My period of 365 days overlapped the period he was there. I’ve elsewhere mentioned I may even have talked to him on the radio because of our two commands. (I never met a Swift boat commander untill after the war and recall the names of none I talked to on the radio during combat operations. It’s simply “likely” I did at some time.

Your comments about the war, i.e., Johnson’s thoughts he could bomb the North out of existence, is only one of a bigger part of the puzzle. There is no easy answer. In fact the variable strategies involved is my own analysis. Although primarily educated in English, I also have an undergraduate degree in history. Unlike many I feel comfortable in leaving judgments to be made by present and future historians, distant from the actual action.

I had under “my command” a pretty good sized chunch of territory. But “my command” was only a limited part of the role of our people in the area. I helped to put out fires.

But I do feel comfortable in saying that Kerry’s comments about deliberately killing civilians, burning villages with no military reason, etc. are false. For one thing the Naval aircraft I summoned, working with a Marine counterpart and Marines on the ground, would have been far more extensive than Kerry’s. Yet I spent most of my time in a bunker, surrounded by tons of sandbags, in 110 degree heat, one light bulb, and three, sometimes four other humans, and some fancy radio equipment.

I rarely ever saw the scenes of combat. But that doesn’t mean Kerry is somehow more qualified than I, or qualified at all, in making the comments he made after the war. Secrets are not well kept in the military. There’s the rumor mill among enlisted personnel, another among non-coms, another above lower echelon officers like myself, etc. etc. But I was the one who ordered, after consulting with my Marine liason, virtually every air strike in my area, adjoining the Delta, and some strikes in the Delta area and in areas where Kerry served.

A Swift boat, or several working in combination, can bring a fair amount of machine gun fire to bear on an area. But we had 3 to 5 “Jolly Green Giants” in the air over the Delta 24/7. I “borrowed” them from time to time, but the primary support I provided was the carrier based fighter-bombers of the U.S. Navy.

I lived in a hole, covered by sandbags, on top of several very ugly red hills with vegetation cleared for 1000 meters or more around them. But I “saw” through what I heard from troops on the ground, their commanders when they returned (lowly Lt. JGs like myself most of the time), and there was much discussion centered on the effectiveness of Navy aircraft, any one of which could do more damage than half a dozen Swift boats. I often sent in two to five such aircraft.

From talking to the Marine ground coimmanders we learned that napalm was substantially more effective than conventional bombs. Thinking of the types of devastation and the effects on civilians (or VC for that matter) is not a pleasant thought. It wasn’t at the time.

When we hit villages, better candidates for conventional bombs, it was more often with napalm because that’s what the aircraft in the air (I usually had five to a dozen in my sector 24/7). Today’s aircraft, even our helicopters, are better equipped and have a diverse and more selective type of armament. We still had some aircraft stuck with rockets which were far less effective than bombs or napalm and were eventually refitted for that purpose.

My sector was terrain which had heavy forest coverage and little open areas. More open areas, like the agricultural areas, found rocket armaments more effective and, to a lesser extent, conventional bombs. Bombs were only of real use when there were targets like permanent bridges or areas where VC tunnelling was known to exist. In dense vegetation napalm was vastly superior because the effectiveness of conventional bombs was restricted by the heavy forestation.

This is allo headed somewhere: napalm is the armament of choice for Hollywood. The effects, as depicted in widespread media coverage, was horrible on those who survived, and there are certain famous photos of children so injured which are burned into my memory and will live with me the rest of my life. But I didn’t need to see those photos beforehand. I knew what napalm did. And by the time I left that duty (I lived on those red hills about seven months of my 365 days), 90% of the available resources were napalm.

If a village, obviously somewhat out in the open, or one along the shore of a river feeding the Delta, or the Delta itself, produced heavy fire on our Marines, we destroyed it with napalm, what was at hand. “Heavy” fire should be emphasized. Virtually every village near a body of water would have a sniper or two. The ground unit (or Swift boat) was all that was needed to deal with that issue. We didn’t drop napalm or anything else on it.

Consider from a practical standpoint the simple fact that it was clearly a waste of assets, concern for civilians not even an issue.

There’s no doubt that Kerry’s Swift boat, through indiscriminate firing with their .50 calibers (I believe they also had one .30) could kill a number of civilians. But I have no knowledge, and this is the source of uproar among those whose duty was on Swift boats, who were always in danger. They were lightly armed, had virtually no armor, and were essentially over sized water skiing boats built out of plywood. In fact they were little more than the PT boats of WWII. They came about out of necessity as the only means feasible of interdicting smuggling through the Delta (and other areas).

Their role was primarily searching literally every small craft travelling south. The numbers that slipped through, especially during the night, was substantial. We never had enough Swift boats to do more than slow the traffic a bit. The option, transport over land, fell into the area of my sector, although usually civilians carried the munitions and our attacks were designed to destroy their military cover.

That, not so briefly stated, is what Swift boats did and why I know something about them. If Kerry killed and slaughtered, indiscriminatlely, civilians, then it was done under his command. We provided only limited “offensive” support as intelligence in the area was limited, in part by the terrain itself. We called in air strikes when our search and destroy groups on the ground were ambushed or ran into a larger opposing force.

Even villages taken over and “occupied” by the VC rarely were without civilians. Some cooked their food, some were “used” by them (use your imagination), some were their spouses who travelled with them (many VC combatants were also women), etc. etc. So an “abandoned to the enemy” village rarely meant there were no civilians present. The VC also didn’t evict them. They usually fled at night and were in no way, in most cases, sympathetic to the VC (any more than they were to various corrupt governments in South Vietnam). The VC stole their rice and raped their daughters.

That’s a long way of getting to the point that when I called for a strike on a village, usually one of more than one aircraft, it was with the knowledge that there likely were a (relatively) small number of civilians present. It was invevitable. The VC were the very ones we wanted to defeat to reduce their support of smuggling overland. The stores of rice and other food stolen would also be a strategic problem. So I ordered napalm on those villages, a sufficient number of planes usually to obliterate them.

Other “communications officers” like myself did the same thing. For one thing it was difficult enough, knowing there were likely civilian women and likely some children, to know their death would be virtually assured by direct account, with few survivors. We didn’t want VC survivors for obvious reasons. We didn’t want civilians to survive for different reasons: such survivors often suffered wounds far worse than death.

Napalm is still in use but has largely been replaced by modern bombs which fragment into thousands of lethal components to wreck their damage. Purely speculation, but the use of napalm I’ve seen in Iraq has large appeared to be selected to create widespread fire. In Vietnam the intent, often described in similar terms, was largely selected to destroy and disrupt the maximum number of enemy by burning them to death.

Swift boats had other missions of course, also made popular in the movies, but hauling spies and snipers around was not their primary role. Often these other roles were conceived by some general in Saigon who had no concept or idea of the appropriate role of a Swift boat. Fortunately, and I heard an awful lot of radio traffic of different kinds, most carried on the mundane, but danger work, of searching thousands of small craft, anyone of which might have a young boy, a grandmother, or a father with a grenade in his hand, waiting until the Swift boat got close enough to throw it.

John Kerry was a hero in Vietnam, no more than many others I knew. I picked up a few medals myself.

What he did AFTER Vietnam, especially the lies he told, and his inconsistent support of the military and intelligence communities of the U.S. in later years, is what should interest us. As a voter Senator Kerry scares the hell out of me when I consider the prospects for his leadership as President.

Well, I will have to think about it. Thanks for pointing out something I’ve not ever before considered.

So you are backing the use of racial profiling?

”Close the borders and start kicking in doors to find the Muslim scourge hiding in our midst, laughing at our stupidity.”

What a generalisation. Maybe im just reading it wrong. Are you saying Islam in general is the scourge? Im sad at the what international terrorism has done to the US. Liberty seems to have gone very much down the pan.

President Nixon finally began bombing Laos and Cambodia, via “Operation Linebacker 2″, to try to cut the supply lines to the North and the Viet Cong. But it was too late by then. What I meant with my “political” war comment was that the US was too concerned by domestic and foreign public opinion and Soviet and Red China (who were suppling the North and the Viet Cong) reaction to the way the US conducted the war. So I guess that’s why the US would not invade and capture the North.

Correct me if I have any of this wrong.

Tolerance ends when the “religious sacrament” is used as a base for America’s enemies. Are we supposed to kill ourselves with our own virtue? Think about that one…

Vietnam was the war of my generation. While there are some “hearts and minds” issues involved, the key to each war, its primary intent, is vastly different. If Vietnam was a “political war,” it was lost because of a failured leadership in the elected government at the highest levels. We lacked the resolve and single minded leadership to win in Vietnam.

That’s been said many times and in many ways. We’ve been warned, and rightly so, by the President that the war against terrorism is for the long term, a fact lost to many people. We inevitably are going to make some mistakes at certain times, in certain places, but it’s absurd that any short term concerns get in our way of the broader view.

We were “in” the war in Nam, “out,” back “in” again. Resolve was always a variable. We inserted 500,000 additional personnel at one time, then essentially froze further support. The scale was larger than Iraq or Afghanistan, although there are some similar concerns. We don’t NEED to be concerned about the lack of “support” by our old friends, the French, for example, up to their elbows in self-interest, not the least of which is UNSCAM.

The concern for some unspecified “consensus” is insane. In a war against terrorism we face a variable enemy, sometimes very well organized and well financed, sometimes throwing rocks in the streets. The perceptions of different countries, their people, etc. are inevitably going to vary, whether through design or ignorance.

I remained disheartened and disillusioned in returning from Vietnam. I “opposed” the war at that point, but I didn’t attend the same rallies or speak the same words as a certain political figure (or Hollywood star). Fortunately our life and times have changed. But that politician, Sen. Kerry, DID betray me and others with his words. His period of service over lapped with the 365 days I was there. The present so-called “attack ads” by the Swift Boat Group (or whatever they’re named) speak the most basic thoughts of many of us at the time.

Others, with Sen. Kerry only one, had sharper (and often inaccurate) descriptions of what they’d seen in Nam. I had good reason for not trusting Sen. Kerry at the time when he testified before the congressional committee. Whether the advertisements are understood the same way today is doubtful. Times have changed. Most of the hurt, the way we felt when hippies stood at airport gates and spit on returning military personnel (even draftees) has disapated with time. But it will never be gone and Sen. Kerry chose to wave the flag on his behalf (likley an attempt from Day 1 to head off criticism), and he can bloody well sleep in the bed he made for himself.

Rant ends.

I recall in the early days of the “Internet” when usenet was essentially the only feature involving a general exchange of information. Straying into something like a news group dealing with an historical period, particular writer, etc. and making a casual remark guaranteed that the poster discovered what being “flamed” met.

All the stodgy professors in the U.S. frequented their domain of news groups. Some discussions literally lasted years on some minute point. Scholarly, yes, but the acrimony was thick in the air. Times have changed in terms of access and the fact today’s Internet represents the broader spectrum of society.

Including the nuts. And including those of incredible ill will towards others. I’ve seen incredibly nasty posts to personal blogs of some of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war teenagers or someone simply gone beserk in the world of anonymity that”s today’s net. It’s been said for years that the impersonal and heavily trafficked freeways of southern Cal. contribute to the number of drive by, anonymous shootings, drivers gone crazy over some perceived slight, etc.

Nuts or someone who chooses the net to “chill out?”

It shows real clarity of thinking. The war on terror isn’t simply a military strategic battle, it is a propaganda battle as well where we are trying to communicate that American ideals are the superior way to govern a community or a nation. You don’t create many converts destroying sites that even your Iraqi allies believe to be holy.

http://www.dellgines.blogspot.com

The terrorists we’re fighting, most of which are indeed arabs, represent a small minority of that population of the world’s people. Some of the terrorists are Muslim extremists and are black, living in countries like the Sudan, Kenya, and West Africa where the Muslim religion continues to rapidly spread. Animism as a religious belief , for example, has all but been replaced by Islam in West Africa.

A small minority of Muslim extremists can be found in that group, in addition to those who are Arabs (witness the two bombings of American embassies a few years ago).

Tighten the borders. They caught five members of Hamas in the U.S. today.

Load the 3rd Marines up with enough tear gas or whatever. Destroying that shrine would be tantamount to have Muslims destroy the Church of the Nazarene, something all may recall upset the Pope a year or so ago when he “mediated” between the Israelis and several hundred terrorists who took “refuge” in that well known shrine.

Recall when a group of nut nicks took over “the shrine” (whatever it’s called) in Mecca 8-10 years ago? The Saudis rushed it with troops, shot the hell out of the place and killed or captured them to the very last man.

There’s much to be said for good PR when you’re selling soap or used cars. In this case it isn’t PR that’s needed or leveling the shrine, just a carefully planned attack with a force so superior they won’t have a change.