New documents from Vietnam era resonate even now

[ProSense]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – In the thick of the Vietnam War, senators harrumphed about White House arrogance, fretted over their own ineffectiveness, complained bitterly about misleading information from the Johnson administration and debated the value — and potential damage — of telling Americans the truth.

In more than 1,000 pages of previously classified testimony and transcripts from 1967 and 1968, a picture emerges of the political, social and moral crosscurrents that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrestled with at a time when the shadows of Vietnam colored their thinking on problems foreign and domestic.

The documents were released Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee and its chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a decorated Vietnam War hero who later emerged as a forceful opponent of the war.

"It is incredible to read through these papers and hear the voices of many of the Senate's giants wrestling with Vietnam and all its complexity at a time when many of us, including some of us on the Foreign Relations Committee today, were serving as young officers in Vietnam living out those very same questions in a personal way," Kerry said.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100714/ap_on_re_us/us_vietnam_documents_1

[defendandprotect]

1. Thank you -- will save the link for later -- !!

[Hydra]

2. Unreal

"I must say that with one war going on in Vietnam and the possibilities of a war (with North Korea), I would think the best thing to do would be to try to pursue this by diplomatic means and not to use force," Republican Sen. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky tells Rusk.

Sound like what happened with us when we were banging the drum on Iran and N. Korea launched a test missile?

Unbelievable that nothing has changed since then.

[defendandprotect]

3. Haven't had a chance to look at the details, if any --- but would comment ...

that knowing information in a timely frame work is very important --

the even more serious problems we have now -- with two more perpetual wars bankrupting

our Treasury -- Democrats now attacking Social Security and Medicae --

I'm sure, will prevent the nation giving this material the attention it deserves . . .

[ProSense]

4. Here is a link to the documents

PDF

[defendandprotect]

5. Thank you -- are you reading them?

It will probably be days before I can even look at them --

:)

[No Elephants]

6. Debated the value of telling the American people the truth.

Arrogant turds. the American people were paying for the war and for the truth with their children and their taxes.