Nixon and Dulles wanted to Nuke North Vietnam. [View all]

[Kid Berwyn]

Today marks 70th Anniversary of the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. The Republicans in Washington did all they could to keep the war going, sending France all the weapons and ammo they could. But it wasn’t enough, so VP Richard Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proposed Operation VULTURE.



“We might give them a few.”

Did the US offer to drop atom bombs at Dien Bien Phu?

By Fredrik Logevall
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | February 21, 2016

Excerpt…

Turning to Dulles, the foreign minister noted the presence of American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin and Dulles’s repeated public statements that the United States would not tolerate the expansion of communism. If Washington so desired it could now reconcile those twin realities by assisting her ally at Dien Bien Phu. “He merely looked glum,” Bidault later remembered of the American’s reaction, “and did not even promise to repeat my request to Washington.”

But Dulles did offer a response, the nature of which has been shrouded in controversy for more than half a century. According to Bidault, the American took him aside during an intermission and asked him whether atomic bombs could be effective at Dien Bien Phu. If so, Dulles allegedly went on, his government could provide two such bombs to France. Bidault said he turned down the suggestion flat, on the grounds that the bombs would destroy the garrison as well as the Viet Minh, while dropping them farther away, on supply lines, would risk war with China. When informed a few months later of Bidault’s claim, Dulles said he could not recall making such an offer and insisted there must have been a misunderstanding.

Given Bidault’s visible exhaustion on the day in question, and his muddled speechmaking, and given the lack of any British or American confirmation of the claim, it is reasonable to suppose Dulles had it right: No offer was made. On the other hand, Bidault’s version is supported by senior French official Jean Chauvel in his memoirs, and by French general Paul Ely in his diary, which was kept on a daily basis. Ely, a key player on Indochina strategy in these months, wrote that he was of two minds about “the offer of two atom bombs. The psychological impact would be tremendous, but the [military] effectiveness would was uncertain, and it carries the risk of generalized warfare.”

Moreover, Bidault’s contention that Washington might offer atom bombs to his government had an inherent plausibility. In December 1953, when Western leaders held talks in Bermuda, Eisenhower alarmed the British and French delegations by referring casually to the atomic bomb as just another weapon in the West’s arsenal, one that might be used if the Chinese under Mao Zedong violated the terms of the recently-concluded truce in the Korean War. In February 1954, the president told Congressional leaders that in the event of war with China the United States would “go all the way,” with no limitations on targets hit or weapons used.

You could drop the Bomb, clean those commies out, and the band could play the Marseillaise. At several points in the weeks thereafter, US strategists considered the possible use of the Bomb, and according to one interpretation Operation Vulture always had, from its inception, an atomic dimension. In early April, a study group in the Pentagon examined the possibility of using atomic weapons at Dien Bien Phu and concluded that three tactical A-bombs, properly employed, would be sufficient to obliterate the Viet Minh effort there. Admiral Arthur Radford used this finding to suggest the use of the A-bomb to the National Security Council on April 7. According to Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining, “You could take all day to drop a bomb, make sure you put it in the right place…and clean those Commies out of there and the band could play the Marseillaise and the French could come marching out…in great shape.”

Continues…

https://thebulletin.org/2016/02/we-might-give-them-a-few-did-the-us-offer-to-drop-atom-bombs-at-dien-bien-phu/

These warmonger greedheads from history have passed the torch to the warmonger greedheads of today. Why I bring it up: We the People didn’t get to vote on it, nor our representatives in Congress, the decision was made without our input, in secret.