US Marines defeat Insurgent attack, page 6

The soldiers in units are not always informed that journalists are among them. It is often left up to them to learn on their own. If they do, great. But if they are completely unaware of it, they're unaware of it until they find out. You are more right on that one, though, as not all soldiers are unaware of journalists either.

As for the Gulf of Tonkin, no one knows what the full history of that is. It is either true or false. The main reason for Vietnam was for containment of communism. Vietnam was not supposed to be the all-out war that it was, had it been fought properly.

And yes, Vietnam would've been a fairly quick victory. The initial battle in Vietnam was successful; that is fact. Ho Chi Mihn was ready to negotiate----that is fact. If Johnson had gone ahead and cut off the Soviet/Chinese supply lines to Northern Vietnam from the start, thus shutting down the capital as well, as Nixon did, the N. Vietnamese would have had no choice to negotiate (which they did when this occurred, years later). They would have not been able to put up a fight against the American forces.

Also, of the fight that they would have put up, had they tried to, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective as N. Vietnam would've been open to bombing. Warehouses, roads, bridges, railroads, etc....all would have been destroyed, effectively destroying the NVA's ability to fight.

The war would've involved casualties, every war does, but they would have been far, far fewer.

Regarding Nixon, you need to get a better grasp of why he opened up Cambodia to attacks. You will find it was actually Vietnam that was doing the illegal thing; whether what Nixon did was technically illegal or not (which is debatable), it was morally right as it saved the lives of a lot of soldiers in the end.

Johnson had opened up Laos to bombing, not Nixon. Nixon resumed the bombing of Laos. Cambodia had tried to remain NEUTRAL with regards to the war in Vietnam, however, this was violated by NORTH VIETNAM because Northern Vietnamese forces occupied Cambodia. They used Cambodia as a source for hit-and-run tactics on American soldiers (American soldiers couldn't go and attack them, as the U.S. was respecting the neutrality of Cambodia).

Cambodia and Laos were both used as supply routes for Northern Vietnamese forces, and many food and weapons stockpiles were kept in Cambodia.

You can look at it this way: Nixon opened up a neutral country like Cambodia to bombing which is (possibly) illegal.

OR

You can view it this way:

The United States respected the neutrality of Cambodia by not bombing it. But North Vietnam did NOT respect it, and invaded and utilized it for storage and supply routes, as well as bases to attack American soldiers from.

Nixon realized the only possible way to stop such tragedy was to bomb Cambodia and thus destroy these North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia and the supply routes, which he did.

He thus saved the lives of many American soldiers. The same applied for Laos.

You, Rich23, by your thinking, would have allowed countless soldiers to die and ignore the fact that Northern Vietnam was violating the neutrality of Cambodia, just because you thought it was "illegal" to go into the country.

Now if Cambodia had been left alone by the NVA and untouched, then it would have been murder for the U.S. to bomb there. But that was not the case.

As for journalists getting killed, it happens, soldiers get killed over there too. You say a journalist was bombed during the invasion? During the invasion, a U.S. aircraft came over U.S. troops and opened fire in a strafing run against them, not realizing it was U.S. soldiers and not the enemy. It stopped when a signal flare was fired. You can read that right out of General Tommy Franks book.

There were a lot of initial mess-ups during the invasion. No war plan is ever cut-and-dried. One of the main rules any soldier will tell you is that if your plan is going well, something's drastically wrong.

By the way, the "cock cleaned" statement wasn't a typo. It was a rude statement you made, nothing more, implying that the U.S. had its butt kicked by the North Vietnamese while trying every possible method to stop them, which isn't true at all. Most of the methods were not tried until later on.

The fact of the Vietnam War is that the initial battle had Ho Chi Mihn ready to negotiate. The media messed up that one by lying outright and changing the opinion of the American public. Had the war been fought the way Nixon fought it from that point on, the NVAs would have had no choice but to negotiate, as their ability to fight would have been wiped out.

Far, FAR less American and Southern Vietnamese and even NORTHERN Vietnamese lives would have been shredded.

Yes, the initial bombing of Northern Vietnam would've killed a lot of people, but it would have been a lot less than what was killed in the long run.