What link are you using for these?Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm99
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What link are you using for these?Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm99
JMA: based on the ad hominems you've been tossing at me for the last couple of days, I don't think I owe you the time of day or a link.
For the benefit of the others here, go to Google Books, Perilous options: special operations as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy By Lucien S. Vandenbroucke (url on my computer - it goes to Page 200 - use "Previous Page" on the right of Page 200 to get to pages 65-67).
Vandenbroucke was a State Dept. guy who generally took a negative view of special ops because of what he believed to be their negative impact on US foreign policy.
Regards
Mike
Mike,Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm99
It probably won't surprise you when I tell you most State P**ks still have a negative view and they are constantly telling us "other than State personnel" about our negative impact on foreign policy. It would be the chargé d’affaires who told us the Rwandan refugee crisis will last "two weeks tops" in July of 94 :D
Regards, Stan
Mike, with respect to you and given your approach to this thread being rather as one would expect from Moorer's legal team rather than someone attempting to find the truth you have hitherto got off lightly IMHO.Quote:
Originally Posted by jmm99
FWIW I have attempted to read the preview link and using three browsers (IE. Safari, Firefox) I continue to get 'No Preview Available' so must make do with the three pages you posted.
Yep, I get no preview available.Quote:
For the benefit of the others here, go to Google Books, Perilous options: special operations as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy By Lucien S. Vandenbroucke (url on my computer - it goes to Page 200 - use "Previous Page" on the right of Page 200 to get to pages 65-67).
So... from the attached pages we learn...
and Moorer:Quote:
According to Secretary Laird's military assistant, Brigadier General Robert Pursely, DIA told Laird and him before the operation that, "the chance that prisoners were still in he camp was, at best, 10 or 15 percent.
In post #4 to this thread I said the following:Quote:
"I argued more strongly than all the others that we should go in and conduct the rescue mission ... We had some doubts the POWs were there, but the forces were poised to go and there was some possibility the POWs were still there."
Laird/Pursely were told there was a 10-15 percent chance the POWs were still there while according to Train, he and Moorer knew the camp was empty. Yet despite this the raid went ahead.Quote:
Having been involved in some raid activity myself it is the waiting that gets to you. You want to get it done and over with. Son Tay had a specific weather/moon phase window of opportunity which limited possible action to a few days in each month. They wanted to go in October but were scheduled for November. The prospect of another delay was not what the commanders (and probably the troops) wanted.
Moorer was in a position to pull the emergency brake on a train that gathering a momentum of its own and he failed to do so and allowed himself to be swept all in the 'group-think'. As the top man in the military he failed. He failed to say:
"STOP... we are planning to do what on an empty camp 23 miles from Hanoi?"
This comment on Vanderbroucke? Because he doesn't produce what you wanted you got to put the boot into him too? Very Sad.Quote:
Vandenbroucke was a State Dept. guy who generally took a negative view of special ops because of what he believed to be their negative impact on US foreign policy.
Regards
Mike
It saddens me more than I can say that it is the behaviour of men at the top of the military (as in the example of the Son Tay Raid) that opens the door for the demand for civilian oversight and micromanagement of military operations.
While you have the luxury to discount reasons other than the PWs if you wish, the decision makers at the time did not.Quote:
Originally Posted by JMA
He did not "put the boot into him..." He disclosed a salient fact about his bias which any prudent person would consider in arriving at a judgement.Quote:
This comment on Vanderbroucke? Because he doesn't produce what you wanted you got to put the boot into him too? Very Sad.
There's a lot of that bias stuff going around, though it is exposed rather than disclosed... :D
Your sweeping lack of knowledge of how US foreign and military policy are crafted -- bad choice of words there, perhaps 'clumsily assembled' is better -- is yet again noted. You are of course entitled to that lack of knowledge and even to flaunt it as you do on these little forays through fantasy land in which there are no political interferences with military operations. :rolleyes:
Though I again suggest if you wish to comment on US polices and actions intelligently or with the slightest degree of credibility you might work at becoming a bit more aware. That lack of knowledge is shown by this statement of yours:The only sad thing in this thread is your intransigence and attempt to couch things of which you know little in terms of your own experience and denigrating the experience of others with condescension.Quote:
It saddens me more than I can say that it is the behaviour of men at the top of the military (as in the example of the Son Tay Raid) that opens the door for the demand for civilian oversight and micromanagement of military operations.
I suggested to you many months ago that was a mistake. It still is.
A little education is offered with faint hope it will be understood or accepted. That micromanagement of which you write began in this country during WW I. Wilson and his alter ego 'Colonel' Edward House who with no military or foreign policy experience served as Wilson's de facto national security adviser and diplomatic troubleshooter. Both of them intruded in American military affairs to an extraordinary degree during the war. They set the Stage for Franklin Roosevelt in WW II who was even more intrusive and for Lyndon Johnson who was yet again worse. So the Civilian oversight ALWAYS present in the US from 1775 forward became stifling by 1970, Nixon merely continued the interference of his predecessors . It caught up not only Son Tay, but the later Mayaguez and still later Eagle Claw -- in fact, in every US action since to include Iraq and Afghanistan, thus it still is stifling...
Having been in the US Army at the time and having known and talked to several participants as opposed to basing comments on unclassified history and articles, I'm quite certain you are wrong on Moorer's ability to halt the operation. Just that simple. While your simplistic tactical approach to the issue may seem to have some merit in your eyes, in the eyes of anyone who has the slightest idea of how the US Government works it will be seen as just that, simplistic and tactical. No matter, you can of course believe what you wish for whatever reason you wish to do so. Still, I again suggest that if you wish to comment on US policy and methods, you ought to know a bit more about the monster and the bureaucracy that feeds it.
Where is blueblood? No matter, I'll quote him:
"So what's with the holier than thou nature?"
I'm not an expert on this subject, but if the boss came to me and said...
"Hey guys, it looks like there is only a slight chance that our guys are still at the camp. Do we go or shall we cancel"?
My reaction would be, "Let's go get our guys."
I noticed you had taken up position waiting for your moment to pounce so I through the bait in the other thread to lure the vulture down... and it worked. You are so predictable Ken
Once again you take it upon yourself to set me right on an issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken White
All this does display is how US-centric your view point is to the exclusion of reality and common sense. You demean yourself in the process (even if you can't see that).
It seems everything (and I mean everything) can be excused with the simple retort you just don't understand the US system etc etc.
But you fail to note that the majority of the world's population is not trapped in and by the US system so are able to see through the crappy excuses to where the real problems lie.
Every time there is a mark 1 cock-up mentioned it is met with the usual "but you don't understand our complex systems". A cock-up is a cock-up (whatever the reason) and that is the hard truth.
Son Tay was an audacious concept which degenerated into a case study of planning failure due to Group-think and weak leadership. The world knows this but only the Americans in mental lock step with the officially applied spin are in denial. Sad, very sad.
I'm seeing little of actual value in this thread aside from the usual sniping. Cease and desist. Otherwise this gets the same lock Dave applied so judiciously to the Revolution in America thread.
Maybe your reaction should then be to put in for a transfer because a smart boss would have said:Quote:
Originally Posted by Misifus
"We are aborting the Son Tay raid as we no longer are sure there are POWs there. We have identified Dong Hoi as live and are going there in a month or so."
No expertise needed... just a lick of sense.
Actually it did not -- I posted in the order I read the threads -- so yet again and as so often occurs due to your penchant for charging blindly and self righteously, you're wrong... :DQuote:
Originally Posted by JMA
Nasty, fruitless job but some has to do it. Actually, I'm not alone in that quest. A number of folks here have tried to do that. You pay little attention to them either.Quote:
Once again you take it upon yourself to set me right on an issue.
Not really. I'm simply attempting -- quite unsuccessfully I note -- trying to keep you from continually doing just that to yourself.Quote:
All this does display is how US-centric your view point is to the exclusion of reality and common sense. You demean yourself in the process (even if you can't see that).
That's another untruth or shading of the truth. Not everything but indeed a number of things on which you choose to comment about the US. Ignorance shows...Quote:
It seems everything (and I mean everything) can be excused with the simple retort you just don't understand the US system etc etc.
You and that rest of the world also fail to note that those aren't excuses, they are reasons and that we are well aware of and tolerate, even welcome, that dysfunction because it is offset by a number of to us, advantages. That's where much misunderstanding originates.Quote:
But you fail to note that the majority of the world's population is not trapped in and by the US system so are able to see through the crappy excuses to where the real problems lie.
Nah, that's also untrue -- I only mention that when you miss the boat on an issue to which it applies. You get more right than a you do wrong but when you err, you tend to do it spectacularly. Cock-ups are often in the eye of beholders. In this issue, you see a cock-up, full stop. As the full story is not yet unclassified, others are suggesting you should not rush to judgement and doing so in several different ways for several different reasons. I strongly doubt this is a case of 'Everyone's wrong but JMA...'Quote:
Every time there is a mark 1 cock-up mentioned it is met with the usual "but you don't understand our complex systems". A cock-up is a cock-up (whatever the reason) and that is the hard truth.
Officially applied spin? Seems to me that your application of a cock-up label is predicated on cherry picking US sources. :wry:Quote:
Son Tay was an audacious concept which degenerated into a case study of planning failure due to Group-think and weak leadership. The world knows this but only the Americans in mental lock step with the officially applied spin are in denial. Sad, very sad.
If it's sad, why do you relish it so? :D
Crocodile tears are unbecoming...;)
Guilty -- and departing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Blair
I have not read it, but I recently noticed this in bookstore:
The Quiet Professional: Major Richard J. Meadows of the U.S. Army Special Forces, by Alan Hoe. The University Press of Kentucky, 2011.
The author is a veteran of Special Air Service and first met Meadows in 1960 during Meadows’ exchange with SAS. Saw there was a chapter on the Son Tay raid.
Judging from your attitude and vitriolic responses on this thread, it's apparent that you are the one who requires a "lick of sense."Quote:
Originally Posted by JMA
Now go ES&D.
Ok...time for a cooldown. This thread's locked.