by Karen St. John, Staff Writer 

      Like many of us, the Vietnam War became teenager Marc Phillip Yablonka’s war.  The son of a holocaust survivor and U.S. WW II veteran, Yablonka watched as the war dragged on and Saigon fell in 1975.  For decades falling the collapse, a steady stream of Vietnam refugees poured into California.  Yablonka’s role as an English teacher for adults suddenly brought him up close and personal to the war that he had only a vague notion of.

NORTH VIETNAMESE TAKEOVER OF VIETNAM PART OF NIXON, KISSINGER PLAN TO RIG THE 1972 ELECTION

A STORY OF DISHONOR AND BETRAYAL

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Declassified documents and tapes now show every single word on how the Vietnam War was ended was a lie.  Henry Kissinger and President Nixon openly planned the fall of Vietnam to the Communists as part of a plan, along with Watergate, to give us "FOUR MORE YEARS" of the same, lies and betrayal.

A study of more Nixon/Kissinger tapes will show that, along with abandoning South Vietnam, our POWs held by North Vietnam in Laos were also abandoned, more than 200 of them. 

This fact had been declassified in the 90s when the tapes were released but John McCain blocked any investigation, as he has blocked all investigations of POWs.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is doing all she can to get full coverage for all Viet Nam veterans who have been affected by Agent Orange.

She could use your help. 

If you would like to help her, here is her website address and the article concerning Agent Orange care she is trying to secure for Viet Nam vets.

From Meg Jones of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel - Dick Olsen volunteered to go to Vietnam because he knew it would make him a better artist. The pictures Olsen, now 73, painted and sketched ended up at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago. Now, Olsen's art is among those included in an exhibit of artwork by veterans that will open at the Milwaukee Art Museum. [Sculpture at right is by Vietnam veteran John McManus, on display at the Milwaukee Art Museum though Nov. 15 in honor of Veterans Day.]

In today's Politics Daily there is a powerful piece about Max Cleland. The former senator was taken out by the Bushites in a particularly nasty race with Saxby Chambliss coming out the winner years ago.  The loss of his senate seat sent him into a tailspin at that time from which he is now recovering. 

His Viet Nam experience had to be reconciled emotionally for him to move forward.  This is a piece  you will remember for awhile. 

In news reported by the Associated Press today, Al Qaeda is pretty much gone from Afghanistan; at least that is the intelligence community's view on things.  That article is here.

by Donna Teresa, Staff Writer

One of the most deeply profound things I have done is volunteered with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation, "Teach Vietnam Network" in Washington, D.C.

Since 2005, I have been involved with this program that provides educators invaluable resources to help educate young people about the Vietnam War and those who served in it. I've had the privilege of being a volunteer, helping the veteran and military community for many years and sharing the "Teach Vietnam" program with young people and teachers.

My community has provided me with some of the most heartwarming, inspirational moments I have ever experienced. Those who have shared those times with me at the Monterey County Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Salinas, know exactly what I am talking about.

HEROES or HUCKSTERS?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

I first started talking about POWs while in Vietnam as a Marine.  Universally, all of us wanted to head north and get them out.  We were under clear orders, fight to the death, never be captured, never leave anyone behind.  They will be tortured and slaughtered.  This was official USMC policy in Vietnam.

We also knew we could head north to Hanoi any time we wanted and the North Vietnamese could do little to stop us.  We watched this twice in Iraq.  This was what we were trained to do, not play neighborhood cop or fight unsupported and outnumbered until our casualties reached levels no one is remotely aware of today.  We lost as many Marines in Vietnam as in WW2 but with casualty ratios 4 times higher.

Time for us to talk honestly.  We knew our POWs were living in hell and it hurt us each day not being able to get them.  We lived with this and talked about it often while on combat operations.  We also knew that some would do anything to survive and none should be judged.  We never imagined that being captured would make a few the heroes of all of us, especially when thousands of Marines, totally forgotten by everyone, fought to the death, their bodies hacked to pieces and left among those they had killed.  This is a story that could be told thousands of times but never is.  Instead we give medals of honor to POWs who get lost in the woods.

One POW stands out above all others, Colonel Ted Guy.  Ted was part of our original group on AOL, an outspoken POW/MIA activist.  He was captured only after emptying his pistol into several North Vietnamese and trying to beat the rest of them to death with the empty weapon.  He got less mellow as time went on.

Ben Stocking of the Associated Press has written a story and released it today concerning high levels of dioxin, the active catalyst in Agent Orange at Da Nang Airport, the home of a former U.S. Air Force base that was the main storage area in the country for that herbicide.  He also says that two other areas in the country that housed U.S. Air Force bases Phu Cat and Bien Hoa, also have unacceptably high levels of the chemical in the soil and sediment.  The article is here.

Agent Orange has caused death and destruction everywhere as any person living since 1970 knows who can read English at the fourth grade level.  We have untold numbers of Viet Nam veterans of many nations who have suffered from it as well as had children with birth defects because of it.  The Viet Namese have suffered horribly from this also in premature cancer in statistically high numbers among the population and with children born with weird birth defects.

So what is the lesson here?  I don't know.  But I would guess that there just has to be one.

NEVER DEPLOYED "COLONEL" WILSON

DEFERRMENTS THROUGH 1972 THEN "SHEPHERDED" INTO RESERVE BILLET TO AVOID VIETNAM

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

Joe Wilson, real name "Addison" presents himself as a hard boiled combat veteran, retired Army colonel and all around tough guy.  He belongs to "white supremist" organizations, fought hard to keep the Confederate flag in South Carolina and, when an aide to the notorious racist Strom Thrumond, abused and threatened Thurmond's half-African American daughter in an attempt to shut her up.

His real record is Vietnam.  Born in 1947, Wilson was prime material for the Vietnam War.  After taking deferment after deferment for college and law school, in 1972, Wilson was glided into a coveted Army Reserve billet,  protecting him from service in Vietnam.  He quit in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and transferred to the National Guard where he was a Judge Advocate, a "lawyer."

Wilson has one of the worst records in Congress, having voted against Veteran funding 11 times.  The only "veteran" Wilson has helped is himself.

by Karen St. John, Staff Writer

With his family steadfast against his plans to enlist in the marines and go to Vietnam, seventeen-year old Robert J. Topmiller did the next best thing – he joined the U.S. Navy in 1966 under the Kiddy Cruiser Program, which permitted those under eighteen to enlist, with an out date of one day before their twenty-first birthday.  He was in boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Station, north of Chicago, when he chose a career field.   Robert selected “Hospital Corpsman” (medic). 

After completing his medical training stateside, Topmiller found himself in two months of intensive field training on Okinawa.  A training Topmiller rated as “totally irrelevant to my experience in Vietnam.”  He arrived in Danang, Vietnam, in mid-January of 1968, and immediately continued onward to the marine base at Khe Sanh.  In between treating recon patrols for serious wounds and men on base for rat bites, Topmiller filled sand bags and dug bunkers. 

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Then, in the wee hours of January 21, the enemy began an assault of mortars, shells and rockets that varied in intensity and damages for seventy-seven days until April, when US forces finally ended the siege. In June of 1968, General Westmoreland no longer needed the Khe Sanh base for defense and approved its abandonment and demolition.

FINALLY, EVERYONE ELSE IS EVEN CRAZIER THAN VIETNAM VETS

REASON TO REJOICE OR NATIONAL TRAGEDY?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

First thing I read this morning is an email is about a young soldier from Ohio who killed himself because of abuse in the military.  The issue?  Physical fitness.  How do I look at this, as a parent who has also lost a child, as former military, very former by the way or as a journalist who sees a obsession everywhere, a country with too much time on its hands and too little common sense.

Having spent most of my life as a Vietnam veteran I have actually enjoyed, on occasion, being designated both "dangerously insane" and "wildly rational."  Who could want more?  People are both afraid you will murder them like you did all those innocent babies in Vietnam and amazed that you aren't a total jibbering idiot.  Thus, you can be both a dangerous sociopath and circus clown at the same time, kind of like being President.

After nearly 40 years of silence, convicted ex-Army officer says he's sorry

LEFT: Lt. William L. Calley Jr., in a photo taken on April 23, 1971, during his court-martial at Fort Benning, Ga. He was convicted of the 1968 killing of 22 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

VICTIMS OF 4 DECADES OF BETRAYAL

VIETNAM VETERANS DEMAND REPARATIONS FROM AN UNGRATEFUL NATION

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

The new Obama GI bill just kicked in.  New vets can get massive funding for college, enough to live like rich fratboys, yes, that much.  They can give their benefits to family members or use them to, not only go to school but live, eat, buy text books, drive a car, all things denied Vietnam veterans.

What did Vietnam vets get?  They got $173 a month.  What was that to pay for?  Living expenses, books, tuition, supplies, fees, in fact everything.  What did it pay for?  It paid rent on a shared bedroom in an old house and bus tokens.

Who paid the rest?  Vietnam vets worked, most full time, often having to miss classes because of jobs.  They borrowed thousands and left college in debt.  Books?  They were checked out from the library or never bought at all.  Food?  Whatever you could buy for a buck a day, usually canned hash or Beefaroni.

No counseling, no disability checks, to PTSD or TBI treatment, just poverty, overwork and the struggle to find jobs while being banned from most companies and denied employment preference.  The price?  Devastation.  Banned from mainstream service organizations because of our "undeclared war" we stood alone.  Now few of us can stand at all.

BBC VERSION OF VIETNAM CONFLICT PURE BULL

RICK STEIN:  GREAT FOOD BUT DUMB ON POLITICS AND HISTORY

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

While at RAF Alconbury, just outside Cambridge, last week I made the horrific mistake of watching BBC television.  I want to thank my hosts, of course, for the delightful accomodations and kindness but, at the same time, as a Vietnam veteran, I can't let the cheap anti-American propaganda the BBC was promoting go unpunished.

BBC chef, Rick Stein, a great seafood expert, was doing a tour of Southeast Asia and its food.  Having spent more than a bit of time in that country myself, I was impressed with their varied cooking and wish that I might have seen some of that myself when I had the chance.  However, Chef Stein spent too little of his time talking food and much more talking politics, war, history and promoting fiction as a pawn of the communists.

Even as a long time critic of the Vietnam War, I can't let this stand.  I can understand Stein's ignorance of history but the BBC has no excuse for promoting a version of the Vietnam War so hateful and demeaning to American troops.  It's bad enough I have to watch their phony version of WW2.. 

by Marc Phillip Yablonka

A Merriam Press Original Publication: Military Monograph MM27

This is a newly-edited compilation of eighteen years of Yablonka’s reportage on American involvement in Indochina and the people affected by America’s connection to that part of the world. After all those years and numerous articles about an indelible mark on American history published in the likes of the U.S. Military’s Stars and Stripes, Army Times, American Veteran, the Weider History Group publication Vietnam Magazine and others, these stories needed a wider audience for the world to know what they suffered, how most survived, and how they overcame adversity.

By Bob Hanafin, Staff Writer

A "Vietnam Era" Veteran is defined as any Veteran who served during the official time frame of the Vietnam War anywhere in the world as defined by Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I would assume that even National Guard members who have achieved official Veterans status as defined by the VA would be considered Vietnam Era Veterans.

I'm basically familiar with this, because most of the VA benefits I applied for and got when I served during the war were because I was a Vietnam Era Vet. However, I know that Congress passed a law in 1996 just after I retired from the Pentagon that changed the definition as it applied to those who served in-country Vietnam proper, and those Veterans who served elsewhere. The time frames are different.

THOUSANDS WEARING SERVICE RIBBONS NEVER EARNED IN VIETNAM

REAL VIETNAM VETERANS ARE FORGOTTEN IN A SEA OF 'WANNABEES'

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

Who are these folks we see, festooned in vests and ribbons, all screaming for war against someone?  Are they real Vietnam vets, aging holdovers from a disasterous war?  Having spent 40 years as a Vietnam veteran, I have a pretty good idea.  NO!  Most Vietnam vets are "era" veterans, "non-era" Veterans or "supporters."

Of those who served in Vietnam, 90% are non-combatants.  This is the noisiest group of all.  Vietnam vets were, for the most part, "anti-war" but most were not activist.  They felt this way because they weren't insane, at least not then.  Here is why:

• NONE OF US LIKED THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT - IT SEEMED WORSE THAN THE COMMUNISTS
• THE VIETNAMESE WERE NEVER VERY ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT US OR THE WAR
• OUR OWN MILITARY WAS SO OBVIOUSLY CORRUPT AND OFTEN INCOMPETENT THAT IT WAS AN EMBARASSMENT TO PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS
• THERE WAS NO WAR, ONLY MURDER ON A MASSIVE SCALE THAT WE KNEW WOULD OUTLAST US
• NIXON HAD ALREADY ANNOUNCED OUR SURRENDER - WHY DIE WHEN YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST?

Wichita council to weigh Vietnamese veterans' proposed memorialAllied vets seek memorial alongside U.S. vets

 What started as a quiet plan to put a Vietnamese war memorial at Veterans Park has become an emotional debate over history, honor, race and, of course, politics.

The years-long standoff is expected to come to a head Tuesday when Wichita City Council members could vote whether to allow the memorial or -- more likely -- hear comments and delay a decision.

The Defense Secretary that more or less structured American involvement in Viet Nam died today.  Here is the story as printed in today's Washington Post.  I thought all Viet Nam veterans who frequent this site would want to read this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601197.html?hpid=topnews

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)