BREAKING NEWS: Retired Gen. William Westmoreland has died

[Freedomfried]

Its an omen!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050719/ap_on_re_us/obit_westmoreland

The silver-haired, jut-jawed officer, who rose through the ranks quickly in Europe during World War II and later became superintendent of West Point, contended the United States did not lose the conflict in Southeast Asia.

"It's more accurate to say our country did not fulfill its commitment to South Vietnam," he said. "By virtue of Vietnam, the U.S. held the line for 10 years and stopped the dominoes from falling."

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I thought he was already dead.

Like Francisco Franco.

[Mr_Spock]

8. lol

You're mean :D

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

2. stuff from wikipedia

In 1982, Mike Wallace interviewed Westmoreland for the CBS special The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. The documentary alleged that Westmoreland and others had deliberately underestimated Vietcong troop strength in order to maintain morale and popular support for the war. The result was the disastrous Tet Offensive.

In Westmoreland v. CBS, Westmoreland sued Wallace and CBS for libel, and a long and arduous trial process began. Westmoreland surprisingly settled with CBS for an apology, about as much as they had originally offered. Research after the trial uncovered the reason: while CBS' internal investigation revealed that they had used shoddy journalistic practices, Judge Leval's instructions to the jury over what constituted "actual malice" to prove libel were so weighted in favour of the defense that Westmoreland's lawyers knew he would lose.

In a 1998 interview for George magazine, Westmoreland dismissed the battlefield prowess of his opponent North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap. "Of course, he was a formidable adversary," Westmoreland told George correspondent W. Thomas Smith, Jr. "Let me also say that Giap was trained in small-unit, guerilla tactics, but he persisted in waging a big-unit war with terrible losses to his own men. By his own admission, by early 1969, I think, he had lost, what, a half million soldiers? He reported this. Now such a disregard for human life may make a formidable adversary, but it does not make a military genius. An American commander losing men like that would hardly have lasted more than a few weeks."

[shraby]

3. I honestly can't say I'm sorry he died.

He should have been court martialed for what he did.

[Freedomfried]

4. He put a lot of young Americans in their graves.

With his lies and pompus bullshit

[Porcupine]

5. They better cremate the evil bastard.

Because otherwise people will be standing in line to piss on his grave.

[deminks]

6. Like the Chimp in Chief...

(snip from the article)

He would later say he did not know how history would deal with him.

"Few people have a field command as long as I did," he said. "They put me over there and they forgot about me. But I was there seven days a week, working 14 to 16 hours a day.

"I have no apologies, no regrets. I gave my very best efforts," he added. "I've been hung in effigy. I've been spat upon. You just have to let those things bounce off."
(end snip)

I have nothing else to say.

[cynatnite]

7. He'll have full military honors

He'll be set on a pedestal and praised for his long military service. That's how it usually works whether anyone agrees with it or not.

Oh, I don't believe in omens :)

[sleipnir]

9. Another room in Hell filled.

n/t

[Faygo Kid]

10. Now he will know if there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel

He lived to the ripe and peaceful old age of 91, and never understood the world that was no longer what he had left West Point for in 1936. To his credit, he gave great homage to the Vietnam Wall, but perhaps that was just a soldier's due. Today, I am sure he would have been (perhaps was) a fervent supporter of the war in Iraq, although tempered by his own failure, if only slightly. He and the others gone rest with the 20 year olds of 1969 who they fed into that meat grinder, and McNamara is now alone. I for one tonight will instead again recall George Ball, undersecretary of State to LBJ, who saw that war for what it was and tried to stop it. That was an honorable man. Westmoreland? A figure in history, brave and intelligent but one dimensional and all too ready to sacrifice others. At least he had personal courage, unlike most of the neocon rulers of America today, and their radio/FoxNews Wormtongues. LBJ always seemed tragically larger than life; Westmoreland, who I remember well, always seemed smaller, and his tragedy was not personal. It belonged to the friends, families and fellow citizens whom he failed.