How many American adults can correctly identify 'Daniel Ellsberg'?

[Octafish]

64. John M. Newman found a gap in Pentagon Papers...

In his landmark work, JFK and Vietnam, the then US Army major and West Point professor Newman found that the Pentagon and CIA gave LBJ, as veep, a more accurate picture of what was happening in Vietnam than they provided JFK, as president.

Why? JFK said he would not get into a land war in Southeast Asia and he certainly was not going to place US draftees in the middle of Vietnam's civil war; Johnson would and did after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Vietnam Withdrawal Plans

The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.

The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:

http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm

Recently, The Nation magazine wanted to know "Why don't Americans know what really happened in Vietnam?" Interesting read, it brings up how much USA uses the volunteer military and observes the corporate owned news media don't want to bring that up so that people continue to thank the troops for their service without wondering why they're tasked with missions in 133 countries around the world. What the article missed and people need to know:

JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...

The 1,000 advisors were the beginning. All US military personnel were to be out of the country by the end of 1965, reported James K. Galbraith.

Then in NSAM 273, four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ changes the policy to stay and support South Vietnam in its "contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy."

That important part of the Vietnam story doesn't get repeated much, except on DU and a few gargling places on the Net.