(SB) - After all these years, I learned the real story of our engagement in Vietnam. The episode that was to have launched that war that took close to 60,000 American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen, was a total lie. The incident was made up. No one at the time questioned it. No one asked questions, and like today, if a person was bold enough to ask, he was summarily shut up.
Count them 58,220 young military men and women that never got to live a full life.
That blame falls directly on Lyndon Baines Johnson. I never liked the hillbilly. (Even though, at the time, I was a Democrat.) Besides that, I learned he was forever cheating on his wife Lady Bird. She knew he was doing it, but never tried to stop him.
Count them: 58,220 soldiers, sailors, Marines and airman, killed as a result of a lie.
I was overseas at the time (1965-66) when the Vietnam war started in 1964. You know something: I didn’t know, my buddies didn’t know, there was no news that I saw, no talk, virtually nothing about the war that was going on and escalating. Totally in the dark for two years.
The same with Ted Kennedy, brother of JFK and RFK, who claimed the death of his secretary Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts (July 18/19, 1969) was the result of an accident. It was, but the real story never came out until 50 years later.
Turns out there was a third woman in the Kennedy car, another secretary. Mary Jo, supposedly unbeknownst to Ted, was in the rear seat of the car, asleep. (Drunken parties often do that to people.) When Kennedy’s car went off the bridge, he and the secretary on the passenger side, managed to escape.
Once the car was pulled out of the drink, Mary Jo’s body was discovered.
Enter cover-up, cover-up, cover-up… lie, lie, lie. After all, careers were at stake, along with power, privilege, money, greed, lust, and all the trappings that come with being born of high places. This happens to people born of low places, too.
I was told he was at fault by a famous lawyer at the time who was in Sioux City on a case. I was working for KTIV-TV then. I hate to say it, but I could not get it into my head that Teddy was at fault for the young woman’s death. (I was young, dumb, impressionable, and filled with idealism.)
John F. Kennedy’s assassination continues to rise out of the ashes. Why? Hard to believe Lee Harvy Oswald worked alone from atop the book depository where he is said to have positioned himself to kill JFK in Dallas (1963).
Hundreds of books later have turned up previously unknown or unreported occurrences at the scene of Kennedy’s demise. Talk of a second shooter, questions about trajectory, entry wounds, and even CIA and VP Johnson’s involvement has arisen. Add to this the missing evidence that unaccountably disappeared over the years.
Probably the best reason I heard for Kennedy’s murder came from a buddy from Wisconsin who said, “Kennedy was killed because he was too good for the people.”
At the issuance of the Warren Report, Americans were told we would get all the facts and the full disclosure 50 years after Kennedy’s death. In 1992, another 25 years was added to the release of information. For one reason or another – everything from COVID 19, to matters of research surrounding national security – have been given. The result: We still have not received the full report… and for that matter, never will.
I’ve often heard the phrase, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Based on that and the jockeying, double-talk, smoke and mirrors, and continuous delays, my take is we haven’t been told the truth.
Franklin Roosevelt is hailed as a hero ‘because he got us out of the Depression.’ Franklin didn’t get us out of anything. World War II did.
Which brings up another one of those hidden gems in history.
For some reason or another, Franklin’s kindness and assistance to China during the years leading up to Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) is a mystery. During the Sino-Japanese War in which Japan invaded China, Roosevelt spared no embargo on Japan. He cut them off from raw materials, steel, oil, food – in fact, everything and anything bent on halting Japan’s excursion into China.
He was warned by former President Herbert Hoover, who wrote Roosevelt saying ‘Why didn’t you just let them burn themselves out?’
Good question; no answer.
Imperial Japan, realizing they weren’t going to go anywhere, turned on America, hoping to destroy our Pacific Fleet and thus allow the Japs a free hand in getting what they wanted from countries along the Pacific rim.
So, as it turned out, the Chinese are repaying us for our kindness by planning to annihilate us economically.
Another thing. Roosevelt hated Germans; he loved Russians. In fact, on his staff, he had, I believe, five communist operatives working with him and advising FDR on every turn of the war. America was the main supplier of tanks, planes, ammunition, and food to the Red pests. If we hadn’t stepped in to help the communist fools, Nazi Germany would have wiped them out.
So, through that episode in our nation’s history, Joe Stalin and the Soviets got all of Eastern Europe at the conclusion of WWII. They ran the table for over 50 years and cost us trillions and trillions via the Cold War.
Today, the Russkis are back at it, along with the wet market Chinese.We never seem to learn from history, do we?
So, here we are, 2024, an election year. Americans on the west and east coasts along with a skewed media have spun one lie after another, promulgating fictitious stories, and counting on us to believe in a false narrative based on hate.
That narrative unraveled a couple of weeks ago when Joe Biden in a debate with Donald Trump, totally fell apart. Seeing is believing, but in this case, it was all seen on the national stage. Now, all of a sudden, Joe’s party is clamoring and demanding he not run because they saw first hand he is suffering from mental acuity issues, Alzheimer’s, or dementia.
Fact is, the Dems knew this way, way back. They knew it, hid it, and went with it. Now they are backed into a corner. Americans – including Trump haters – are learning they’ve been lied to and worse, they believed the lies.
Based on the history I’ve witnessed, leading up to today, that leaves the Dems with only one thing left to do: Lie and cheat their way out. Like all the incidents mentioned in this commentary, it’s always about the money, about power, and about control.
Giving credit to Billy Joel, he sang about this in a song produced in 1989:
Harry Truman, Doris Day
Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific
Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon
Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea
Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-Bomb
Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I,
And The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine
England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace
Santayana goodbye
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
