Son Tay raid: stop or go? Vietnam

[jcustis]

What is your definition of confirmation? A POW waving into the night as an SR-71 flew overhead?

Silly.

I was being flippant to make a point, but are you going to answer the question? It was still directed at you and was not rhetorical.

What standard do you believe they should have used to achieve confirmation or denial? A single source HUMINT report? A knock at the front gate?

And don't reply with, "well, the intel should have been better than what they had," because that's just moving the goal posts in circles. We know they should have had better intel, and there hasn't been anyone in this thread who has said otherwise.

Quote:
At the end of the day, I don't believe Moorer to be a moral coward, imbecile, or unintelligent, and the contrasting viewpoints in this thread simply demonstrate the beauty of how people can come to different conclusions over the same bit of information.

You don't believe or you don't want to believe?

You really don't have any idea how this discourse is supposed to work right now, do you? You are just talking in circles at this point.

I...don't...believe...Moorer...to...be...a...moral...coward...imbecil e...or..unintelligent.

Now your problem would come if you were asked to substantiate that.

I don't need to. I have substantiated it already, at least the reason why I come to that conclusion.

I put the Vandenbroucke material on the end of spoon for you. Did you even read it and find the reference to the point made about the 3-13 November activity?

[jmm99]

I called; you didn't show the cards - end game.

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

I called; you didn't show the cards - end game.

Regards

Mike

I was supposed to produce the transcript of Vandenbroucke's interview with Train?

You're joking right?

[Surferbeetle]

I was supposed to produce the transcript of Vandenbroucke's interview with Train?

You're joking right?

Hmmm...so then, your considered analysis still boils down to unsubstantiated allegations, with a baseline of 'leave the POWs to the tender mercies of their captors'?

Poor form at best.

[JMA]

Hmmm...so then, your considered analysis still boils down to unsubstantiated allegations, with a baseline of 'leave the POWs to the tender mercies of their captors'?

Poor form at best.

Look I don't understand your inability to understand the most simple truth... and that being the camp was empty. There were no POW's there... the evidence points to that this was known by Moorer/Blackburn/Bennett before the raid was launched. Yet it went ahead placing the soldiers and airmen involved at an unacceptable risk on a fruitless exercise.

The charade of Son Tay resulted in the consolidation of US POWs to location beyond the reach of rescue.

If you want to do it you need to do it right but with the best will in the world and the best troops it is the string of intelligence failures and severe limitations in the top levels of US military command (at the time) that made these kind of operations a near impossibility to conduct effectively.

[JMA]

What standard do you believe they should have used to achieve confirmation or denial? A single source HUMINT report? A knock at the front gate?

You are being silly again.

My standard is unimportant... and your demand for such is an attempt to draw that into the discussion is just a red herring.

The simple fact is that after 14 July 1970 for the four months and one week until the raid went ahead on 21 November 1970 no INTEL was produced to prove the camp was still occupied by US POWs. In other words no confirmatory INTEL.

In fact the evidence of a POW presence had deteriorated to so tenuous a level that Pres Nixon was deliberately deceived by not being informed of either the lack of activity in the camp nor the HUMINT report that the POWs had been moved.

To help you obtain a simple grasp of the Son Tay issue I suggest you read Amidon's document. You really need to attempt to approach this in an investigative and enquiring manner rather than mere resort to high school debating tactics driven by a desire to be blindly loyal to a man who screwed up big time.

[jmm99]

p.65 (p.64 is unavailable from Google)

p65.jpg

Best I can do given attachment limits (enlarge your view to 150% or so).

and p.66

p66.jpg

and p.67

p67.jpg

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

p.65 (p.64 is unavailable from Google)

What link are you using for these?

[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

[Stan]

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.

Mike,
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

Regards, Stan

[JMA]

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.

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.

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.

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).

Yep, I get no preview available.

So... from the attached pages we learn...

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.

and Moorer:

"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."

In post #4 to this thread I said the following:

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.

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.

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?"

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

This comment on Vanderbroucke? Because he doesn't produce what you wanted you got to put the boot into him too? Very Sad.

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.

[Ken White]

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?"