News Is Iraq Now Ruling Itself? From AP

[HAVOC451]

There is a small amount of truth to that. Very small.

For the first six years of the war, media coverage consisted of whatever the government decided to spoon-feed to the media. We were not winning then either. However, we were certainly not losing it.

For the Vietnamese to win, they needed the American people to realize that we had no interest in winning that stupid war.

For the Americans to win, we needed to kill most of the 20+ million Vietnamese.

When the media coverage became honest, it made victory for the Vietnamese possible. Even when the media were being tools for Johnson, there was no chance of American victory. We simply could not be monstrous enough to win, even in secret.

So, I suppose you could say that the behavior of the American media was an integral ingredient of our defeat in Vietnam. Considering that defeat was most likely inevitable, and that victory would have required a holocaust, the media did the nation a service by switching to real, honest reporting on the war.

Njorl

Well said Njorl.
The Vietnamise wanted the French out most of all. If we'd been listening we might have seen that Ho Chi Minh actually admired the USA. Had we not acted out of shear fear of communism Vietnam could very well have moved toward the center and westernised. Too bad such notions could not be heard over the din of the cold war.