30-03-2009, 12:51 AM
(This post was last modified: 30-03-2009, 01:00 AM by David Healy.)
Nathaniel Heidenheimer Wrote:Hi im taking three grad classes and taking care of my alledged child so I am so busy and losing my mind-remainder.
One of my classes is on the Cold War from non us and russian perspective. In reality, thought the title makes it sound groovy, the class is far right with a pangloss of superficial multiculturalism... Sort of a Fareed Zakaria magaziny distortion written largely in accord with CIA injunction.
These past two weeks have been a real eyeopener into just how UNBELIVABLY BRAVE NEW WORLD we have fallen even in academic history departments.
If you had to read what I just read about Vietnam in this youthful X-file generation historian named Jeremi Suri you would lose your body hair and write similar posts into the wilderness. It is far far far far far beyond anything that could ever be imagined in the USSR.
He pins the whole thing -- including the basic creation of the DIEM project on JFK!!!!!!! He treats LBJ as a saintly grandfather whose only mission is to spread the NEW DEAL to Vietnam. It is cartoon and I am trying not to go epileptic on Tueday night so I have...
THESE QUESTIONS...
1) CAN SOMONE GIVE ME SOLID NUMBERS OF HOW MANY US TOTAL MILITARY PERSONNEL THERE WERE IN VIETNAM ON 11-22-63 HOPEFULLY THE BREAKDOWN . ALSO NUMBERS OF INTEL PEOPLE. ( I REALIZE THERE MAY BE AN OVERLAP) I AM ALMOST CERTAIN THAT OUR SORDID LYING TEXT VASTLY OVERSTATED THESE NUMBERS.
...
I was in Saigon the day JFK was assassinated. At the Plaza Hotel on Tra Hung Dao, Saigon. Had been since the revolution that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem less than 3 weeks earlier. Located less than 2 blocks from where the first Buddhist self immolation occurred, which I witnessed.
Roughly 17,000 (military support, military advisors, Special Forces, USAID, CIA, Embassy, US civilians, American school, American missionaries and some families the above) Americans were in country that day.
US Military Advisors (MAAG-Vietnam) of which I was assigned, accounted for no more than 1,000 military field advisors assigned to various Republic of South Vietnam military units...
below numbers are fairly accurate.
Year Troop Level
1959 760
1960 900
1961 3,025
1962 11,300
1963 16,300
1964 23,300
1965 184,300
1966 385,300
1967 485,600
1968 536,100
1969 475,200
1970 334,600
1971 156,800
1972 24,200
1973 50
a few other interesting stats....
http://www.landscaper.net/timelin.htm#VI...STATISTICS
this you may find interesting regarding Johnson's handling of the war:
http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-Viet2.html
