DC Insiders Tiptoe Around Real Iraq/Vietnam Connection

This is a fine treatise on the relationship between Viet Nam and Iraq and well worth the read.
DC Insiders Tiptoe Around Real Iraq/Vietnam Connection
Thursday, August 23, 2007
President Bush gave a great speech at the VFW national convention earlier this week, linking our actions in Iraq and the wider War on Terror with what we had done as a nation in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

He made the point that when Congress, through the Case-Church Amendment in 1973, cut off all funding to South Vietnam, Southeast Asia fell, and millions suffered at the hands of the communists as a result. Among the many outrages and tragedies of this devastating turn of events was that only the previous year our South Vietnamese allies had successfully fought off a major offensive from the communist north using its ground troops backed by our air power.

President Bush gave a great speech, long overdue, well received by the war veterans, and certainly laid out the future for Iraq and us if we again turn our backs on a developing ally and let chaos reign.

My only disappointment with the speech was when the president started listing the numbers who had died at the hands of the communists country-by-country. In South Vietnam it was in the tens of thousands in the concentration camps - which the communists in Congress and the media still refer to as re-education camps as though they were some kind of adult education facilities.

That number is OK is guess. I have been told by people who should know that approximately 60,000 died in those camps from executions, starvation, and forced labor including clearing land mines from old battle areas.

But there also were an estimated 1,000,000 Vietnamese boat people who fled the communists, taking to the South China Sea in anything that would float, at least for a little while. I have seen estimates that of that one million people, some 300,000 never landed on safe ground.
REAT IT ALL: