This FReeper quote CAN'T be right. What's the real story here.

[mistertrickster]

Apparently in the last election, this was a quote that the Swift Boat Liars et al used to smear John Kerry with (I did not see it at the time)--

From North Vietnamese General Giap's 1985 "Memoirs": "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes."

They were ready "to surrender," but the Vets for Peace caused so much disruption in American media, they thought they had a chance if they could just hold out a little longer.

******

Giap claims he was ready to surrender? Would he admit to that even if true?

I can't find any independent verification of this "quote." All I get on a google search is links to FReep or Swift Boat Lie sites that just repeat the same information.

What's the real deal, any ideas?

[malmapus]

1. This is a scary thought too from another repug

Got it from a thread where they were proclaiming their love for * (on a freaking Support the Troops group where I put my politics on the front door but these #$%$#^'s don't).

-------------------

I was honored to hear him speak when he visited Fort Polk, LA when my husband was in Iraq. I stood 10 feet from him and have some amazing pictures. I supporte our president 100%. He is a kind , caring man. To bad we can't vote him in for another 8 years....


-----------------------

We can't be talking about the same President

[tom_paine]

4. Don't forget the Germans thought Hitler was a "kind and caring man"

One thing throughout history is constant. There is no Tyrant so vile nor low that MILLIONS will not believe him to be a Good Man.

This is absolutely unremarkable. She would think the same thing if she saw her Monster running down the street with Howard Dean's severed head in his hand.

"He deserved it," she would say.

Get used to monsters in Amerika, their numbers are on the rise at a remarkable rate since the United States of America fell.

[Racenut20]

2. Don't have a line, but I can assure you that one of historys all time

leading General was not about to surrender or call for a truce.

[meegbear]

3. They are wrong ...

http://www.vvaw.org/faq/#1

[DS1]

8. It's funny that it's the FIRST ONE

:D

[mistertrickster]

10. Okay, BEAUTIFUL, Bear . . . I knew this was just too convenient for

them to be true.

Here's what I found in "Vietnam: A History" by Stanley Karnow

"Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap . . . spoke of fighting ten fifteen, twenty, fifty years, regardless of cost, until final victory." The author himself recounts interviewing scores of VC hiding for 6, 7, 8 years in the jungle sanctuaries constantly pounded by bombs and shells. They had no intention of ever "giving up." (p. 18)

[getmeouttahere]

5. Why would it make any difference to Giap?

and why would we believe anything coming out of the swift boat liars camp anyway?

[niyad]

6. first of all, they got the title wrong, second, here is a review from

amazon about the little pamphlet:

General strategies, few specifics, in the 1975 campaign, March 20, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
Generals Dung and Giap, the two great military strategists of North Vietnam, describe the methods they used in the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. This was the 1975 offensive that culminated in the fall of Saigon and ended the Vietnam War.
Written in Party Speak, this short volume is a lengthy read. Buried within the patriotic prose are the important strategic decisions that allowed the communists to complete in five months what they originally planned to accomplish in two years. Credit for these decisions - blanketing all geographic areas of the South, utilizing the regular army along with local insurgents, establishing good roads for rapid deployment of regular troops, maintaining flexibility and rapidly following up on enemy errors - is always given to the Party. There is no personalization either of friend or foe. The United States is named "the U.S." throughout the essay, and the South Vietnamese army and government institutions are called "the enemy" or "the puppet."

The objective of this book was the description, in broad terms, of the strategies employed by North Vietnam in 1975 well after withdrawal of U.S. troops. If you are looking for details in tactics employed throughout the campaign, you will not find them here. Nor is this the book in which Gen. Giap supposedly stated that groups such at the Vietnam Veterans Against the War gave the North the resolve to carry on. This book is for the reader already familiar with the course of the war after the Paris Agreement, who is interested in hearing in the words of the victors how they envisioned the means of bringing down the South Vietnamese government.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0916894010/qid=1124305770/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4621313-7884855

[MisterP]

7. Giap said that we're doomed in Iraq

and it's from the side of the aisle fixated on "boy buggery," as Corsi kept babbling about with unwonted attention on FR

[MrBenchley]

9. Nixon stopped bombing just before the 1972 elections

because he wanted to pretend the war was coming to an end...after the election, he and Kissinger sabotaged the peace talks and Nixon bombed Hanoi at Christmas.

A peace accord was signed in early 1973 (over the objections of the South Vietnamese). After that, the discovery that Kixon had secretly and illegally expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos, plus Watergate, helped get Tricky Dick kicked out of office, and Ford stopped funding the South Vietnamese Army.

[mistertrickster]

11. The right-wing smear machine--isn't it incredible?

How they can take a lie like that, a bald-faced unmitigated lie, and run it through the Drudge Report, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilley, the talk-show circuits, and the op-ed of your local newspaper until it doesn't even matter that it's utterly bogus--it's too late.

Years later--even after it's been wholly debunked--people will still be repeating it as if it were true . . .