Walter Cronkite Says that Iraq and Vietnam are the same

[ECH1969]

CRONKITE: And my story coming out, Tet Offensive, saying that we ought to get out of there was a highlight of my career certainly, a very important highlight.

SMITH: Well, makes me want to ask you about coverage of this war, of the Iraq War, because people try to make comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq.

CRONKITE: I think the comparison is almost exact.

SMITH: You do?

CRONKITE: Yes, I do. I do. I don’t think… I think we made a mistake in getting into that war, even as we made a mistake in getting into the Vietnam War. John Kennedy did that to us, originally, and then Lyndon Johnson did his best with it. But he inherited it, and he had a difficult time getting us out of it. He did his best. This war is the same thing precisely. We shouldn’t have gone in there. We got in by mistake. We got in thinking we could do something for democracy, save a democracy. Same thing we were saying, Kennedy said, for Vietnam, we were saying for the Middle East.

SMITH: Yeah.

CRONKITE: And that we were in danger, and we had to save democracy. They didn’t have any democracy, just like they didn’t have in in the Far East. Vietnam was a monarchy, and a very mean one. And much the same. Of course, we knew that we were getting that kind of situation in Asia. I mean, in the Mideast.

SMITH: Yes.

CRONKITE: But we didn’t know the full extent of it. We thought we could create the liberties of a democracy there. A sad mistake, of course.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/texasmonthlytalks/transcripts/cronkite

[JuniperLea]

1. And that's the way it is...

n/t

[xray s]

2. Iraq is much, much worse

After we left Viet Nam, it was not a threat to anyone.

The aftermath of our involvemnt in Iraq will be a bloody sectarian civil war that will resonate for decades and spread throughout the Middle East.

The Domino Theory will finally finds it place in history, and Bush will be the idiot that started them toppling.

Ironic, isn't it?

[Jack Rabbit]

3. I disagree with Mr. Cronkite on this matter

Vietnam was an honest mistake.

If one could ask the idiots who got us into Vietnam what they thought they were accomplishing, they would have said "We thought we were containing Communism." And that would be an honest answer.

If one were to ask the idiots who got us into Iraq what they thought they were accomplishing, they will tell you "We are fighting terrorism." That is not an honest answer. Iraq had nothing to do with international terrorism and they knew it.

Iraq is a dishonest mistake.

[xray s]

4. I don't know...

I think the same profit motive lit both fuses.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. In Vietnam, only remotely

There wasn't much in Vietnam worth taking. How many barrels a day does Vietnam produce?

[xray s]

7. I am thinking bombs, tanks, ammo

I remember all those Huey's they tossed into the ocean on the way home....

[Jack Rabbit]

10. Oh, that

The defense industry really didn't need an actual war for that. They could have sold the government Napalm just to be prepared for one.

[ngant17]

13. Vietnamese oil?

I am sure oil was never an issue for going to war over there. Although Vietnam does have some
oil rigs that are productive at the moment.

As an aside, it is my understanding that one of the world's largest off-shore oil deposits is in
a no-man's land in the South China Sea, all claimed by China, Vietnam, and Phillipines.

[calmblueocean]

12. Exactly right. Motives matter.

Iraq is worse than Vietnam because the justifications for it keep changing, and we haven't heard them tell the truth *yet*.

[madeline_con]

6. Has Walt gotten senile?!

"We got in thinking we could do something for democracy, save a democracy."

Who's this "WE" he's talking about? Does he honestly believe this shit? :wow:

[greenbriar]

8. Check out my vIdEo>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

http://video.freevideoblog.com/video/91C11B44-3667-4207-8A4F-C82F262F4A95.htm

[dflprincess]

9. So, will Bush realize, like LBJ did

that if he's lost Conkrite, he's lost the country? (or at least for those of us who remember when "Uncle Walter" was the most trusted man in America.)

[Strelnikov_]

11. No They Are Not. Iraq Is Much Worse Than Most Americans Can Imagine

The region around Vietnam did not supply 25% of the worlds oil production.

The region around Vietnam did not have 2/3rd's of the worlds remaining oil reserves.

The region around Vietnam did not have a majority of the worlds remaining natural gas reserves that we are depending on for imports since North America has limited reserves remaining.

The destabilization that the GOP initiated with their misguided/ mismanaged war now puts all of these resources into jeopardy. The GOP made a petro grab, bungled it badly, and the American people are going to pay the price for generations to come.

Pulling back from the Middle East without a WW II level societal/infrastructure transformation virtually ensures disaster.

The Chimp has placed the nation in a Catch 22 over the near term (5 yrs +/-) in the Middle East. The only way out over the long term is to initiate the greatest energy transformation ever undertaken, today, so in 5 yrs. it will be far enough along we can pull back from the Middle East.

And all this is due to the complete incompetence of the GOP and their pursuit of this war. If they had decided Iraq must be taken, why did they not use adequate troop levels or follow the advise of State Department experts? Why did they rush to set up a wild west of crony capitalism, thus alienating most of the population? And why take Iraq at all? If the purpose was to fight Islamic extremism, why not use secular Iraq as an anvil much as the US used the Soviet Union in WWII?

Incompetence rising to the level of treason.

From Kunstlers Blog today:

The plain truth is, if anything happens to upset the current management and allocation system of the the global oil markets, the industrial economies of the world will collapse, and America's will collapse hardest and worst because of the way we have arranged things for ourselves. The global oil markets currently revolve around Middle East oil production. If the region is overcome by instability, than it's simply GAME OVER.

You can spin out any number of strategic scenarios about what is liable to happen in the Middle East from here on, with or without America trying to run a police station there, and none of them are good. They range from Iran gaining control of twenty percent of the world's remaining oil, to a free-for-all world war joined by virtually all the nations capable of projecting military power into the region. We'd be stuck with the consequences because we are otherwise too cowardly, lazy, and greedy to face our situation at home -- which is simply that we cannot keep running a drive-in utopia. We have to make other arrangements and we have to make them now.