THE LIES OF THE POWERFUL

Truth is the First Casualty in War

By zdf.de

[This article originally published 3/10/2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.zdf.de/ZDFde/13/0,1872,2109965,FF.html.]

The Vietnam War of the US began in 1964 with very targeted false information. This was also true in the Iraq war. Misjudgments and lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapon arsenal and his alleged ties to Al Qaeda led to the crusade against Iraq.

Two American destroyers were allegedly attacked in the high seas by North Vietnamese gunboats. In reality, these two US destroyers were assaulted in North Vietnam’s territorial waters. The Maddox had even put down a sabotage troop of South Vietnamese soldiers.

WHOLE PROVINCES WERE WIPED OUT

This incident was enough for president Johnson to order North Vietnam’s bombardment by the US Air Force and the US Navy continuing for nearly ten years. Enormous amounts of explosives rained down on this relatively small country. Whole provinces were transformed into a moonscape or lunar landscape. The surface bombardments of the B52s eradicated the jungle.

At the climax of the conflict, more than 500,000 GIs were deployed in South Vietnam to overpower the poorly armed Vietcong partisans. There wasn’t the least doubt about the fast and total victory of the US. Even the allies of the Vietcong, the Soviet Russians and Chinese, predicted the ruin of the Vietcong as General Giap confirmed retrospectively in Hanoi. “Even our friends, the great socialist states, did not believe in our victory against the American invasion.”

PAST TIMES

The Pentagon at that time relied on the superiority of the US army and the perfecting of the most modern weapon technology. In 1966 Defense secretary McNamara extolled the unerring effect of high technology like his successor Donald Rumsfeld. However reality looked different. The guerilla war wore down the occupying power. In their underground bunker systems, the Vietcong partisans developed a capacity of survival and stubborn resistance that hardly any other race had found.

President Johnson who blindly fell in this “quagmire” (mire or morass) gave addresses that could be models for president Bush. “America wins its wars. We shouldn’t deceive ourselves. We have declared war on ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, and sickness. We wage war on tyranny and aggression.”
HORRIFIC PICTURES IN THE MEDIA

Unlike the present-day Iraq conflict, the media could report unhindered from Vietnam. The frightening pictures of dead civilians and reports of whole populations that were ruthlessly resettled reached the public media.

In today’s maze of streets in Saigon and its seething traffic, one can hardly fathom the secret conspiratorial preparations. Ho Chi Minh’s followers in South Vietnam forced the decisive victory for Vietnam.