TheNeverWas wrote:

2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during the reentry....

"We could not save them so we didn't try."
 

Not only was that story and picture accurate.  It demonstrated what right wing extremists did not want the public to know about the lie called Vietnam.  My Lai  just just another example of who the real enemy was in Nam.

I knew people, deployed to Nam, who would admit that Americans might rake a field in Nam to kill farmers. Since those farmers were gooks.  And therefore must be evil.

The brother of one noted that he would not talk about Nam until right after we all came out of the movie Apocalypse Now.
 

Last edited by tw (2/01/2022 5:00 pm)

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

...I think tw's right...

Wh-

Wha--

Where am I?  What's happening?

First, Big V, now, you...

Is this a variant?  What's going on?
 

TheNeverWas wrote:

 Where am I?  What's happening?
 

A substantial number of 20 to 36 year olds also do not know what the holocaust is or absolutely deny it.  I recall that number at about 30%. You need to start vetting your information sources.  So many need not be honest.  And are automatically believed.

To know anything about Nam means identifying the greatest enemy of the S Vietnamese people.  The government in Saigon.  That picture accurately identified the problem.  And why 50,000 American solidier were massacred there for no purpose.

That picture was and is accurate.  But so many are easily brainwashed by same techniques my father also used to manipualte the naive.
 

Last edited by tw (2/04/2022 12:38 pm)

tw wrote:

...so many are easily brainwashed by same techniques my father also used to manipualte the naive.

I knew something happened to you as a child.

I knew it.
 

February 9

1913 – A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of the Americas, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a record-setting audience of 73 million viewers across the United States.

1986 – Halley's Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System.

Diaphone Jim wrote:

  Was there any thing close after that war?

Everyone involved in the My Lai massacre were exonerated.  Except Calley who was under house arrest for only three years.  When testimony said he alone probably kill 50 mostly women and children.

Massacres by American soldiers were said to be routine among the few - and never reported. 

Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the new MACV commander. He described an ongoing and routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians on the part of American forces in Vietnam that he had personally witnessed,

  and

My Lai was first revealed to the American public on November 13, 1969—almost two years after the incident

.  Why?

Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers (D-South Carolina), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

  and

General William C. Westmoreland, the head of MACV, also congratulated Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry for "outstanding action", saying that they had "dealt [the] enemy [a] heavy blow"

Massacres in Nam (no where near as massive) twere rather routine according to a few I know who were there.  "We had to burn the village to save it."  That also was routine.

We are now beginning to learn that most Afghanistanis knew someone innocent and killed by American drones.  Those attacks were (apparently) justified by a same mentality.  With top management looking the other way - constantly.  Just another reason why Americans in Afghanistan were unpopular with (apparently) most of the population.
 

Last edited by tw (2/09/2022 8:18 pm)

TheNeverWas wrote:

Aaaand now I wish I'd never started this damned thread.
 

I wish you didn't feel that way.
I spent a year on the ground in Vietnam in the infantry.
One of the ways I have learned to deal with the legacy of my involvement (and perhaps help stave off PTSD) has been to read about the long and short term history of the war.
The military has and continues to do everything to whitewash it that it can. "Lessons learned" is one of their favorite terms for these self-serving attempts.
Folks that want that to be true loved Ken Burn's biased attempt to foster it.
So when the subject comes up, I feel compelled to jump in.
The photo you posted and its made-up justification should be a part of the lessons we still have to learn.
Jane Fonda's attempts to end US bombing of the North in particular and the war in general, for example, make her a hero and patriot, not a traitor. 

I read a short article about how far the chess AI has advanced. There's a web portal somewhere where you can watch AIs playing each other all day long, and the game theory that they're basing their moves on is completely alien and indecipherable.

Flint wrote:

I read a short article about how far the chess AI has advanced. There's a web portal somewhere where you can watch AIs playing each other all day long, and the game theory that they're basing their moves on is completely alien and indecipherable.

Now I won't understand the thinking of the humans or the machines.

 

Feb 17

1863 – A group of citizens of Geneva found an International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which later became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

1864 – American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.

1972 – Cumulative sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceed those of the Ford Model T.

Feb 28

1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April's Nature.

1958 – A [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestonsburg,_Kentucky_bus_disaster]school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck[/url] and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in what remains one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history.

1975 – In London, an underground train fails to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashes into the end of the tunnel, killing 43 people.

1983 – The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen]final episode[/url] of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_(TV_series)]M*A*S*H[/url] airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.

1993 – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh. Four ATF agents and six Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

Birthdays

1901 – Linus Pauling, 1906 – Bugsy Siegel, 1931 – Gavin MacLeod, 1939 – Tommy Tune, 1942 – Frank Bonner, 1942 – Brian Jones, 1945 – Bubba Smith, 1948 – Bernadette Peters, 1955 – Gilbert Gottfried