I wonder how many playing cards this will divy up?

I wonder why they include this F-16 in the same story as if it was even part of the same operation?
The f-16 crash was not even part of the operation.

To make the situation sound worse than it was, of course. Don't you know we're losing the peace?
This is CNN, after all...

Thank God our present administration isn't allowing liberal media, its liberal constituency and the UN to dictate policy over Iraq.
That is what happened thirty years ago and at the end of the day, while all the sanctimonious liberals here in America went about their day to day business, the people who got the fid were the rank and file citizens of the former South Vietnam.
Luckily for the rank and file IRAQI citizen, we have George Bush in the Oval Office this time out.

The thing that makes me feel warm and cozy is the thought that the Apache heli *crashed* and the pilots survived. Go US.

Still, it's gotta be a painful thing to see a multi-billion dollar piece of equipment go crunch.

Hopefully it won't come out of their paychecks.

..is just me or are there a awlful lot of this helicopters being shot down?What the hell would it be like against real air defense,dont take this as troop bashing,there have been to damn many helicopter crashes.Dont like what I`M seeing of this platform..

the shitty end of of the stick perhaps: Rob, somebody has to run point i.e. - find where the peoplle that shoot back are - the leading edge so to speak - Apache misson????????????

..yeah guess ya right,think I`ll just take a ABRAMS,if it`s all the same to ya.....

Wolf,

I hate to break it to you, but the war against/in (depending on how one looks at it) Viet Nam was fought largely by liberals. Think LBJ, a uber-liberal who ratcheted that war up during his entire administration. Why anyone thinks that liberals are neccessarily anti-war is beyond me (hell, many of the so-called neo-conservatives are liberals, ex-trotskyites, and the like who broke with their fellow liberal colleagues over Viet Nam). Just as there is a conservative anti-war/isolationist wing (see Pat Buchanan), so there is a liberal anti-war wing. In fact, wasn't it the Nixon administration, a group of fairly conservative Republicans, that ended the war in Viet Nam?

TBOX,

An Apache Helicopter costs approximately $15 million dollars. Think about it; the US defense budget right now is ~ $400 billion dollars - how many Apaches could they buy with that amount of money if they were "multi-billion dollar piece of equipment."

My commercial pilot brother describes a helicopter as 10,000 bolts flying in loose formation (and you can put scare quotes around flying if you wish.) They're tender things under the best of circumstances, and having bad guys shooting at you isn't the best of circumstances. Helicopter crews run pretty high risks in training, too, don't they?

OOOOHYESINDEEDYGUYS. '68-'69 I rode three of those CH47s IN (as in powerless, IN, rather than augerin', IN), and I will NEVER ride in another. I don't give a shit if I have to saw my damned arm of, I ain't climbin' in another. Scary. The description lacks the word 'vibrating'. Other than that, it's good to go.

Stephen,

Well, if an RPG can take one out by barely grazing them and screwing up a rotor, they can't be all that tough.

Stephen,

Think about what an airliner does when it loses power? It sinks like a rock. The safest way to fly is by glider. :)

Jacques - Curious - Where are you from? You need HOT AIR for those things... ;-)

I'm a joint French-American citizen; gliding is a fairly large "sport" in France, if you didn't know. I've also flown in California and the Smokies.

Jacques,

I don't think Nixon had much of a choice, as the VC were literally running us out of Nam...

You do have a point about the liberal, conservative thing though....

mike,

Its a bit of a misconception that the US military was doing poorly in Viet Nam; they never really were. Even the Tet Offensive ended up being a victory for the US. What Tet did undermine, and seriously so, was LBJ's promises that the war was going smoothly, and victory was at hand. LBJ lied a lot to the American public so as to not have his Viet Nam policy called into question (he desperately wanted to win in 1964; ultimately this did far more harm than good to the war effort, and I might add, when Tet was revealed as a success, no one believed LBJ that it was. This skepticism (and the need for it wasn't ludicrous given past lies, etc.) also was seen under Nixon.

Now, whether winning in Viet Nam would have been good or worse for the Vietnamese I can't say; I am, however, of the opinion, that the longer the fighting went on the worse the situation was going to get no matter who won.

Guys - Different frame of reference. Same ass attitude that little freakin' idiot has in DPRK - human life is of little value. We, on the other hand, require more amenities, like food, shelter, water and FREEDOM, among others. I was there. We had a BAD attitude (while incountry) 'cuz we had NO support at home. Straight answer. I find this blog at least once a day - because I get to read words at least, from all corners of the world and from all political perspectives. This one we're in right now? It has a very large group of people supporting it that are in my demographic. From my perspective, this is payback for the abuse we suffered on a global scale in VN. I digress. My two cents about that debauchery (that's a French word, ain't it Jacques)?

Helicopters were always a bad idea for the combat zone and that was realized from the begining. But in Veitnam there was complete airsupieority in the south, so choppers were fairly free to operate. First it was pick and delivery, then guns to protect the chopper, then heavly armed choppers to gaurd the transport choppers, then ground attack choppers. It sort of worked in that war , but there were still a lot of chopper losses. It probablely wasn't a trend we should have continued. The Soviets turn a different appoach. They used beefed up armored choppers instead of light fast one like the U.S. The Soviet appoach has been called the flying tank. But in Afganastan the flying tanks didn't do well . It maybe be the biggest best armored and armed chopper ever but blow off the tail roter it is coming down hard. Also to lift all that extra weight the Soviets used long flexible main roter blades . Well in combat you gotta do what you gotta do , and twisting one of these big choppers to avoid ground fire some times resulted in the main roter flexing just enough to cut the tail off. Light and fast is the way to go. As even the French agree. But choppers need to be used with care on the battlefield. We need something like the warthog 2 that got canciled. Or even a modern rebuild on the A-26 Invader. Choppers are too slow and they can't take punishment. The Invader was fast,nimble,could carry alot of fire power, and it could take a licking and keep on ticking.

I was gonna say that but you stole my thunder sam.

But on the Apache thing... Theres a hell of alot of what if's that aint on that one.

Thats why they went back to using Marine cobras.

Simple yet robust is the way to go, IMHO.

Whatever happened to VTOL?

Rerun? Roge? ' What's Happenin'?

Nevermind....

The liberal angle I was referring to, Jacques, doesn't pertain so much to the Executive Branch as to the media and a lot of politicians wanting to make points with their constituents.
The newspapers and evening news were full of My Lai, napalm, etc and generally painted us to be evil mass murderers in 'Nam.
The atrocities committed on South Vietnamese civilians by Ho's forces(NVA and VC) and the very fact of an oppressive communist regime taking over the country got little or no coverage stateside.
In addition, there was the draft; Thousands of kids who'd barely(if at all) even heard of Vietnam being conscripted to fight a war they didn't understand.
Had our side of the story been given the amount of coverage and commentary by the press that was enjoyed by the other side, things might well have gone a bit differently.
I believe the voluntary enlistment numbers would have gone up as they always have before when we were going to war for a good cause.
It is the nature of Americans.
So basically, the whole thing became a political goatfuck at the top. There were a lot of screwups in Saigon, a lot of screwups at the Pentagon, etc, etc.
As excrement always rolls downhill, so it did then.
On the home front, a lot of the problem was, as I've said, due to bias by the press.
Which is why I also said, "Thank God we have Bush this time out."
Like the man said, "I don't listen to focus groups."

Regarding Vietnam (the debate that won't end until those of us from the era end)...

It was old fashioned liberals who started Vietnam. It was new fashioned liberals (today's liberals, who are vastly more Marxist-Leninist than the old ones) who ended it - by taking control of Congress and preventing the US from even shipping supplies to South Vietnam. In the middle was Lyndon Johnson, who was extremely incompetent in his prosecution of the war, and somehow was willing to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight (and tens of thousands to die) even though he privately believed from the start that we would lose!

Nixon, for all his faults, essentially won the war in Vietnam by a two-fold strategy: He ended the widespread demonstrations and resistance to the war in the US by removing US troops and making the war no longer a threat to college boys who might get drafted; he ended the major resistance in Vietnam by bombing North Vietnam into submission (the "Christmas bombings") and then keeping US airpower in reserve to stop any NK invasion (this was used once very successfully).

Unfortunately, by this time the new left had taken over Congress and all major national press outlets, and Nixon was weakened by Watergate. The result was a Congress which ultimately betrayed the South Vietnamese by not allowing US armed intervention, and by actually embargoing US arms shipments to Vietnam.

If it were not for the actions of Congress, South Vietnam by this time would probably be like South Korea. Bordered by a hostile ethnically similar neighbor to the north, but prosperous and free.

I was only off on the price of an Apache by a few orders of magnitude.

That's not much, is it?

:D

Sorry, j/k, obviously.

Really, once numbers get over what I'll likely earn in a life time, I tend to stop counting.

John Moore

Thank you. You are much more eloquent than I, and much less emotional. Well said.

Also, thanks for the link to your site. I have been having a blast reading those great French jokes!!!!

John Moore - I had no clue who you were, nor what your blog was. I have spent little time on any of them, but for Command Post. That point is relative, in that you addressed the VN issue so succinctly in your opener on this thread. So, I get to vent WITH you! After Wolf posted, about your blog, I hit it. First one that popped up in my immediate area of curiousity was the Iraqi-WMD thingy. If you are VN era, you remember what we went through with AO. My skeptiscope was about ALL that I was able to keep from that fiasco. I felt we'd been told not a lie, but rather we were NOT told the truth. For that reason, I looked. You rang a bell with me, with the Cyanide (possible byproduct from Industrial manufacturing), and Mustard Gas (a possible byproduct of mixing common household products) in the river. I have, on Command Post, asked the question about the rather HUGE fish kill in the Gulf AFTER the war began, and AFTER the initial report of the chem dump/find in the river. Am I the only one (besides you) that thought it was relevant? It would have had to have been done fairly close to outlet to have an effect on fish, unless the fish were swept downstream (logical) with the dump. Do you have links to the original story? Curious. Good go on the explanation of VN, I might add.

I remember that rather large fish kill story, Dave; and also water testing, Then, I heard the "liberal" story where it said the fish kill was from all the pollution from war ships in the gulf.
I haven't heard anything else about it since. All those stories were during the movement before Baghdad fell into coalition hands.

Today's liberals are Marxist-Leninists? Yes, that's why Dick Gephardt qoute's Lenin's "Imperialism" so much - Not. Liberals are not Marxist-Leninists - they do not call for a revolution of the proletariat, state ownership of industry, the abolishment of property, or anything along those lines. Hannah Arendt once wrote that people who confuse and otherwise fail to differentiate political ideologies and the like are bound to lose their freedom .

"Unfortunately, by this time the new left had taken over Congress and all major national press outlets, and Nixon was weakened by Watergate. The result was a Congress which ultimately betrayed the South Vietnamese by not allowing US armed intervention, and by actually embargoing US arms shipments to Vietnam."

Americans generally wanted nothing to do with the conflict by this time; it was hardly the Congress alone who "betrayed" South Vietnam.

"If it were not for the actions of Congress, South Vietnam by this time would probably be like South Korea. Bordered by a hostile ethnically similar neighbor to the north, but prosperous and free."

Well this assumption is based on the notion that the two conflicts were similar (which they weren't), and that a "free" South Vietamese government could have ever overcome its fatal weaknesses like lack of popular support, corruption, its inability to conquer elements in its own popular which were loyal to the north, etc. Even in the much more manageable situation of South Korea, the population had to endure decades of dictatorship and oppression before the despots were ousted in the 1980s and popular elections came into place. South Vietnam would likely be much more like the Phillipines was in the 1980s today than it would be like South Korea.

On the other hand, most of the South Vietnamese people didn't want the Ho Chi Minh regime to take over their country. They rightly viewed what they had as far preferable to what the northern invaders offered.
"The will of the people" is what America's political system is based upon, and that formula has proven itself to be successful(fortunately, most of us are right thinkers).
The Fourth Estate was irresponsible in portraying our involvement as anything other than geared toward that very concept, while portraying our enemy as a great and benevolent liberating hero of the South Vietnamese, and this was akin to a great propaganda victory. I say irresponsible because the press, as the public's only real source of information(pre blog, of course), has a responsibility to report issues as they are, not as the reporting venues WANT people to believe they are.
The media's biased reporting had a major effect on VN related politics stateside, and the rest, as they say, is history.

At the risk of arguing with you on two different threads, Jacques, you're wrong. Extreme left Liberalism and Leninism are similar in some ways. Hawaii has placed price controls on gasoline and some other commodities. What is that if not state control of industry?

How about mandatory minimum wage? or the idea that the state should provide universal health care coverage? The latter even has a name--SOCIALIZED medicine, although you will never hear a liberal call it that these days.

I'm not saying that all liberals are like that, but you have to note the similarities between the Manifesto and what some in Congress are currently advocating.

Wolf,

"On the other hand, most of the South Vietnamese people didn't want the Ho Chi Minh regime to take over their country. They rightly viewed what they had as far preferable to what the northern invaders offered."

How do you know this? Did you take a poll? And how does this explain the millions of Viet Cong (South Vietnamese rebels) that the GIs were fighting over there?

"The Fourth Estate was irresponsible in portraying our involvement as anything other than geared toward that very concept, while portraying our enemy as a great and benevolent liberating hero of the South Vietnamese, and this was akin to a great propaganda victory."

You're going to have to give me some examples of this please. Actual news reports from the time and such. Keep in mind that before Tet, Walter Cronkite was a staunch supporter of the war.

"The media's biased reporting had a major effect on VN related politics stateside, and the rest, as they say, is history."

Actually what most undermined the effort was, well, the government lieing (LBJ & Nixon) about the war effort generally. That and the length of the campaign itself.

johhny,

"At the risk of arguing with you on two different threads, Jacques, you're wrong. Extreme left Liberalism and Leninism are similar in some ways."

Well, at first it was "liberals," now its "extreme left liberals." Can anyone stick with a label an use it here?

"Hawaii has placed price controls on gasoline and some other commodities. What is that if not state control of industry?" That's state regulation of industry; to directly qoute myself I wrote of "state ownership of industry" - regulation and ownership are not the same thing, and if you think that they are, then you've never lived in a nation that had the latter. BTW, Nixon as implemented wage and price controls - in fact there is a piece in Slate about such right now - and I wouldn't characterize Nixon as a Marxist-Leninist.

"How about mandatory minimum wage? or the idea that the state should provide universal health care coverage? The latter even has a name--SOCIALIZED medicine, although you will never hear a liberal call it that these days."

Again, these are regulatory schemes, they aren't direct ownership. In the firtst instance the hope is to "regulate" capitalism; in the second instance the hope is not to regulate capitalism but to get rid of it.

"I'm not saying that all liberals are like that, but you have to note the similarities between the Manifesto and what some in Congress are currently advocating."

Which similarities would those be? I would like you to specifically point them out to me, instead of making some vague shot in the dark.

Liberals are not Marxist-Leninists. They really have very little if anything in common. Liberals are not anti-capitalists; they are social reformers (or see themselves that way at least); while Marxists are revolutionaries who want to do away with capitalism altogether. What most conservatives have issues with liberals over concern, to be frank, social issues.

The Apache is flat out the best work-horse attack helicopoter in existance. A slow mover? How slow do you consider 197 knots? You say you would prefer to be driving across the desert in a tank. Tell you what, you and 15 of your friends can have 16 tanks between you--I'll take a single AH-64D with a full set of Hellfires and I guarantee you and your buddies will have nothing left but metal parts scattered across the desert after 20 minutes. And, if I had a 16 tank column to destroy at 5 km standoff, I'd take one apache over 10 cobras in a heartbeat.

The problem was how the army initially chose to use them. They were so overconfident after all the previous successess and proof of its superiour lethality that they thought it was a magical machine that could fight an urban war as effectively as a desert campaign. The truth is that the Apache was never designed to fight in an urban environment. It was designed to be a tank killer. What the liberal news media did not report was the destruction of several dozens of tanks and the crippling effect it had on the Iraqi medina division. It was so much better marketing to show the defeats than the victories...you know how important ratings are... The Apache was designed with kevlar armor which is designed specifically for larger caliber munitions. When a large caliber projectile hits the kevlar the armor flexes and causes little damage. The smaller arms fire such as 7.62mm punches small holes through the kevlar. Enough holes may result in fallback to deteriorated operational modes or reduced redundancies. These don't normally take you out of the mission, but will typically prevent the aircraft from being mission capable for the next go around. Not because it couldn't go into battle, but because policy dictates that you don't start a mission with a degraded aircraft. The loss of Apache aircraft has been show to be a result of overconfidence in the aircrafts ability to stay on station and take fire without degradation. The problem is when you take so much fire (30+ rounds) that statistically they are getting more likely to hit a vital component...fuel line, System Processor, splice junction, hydraulic line, etc. The results from the Iraqi campaign have given us many lessons learned which will help the Apache design to be modified to further reinforce critical areas and reduce the impact of small arms fire.

The bottom line is that the Apache is not designed for daylight missions in an urban combat environment.

Jacques;

Between late 1969(when I was a mere lad of 19) and 1973, I was too busy to save newspaper clippings or make log entries, as it were. I did, however, witness the resolve, personally, of a vast number of South Vietnamese people who were determined to fight off their "brothers" to the north. Many of these folks were friends of mine. Few people I met over there wanted the Ho government to take over.
*A HUGE amount of those S. Vietnamese who belonged to the VC were people who had been conscripted through successful recruitment campaigns, such as the continued wellbeing of their families as a reward for joining up, or for the conscripts to remain living as long as they cooperated.
**I have had occasion to hang around with a few former Legionnaires who were at Dien Bien Phu. If you are French and in France, I'm sure you could find a few people who were in French Indo-China back in the day, and a few former Legionnaires who were at DBP.
Ask them. As fellow Frenchmen, they could probably be more persuasive.
But like John Moore(I've been reading a lot of his blog, which I only learned of today, and I like it. Great articles and well thought out opinions)said, "that debate won't end until those of us from the era end", so I'd just as soon move on. For me personally, that was a lot of violent episodes ago.

Jacques,

Thank you for your response. And I am not making vague shots in the dark, so no need to make unjustified accusations. Those I will get to in a moment. All you had to do was ask.

First, I did not intend to confuse with the use of the term "extreme left liberals" I used it to draw a distinction between the vast majority of nonconservatives (liberals), and those in your party who advocate things that are similar to socialist. Now having said that, if you look back, I never said any of the things were socialist, merely similar.

I can see we are going to get into an argument of semantics, here, but what is complete control if not ownership? If the above mentioned control of industry does not allow it to behave in the normal manner of a free market, it becomes closer to socialism than it does to capitalism. A policy doesn't have to be intentionally anti-capitalist to make it so.

As said, merely similarities, but present. It does not make anyone a Marxist.

As for congressional members, in my district, at least, there are three: Rep. Sherrod Brown Rep Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and Rep, Dennis Kucinich who have advocated, each individually, a type of universal health care coverage in which, essentially there is no free market, prices and values are established by the government, and health care is rationed. As you aptly stated, "the goal was not to regulate capitalism, but to get rid of it." and subsequently, "Marxists are revolutionaries who want to do away with capitalism altogether." Welll said. There are other but I trust I've made my point. (This isn't limited to liberals, either, the Nixon point was well met, but it illustrates that those things are less common among conservatives.)

And let's not forget some of the "revolutionaries" who at anti-war rallies wear T-shirts depicting Stalin and Mao, whom, I don't have to remind you....

Which party do you think they are registered in? While not proof or evidence in itself, it does point to that which people value.

Jacques, in no way was I trying to say that all liberals are Marxists, nor was I trying to pigeonhole you into that category, but you cannot deny that there are those in the Democratic and Green parties who espouse things that could be considered socialist, or socialist-like. That doesn't make them bad or evil, but it is what it is.

Vamp

Thanks for the briefing. Love to help you guys through the process.

Yeah, I heard some and figured a bit more of what you were sayiing. Sure fits the scenario.

thanks