[A-List] FW: Oliver North, John Kerry and Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap: Birth of an Urban Legend

[Christopher Black]

Stan,

The CBC ran Michael Mclear's documentary on the Vietnam War (both agaisnt
the French and the Americans) last week. Mclear was noted as a CBC
journalist in the Vietnam war and was the first western correspondent to do
stories from the North.  He suffered in his career as a result. Anyway, in
the two documentary he has several interviews with General Giap (still alive
and well in his 90s) in which Giap stated they never had any doubt
whatsoever that they would defeat the French and that in the end they would
defeat the Americans. He talked in purely military, strategic, tactical and
economic terms. He never mentioned the anti-war movement in the US.

He stated the US always underestimated who they were fighting. He said that
instead of the US estimate of 1 million soldiers sent down to the south they
in fact sent down two million.  That for the US to have even come close to
defeating them they would have needed not 500,000 but two million men.

Chris
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stan Goff" <sherrynstan at earthlink.net>
To: <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 12:49 PM
Subject: [A-List] FW: Oliver North,John Kerry and Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap: Birth
of an Urban Legend


[If slandering Bonesman Kerry is a misdemeanor, slandering one of the
greatest freedom fighters in history, General Giap, is a major felony.
Here's the real deal.  -SG]

Chicago Independent Media Center


Commentary :: Media
Oliver North, John Kerry and Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap: Birth of an Urban
Legend
by Walter F. Wouk
28 Mar 2004



The claim that Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap said that if it weren't for
organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would
have surrendered to the U.S., is a lie.
On February 10, 2004 NewsMax.Com ran a story entitled, "Gen. Giap:
Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/10/222651.shtml

The story claimed that "In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen.Vo Nguyen
Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. -
according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North."

The Giap quote is a lie. According to WashingtonDispatch.com columnist
Greg Lewis , who researched the alleged quotation, "no such volume
exists."
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8268.shtml

Lewis wrote, " A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to
what has turned out to be an "urban legend." Specifically, based on a
"news" item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a
volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo
Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver
North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I
did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I
haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually
made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated."

The bogus Giap quote has been repeated as gospel in numerous articles,
blogs, commentaries and pseudo-news reports criticizing John Kerry. In
the past General Giap is also alleged to have made similar statements
about Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, though there is no evidence that
he did.

The fact is, there is no credible evidence that General Giap ever
considered surrender an option during the Vietnam war.
####


The author is the director of the Thomas Paine Project and a member of
Vietnam Veterans Against the War

See also:
<http://www.wintersoldier.org>
<http://www.vvaw.org>
This work is in the public domain

no rights reserved