users from infantry battalions. A senior Marine legal officer admitted the helplessness in stemming the tide of marijuana use: "I don't know what the solution is....I don't know what the hell we are going to do."[11]

Before 1968, marijuana use among soldiers was largely ignored by the Army. Newspaper stories describing its widespread use helped publicize this situation, inclining Army officials to label it as a problem. Their solution was a comprehensive program to eradicate its use. Armed Forces radio and television proclaimed the dangers of marijuana consumption. Drug education lectures became mandatory. Troop quarters and secluded fields were searched for marijuana. Soldiers were warned by chaplains, physicians, and legal officers that marijuana use could cause not only physiological damage and lead to psychosis, but also result in injury to men dependent on this for marijuana possession reached as many as 1,000 in a single week.

Marijuana use was fairly easy to detect: it is a bulky commodity and emits a distinct odor when smoked. Consequently, the Army was able to wage a vigorous suppression campaign. In 1968, responding to U.S. pressure, the Vietnamese government publicly condemned the sale and use of marijuana. Province chiefs were ordered to forbid its cultivation. Aircraft were used to locate marijuana fields and South Vietnamese troops were sent into the field to destroy crops. U.S. Army Press releases claimed the drug problem was being brought under control. Eventually the anti-marijuana campaign by the Army was relaxed, although use remained high among enlisted personnel and junior officers.[12]

In fact, marijuana use was mostly a problem because it conflicted with American civilian and military values. Use of marijuana did not constitute an operational problem. Smoking in rear areas did not impact operations. Use among combat personnel came when units stood down rather when in the field. The Commanding General of the 3d Marine Division noted "there is no drug problem out in the hinterlands, because there was a self-policing by the troops themselves." Life for combat soldiers depended on their being clear-headed.[13]

Army Major Joel Kaplan of the 98th Medical Detachment realistically appraised the use of marijuana. While noting that marijuana was used at high rates, alcohol consumption among career military personnel was a larger problem. "I think alcohol is a much more dangerous drug than marijuana."[14] One Air Force officer understood well the difference: "When you get up there in those early hours, you want the klunk you're flying with to be able to snap to. He's a lot more likely to be fresh if he smoked grass the night before than if he was juiced." A much larger problem was on the horizon for American military commanders in Vietnam. When heroin use became commonplace, one Army commanding officer rationally described the implications of marijuana use. "If it would get them to give up the hard stuff, I would buy all the marijuana and hashish in the Delta as a present."[15]

Soldiers in Vietnam smoked marijuana and took other drugs who would not do so at home. A soldier's friends become extremely important; new soldiers adhere to behavior of members of their group. Marine commander Major Ives W. Neely claimed "at least 70 to 80 percent" use within his company. Marines would catch a new man as he reported into the unit, instructing him that if he was going to buy marijuana he would buy it from them. If anyone told, turned in any of their names, "there were ways to do these people in."[16]

When young men, many still teenagers, are in a strange land and surrounded by enemies (real and potential), they do not have to be cajoled into assuming the habits of their new friends who proceeded them to Vietnam. One former Marine related his first experience with marijuana in the form of hashish. He was with a small group guarding the Hai Van Pass, certainly one of the most beautiful places in Asia in terms of physical geography. Fresh water flowed in a pipe on a hill near an oil refinery and emptied into the South China Sea. Vietnamese fishermen would come ashore while the Marines bathed in the pipeline outflow. For ten piasters (about ten cents), the Marines could buy French bread, hashish, and fresh lobsters from the Vietnamese. The Marines smoked the hashish in a pipe fashioned out of a M-14 shell casing. With their appetites stimulated from the hashish, they ate the bread. The lobsters were flash-fried in a helmet. Cooking fuel was provided by plastic explosives (C-4), which burns vigorously when ignited. This practice was a common one for the platoon guarding the oil refinery at the Hai Van Pass in 1965.[17] It was a practice that would prove impossible to eradicate.

Other drugs were available to U.S. forces. In 1967 opium cost $1.00 while morphine went for $5.00 per vial. Tablets of Binoctal, an addictive drug consisting of Amytal and Seconal, were available in tablet form from Vietnamese children at from $1.00 to $5.00 for twenty tablets. Although technically a prescription drug, Binoctal was available over the counter at almost any Vietnamese pharmacy for about eight piasters for twenty tablets. Twenty tablets, consumed at once, was a fatal dose. One soldier had died from Binoctal use, and three near-fatalities had been reported. "O.J.'s" were opium joints. After 1970 the name was often a misnomer, since heroin was widely available to U.S. forces. A tobacco cigarette was rolled between the finger and thumb to loosen the tobacco. The cigarette was partially emptied. A vial containing 250 milligrams of 94 to 96 percent pure heroin was poured into the cigarette, which was smoked.[18] Widespread heroin use would dwarf previous drug problems among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. It was the attempt of the U.S. military command to suppress the use of marijuana that caused to the switch to heroin.[19]

Chinese immigrants to Vietnam in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought their opium smoking habit with them. Initially the emperors of Vietnam welcomed these Chinese for their entreprenuerial skills. Over time opium addiction appeared among the Vietnamese. In the 1830s Britain exported opium from India to China in large quantities. Opium smokers in Vietnam paid for their opium in silver, causing a drain of specie and inflation in Vietnam. The Vietnamese court strongly opposed opium smoking on both moral and economic grounds, and opium was outlawed soon after it appeared.

The French fought their way into Vietnam about the time of the U.S. Civil War. In order to pay an indemnity to the French, the emperor established an opium franchise in the northern region. Opium became a lucrative source of income for French colonial administrators. A modern opium refinery was constructed in Saigon. Opium dens and shops were opened to meet consumer demand. By 1918 there were 1,512 dens and 3,098 retail opium shops in French Indochina and the opium business was booming. [20]

By the beginning of World War II Indochina had over 100,000 opium addicts. By now the opium source was Iran and Turkey and imports totaled about 60 tons annually. During the war the British blockaded shipping to Indochina, forcing the French to expand opium production in Laos and Vietnam to avert a fiscal crisis. Indochinese opium production increased from 7.5 tons in 1940 to over 60 tons in 1944. By the late 1950s the region was self-sufficient in opium production. By 1969 the Golden Triangle (the opium producing regions of Laos, Thailand, and Burma) was harvesting 1,000 tons of raw opium annually.

In late 1969 and early 1970, Golden Triangle laboratories instituted a more sophisticated opium refinement process, allowing them to produce high-grade (80 to 99 percent pure) no. 4 heroin. A CIA report said the adoption of this new production technique seemed to be due to the large market in South Vietnam. Previously heroin had been unavailable in South Vietnam. Now teenagers sold it to American soldiers on the highways; street dealers gave it to GIs as they walked through Saigon, and maids sold it to military personnel while cleaning their living quarters. In 1970 there were 1,146 arrests for hard drugs. The following year arrests in this category increased to 7,026. That year 1971 U.S. Army medical officers estimated that 10 to 15 percent of the lower-ranking enlisted personnel in Vietnam were heroin users. .[21]

Psychoanalyst Dr. Norman E. Zinberg, a consultant for the Department of Defense on drug abuse in Vietnam, noted that heroin use was done casually by U.S. troops. More than one-third picked up the habit during their first month in Vietnam, and probably 90 percent in their first four months. A typical heroin user in Vietnam was quite unlike the typical heroin user in the United States: the soldiers may have come from small towns in the Midwest or South. All ethnic and educational groups were represented in about equal proportion. Users existed in administrative, combat-support, and combat occupational specialties. Combat troops avoided heroin use in the field. Zinberg notes one soldier who stood down after 13 days on a long patrol. One of his first actions was to pour a vial of heroin into a large shot of vodka and drink it.

In the U.S. heroin was injected and rarely smoked. In Vietnam, where the drug was much more pure, the opposite was the normal route of consumption. Heroin was also snorted and taken orally. These means of ingestion minimized the physical risks of injection. There were no deaths from overdose. Men used heroin to pass the time, to deal with the danger, boredom, and purposelessness of their lives.[22]

In terms of physical geography, South Vietnam consists of a coastal plain in the east and a long mountain chain in the west in addition to the Mekong delta in the far south. The source of opium lay on the other side of the Annamite Mountains. Opium and later heroin dealers in Vietnam had to have connections in the Golden Triangle area and means of transporting the drug back into South Vietnam. In the 1950s the French provided these transportation services through their association with Laotian military irregulars. By 1965-1967 the Vietnamese Air Force under Colonel Nguyen Cao Ky shipped opium from Laos to Saigon. Professor Alfred W. McCoy speculates that the May 1970 invasion of Cambodia may have opened another route of entry into South Vietnam. Most reports give early 1970 as the beginning of large scale heroin addiction among U.S. military personnel. Before the invasion Cambodia was hostile to pro-American regimes in South Vietnam. After the invasion there were large volumes of truck, naval, and air traffic between South Vietnam and Cambodia.[23]

Heroin was used by an estimated 15-20 percent of the GIs in the Mekong Delta under the command of Army Major General John Cushman. In mid-1971 Cushman ordered a crackdown. All troops were confined to base, guard patrols were increased, all personnel entering base areas were searched, and emergency medical clinics were established. Cushman determined these efforts were futile as long as the South Vietnamese protected drug dealers among the Vietnamese population. With drug smuggling entrenched among the Vietnamese air force, army, navy, police, customs, and politicians, the importation and sale of narcotics was too lucrative to eradicate. Further, there was an unwritten rule among U.S. embassy personnel to not implicate high-ranking Vietnamese in connection with the traffic in heroin. The CIA avoided gathering information on Vietnamese involvement. Within two weeks after its beginning Cushman's campaign fell off in intensity.[24]

Nonmedical drug use was a serious crime for soldiers in Vietnam. The usual punishment for convicted offenders was the maximum sentence: up to ten years' confinement, dishonorable discharge from the military, and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. Alcoholics, by contrast, were given unsuitability discharges, which usually were honorable or general. That soldiers were not deterred from heroin use speaks to the special conditions they faced in Vietnam. Heroin was also available in neighboring Thailand. Even though heroin supplies there were greater than in Vietnam, heroin use among Army and Air Force personnel was less than one percent.

The different rates of heroin use between military personnel in South Vietnam and Thailand reflected the different natures of duty in those countries. In Thailand, men got days off from work. They were free to travel among the friendly Thai population. There was no anxiety caused by danger from enemy action. Military duty was considered purposeful. By contrast, military service in Vietnam during the era of troop withdrawals was considered less meaningful. Soldiers worked seven days a week, often 12 hours per day, and felt there was little point in getting killed before the war was officially declared over. Many U.S. military personnel felt the Vietnamese tried to take every possible economic advantage of them. Soldiers were taught to not trust the civilian population; there were frequent reminders that civilians might be Viet Cong supporters. The goal of lower-ranking military personnel in Vietnam was to stay alive for one year and return home. Heroin use was a way to pass the time while thinking about leaving.[25]

Drugs did not only affect the lower ranks. In 1970 an Air Force major was apprehended at Tan Son Nhut air base near Saigon with $8 million dollars worth of heroin in his aircraft. In 1971 a colonel was court-martialed for leading marijuana parties in his squadron. Nor were U.S. security forces immune: that year 43 military policemen at Cam Ranh Air Force Base were arrested in narcotics raids. At Pleiku, a newly arrived lieutenant was gunned down in front of his entire platoon by four Army drug dealers. The company and battalion commanders were relieved of their commands; the feeling was both should have known about the drug dealing in their command. In 1971 U.S. customs at an Army post in New Jersey seized about 15 pounds of heroin from Bangkok in a package mailed through the U.S. military postal system. In March and April 1971 248 pieces of mail containing drugs were detected by customs in the Army and Air Force postal systems.[26]

In late 1970 heroin made its way to Marine Corps units operating in the northern part of South Vietnam. Marine Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons considered the effect of its use on Marines, saying it wa

"impossible to quantify just how debilitating drug use may have been....In general, poor performance attracts attention which leads to revelation of drug use. But this does not 'prove' that drug use caused the poor performance nor does it give any indication of how many 'good' performers use drugs."

Marine Major General Alan J. Armstrong was more decisive in his analysis of heroin's effects, noting that in one aviation unit at least, heroin use was an operational problem and no longer only an administrative problem.

Military commands employed all available media to inform personnel of the moral, legal, and physical consequences of drug use. Pamphlets were created and distributed to platoon leaders. Drug education teams gave lectures. Drug abuse councils were created, traveling from unit to unit to spread the word. When education failed to stem the use of drugs, the Marine Corps relied upon punishment. When the judicial system could not court martial Marines fast enough, administrative discharges were used to get rid of offenders. The feeling of Marine Corps Commandant General Louis H. Wilson Jr. was that the Corps would go down in strength rather than allow unsuitable Marines to stay within its ranks.[27]

Senior military leaders understood that new arrivals were being introduced to drugs by existing users among the U.S. forces in Vietnam. Ridding itself of users was chosen to "guard against further infection." Amnesty programs for users were the means to accomplish this house cleaning. The Navy selected two barracks ships moored at Nha Be (near Saigon) for the site of its rehabilitation center. Within one month 100 hundred sailors had turned themselves in for treatment. By comparison, at the same time (July 1 1971) the Army was treating 460 men while 350 airmen sought drug treatment.[28]

Drug use was less of a problem in the Marine Corps than in the Army. Towns and villages in the Marines' area of responsibility were off limits to Marines, thereby limiting their accessibility to drugs. Marine units began withdrawing from Vietnam in 1969, with the last Marine ground unit out of the country by 1971. The Army remained in Vietnam until the end, fighting a defensive campaign to cover the U.S. withdrawal. This was when the drug problems of the Army peaked: in 1973, 34 percent of American soldiers in Vietnam had commonly used heroin.[29]

On June 22, 1971 the Army instituted its new program to deal with drug use. Every soldier leaving Vietnam was obligated to submit to a urinalysis test that detected heroin use within the previous five days. Those with positive test results were confined to a detoxification center and not allowed to return home until they could pass the test. Coupled with mandatory testing was the amnesty program, guaranteeing every soldier the right to declare himself an addict and receive treatment. By September 22 (a period less than three months), 3,580 armed forces personnel had tested positive for heroin use.

This program was flawed in its execution. Unit commanders began declaring anyone who failed two drug tests to be of "negligible value to the United States Army." The U.S. military command in Vietnam discharged between one thousand and two thousand heroin addicts per month. These men were flown back to the United States and discharged almost immediately. Follow-up treatment was mostly nonexistent. In August 1971 a congressional subcommittee on public health noted that Veterans Administration hospitals handled only three referrals out of 12,000 heroin-using servicemen from Vietnam. Now on their own, many of these veterans returned to communities as addicts that had always been free from heroin addiction. Two years later a White House task force survey found that one-third of those servicemen who had tested positive for heroin in Vietnam were still heroin addicts. [30]

The market for heroin among U.S. military personnel was worth $88 million dollars to South Vietnamese drug traffickers, who viewed naively viewed heroin as solely "an American problem."[31]

These profits were taken even though the Vietnamese had the most to lose from the withdrawal of American military forces. Golden Triangle heroin laboratories did not go out of business when American soldiers stepped up their withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1971 the Laotian ambassador to France was apprehended with 60 kilograms of heroin destined for the United States. Later that year a diplomat from the Philippines was arrested in New York with 15.5 kilograms of Laotian heroin. During the twenty years before 1972, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics claimed that only five percent of America's heroin came from Southeast Asia. By 1972 that figure had risen to 30 percent.

In 1974 there were an estimated 150,000 Vietnamese heroin addicts in Saigon. The following year, with the fall of the government in the South, these addicts became the problem of the new communist regime, in a manner similar to that of American Vietnam veteran addicts in the United States.32 The United States was unable to end its heroin problem in Vietnam even by ending its participation in the war: heroin came home with us..[32]

[1] David T. Courtwright, Dark Paradise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 202n

[2] E. G. Eberle et al., "Report of Committee on the Acquirement of Drug Habits," Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association, 1903, vol. 51, p. 475.

[3] Gary D. Solis, Marines and Military Law in Vietnam: Trial by Fire, (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps), 1989, p. p. 74n

[4] George S. Prugh, Law at War: Vietnam 1964-1973, (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1975, p. 106.

[5] Electronic communication from John S. Baky dated August 2, 1996. Baky was a military policeman in Vietnam.

[6] 6Richard Boyle, The flower of the Dragon, (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), p. 190, 212. Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War, (New York, NY: Riverhead Books), 1996, p. 10

[7] The author raised the issue of Vietnamese use of marijuana on the Internet Usenet Newsgroup Soc.History.War.Vietnam on August 1, 1996. The comments about open use by the Vietnamese and marijuana growing wild are in email communications to the author by American veterans who wish to remain anonymous. The report of marijuana in the knapsack of a dead NVA soldier was related to the author at the 1993 reunion of Khe Sanh veterans in Washington, D.C

[8] Norman E. Zinberg, "G.I.'s and O.J.'s in Vietnam," New York Times Magazine, December 5, 1971, p. 120.

[9] Solis, p. 104

[10] Solis, pp. 74-75, 104. W. Hays Parks, "Statistics Versus Actuality in Vietnam," Air University Review, vol. 32, no. 4, May-June 1981, p. 86

[11] Solis, p. 127

[12] Zinberg, ibid., Prugh, p. 107

[13] Solis, p. 104

[14] Boyle, pp. 73-74

[15] Zinberg, ibid.

[16] Solis, pp. 126-127

[17] Electronic mail communication dated August 5, 1996, from a Marine Vietnam veteran who wishes to remain anonymous

[18] Solis, p. 74; Zinberg, p. 37, 114; Boyle, 69

[19] Zinberg, p. 120

[20] Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill), 1991, pp. 109-111

[21] McCoy, pp. 113, 115, 222-223; Prugh, p. 107

[22] Zinberg, p. 114, 116, 118, 122

[23] McCoy, pp. 196-197, 225-226

[24] McCoy, pp. 224-225, 255

[25] Zinberg, pp. 116, 118, 122-123; Cosmas and Murray, p. 361n

[26] Robert D. Heinl, Jr., "The Collapse of the Armed Forces,"in Marvin E. Gettleman et. al., Vietnam and America, (New York: Grove Press), 1995, p. 329; James Kittfield, Prodigal Soldiers, (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1995, p. 189, 190; McCoy, p. 259

[27] Graham A. Cosmas and Terrence P. Murray, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 1970-1971, (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps), pp. 360-361; Solis, pp. 231-232

[28] R. L. Schreadley, From the Rivers to the Sea, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), 1992, p. 368

[29] Parks, p. 85, 86; McCoy, p. 258

[30] McCoy, pp. 256-258; Schreadley, p. 369

[31] McCoy, p. 224; Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, (New York: Vantage Books), 1973, p. 564

[32] McCoy, p. 259, 260, 261.

source

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Vietnam Veterans 'Moving Wall' Comes to Middle Tennessee

An article at a local news site spurred me to respond. I had to tone it down a bit. This is a rural, bible belt area and sometimes a more subtle approach is best. My comments are below the re-posted article. Thanks to the Cannon Wire for allowing other views.



Ken Wilson, AKA Purple Haze, as part of the Patriot Guard





Cannon Countian to help escort 'The Moving Wall'


Some things need to be repeated. Then, of course, some things just don’t.

You have heard that “The Moving Wall,” the mobile version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial will be on display at Westwood Elementary School, 912 Oakdale Street in Manchester, just a short drive away.

You also probably know that it will be on display October 29 thru November 1 and will be open 24 hours a day. You also may know that there is an opening ceremony scheduled for 7 pm Thursday night October 29.

Another thing you may be aware of is that The Patriot Guard Riders along with Rolling Thunder and The American Legion Riders will be providing a Motorcycle escort of The Moving Wall from The Ambassador Inn on Interstate drive in Manchester to the display site at Westwood Elementary School.

However, what you may not know is that Cannon County’s own Ken Wilson rides with the Patriot Guard Riders and will be part of the escort.

Are you old enough to remember Vietnam?

Vietnam soldiers were the forgotten veterans of an unpopular war. It was an unsettling time where every belief system seemed to get turned upside down and inside out.

Most of the nation, worked up to a media feeding frenzy, didn’t want the war, didn’t like the war, and disrespected those who were in it, forgetting that those who went were drafted and didn’t have much of a choice.

In Cannon County, citizens for the most part are insulated from what occurs in larger cities. Cannon County was lucky because most didn’t see active war protesters except on TV.

Across the nation, Americans were even going so far as to participate in flag burning ceremonies, bra burnings, and of course, we can’t forget Woodstock, where the sex, drugs, and rock and roll were free and easy.

Vietnam was the first nationally telecast war, brought to you in Technicolor, in the comfort of your living room, by your local sponsor.

In Cannon County, the most you may have seen locally were kids who wore POW/MIA bracelets, peace signs, and you may have noticed a patch of the American Flag that had been sewn on a kid’s posterior.

That is, if you lived during that era.

Most didn’t understand that those people who were in Vietnam and millions like them gave Americans the right to express freely their opinions. The American soldiers gave Americans the right to desecrate a patriotic emblem that in many countries would have been a hanging offense.

During that black time in American History, boys, barely old enough to grow hair on their chin, saw things that people only in war see, did things that people do only in war, and at the end of their tour, if they were lucky, they came home.

There were no welcome home bands playing, no patriotic flag waving, no kisses and no hugs.

Instead, they were spit on, physically hit, and mentally slapped by curses when they stepped off the plane and onto American soil.

By the way, don’t think it didn’t happen to those who were from Cannon County, because it did.

Never heard anyone from Cannon County who did any spitting on our soldiers, though.

Overall, our country didn’t mourn and honor the lost, instead, they protested the coffins bearing those that came home, causing even more grief to the families that had the ultimate grief to bear.

There were even protesters at their funerals, appalling to everyone except the protesters.

Years later, the worm turned.

In 1979, a group of Vietnam veterans started the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, choosing to take that black time in patriotism and turn it to good, in order to honor those who served and educate others.

The group lobbied Congress for a two acre plot of land in the Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation to see it though. It was a three and half year task to build the memorial and to orchestrate a celebration to finally salute those who served in Vietnam. It’s not a war Memorial but a Memorial to those who served in the war, both living and dead.

"The Moving Wall" is the half-size replica of the Washington, DC. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been touring the country since 1984 and there are actually two that travel from April through November.

If you have never been to Washington, felt the power by placing your hand on the cold marble and in awe felt all the names engraved, you now have your chance at the next best thing.

Another organization sprang up with another mission, but just as noble is the Patriot Guard Riders.

Yes, the Patriot Guard Riders ride motorcycles and they have an unwavering respect for those who risk their very lives for America’s freedom and security.

Ken Wilson has ridden many miles to different locations to participate in this worthwhile endeavor.

The Guard's mission is to attend the funeral services of fallen American heroes as invited guests of the family. Their mission is also to show sincere respect for our fallen heroes, their families, and their communities and to shield the mourning family and their friends from interruptions created by any protester or group of protesters, so that what happened in the past will never happen again.

Of course, they accomplish the latter through strictly legal and non-violent means.

We must never forget to show respect to those who have served, those who are currently in service, and those who have died to keep our great America free.

Veterans Day is November 11 and Cannon County is remembering our veterans with a parade and more.

Lessons were learned when the worm turned.

http://thewall-usa.com/

http://www.patriotguard.org/
source: Cannon Wire
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have stood at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. I have laid my hands on the names of a best friend, former neighbors and those that I did not know. I felt a tingle in my spine and tears upon my cheeks. I also remembered those that I knew whose names are not on the wall but who died prematurely from their time in Vietnam, not from physical wounds but from the demons they brought back with them.

My respect for those who served and died has been unwavering for over 40 years. My disrespect and contempt for those who sent them has also never wavered.

If you don't want to hear a counterpoint to some of the notions in this article, read no further. My intent is not against any present or former service member but to challenge the propaganda and lies that the wars of our time have been for America’s freedom and security. You may say that questioning the actions of our government is un-American. I call it patriotic.

A hard thing for folks to accept is that our government has been hijacked by forces in the military/industrial complex, the CIA, the lobbyists, the profiteers of war. Eisenhower in his last speech even warned us of what was coming. {http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY}
It could be argued that the assassination of JFK was a coup d'etat from which we have never recovered.

An even harder thing to accept is that our government would send our sons and daughters to kill and be killed for one thing...the profits of a few. We tend to think that politicians and U.S. contractors are just like us. Perhaps that is the biggest deception of all. Remember the quote from one of the architects of the Vietnam war and still an 'adviser' to the current administration, Henry Kissinger?
(Soldiers are) dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy. {http://www.buzzle.com/articles/biography-of-henry-kissinger.html}

The escalation of the Vietnam War was based on the Gulf of Tonkin incident which in hindsight was a big lie. {http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/Gulf-of-Tonkin.htm} The same type of lies were used in the government/media creations of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq where the plans were already in place before 9/11. {http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/11/bush_began_iraq_plan_pre_911_oneill_says/} The war planning think tank The Project for a New American Century conceived the concept of 'permanent war' in 2000 with their "Rebuilding America's Defense". All that was lacking was a 'new Pearl Harbor' which so conveniently happened just one year later. {http://www.sourcewatch.orgindex.php?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century}

The author above is certainly correct about the despicable treatment of returning Vietnam vets. I am thinking that the worst of these actions happened as the vets returned to the West Coast where the anti-war movement was most prevalent. Although there were millions of sincere protesters, it is known now that many of the major groups were infiltrated by the FBI and other government lackeys. These agent provocateurs encouraged the spitting and name calling and some followers blindly obliged. It was another 'divide and conquer' technique to paint all activists as disrespectful to the involuntary draftees who were forced to do what they did. Of all of the hundreds of Vietnam vets I have known, I also never heard of this happening in the middle Tennessee area.

By some estimates we are now nearing $1 trillion spent on war since 2001 and those figures may be low. {http://costofwar.com/} This does not include the cost to America for our 'best friend' in the middle east, Israel, who is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. {http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/245-2008-november/3845-congress-watch-a-conservative-estimate-of-total-direct-us-aid-to-israel-almost-114-billion.html}

Cui bono - Who benefits? Who profits and who pays? As in all crime scenes...follow the money.

Our taxpayer military expenditures are now 54% of total federal outlays. {http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm}

Besides that, in an economic crisis, the U.S. is expanding its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier. {http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html}

War is our biggest industry. Just about the only one we have left. History has shown that we tend to arm all sides in a conflict. The CIA created and funded al quada to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, then they became our enemy. Saddam was our ally once, we supplied all the WMD's he could pay us for in the Iraq/Iran war and then he became our enemy too. Without enemies of our own creation, the profits of the war machine would dwindle. Iran is the new one with Pakistan and their nukes right alongside.We've caused the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis, displaced millions more and destroyed their country while losing over 4,000 American lives as a result of our occupation. What for...to save them? Please name one thing that the Bush administration told us in 2003 that was a true reason for our invasion

8 more U.S. soldiers died today in Afghanistan on top of the 14 this past weekend. Did they die for our 'freedoms' or did they die for the money machine we call the defense industry enabled by a Congress with conflicts of interest? The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has calculated that more than 151 members of Congress have up to $195 million invested in major defense contractors that are earning profits from the US military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. {http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/14-congress-invested-in-defense-contracts/}

Once more...Does the government and media ever lie to us? Most of you will say yes to that question. My other question is how do we discern between the truths and the lies that we are fed daily? Could it be that the profiteers of war are liars who will bring our great country down economically and morally using our children as pawns in this killing game.

I salute our soldiers. I bow in respect to the Vietnam wall and the lost lives it represents. But I will never bow to the orchestrators of false wars.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
Gandhi

All warfare is based on deception.

Sun Tzu

*************

Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial - My Small Tribute to Eric Duffer

Monday, August 10, 2009

Fort Campbell's 'Modern' Welcome Home for Vietnam Vets can not make up for the lies of war

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." George Orwell

http://grunt.space.swri.edu/images/vn/deanna/ark9.jpg The Grunt

Leaders decided to make it up to the previous generation
Since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers returning to Fort Campbell have been greeted by waving flags, an Army band and plenty of family and friends.

That was not the case in the 1960s and early '70s, when there was very little support for many Vietnam veterans returning from combat.

So leaders at Fort Campbell decided to make it up to the previous generation and give them a long-awaited welcome-home celebration this week.

The event will be Sunday as a part of the installation's annual celebration for the 101st Airborne Division, called Week of the Eagles.

Robert Nichols, a retired command sergeant major from the 101st Airborne, is helping organize the event along with the 101st Airborne Division Association, an organization for former members of the storied division.

A veteran of both Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars, Nichols said there was a stark difference in how he was treated when he came home each time.

"I was just 18 and 19 in Vietnam, and I did what my country asked me to do," he said. "When we came home, everyone was mad at us, and it was confusing and it was emotional. It was very hard."

He's hoping that these veterans will get a chance to experience the support and gratitude that current soldiers enjoy. {more - the Tennessean}

I don't know what area of the country Mr. Nichols was refering to when he said "everyone was mad at us." I don't recall that being the case here in the middle Tennessee area. That would be misplaced anger, wouldn't it? Most of the 'grunts' sent to Vietnam were forced to go there, it was called the draft. The anger I saw, even my own, was towards the government who told nothing but lies about why we were there.

I'm all for supporting war vets but that doesn't mean glorifying the lies. Vietnam, just as Iraq and Afghanistan, was never about freedom, security or any of the rest of the nonsense our 'leaders' and the bought media tried to convince us to believe.

I hope this so called 'better late than never' ceremony helps a few of the vets. I suppose it is a form of group therapy and maybe a few old wounds will be healed.

But the greatest help for all should come from those vets who have not succumbed to the constant bombardment of propaganda that 'war is peace' and have the realization that all these wars are for one thing...the profit of a few.

Perhaps just one Vietnam vet will stand up and shout "You lied about everything, over 50,000 of our brothers died in vain and now you want to ease the guilt by having a band play in our honor. Bullshit!"

Perhaps just one vet will say "Never Again."

Where is the outrage against the lies of war?


~~~~~~~
Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial - My Small Tribute to Eric Duffer

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Dick Holbrooke - The Zionist Agent in Obama's Viet Nam

by Christopher Bollyn


Dick Holbrooke in Afghanistan in 2006. Understanding Holbrooke's mission in Central Asia requires knowing who this Zionist "master of disaster" really is.

War weary Americans who hoped the new Obama administration would change U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home must be sorely disappointed. The only Americans coming home these days are those who have died in the senseless conflict. More troops are being sent to fight a war that is understood neither by the American public nor by the people doing the fighting.


Americans are coming home from Afghanistan in caskets under the cover of night.

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, July 5, to discuss U.S. military actions in the Middle East. During the interview Mullen revealed what he called the real strategy in Afghanistan: to clear, hold, and build. The first question asked of Mullen was about the military situation in Afghanistan as the U.S. Marines carry out a large offensive known as Operation Strike of the Sword or Operation Khanjar (Arabic for "dagger"):

Admiral Mike Mullen: I suspect it’s going to be tough for a while. And again, we have enough forces there now not just to clear an area but to hold it so we can build after. And that’s really the strategy.

The logical question to ask Mullen would have been, "What is it that we want to build in Afghanistan?" although John Dickerson of CBS News did not ask. If building is "really the strategy" in Afghanistan as Admiral Mullen says, what is it that so badly needs to be built?

WHY ARE WE IN AFGHANISTAN?

U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001 when they were supposedly sent in response to 9-11, although no Afghans were involved in the terror attacks. The U.S. reportedly gave up its pursuit of Osama Bin Laden years ago. So why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan and why are we still there? Why has President Obama increased troop levels in Afghanistan? The short answer is the TAPI gas pipeline, which will carry gas from Israeli-owned and managed gas fields in Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and China.

The TAPI pipeline needs to cross Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan.

Turkmenistan and Afghanistan are both very rich in gas reserves. The Turkmen mineral assets are managed by the former Mossad agent Yosef Maiman. Building the TAPI pipeline is a Zionist pipe dream that will use the mineral wealth of Turkmenistan to benefit Maiman and his partners. This is the main development project that U.S. policy is trying to accomplish. Transit fees from the gas pipeline are intended to support the government in Kabul.

Mullen touched on this development in the interview:

We’ve got to move to a point where there’s security so that the economic underpinnings can start to move, development, that we can create governance so that the Afghan people can get goods and services consistently from their government.

Are we to believe that the U.S. is fighting an 8-year war in Afghanistan in order to make sure the Afghans can get "goods and services consistently from their government?" Have we spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan so we can build post offices, train stations, and power plants? What are the "economic underpinnings" that need to "start to move?" Why would the U.S. government care more about providing "goods and services" to the people of Afghanistan than, say, the people of California?

Mullen touched only lightly on the subject and CBS News was certainly not asking the questions that would allow Americans to really understand the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

"The economic development the generals talk about, including gas pipeline construction, requires stability," Gary Leupp wrote in Counterpunch on July 6, "But Afghanistan, like Iraq, was destabilized precisely by a U.S. attack and occupation in the first place. More ominously, Pakistan has been destabilized by the invasion of the next-door country." Why are Americans fighting wars in Central Asia for a pipeline from Turkmenistan?

To understand why Obama is pushing the war in Afghanistan, one needs to understand that the Obama administration is really a Zionist-controlled government. If this were not already abundantly clear, it can be seen by the person appointed to apply U.S. policy in the region. That person is Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke, one of Obama's first appointments. Holbrooke, a Zionist Jew and a long-time associate of Henry Kissinger, is the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke was a director of Maurice Greenberg's incredibly badly-run A.I.G. insurance company from 2001-2008. A.I.G. is really a criminal enterprise, indicted on numerous charges, which insured investment banks against losses from the extremely risky financial "instruments" that caused the financial collapse of 2008. When these risky instruments failed, A.I.G. was bailed out with more than $180 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars, which it then distributed to the dodgy investment banks it had insured. A.I.G. has already cost every man, woman, and child in the United States about $600 each. Holbrooke was a key insider in this tremendous scam. Greenberg and A.I.G. are also involved in the terror attacks of 9-11 and the fraudulent "War on Terror" in many ways. The first plane that struck the World Trade Center, for example, flew directly into the secure computer room of a Greenberg-owned and managed company, Marsh.

Prior to A.I.G., Holbrooke was a vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston. First Boston was the place where the mortgage-based securities were first created under Laurence D. Fink. (Fink developed mortgage-based securities at First Boston in the mid-1970s when 9-11 "whistle-blower" Indira Singh worked there on the IT and risk consulting end of the business.)

On January 22, two days after taking office, Obama named Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. At this point, the U.S. government had already bailed-out Holbrooke's company to the tune of some $180 billion. Yet two months later, Obama blasted A.I.G., calling their business practices "outrageous" and trying to distance his administration, which includes a former director of A.I.G., from the tremendous cost the A.I.G. bail-out imposed on the U.S. taxpayer: "Nobody here was responsible for supervising A.I.G. and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in," the president said.


Richard Holbrooke of A.I.G. and George Mitchell were both early Obama appointments. Obama reportedly did not talk with Holbrooke about the $180 billion bail-out of the company he had been a long-time director of. Instead he lied by saying no one in his administration was responsible for supervising A.I.G.

Obama's denial is clearly not true. Holbrooke, an Obama appointee, had his hands deep in the A.I.G. scam for 8 years and had made a good living doing so. Fox News reported on March 19, 2009, that Holbrooke made more than $250,000 a year as a director at A.I.G.:

Holbrooke joined AIG's board in February 2001 and resigned in July 2008, two months before the company nearly collapsed. Over more than seven years as a board member, he may have earned as much as $800,000 in cash and company stock, according to AIG financial documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Since September, AIG has received $180 billion in taxpayer money to keep it from failing and causing more damage to the U.S. economy…

For much of his tenure on the AIG board, Holbrooke had a role in approving salaries and compensation. From 2001 until mid-2005, he was a member of the board's compensation committee. According to AIG financial statements, the committee sets the salary for the company's chief executive officer [Maurice Greenberg] and gives advice on how other senior managers are to be compensated.

HOLBROOKE AND VIET NAM

When critics call the conflict in Afghanistan "Obama's Viet Nam" they are not far off. Holbrooke was a key player in the Viet Nam war from 1962 to 1969. His biography concerning Viet Nam looks like this: Joined Foreign Service US Department State, 1962, served in South Vietnam Saigon, 1963-66; staff member The White House, 1966-67; assigned US Department State; staff Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam, 1968-69. From his high-level positions in the Viet Nam conflict we can see that Holbrooke and Henry Kissinger have worked together since the mid-1960s.

Holbrooke and Kissinger have continued to work closely together at the American Academy in Berlin, which they founded in 1994. The academy is located in a lakeside mansion across from the train station in Wannsee. In 2008, Holbrooke gave the Kissinger award to George H.W. Bush. Why are Holbrooke and Kissinger giving prizes to former U.S. presidents?


George W. Bush receiving the Kissinger Prize in 2008

In an odd breach of protocol, Henry Kissinger was sent by the Obama administration to hold high-level talks with the leaders of Russia in March instead of the Secretary of State. Why was Kissinger speaking for the United States under the newly-elected Obama administration? Who really makes U.S. foreign policy?


Kissinger meeting Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on March 19, 2009

Holbrooke also played a key role in the U.S.-led bombing and subsequent Balkanization of Yugoslavia, in which the formerly prosperous and socialist nation was carved up into ethnic mini-statelets. The breaking up of Yugoslavia resulted in a significant reduction in the standard of living across the nation. NATO continues to control the statelet of Kosovo, which was literally ripped off from Serbia along with Trepca, one of the richest mines in Europe.

Holbrooke, who is called "the bulldozer" by some who know him, is a pushy individual who has been involved at the highest level in one disaster after another since the early 1960s. Now he is the point man in a disastrous and senseless war in Central Asia, which has gotten much worse since he joined the effort in January 2009. Why is Holbrooke put into such positions of power in the first place? The man, after all, has a long record of creating mega-disasters.


Holbrooke visited refugees who had been driven from Pakistan's Swat valley in early June. "Are you glad the army came in, even though you were driven out of your homes?" Holbrooke reportedly asked the refugees.

To understand why Holbrooke is put into these positions, it is necessary to understand who he really is. Although it is not reported in biographical sketches, Holbrooke belongs to a very highly-connected family that is related to the Rothschild and Guggenheim families, among others. It is his German Jewish family connections that have placed him in positions of power in the U.S. government.

Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was born April 24, 1941, to Dan Holbrooke and Gertrudis "Trudi" Moos Holbrooke. Dan, his father, was a Polish Jewish immigrant who changed his name to Holbrooke. Biographical sketches claim that Dan's original surname has been lost, which is very unlikely. Dan Holbrooke's real name has been hidden in the same way that the family has sought to hide its Jewish roots. But why would the Holbrooke family want to hide its Jewishness? It it because that is their secret connection to power that they want to conceal?

Celia Mcgee of the New York Observer wrote about Holbrooke in 1998:

The son of Dan and Trudi Holbrooke, raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., schooled at Brown University, he was a son of assimilated, upper-class Jews who fled Nazi racism. "I've been with him plenty of times when his Jewishness was obvious," said his friend Stanley Karnow, the journalist and author, "and he jokes about it plenty, too. It just isn't an issue with him, or Kati."

Holbrooke's father, whose real name is not known, died when Holbrooke was 16. His mother comes from the influential merchant Moos family of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The Moos family is engaged in leather trading and moved their business to Argentina in 1922. Holbrooke's grandfather Samuel Moos was born in Reutlingen in 1889 and married Valesca Friedheim of Zurich. Samuel and Valesca lived in Buenos Aires where the leather-trading business is run in the name of the company founder, Elias Moos S.A. The Moos family, which is related by marriage to the Rothschild, Guggenheim, Weil, Marx, and Einstein families, traveled frequently by ship between Buenos Aires, New York, and Europe. There is even a seminar room at Tel Aviv University named in honor of Samuel and Valesca Moos. The Moos family collected nearly 1 million Swiss francs from Switzerland in 2007 for money they claimed to have lost in accounts during the war, which was multiplied by a factor of 12.


The graves of Ludwig Rothschild and his wife Hanchen Moos in the Jewish graveyard of Gailingen, Germany.

By understanding who Dick Holbrooke is we can see that there is a secret agenda behind the war in Afghanistan, which is likely to become much worse with his involvement.

Source: Christopher Bollyn