15-10-2018, 12:52 AM
Great stuff Jim - will put that book on my reading list.
Kind of ironic that Nixon ending up doing all the stuff Kennedy wanted to do: recognition Red China, detente with the USSR, withdrawal from Vietnam (of course Kennedy would never have engaged in the futile bombing campaign of North Vietnam and expansion of the war to Cambodia).
The Chomsky disciples often cite the Agent Orange business as evidence that Kennedy was no different than LBJ or NIxon vis-a-vis Vietnam. But according to what I've read the program was very small until LBJ's escalation of the overall war and the toxic effects of dioxin were not known until the seventies. You allude to Rusk misleading Kennedy about the nature of the herbicide program. Is that from the Parker book or do you have another source?
Kind of ironic that Nixon ending up doing all the stuff Kennedy wanted to do: recognition Red China, detente with the USSR, withdrawal from Vietnam (of course Kennedy would never have engaged in the futile bombing campaign of North Vietnam and expansion of the war to Cambodia).
The Chomsky disciples often cite the Agent Orange business as evidence that Kennedy was no different than LBJ or NIxon vis-a-vis Vietnam. But according to what I've read the program was very small until LBJ's escalation of the overall war and the toxic effects of dioxin were not known until the seventies. You allude to Rusk misleading Kennedy about the nature of the herbicide program. Is that from the Parker book or do you have another source?