Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
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.
While you have the luxury to discount reasons other than the PWs if you wish, the decision makers at the time did not.
This comment on Vanderbroucke? Because he doesn't produce what you wanted you got to put the boot into him too? Very Sad.
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.

There's a lot of that bias stuff going around, though it is exposed rather than disclosed...

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.

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:
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.
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.

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?"