Original subtitles

[helicopters flying]

[weapon firing]

[explosions]

[gun firing]

Ladies and gentlemen, a long time

ago Abraham Lincoln made a statement.

To stand by silence when you should speak out

makes cowards of men.

It's time we spoke out about Vietnam and the most obvious,

yet the most ignored threat ever faced by free people

in the history of the world.

The street demonstrators demand that we

get out of Southeast Asia so that there will be peace.

Where do they get the idea that there will

be peace just because we quit?

We can't stop the war by giving up,

and we sure can't settle anything

by trying to bargain with a winning

enemy at the peace table.

As for the war that was going on a long time before Vietnam

and will go on whether we pull out or not,

we can't stop the war by giving up.

And the way it is now we're not programmed to win because

of the politicians and civilians that we've

let stick our nose in it.

Listen to this young fellow.

I'm flying helicopters commercially in Alaska now.

Not long ago, I was flying them in Vietnam.

I was there to fight the communists and try to win

but our politicians wouldn't let us.

What kind of a war is this that we're not supposed to win?

Truth of the matter is it's not a separate war at all.

It's only one battle in a bigger,

long drawn out attack that's been

going on for over 50 years.

And it's a war we're loading not only on the battlefields

but out on street corners, college campuses,

in the offices of some of our most influential

so-called statesmen.

Now all men of good will certainly want peace,

but do we want peace at any price, peace without freedom?

We all know that this country has, with good will

has stumbled a few times and made a mistake or two,

can't go back and do anything about that.

But as Mr. Lincoln once said, "I wish I had been there when

the horse was stole, but I reckon I can find

the tracks when I do get there.

Seems to me the horse is already stolen,

so we better get back and pick up the tracks."

To give you that background we have a man who really knows.

Someone who was there when all the important history was

being made since World War I.

He has the facts firsthand from leaders and the generals

themselves.

Here he is.

A great newspaper man, Mr. Lowell Thomas.

Hello everybody, this is Lowell Thomas,

to chat with you for a moment about what we all seem to agree

is just about the most important subject of our time.

And to those of you who are fairly young perhaps

it is more important to you, than to the rest of us.

I'm sure you all remember the words of the father of

our country, George Washington.

He was a fairly wise man.

He said, "the best way to prepare for peace

is to be ready for war.

NARRATOR: World War I with the beginning of what

the whole of mankind hoped would lead

to a permanent world peace.

LOWELL THOMAS [VOICEOVER]: It seems like the height of folly

now, hard for us to understand, impossible,

in fact to comprehend.

But after the war was over, the Allies

began to disband their armies, break up their navies,

and melt down their guns!

NARRATOR: In the confusion at the end of World War I,

a group of dedicated men came to power in Russia.

The leader of the group, Nikolai Lenin, head of the Bolshevik,

or Majority Communist Party, he knew

the free nations of the world desperately wanted peace.

He also knew his ideology, Communism, could use

this as a tool against them.

Part of his plan to achieve world wide supremacy

was to instruct communist followers in all countries

to protest for peace.

A disarmed nation then would be ripe for plucking.

As soon as hostilities ceased at the end of World War

I, the Allies who had stopped the Kaiser's war machine,

stopped it cold, alas they began to disband

their armies and navies.

After all, Germany had been the only nation

with ambitions to expand, and Germany was smashed for good.

Or was it?

No one at the peace tables had ever heard of a lance corporal

in one of the Bavarian regiments, a chap

known as Adolf Schicklgruber, later

to be known as Adolf Hitler.

It's hard to believe that a lowly lance

corporal with a funny mustache could ever get far.

But in less than 15 years, there he

was, head of a re-armed Germany, with plans

to conquer the world.

Distinguished men like the lone eagle, Charles Lindbergh and

the fabulous Jimmy Doolittle--

Told us what was going on in Central Europe,

told us what Hitler was doing, and we

paid little or no attention.

NARRATOR: Ah, but life was too dear and peace too sweet

to rock the boat, so few raised a hand

to do anything at that time.

So in 1938, with the most powerful war

machine in the world up to that time,

Hitler marched on Austria.

The next year, 1939, he marched on Czechoslovakia.

Now, England began to get the message.

We all know how Chamberlain went from London to Munich

with his umbrella, and came back saying,

"this means peace in our time."

But no sooner had this conference been concluded,

then Hitler made a pact with Russia.

And then they both attacked Poland.

The next step was the blitz on the west.

[explosions]

With the Nazis and the Communists in collusion,

their representatives here in America

stepped up their propaganda and began shouting to us,

disarm, disarm!

No harm will ever come to America.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, peace talks had so reduced US power

that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,

you all remember that some of our old battleships

lined up there either were sunk or beached.

And we had, for all practical purposes,

lost our Pacific fleet.

It appeared as though it was almost too late,

but we did get down to the agonizing business

of rebuilding for a counter-attack.

And the history books show that in spite of all obstacles

we finally, we finally did win.

After that, followed those usual negotiations between the winner

and the loser.

But even while we were winning, certain American leaders,

perhaps fooled by Stalin, they arranged

things so we lost nearly as much as we gained, possibly more.

As our troops rushed in triumph through Germany

they got the word to slow down, slow down.

Let the Russians move in.

Let the Russians take over East Germany,

take over the great city of Berlin.

Today, a nation of people who love communism

so well that they have to be walled in

and kept in with guns, they are a tragic monument

to those people who seek to appease the enemy.

[weapons fired]

In meetings at Yalta with Lenin's cunning successor,

Stalin, the Russians managed to take over all of Eastern

Europe, much of Asia.

We know what happened in the Far East,

and how they put it over on China.

And so the stage was set for Korea, and a little later

on for Vietnam.

In 1945, everybody thought the war was over,

but our real enemy was still going strong.

This was the so-called ally that we had let

take East Germany and Berlin.

Now I'm not speaking of the Russian people,

and I won't speak of the Chinese people.

I'm speaking of the communist conspiracy.

So many of the great Americans of the last generation

are no longer with us to give us the firsthand account of what

happened behind the scenes, behind the false front

of communist cooperation after the war.

We are fortunate that one of the greatest leaders, a conqueror

of the Nazis in Italy, is here and can

tell it like it was when it came to getting along with the Reds.

This is General Mark Clark.

After the end of World War II, when the fighting stopped

in Italy, and I took the surrender of the German forces

there, I went into Austria as the American occupation

commander and High Commissioner.

Russian armies were there in Austria as well,

and I sat on a quadri-apartheid meeting with the Russians

and the British, the French and ourselves

in order to implement the agreement that the nations had

made at Potsdam, which was to bring

about free and independent and democratic Austria once more.

Saw firsthand the duplicity of the Soviets, how they looted,

killed, murdered, and that they couldn't be believed.

I found that every constructive move

and suggestion we made to help Austria

was vetoed by the Soviets.

When I went with Burns to the conference of foreign ministers

in England, and then with Marshal into Moscow,

and there again I saw the difficulty, the almost

impossibility of doing business with the Russians and that

you should do it from a position of extreme force,

and you never compromise, and you never show weakness.

Or they see weakness, they despise it, and exploit it.

And when they see strength and determination,

that's when they sit up and take notice.

In the aftermath of the war, the Reds

managed to grab off East Germany and all

the countries that are now on the wrong side of the Iron

Curtain.

And for the next big move to encircle a world,

they looked to east to Asia.

There a lot of garbled accounts of what

really happened when the East began to go Red,

but we have the number one authority with us,

who can give it to us straight.

This is a man who is more familiar with Asian communism

than anyone else in America today.

He is General Albert C. Wedemeyer, former US

commander in the Far East.

He sat and listened to Mao Tse-tung tell how they,

the Reds were going to take over China.

The general warned the State Department at that time

that we should support Chiang Kai-Shek if we didn't want

the biggest country in the world with 700 million people

to be lost to communism.

Unfortunately, nobody was listening.

We'll listen to him now, General Albert C. Wedemeyer.

I have spent 10 years in the Orient living

in China, the Philippines, and in India.

Experiences and observations in those areas

provide the basis for my ideas and suggestions

about the Vietnam war.

At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union

accelerated plans for the conquest of the Far East.

In 1946, the Republic of China, Japan, and Thailand

were the only independent nations in that area.

Moscow planned to exploit the industrial know-how of Japan,

the vast pool of manpower in China,

and the natural resources in Southeast

Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia,

and the Melanesian islands.

During General MacArthur's wise and courageous administration,

Communist efforts to communize Japan

were successfully blocked.

The Soviet Union then turned its attention to mainland China.

With the connivance of the Red Chinese leaders,

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, mainland China, an area greater

in extent than the United States, and 700 million people

were drawn within the orbit of the Soviet Union in 1949.

The loss of China to the tyranny of communism

was a black mark on the escutcheon

of the United States.

Instead of supporting our loyal World War II ally, Chiang

Kai-Shek, the United States government adopted a hands

off policy which was dramatized by the then Secretary

of State's announcement quote, we will let the dust settle out

there," end of quote.

You and I know that the dust was settled in Korea

and is now being settled in Vietnam with American blood.

Chiang Kai-Shek, and his government

were compelled to withdraw to Formosa

where they maintained a strong bastion

against communists advance.

I believe then, and do now, that we should have continued

our support of the strongly anti-Communist government

of Nationalist China.

Had we done so, the United States would not today

experience an uneasy peace in Korea

and a costly war in Vietnam.

Of course the next communist move in their continuous war

on the free world was Korea.

And after General MacArthur was pulled out for being too tough

on the commies, General Mark Clark was ordered

to Korea to pick up the pieces.

He soon found out he was faced again

with the same ol' problems when it

came to dealing with the reds.

General Mark Clark.

President Truman sent me out to the Far East

to take command during the Korean

War the last year and a half.

And there I saw them again, I saw them this time

on the field of battle.

I saw how treacherous they were, how they murder our prisoners

of war, and how they could not be relied upon to carry out any

of their promises or live up to the rules

of the Geneva Convention concerning

prisoners or conduct of war.

The so-called Korean War was the first evidence

since the pullback from Berlin of a no-win policy.

Apparently Hitler was the last enemy we were supposed

to put up a fight against.

General Clark found out that he had

to try to wage war with one, or maybe both hands, tied.

The fighting was severe at that time

the Chinese had entered the war, and there

were many limitations that were placed upon me

as the commander-in-chief.

I could not hit, for example, the bridges

over the Yellow River over which the killers came

with their paraphernalia, their ammunition, their tanks,

and whatnot to kill our men.

It seemed to me that that was completely wrong that we should

not take out those bridges.

And that would make it more difficult for the enemy

to maintain his position on the field.

We were not able to hit the city of Pyongyang

because there were ammunition plants

that were hidden within it.

We did not hit certain power plants that provided power

for North China and Manchuria.

But in spite of all the difficulties, a kind of peace

was finally arranged in Korea.

At that time we never heard of a place called Vietnam, which was

to be the next Red battle in their long war

against the free world.

Vietnam was in a part of the French colonial possession

known as Indochina.

The reports were that the Indochinese

were fighting for independence from the French.

[explosions]

This may have been so, but it was also a good excuse

for a communist takeover to switch the ruling

powers from France to the Reds.

The so-called revolution was headed

by a character with a funny beard and an unfunny reputation

as a terrorist.

His name was Ho Chi Minh.

He was what the historians call a dedicated revolutionary.

Ho was born in 1890 and was a communist even as a young man.

He was so active that he helped form the French Communist

Party in 1920.

All during the '30s, the Kremlin used him to foment trouble

in the Orient, and aided him in building up a fanatic follower.

When he died in 1969, the London Daily Telegraph

debunked the picture of Ho as a simple patriot.

I quote, "there are always men who, for one reason or another,

will rhapsodize on the qualities of even the worst tyrant.

Ho Chi Minh's record for cold-blooded,

and often bestial murder of men, women, and children,

ranks him beside Hitler and Stalin for shear atrocity,"

unquote.

Now during Ho's career, he was paraded

around the communist world, where

the masses were trotted out to give him a big reception

wherever he went.

He was feted by such Red liners as India's Krishna Menon,

and of course, by, the then big boss of communism, Nikita

Khrushchev, as well as all the secondary world

wields of the party.

Ho made his biggest effort at a place

called Dien Bien Phu where he beseeched the French army.

The United States was asked to bring an air strike

in against Red positions.

The United States refused.

In any event, the French cause was probably

doomed because the leftist French government forced

their army to fight a no-win war as General Clark had been

forced to fight in Korea, So Ho was

able to inflict a humiliating defeat on the French.

NARRATOR: At the Geneva Peace Conference, which followed,

it was agreed that Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam

would be independent nations.

However, Vietnam was partitioned temporarily,

and the two areas divided by the 17th parallel--

the north area to be under the control

of the communist stooge, Ho Chi Minh, and the south

to be under the former French puppet, Bao Dai.

Immediately after the Geneva Conference,

Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Cong followers

launched an extensive and brutal campaign of subversion

and guerrilla action.

More than 50,000 South Vietnamese, including village

officials, teachers, merchants, and law enforcement officers

were kidnapped, mutilated, or killed

by the Viet Cong Guerrillas.

Too often our own information media, TV, radio,

and the press, are responsible for a wide-held impression

that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong

are the good guys, and we, the South

Vietnamese, the South Koreans, and Americans,

are the bad guys.

The Red liners of all countries had a ball castigating

the United States, but no one ever

complained about the almost daily Viet

Cong mortaring of towns and the killing of civilians.

Well, anyway, to give you an idea of how popular

Ho and his crowd were after they kicked out the French,

the Geneva Conference gave all Vietnamese

300 days to go either north or south

to the Red or non-Red area.

Word of this opportunity to make a choice

was supposed to be circulated in every village

and town in the land.

While Ho understandably made no effort

to broadcast this information, over 1,200 thousand people who

found themselves in the Communist North

streamed south to freedom below the 17th parallel.

This rush was still in progress when the 300 days were up,

and Ho dropped the bamboo curtain.

But in spite of the fact that he lowered the boom on them,

officially, the continual defection of North Vietnamese

and defection from the supposedly dedicated Viet Cong

goes on to this day.

From before 1960, US advisers were

aiding the South Vietnamese.

We had in the area what was known as the Military

Assistance Command.

We are fortunate to be able to hear

from the man who was in charge almost from the beginning,

General Paul Harkin.

From February 8, 1962 until June 1964,

I was the commander of the United States Military

Assistance Command in Vietnam.

And at capacity, I commanded all the United States

forces in South Vietnam, the army, the Navy,

the Air Force, and the Marines.

We had no American combat troops in Vietnam at that time.

Our role was strictly advisory.

In that capacity, we trained the Army, Navy, and Air Force

of the Vietnamese armed forces.

You have probably heard people say that the United States

shouldn't be over there in the first place, that's it

an immoral war, that we are there illegally.

The record shows that after the partition of Vietnam,

President Eisenhower promised the government of South

Vietnam, all possible aid.

At the Geneva Conference, the North Vietnamese

agreed not to molest people south of the 17th parallel,

but when the Viet Cong started infiltrating and slaughtering

village leaders, administrators, and school teachers,

the president of South Vietnam asked for our help.

He didn't ask Russia.

He didn't ask communist China.

He asked the United States of America

if we could assist in stopping communist aggression

and helping build up the resources of his country.

This was when my headquarters, the Military Assistance Command

was established.

The South Vietnamese didn't have quite enough forces to protect

all the villages at once.

And we started in 1961, what we call the Strategic Hamlet

Program, which simply meant a trained

local force to protect the local people

from communist infiltration.

By the American advisors, the situation

was frustrating in the extreme.

They would aid a village in building a school

and on the first dark night, the Viet Cong guerrillas

would destroy it by mortar fire with mortars made

in Russia or Communist China.

In the back country, other Americans

were helping to distribute food, medicine, and needed supplies.

Special forces played an active part

in training the South Vietnamese soldiers,

as well as the Montagnard people in the highland.

The special forces, a new unit in our services,

is called the Green Berets.

One of the best known of these is Sergeant Barry Sadler.

We have a big job in Vietnam.

The villagers on both the Mekong and the Highland

are constantly threatened by the Viet Cong

and their North Vietnamese allies,

and often recruited into their armed forces,

sometimes with use of propaganda, promises, lies.

When that fails, they don't hesitate

to use force, terrorism, even to butchering entire villages

as an example to those who won't listen

to their friendly persuasion.

And when they use force, they use these, modern weapons made

in Communist China and the Soviet

Union, their communist allies.

I spent a great deal of my time in the Vietnam

working as a medic.

I work in the villages with the people, and they needed help.

And over a period of years, the health of these people

has been greatly improved by the US medics in the field.

You can't get to really know the people of Vietnam

by staying around Saigon.

Saigon's a big city with 4 and 1/2 million people in it,

and with worst traffic than you'll find in New York.

The marketplaces are crowded and filled with black market goods,

everything from American coffee to opium.

And like all cities in a war zone,

the profiteers are after the buck.

But south of Saigon lies the delta,

28,000 square miles of the richest rice land in the world,

rice land the communist won.

Here's a housewife out catching poisonous snakes for the family

dinner, and glad to get them.

Where the Viet Cong mortared or burned a village,

we came in to collect refugees and ferry them to a new, more

secure area, one that was safe from the guerrillas,

at least for the time being.

Of course, the roads were mined or under possible mortar

attack, and the villagers had to be moved in airborne operation.

And everything went, including burial urns which contained

the ashes of their ancestors, because these people always

carry their dead with them.

More and more aircraft were needed.

But as we seem to be getting somewhere,

it so infuriated the communists that they

stepped up their attacks on these unarmed innocent people.

Whole villages were burned to the ground.

Farmers were mortared and machine

gunned in their rice paddies while trying

to gather their crops.

The attacks became more and more vicious and fanatical.

It seems incredible, but the knowledge

of these terror tactics didn't inflame the free world

against the communists.

But unbelievably criticism of our operations began to mount.

It was frustrating for a soldier halfway around the world

fighting a war, and it seemed like the enemy was

the good guy in the white hats.

It was as if the American public were

only getting the information the Reds wanted them to.

In fact, I'd say the Press had been more help to the enemy

than a fresh division.

To the Americans in the mid 60s the situation

really became explosive.

All the troops were told to avoid combat.

We were losing more and more advisors all the time.

In the summer of '64, some of our destroyers

were patrolling in the Gulf of Concord, and two of them

were fired upon by North Vietnamese gunboats.

A man who was in the unique position

to see the whole thing develop is Admiral

US Grant Sharp, former Commander in Chief of Pacific operations.

Admiral Sharp.

In early 1965, President Johnson

decided that US combat troops were necessary in South Vietnam

to keep the country from being overrun by the communists,

so that is how it started.

Our objectives are clear and honorable.

They are simply to prevent the success of North

Vietnamese aggression, to prevent Viet Cong terror,

and to allow the country to live in peace and freedom.

While our objectives are correct,

the methods we have used to achieve them

leave much to be desired.

We inserted our forces piecemeal,

and then, worst of all, we never used our tremendous air

and Naval power effectively.

Before the admiral goes on, notice

that just as with the Berlin pullback in World War II,

and the hamstringing of the military

during the Korean mess, the no-win policy

dictated by behind the scenes powers in Washington

is again in force and has been ever

since President Kennedy committed

us to this no-win conflict.

From the beginning, we should have closed the harbor

of Haiphong and prevented all the vital imports

from reaching that area.

Instead, we permitted them to import all the necessities

of war without any difficulties whatsoever despite the fact

that we control the seas.

This was a great mistake of course,

and immeasurably increased the casualties

that our side incurred.

One of the best features of a Naval blockade,

or a blockade by mining, is that there are very few casualties

involved.

The country which is blockaded against simply

doesn't get the supplies they need,

and thus their capacity to fight is greatly reduced.

Whenever we fight the communists,

they seem to have help from somebody on our side.

Somebody always wants to bend over

backwards to avoid getting tough with them,

doing them any damage.

I can't figure this as a innocent attitude,

especially since the Reds tell us continually

exactly what they're going to do.

Now Lenin said war is simply continuation

of politics by other means.

He's admitting that if they can't convert you

by peaceful means, they'll just switch to violence

and pull a gun on you.

He also said something else in that book.

He said that the assistance of the Soviet Republic

side by side with the United States is unthinkable.

One or the other must triumph in the end.

Now Lenin's school of poetical warfare in Moscow

teaches that, "war is to the hilt between communism

and the free world.

It is inevitable."

Now don't take my word for it, just get one of these books

and read it for yourself.

If you want to know how they're doing so far,

let's take a look.

They have East Europe.

They're around big Cuba on one side

and getting ready to break out in Korea on the other,

and about to wear us to a nub in Vietnam.

Well, the patience of a nation or the fighting men

will wear out.

If your own side won't let you win since that's what

the Reds want, it makes you wonder

who's controlling our destiny.

The boys on the firing line are the most frustrated of all.

Listen to a man who not long ago was

flying a gunship in Vietnam.

We were never really allowed to go on the offensive.

We were constantly clearing out areas,

only to let the Viet Cong go back in as soon

as we had moved out.

On the search and destroy missions

we would burn up an area with lead,

or lay down a base of fire as the term is.

Then the troops were lifted in.

The boys would be landed and take off into the brush

after the Viet Cong.

When the guys on the ground were at work,

the expression, smoking them out,

was an appropriate description of how they operated.

Later, after they had swept the area,

we'd come back and pick them up, and fly them back to the base.

It would be anywhere from two days to two months.

One thing great about the chopper,

we would be able to get the wounded to the hospital

in a matter of minutes.

We arranged the delta looking for infiltrators,

but the trouble was justice in the city streets, the markets,

or on the water front, the North Vietnamese and the

South Vietnamese look alike.

And you can't tell them apart until it's too late.

The sand-pans below contain concealed

guerrilla terrorists armed to the teeth

and loaded down with grenades.

Our night photo planes told us that during the night

they had slipped in from Cambodia,

but due to the political restrictions

we couldn't hit them.

One thing bad about the war, we couldn't shoot

until they fired at us first.

A lot of my buddies never got a chance to fire back.

It's tough when a politician gets

a hold of your trigger finger.

Sometimes we found their boats hidden in marsh areas covered

with reeds, these, we destroyed because the area was off limits

to the local populace.

Once the troops uncovered an ammunition assembly

plant that was actually below the surface

of the swampy terrain.

The troops found a lot of grenades and explosives

with Chinese markings, the products of munitions factories

in Red China.

When an area became heavily overrun with Viet Cong,

we would pinpoint them and call in the Air Force.

With our let the enemy shoot first policy

we saved a lot of American lives by not having

to drop our ground soldiers into the hot spots,

but the bearded, bleeding hearts at home and lefty politicians

soon put a stop to this.

I guess we weren't supposed to hurt the enemy.

The kind of war we were forced to fight

was bound to get us nowhere.

But worst of all, the guys on the ground

might take an area or a hill with great loss

of blood and life.

They would have to withdraw and might

have to take it all over again three months later.

We all felt more and more frustrated as time went by.

Now I can understand why so many of the people at home

wanted us to call it quits and bring the troops home.

Most Americans at home are honestly concerned.

But unlike any other war that we were ever involved in,

we have a communist-inspired front

in our streets working on the civilities

of a lot of honest people.

They claim they are simply going all out for peace, while a lot

of them burn the American flag, stamp it into the ground

while waving the flag of the Viet Cong,

who have tortured and killed tens of thousands

of innocent civilians whose only crime was that they resisted

joining the Red ranks.

Would you call a person who backed

the enemy, a peace advocate or a member of the enemy's forces?

Well, someone who backs our forces, who has traveled

to Vietnam many times, who has gone to all the combat zones

to entertain the fighting men, and one

of the best loved stars of the American public,

is Martha Raye.

She can tell it like is, Martha Raye.

Thank you, Duke, from one green beret to another.

I've just returned from my eighth trip

overseas with our troops, and I'm now

returning from my ninth trip.

I take it and my gear together to go back home with my family,

and they're also your family too.

Our troops are shocked at the attitude of college officials

and others who stoutly maintain there is no organized direction

to the [inaudible], that all the demonstrations are

spontaneous and unorganized.

We may rest assure these servicemen are not deceived.

The Reds have declared in no uncertain terms

that they are going to destroy the moral character of a

generation of young Americans.

And when they have finished, there

will be nothing left to defend ourselves against them.

And they're doing a pretty thorough job

on some of our kids.

And while this is happening, they

won't let us defend ourselves in the manner

that all great military minds advocate, to attack,

strike the enemy in his own territory.

We keep coming back to this as a central problem in our war

on communism.

Let Admiral Sharp tell it to you the way he saw it.

The major problem was that we were restricted in the targets

that we could hit.

We started in the southern part of North Vietnam

and gradually worked north.

Will the result that the North Vietnamese with the Soviet's

assistance were permitted to build up their defenses

around Hanoi and Hai Phong.

So that when our planes eventually

got into the Hanoi-Hai Phong area,

they were met by the most concentrated and accurate air

defenses that any country has ever faced.

Even so, with their very heavy defenses

and with the restrictions are on our air attacks,

we were still able to damage North Vietnam to the extent

that in the fall of 1967, they were in great difficulty.

Had we been allowed to go in 1968,

and hit the targets that needed to be hit,

and keep the targets down that we had already hit,

the war would certainly had been over by the end of 1968.

If you aren't sufficiently convinced by the admiral,

listen to one of the Navy bomber pilots.

I think I'm speaking for 99% of all the men that have been

to Vietnam, whether in a flying status

or on the ground, when I say that it's one of the most

frustrating experiences a man, particularly a fighting man,

could go through.

I think I can say that all of us who went over there,

and I know all of us that were together

in my particular group, went over

there with a exhilarating feeling

that they were going to go into battle

and do the job that had to be done.

They were going to be allowed to get to the targets.

And of course, we always go in with the feeling

that we want to help the men on the ground as much as we can,

and we do this by bombing the necessary targets.

The logistics lines, the munitions dumps,

the petroleum stations that prevent the enemy from getting

this stuff down into South Vietnam

and using it against our men and, our allies, the South

Vietnamese.

But it wasn't long until we realized that because

of the political restrictions that were placed

upon this particular war, it was to be

similar to the Korean War, only probably worse.

And that we were not allowed to get to these targets

that we knew were necessary targets and vital targets,

to destroy them and to prevent these supplies, and enemy

equipment, and enemy soldiers from getting

into South Vietnam.

We knew that they were going down there.

And we knew how they were getting down there.

We knew where the targets were.

But there was so much frustration in there

that when they came back, and we told the people back

on the carriers, the air intelligence people,

the admiral's war room, that these targets were there,

that we'd like to go bomb them, they were just as frustrated

as we were because they had to then send

a message back to Washington to get permission

to bomb these targets.

And this permission never came.

I recall when they were first setting up

the missiles sites over there.

Missiles, at that time, had been used against American aircraft

flying over North Vietnam.

But we came back and told the responsible people

on the carrier that these missile sites were going up,

that we could see them down there,

they were getting prepared, that we

ought to go back and bomb them.

But once again, our hands were tied,

the admiral's hands were tied.

They had to go back to Washington

through channels with a message, and

the message came back, no, we could

not bomb the missile sites.

Until the time came that two of our planes

were shot down on these missiles on a night

mission or an early evening mission.

And the whole thing was they tried to give the indication

that they had not known ahead of time that these missile

sites were there.

And of course, this is frustrating to a man

to see his friends, roommate, the people that he has gone

through training with, go down in a situation knowing

full well that it could have been

prevented long before had the politicians allowed

you to do so.

Now, when I say restrictions once again,

I say restrictions, such as these.

We could fly over enemy air fields

where the planes were sitting on the airfield.

We knew what they were there for but we couldn't harm them.

These same planes could come up behind our aircraft,

and shoot them down, and climb back down on the deck,

and we were not permitted to go after them

once they got to that airfield.

There was even such a restriction

at the particular time I was there that you could not shoot

an enemy aircraft until he had fired at you, which is to say

that, if he didn't shoot you down first,

then you had a chance at him.

I wish that some of the liberal senators taking

on a negative stand in this situation

to promote their own political ambitions

could be put in the same spot as our boys

overseas with one arm tied behind them,

or maybe two, face this treacherous enemy.

One time, we couldn't bomb convoys.

Finally, we were cleared to bomb these particular targets

but only so long as they were on a roadway.

It doesn't matter if you knew that this particular convoy

was carrying munitions, supplies,

going into South Vietnam.

We knew their routes.

We knew where they were going down Route 1

through Mu Gia Pass.

And as far as bomb shortages at that time,

Mr. McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense,

was decrying that there was no substance to the information

that we were experiencing a shortage of bombs, aircraft,

or flyers in the Vietnam area.

And Congressman Mitchell had been on the carrier

and had personally seen these missions

where we were taking off.

Loading with maybe 1/5 a bomb load.

An aircraft that could carry 24 of this particular type bomb,

we were carrying maybe four of these bombs.

On some days, instead of carrying bombs

to a target that clearly called for bombs,

we'd be carrying rockets.

And when you'd ask your deck officer why we were doing this,

he would say because we don't have enough bombs to last

the rest of the month if we carry them on every load,

or if we load the planes fully.

So it was obvious to us that we were sending out five planes

on a mission, or four planes, that were loaded with maybe

a fourth or a fifth of a load of bombs, when we could have sent

one or two planes with a full load,

and gotten the same job done with a minimum risk of lives

and equipment.

Of course, you're talking about a $3.5 million aircraft in case

you're not interested in the lives involves,

but this is a thing that was frustrating to us, you see.

Our only concern was that we could get in

and be allowed to do the job.

When you send men into war, you should send them in there

with the idea they are risking their lives,

and for risking those lives, they

should be allowed to do the job, to take the action that's

necessary to minimize the risk of their lives

and to get to the enemy and get the job done

in a minimum amount of time and get

back their homes and their families where they want to be.

And this hasn't been done in Vietnam.

And the only way that we're going

to come to a successful conclusion over there

is to defeat the enemy.

Just as bad as a no-win restriction,

maybe worse, is the policy of helping

the enemy to get goods and munitions

with which to defeat it.

Does that sound idiotic?

We'll listen to a young green beret

named Peter Stark who lost both legs below the knees

in Vietnam.

The only way to break communist will

is to break the communist back.

To do this, you must eliminate their access to that material

which they need to wage a war.

You must eliminate their means.

The United States had never significantly attempted

to eliminate their means of war with which

they kill American soldiers in the South Vietnam.

We have assured their main supplier of war goods,

the Soviet Union, and its satellite nation, its colonies,

which supplies 80% of all the North Vietnamese war material,

we have assured the Soviet Bloc countries that we will not

interfere in their shipment of war goods

to the North Vietnamese enemy.

At the same time that we have assured them we will not

interfere with his shipment, we have continued our policy

of trading with the Soviet Bloc, of sending strategic materials

to the Soviet enemy.

For example, in 1966, the United States sent the Soviet Union

the entire technical specifications

which they needed to build a glycerol plant.

Glycerol is used in the manufacture of explosives.

I think everybody's heard of nitroglycerin.

Specifically, in Vietnam, glycerol is used

as a detonator in booby traps.

Over 50% of all American casualties suffered in South

Vietnam have come from booby traps.

I do not think it can be satisfactorily explained

to a man who has lost his eyesight because

of a booby trap-- or to the parents of a man who has been

killed on a booby trap in South Vietnam--

why the government that sent this man to South Vietnam

refuses to interfere not only with the enemy receiving

this type of weapon, but actually

helped the enemy to produce it.

A screaming example, late 1969, we loaned Sweden $50 million.

Early 1970, Sweden loans $45 million directly to Hanoi.

For those of us who have been there,

Vietnam is not a phony war.

It was and is a very real war.

It is not a limited war because there is

no such thing as limited death.

We're glad to have fought in Vietnam for the United

States of America and for freedom

of the South Vietnamese people.

Many of my friends, your sons, your husbands, your brothers,

and in some cases, your fathers, have died fighting

the communist enemy in Asia.

You should be very proud of these men.

They were good men.

They died for the freedom of others.

No more can be asked from any man.

They were willing to fight because they know that

on that day that Americans are not willing to fight

for their freedom.

On that day, America will no longer have its own freedom.

Many people have not been informed of the fact

that Vietnam is more than just an isolated burstfire

war halfway around the world.

It has a much deeper meaning than that.

Vietnam is one battle in a war for the world.

It is a battle we are losing not on the field of battle

but here at home.

The Soviet empire is expanding.

The communists are definitely serious about their stated

goal of world conquest.

They are as serious as Hitler and his National Socialist

Party were about world conquest.

All Americans must remember that the Soviet enemy is

only 20 minutes away by rocket.

Finally, there was a great hue and cry to get the Reds

to the so-called peace table.

After all proof to the contrary over the years

some people still believe you could talk the Reds

out of taking over our country.

Now, to get the enemy to talk peace,

you usually bear down hard on him so that he's had enough

and wants to get out.

Not us, not our state department,

not our defense department, we did just the opposite.

We made it easy on the communists

by stopping the bombing altogether.

Let Admiral Sharp comment on that.

Then, in March of 1968, it was decided to halt the bombing

of the vital areas of North Vietnam

in order to entice the enemies to come to the conference table

to negotiate a peace.

Before the North Vietnamese even got to the conference table

and started negotiating, we had stopped

all bombing of North Vietnam.

So here was a country with tremendous air

power allowing an adversary to fight from a sanctuary.

Were the communists going to negotiate

under those conditions?

Certainly not.

They were going to delay meaningful negotiations,

hoping that our natural impatience to end the war

would get the better of us, and we

would make concessions to them which would result

in victory for their side.

Indeed when our bombing was cut back in March of 1968,

the communists proclaimed it a victory,

and a victory it really was.

So now we have been negotiating in Paris for over two years,

and what have the results been?

Absolutely nothing.

We have made concession after concession,

and the North Vietnamese have offered absolutely nothing

in return.

They have simply used the Paris meetings as a propaganda

platform from which to declare that the United States is

the aggressor in the war, that we must pull out all

of our troops before they will consider

any meaningful negotiations.

So this is what we face as a result of our all out efforts

to bring them to the conference table.

What do the men who have to do the fighting think

about the so-called peace negotiation?

Right now we have people that think that you can

talk with the commies, and I think

history proves that you cannot.

I've looked at this enough, and I am sure that people that are

much more experienced in the field

of negotiating with the Communists

would tell you the same thing.

The only time the communists come to the peace table

is when they feel that they have something to gain there

or for stalling.

And this means that they have more time

to build up their troops in the field

and to get more ammunition, more troops into the battle,

and play publicity and propaganda, particularly when

you have a situation like we have in this country now

where people are expressing their opposition to the war.

And of course, I can understand some of this opposition

because the way the politicians have used it.

They left themselves wide open for opposition.

But the fact remains that the only way

to stop the communist action in Southeast Asia

is from a position of unassailable strength.

That's the only thing they understand.

For those of us who have fought in Vietnam,

the peace talks have always been, at best, futile,

at worst, tragic.

Tragic for those soldiers in South Vietnamese who had been

killed because of the improper and incorrect

use of the combination of military and diplomatic means.

Correct diplomacy, correct negotiations,

are used to shorten the war, not to prolong the war.

The great statesmen that our nation has had in the past

have been those statesmen with the courage and resolution

to allow their military do that job for which

the military is established.

Great statesmen are not people who hamstring the military

and prolong the decision.

Peace negotiation and peace depend on two things.

One is the will of the enemy, the other

is the means of the enemy.

You must either destroy the enemy will

or destroy the means the enemy has.

Now, the United States has always had the means.

The men and material successfully wage

the war in Vietnam and win.

However, at the policy level, we have

never had the desire to win.

We have never had the will to win.

The North Vietnamese communists, on the other hand,

have never had the material or manpower

to defeat the United States soldiers

on the field of battle.

Their leadership, however, has the will to win.

They have the will, the desire, and the determination

to conquer South Vietnam.

Communists are determined men, they are very serious men,

they are very brutal men.

At this point I think we should let General Clark

tell us how he managed to get the Reds

to the peace table in Korea.

So after being at Panmunjom, being in charge

of the negotiations there, and our people being insulted

almost daily, I finally plead with my government

to let me break off the negotiations

and place on the conference table,

a reasonable American position, one upon which

we could sign an armistice.

When finally Washington permitted me to do so,

we walked out.

And then I called in my commanders

of the Navy, the Air, and the Army,

and we sat around for days.

How could we hurt the enemy within the limitations

imposed upon us?

And one by one with the exception of permission

to bomb the Yellow River bridges,

I had these limitations taken off.

Our hands were untied.

And we hit the dams, and we took out their power.

We hit their dams and inundated their fields.

We attacked Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea

after notifying the people that we were coming.

And we just pounded them until it hurt them.

And then about three months later, Kim Il-sung

sent me a message, and said, let's go back to the conference

table, and let's trade prisoners of war and our sick

and wounded.

That's something we had asked to do many months before.

So then we got down to business and began

to work on an armistice.

Then General Eisenhower, my old West Point comrade,

came over as the President-elect.

And we had our plans to present to him,

and I presented them to him, how we

could win the war by the use of the Naval

and Air power primarily.

I'm not a believer in slugging it out man for man on the field

of battle with communists because the American GI

is a very precious commodity.

And the communists don't care how many of their men

they kill.

So not having had the determination to win that war,

we got busy, as I was directed, and we signed an armistice.

Now, that armistice was violated by the communists the next day,

and it's been violated by them ever since.

And as I signed that Korean armistice I was convinced that

had we step out and had the courage

to win in our first test of arms with communism,

and win decisively, we would not be in the predicament

and the mess we find ourselves in at the present time

in Vietnam.

What's the answer?

One political leader who hasn't kept silent

is Alaskan Senator [inaudible].

He went to Vietnam to see for himself.

Our liberal Press has not seen fit to spotlight his remarks,

here they are.

Well, the most brilliant military men in our country

have said that we must win in Vietnam, General Mark

Clark, General Al Wedemeyer, General

Paul Harkins, Admiral Sharp.

The military commanders in the field

have all said that there can be no satisfactory conclusion

to the war in Vietnam without a military victory.

We have the ships, we have the guns,

we have the planes, what is lacking?

We have the men, we have the courage, what

is lacking is a will to win.

Richard Nixon, himself, has said what is needed in Vietnam

is a will to win, but our State Department

does not have a will to win.

In fact, they have said that they do

not intend to win in Vietnam.

One of our top advisers to the president, Dr. Kissinger,

has said, that military victory in Vietnam

is neither possible nor desirable.

This fuzzy thinking, this no-win thinking

has resulted in the loss of more American lives

than either World War I or Korea.

It's resulted in the longest war in American history,

certainly, the most frustrating war in American history.

The question is this fuzzy thinking

or is it something else?

With Congress rests the constitutional authority

to determine foreign policy.

Congress must reassert its authority

and determine the foreign policy.

It must require that military decisions

be made by military men.

Our men on the battlefield must be given the chance to win.

In war there must be victory.

Some people are demanding an abrupt pull-out.

They seem to believe that the Reds will stop

fighting and killing at once and that there

will be instant peace.

Well, let's hear again from General Harkins.

If we pull out abruptly, the Reds

will have a free hand as they had when they took Hue

in that infamous Tet Offensive.

They massacred and mutilated thousands of civilians.

There will be a frightful massacre of those who have

resisted communism in South Vietnam,

and perhaps in the rest of the countries

of Southeast Asia such as Laos, and Cambodia, and Thailand.

It may further open the way to infiltration

and maybe attacks from some of the other countries

such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New

Zealand, and the Philippines.

The communists haven't stopped in their world defensive

so far.

I think it's tragic and unfortunate

that the people of the United States

must be constantly reminded that the communists have said

they were going to surround this and they were going to bury us.

They said they were going to take over Eastern Europe

and they have.

They tried to come down through Greece,

and we helped to stop them.

They tried to come through North Korea,

and with the aid of 15 other free nations,

we stopped them again.

They've taken over Cuba.

They're very active in Latin America.

And now they're trying to come down through Southeast Asia.

I would say they're pretty well surrounding us.

I think it's far better to stop them

on some faraway distant shores than wait for another Pearl

Harbor, or perhaps, to try to stop them on the shores

of the United States.

Tom Hayden has been called America's most

decorated civilian to have served in Vietnam.

He was in Hue after the Tet massacre.

Listen to his account of how the communists exterminate those

who oppose them, Tom Hayden.

A North Vietnamese regiment captured

the ancient capital of Hue during the Tet Offensive

in January of 1968.

The North Vietnamese asked the Hue citizens

to join them and oppose the Saigon government.

The people of Hue said no, then came the massacre.

Over 4,000 civilian graves have been found, many of them

were buried alive.

Over 1,000 people are still missing.

Those in America who say that the people of South Vietnam

support the communists, refused to remember Hue.

They have forgotten [inaudible] where

over 100 Motagnards were murdered,

men, women, and children.

Here is the latest example of the popular support

the communists have in South Vietnam.

Saigon, Viet Cong troops attack a South Vietnamese village

south of Da Nang.

Over 75 civilians were killed and 85 wounded.

The survivors of the Viet Cong invaded by reading Hamlet,

stated that the enemy ran through the streets,

shooting anyone they found, throwing

grenades into their homes and into their civilian bunkers.

But some of the news media will tell

you that the South Vietnamese are

not fighting for their freedom.

That is a lie.

I spent over two years with the people

and they are fighting for freedom.

The Hue massacre should prove that many of them

are dieing for their freedom.

We can't get out.

We lead a vacuum and years to come we've paid

ten times the amount of blood.

And if we get no response whatsoever

to our stopping of the bombing and our initiatives

towards peace, it may be that we will have to step

up and intensify the war.

And then if we do, I'm sure we'll

bring the communist to the conference table,

and we'll bring him fast.

[weapons firing]

[explosions]

When it comes to the question of our pulling out,

I think one of the most significant comments

was made by General [inaudible], field commander, whose

troops were surrounded and forced

to surrender at Dien Bien Phu.

[non-english speech]

General [inaudible] does not speak English,

but in French, he made it clear to us

that if the United States leaves Southeast Asia

in defeat, on that day the whole free world will

begin to crumble.

Ezra Taft Benson offered one solution

that hasn't been given too much attention

up till now, Mr. Benson.

I recently returned from two weeks

in war-threatened and war-torn Asia.

The men of Vietnam who are ready to give their

all in the defense of freedom, who worry about reports

from home of rioters, draft card burners, and other citizens

many times more numerous, who seem oblivious to the threat

to our freedom as they continue to enjoy

their comfortable complacency.

Regardless of any question of our involvement in Vietnam,

we're there and we're involved, so what do we do now?

We should concentrate on doing whatever is necessary to bring

our boys home, but before we bring them home,

we should let them finish the job most of them

thought they were sent there to do.

Let the communists see what good-natured

Uncle Sam can still do when a bully picks a fight with him.

Drop those suicidal, limited political objects

and launch a massive military campaign.

Topple the Hanoi regime and dictate rather

than negotiate the peace terms.

Then bring our boys home.

Will this bring Red China into the war?

Red China is already in the war.

The best way to get her out of it

is to let Chiang Kai-Shek join us as he has requested.

He stands ready with 600,000 well-trained men

who know how to fight under Asian conditions.

Our no-win policy in Vietnam instead of promoting peace,

only sets the stage for settling the problem, for the time

being, with a coalition government of communists

and non-communists, and this virtually ensures continued

war.

You know our troops overseas, they

ask for so very little, and yet they give

and give so very, very much.

Nobody wants a war.

God knows that, and especially our troops that

are fighting one over there.

But as long as they are fighting a war over there,

the least we could do back home here

is just to give them the support, the love, the dignity,

and the respect that they, our flags and our country deserves.

And that's all they ask of you.

Thank you.

So we come back to the men who fight the battle,

or are we all involved in the battle?

Listen to Captain Wilson.

I went to Vietnam to fight communism.

And when you get to the base of it,

that's what Vietnam is all about, communist aggression.

Communist aggression, not only in Vietnam

but in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and all

the areas of Southeast Asia.

We have communist aggression right here in America right

in the streets every day, and it's evident in the newspapers

if you read them closely.

Wherever we can fight communist aggression,

we owe it to our country to do so.

Communism is America's number one enemy.

It has been for years and it will be for years to come.

The only way to solve the problem in Vietnam

is to take it to the base of the problem,

and that is into the cities and towns of North Vietnam.

We do not need to send troops into North Vietnam.

The job can be done from the air.

We knew it when I was over there and we know it still today.

You have to take your aircraft, the munitions at hand,

and go to North Vietnam and bomb the targets and the facilities

that they use to wage war against the other bordering

countries.

This is the only thing that the communists understand.

You do it from an unassailable position of strength.

You let them know that you mean business.

You bomb their facilities that they use to wage war.

You make it so unpleasant for them at home that they have

to keep their troops at home to look after the business

at hand, and they cannot afford to send them across other

country's borders, violating the sovereignty of these countries.

This is the only thing that the communists understand.

It's the only way to deal with them.

It cannot be done at the conference table.

This is the only way to win the war in Vietnam.

A choice made for us nearly 200 years ago by our founding

fathers is now up for review in Vietnam and everywhere else,

in the Mekong Delta and in the halls

of the Congress of the United States of America.

There are over 3 million Americans who

had been and fought in Vietnam.

We have seen communism in action.

We have seen what might be termed relevant communism.

We have seen Marx and Lenin taken off the library shelf

and put on the backs of the people.

We will never surrender to communism

because we know what it is.

There will be no Viet Cong in the United States of America.

We will fight.

We know that there is a possibility that we may not

triumph, but it is not inevitable that the enemy

triumph if he is opposed.

There is no fate that must fall on them however they act.

There is, however, a fate that falls

on men if they refuse that.

We should win in Vietnam.

We can win in Vietnam.

We must help to extend freedom, not allow

it to be foreclosed on us.

This is a challenge that our generation faces.

This must be our goal.

Certainly, we could not stand by idly

and see the communists grab off chunks

of the free world at will, some place we had to stop him.

And when we decided to go into Vietnam,

we should have decided to go in with a determination

to win that war and to win it with the might of America,

mostly air and Naval power, and we had the capacity to do so.

Now in Vietnam, I feel in this second test of arms,

having learned a lesson in Korea,

if I had had the decision to make,

I would have closed the port of Haiphong.

I would have not permitted the paraphernalia of war

from friend and foe alike to be delivered to that port

to kill our men eventually.

I would have attacked with air every

remunerative military target.

in North Vietnam.

I would knock out their railroads,

and inundated their rice fields, and taken their dams out.

And I have found that when the communists come

to the conclusion that they cannot win on the field

of battle what they set out to get, they

run to the conference table.

It is an extension of the war with them.

It should be obvious by now that the predicament we're in

is not the fault of the military.

We should have stopped the Reds in Berlin,

we should have kept them out of Cuba,

we should have won the war in Korea,

but we didn't, so let's not blame the men in uniform

for our political mistake.

Maybe we should listen to them in time of war,

and this certainly is war.

They say there's no substitute for victory.

Maybe we should also remember the words of Winston Churchill,

after Chamberlain's appeasement negotiations in Munich in 1939.

Quote, "The government had to choose between shame and war.

They chose shame and they'll get war, unquote."

They got war.

Now, let's take a look at our country.

Today, in the newspapers, on radio, on TV,

we read, hear, and see riots on campuses and street corners.

Crime is at all time high.

We read about our American flag being hauled down by mobs,

burned and stomped into the ground.

We hear the names of these same mob

leaders over and over from city to city.

They wave the flag of the communist Viet

Cong, the flag of the enemy that we're fighting in Vietnam.

The enemy that kills our boys from ambush

and fades away into political sanctuary.

And at the same time here in America,

the commies are allowed to teach in our schools, parade

through our streets and our capital

while those in high position choose to remain silent.

With all these problems, I wonder

what would happen in America if we all chose to remain silent.

Would crime come to a halt without preventative measures?

Would the communist underground movement to take over America

cease?

Would the communists leave the free nations of the world

alone without our help?

Will they pull back across the 17th parallel in Vietnam

if we withdraw our troops?

The answer is no.

Mr. Lincoln was right when he said that to remain silent

makes cowards of men.

I plead with each of you to reflect

on these facts of history.

Then I'd like to speak for myself.

I believe we must vote out of office, regardless

of political party, those politicians who seek to appease

tyranny and promote anarchy, and to vote for men who are

responsible and who will put the welfare of our country

above their own political ambitions.

We must stop communist rioting inside America.

We must enforce the laws that make crime illegal.

And if there should be another 17th parallel,

we should not plead with the communists

to get back, but warn them, and do it only once.

To hell with world opinion.

We must speak up and take a stand,

only then will this great nation of ours survive.

[MUSIC - "BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS"]