geekerr The United States right wing still resonates with a blind sickening nationalism that denies honesty and decency.They are still lying as their President George Bush did to bomb innocent people in Iraq and use Mexican migrant workers to provide their food.The United States is rife with drug addiction , right wing nationalism which blinds people to the truth.The United States and the western world are presently destroying the entire planet by burning fossil fuels and don\t care about anyone other than their own selfish needs.The American mentality I allows presently the cold blood murder of its own citizenry . It has the highest rate of killing its own people with its love for guns and murder.

poe426 In HEARTS AND MINDS, war mongerer Clark Gifford states that, following World War Two, "We began to feel... that possibly we could control the future of the world." Well, as we now know, They COULD and They DID. More's the pity. One of the most shocking moments in the movie comes when former French foreign minister Georges Bidault quotes John Dulles, who said to Bidault: "And if we were to give you two Atomic bombs...?" I've heard the Nixon tapes wherein Nixon talked to Henry Kissinger about the possibility of using atomic bombs in Vietnam and Kissinger, in a rare moment of restraint, ventured that that might be going just a tad too far. Bidault's statement seems to underscore that exchange. "Throughout the war in Vietnam," Nixon says in one clip, "the U.$. has exercised a degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war." (As far as I'M concerned, ALL pre$ident$ should be held accountable for any and ALL lies that they tell while in office: they should be "under oath" from the moment they're sworn in- like any other defendant. And they should work for Minimum Wage and be forced to retire from Public Office by the time they turn 60- as should any and all members of Government.) As "deserter" Eddie Sowders put it: "It is a supreme irony to be prosecuted by the very same men who planned and executed a genocidal war in Indochina." "We weren't on the wrong side," Daniel Ellsberg says: "We ARE the wrong side." With the kind of arrogant ignorance typical of American$, William Westmoreland offers this bit of wisdom: "Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient." When asked if the U.$. has learned anything from Vietnam, bomber pilot Randy Floyd says: "I think we're trying not to." Prosperity and prosthetics, people. THAT'S the legacy in this company.

sol Hard hitting documentary directed by Peter Davis in how the US got itself involved in the War in Vietnam that ended up tearing the country apart. Made in 1974 before the Vetcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army overran the country the film shows the pitfalls that the US chose to overlook in getting itself stuck in the mud swamps and jungles that was the Vietnam War.There's really no one US President to blame for getting the country into that bloody mess of a war in that we see it was a team effort from Pres. Truman to Pres. Nixon and every other US Chief Executive, Eisenhower Kennedy & Johnson, in between. The French who were involved in the first Vietnam or Indochina War was soundly defeated by Ho Chi Minh's, known as "The Enlighten One", Viet Minh forces in the bloody and drawn out battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. That jungle battle ended the conflict that resulted in the loss, French and Vietnames military and civilians, of over 700,000 lives. During the almost 8 years of of fighting in Indochina War the US was far from neutral in supporting the French with almost 80% of the arms and money for the French to keep the war going.With the free and UN sponsored elections to unify both north and South Vietnam set to be held in 1956 and Ho Chi Minh being a sure shot of winning them the US under Pres. Eisenhower set up the puppet Diem to be South Vietnam's fist unelected president. This set the stage for the second Vietnam War that was to involved as much as 550,000 US troops and lasting 16 years from 1959 to 1975, the longest war in US history, ending up costing almost 60,000 American lives; Not to mention the some 3 million Vietnamese,from both North & South Vietnam, who perished in it.Among the many persons who were personally involved in the Vietnam war the one who made the biggest impact on me in the movie was former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. Clifford in an interview admitted that those Generals and politicians conducting the war had no idea in not only how to win it but who they were fighting against. Everything that they did failed miserably and they ended up stuck in an unwindable war because in their mind by ending it, or withdrawing from the country, would lead to a "Domino Effect" where all of South-East Asia would end up falling into Communists hands. Which to them was worth the enormous loss of life, American & Vietnamese, that this bottomless quagmire of a war was was costing! As it turned out the "Domino Effect" turned out to be pure fiction with no other country in that part of the world turning Communist and Vietnam now a united country being one of the US', next to Communist China, biggest trading partners in Asia!What the film brings out best is how most of the American public finally realized that they've been had in going along with the bankrupt policies of their leaders who conned them, like in the faked and infamous Tonkin Gulf incident, into supporting the war. Taking to the street in massive anti-war demonstrations with hundreds of returning Vietnam war vet participating in them was what really brought the war to an end. But it took almost 6 years from 1966 to 1973 for it to happen! And it was during that time the majority of the almost 60,000 American and 3 million Vietnamese lives lost in the war were snuffed out.In the end the Vietnam War turned out to be a war that many from the Truman Eishenhower Kenndey Johnson & Nixon Administrations who whole hearted supported it at first would now, after all the facts are in about it, like to forget!

JasparLamarCrabb It can be argued (probably successfully) that this is the ultimate bleeding heart's take on the US government's policies in southeast Asia from 1950 to 1973. Peter Davis has nevertheless made a riveting and very unsettling documentary. Relying on first hand accounts from vets, politicians, and a few grotesque "man on the street" interviews, Davis makes it clear that he's not interested in making anything approaching a balanced film. How could he when a scene of a young Vietnamese girl wailing over her fathers coffin is juxtaposed with General William Westmoreland explaining that people in the Orient do not value life? Among the more insightful interviewees are Daniel Ellsberg (who laments how five US Presidents managed to lie to the US over 25 years) as well as former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, who admits he was wrong to go along with LBJ's policies many years before Robert McNamara (whom he succeeded) did. Ultimately this is a very sad movie about a really horrible time in US history.