How the U.S. Got Involved in Vietnam

http://www.vietvet.org/jeffviet.htm

This article tries to answer a special question... how did the US get involved in Vietnam? Though the question is an old one, it should still hold some interest, for the facts behind US involvement in Vietnam paint a very different history than the popular one taught in our schools, or the history of the war which is currently being rewritten to match the public's highly emotional memories of the Kennedy "Camelot" years.

You may debate whether someone's intention was one thing or another, but the historical record speaks for itself. The information contained in this article did not come from unreliable sources. Much of it is contained within our government's own prehistory of the war which it fought so hard to keep from the American public - the documents which later became known as the Pentagon Papers.

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However, the US quickly made it clear that it was against any kind of neutralist solution. By mid-December, Secretary of Defense McNamara told Saigon's leaders that Washington did not see neutralism in Vietnam's future and that President Kennedy's plans for withdrawing from Vietnam had been revised.(67)

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Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was the man most responsible for "giving, controlling and managing the war news from Vietnam." One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. When one of the newsmen exclaimed: "Surely, Arthur, you don't expect the American press to be the handmaidens of government," Sylvester replied, "That's exactly what I expect," adding: "Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? --- stupid." And when a correspondent for a New York paper began a question, he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: "Aw, come on. What does someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?"(79)

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In 1967, Colby's office devised another program that would later be called Phoenix, to coordinate an attack against the Vietcong infrastructure. Again, CIA money was the catalyst. According to Colby's own testimony in 1971 before a congressional committee, 20,587 suspected Vietcong were killed under Phoenix in its first two and a half years.(82) Figures provided by the South Vietnamese government credit Phoenix with 40,994 VC kills. Colby admitted to this same committee that there was no proven method for knowing whether their victims were Vietcong or not.

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Over 2,000,000 Vietnamese dead. But are the real victims of the Vietnam war yet to be born? The United States dropped tens of millions of pounds of herbicide on Vietnam. Included in this were large quantities of dioxin, which has been called the most toxic man-made substance known. Three ounces of dioxin placed in the New York water supply, it is claimed, could wipe out the entire populace. Studies done since the end of the war indicate abnormally high rates of cancers, particularly of the liver, chromosomal damage, birth defects, long-lasting neurological disorders, etc., in the heavily sprayed areas. The evidence is not yet conclusive, but further studies have been difficult to perform due to the US long-standing isolation of Vietnam. Thousands of American veterans of Vietnam have been fighting for disability compensation due to their own exposure to the toxins. For years, citing "lack of evidence," several herbicide manufacturers finally agreed to a settlement in 1984. It is extremely unfortunate that the "evidence" our veterans needed was waiting to be collected in Vietnam. Every year that passes pushes the possibility of collecting it farther and farther away.

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note: I do not know when this article was written, but it is absolutely riveting - from start to finish.

Got involved? Go back to 1954.

It has only recently been revealed how we essentially footed most of the bill for France's war to keep their little empire. All so silly really.