Back during the 2004 presidential campaign, the inveterate liars of the right wing movement were circulating a charming little update of the old anti-Semitic Dolchstoßlegende (wherein Jews and intellectuals were blamed for Germany’s losing the unwinnable First World War) that Hitler rode to electoral victory in the 1930s:
In a recent release of general Giap’s (North Vietnamese general) memoirs, it is now known the full extent of the media and the “peace and love” movement of the sixties, and the damage it has caused. Read this direct quote from the book: “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!” Heard that on Rush earlier
But of course, this turns out to be 100% made-up bullshit. Here’s the debunking:
Did VVAW lengthen the war by protesting it?
The suggestion that VVAW lengthened the war comes from convicted arms dealer, perjurer, and media personality Oliver North. In a cited quote from North (Greg Lewis, “Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots, and Other Innocents”, Washington Dispatch, 2/19/2004), North alleges that Giap in a 1985 book stated that John Kerry and VVAW lengthened the war and insured the ultimate Vietnamese victory. Giap published no 1985 book. THERE IS NO SUCH QUOTE in either of General Giap’s two post-war publications (Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Months And Years, Southeast Asia Program, Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1975 or How We Won the War (coauthored by Van Tien Dung) RECON Publications, 1976).
This particular slander on VVAW and Kerry was disseminated on the Internet from a column in the Washington Dispatch by Greg Lewis, February 19, 2004. (Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8129.shtml) In reaction to responses to his original column, on March 2, 2004, Greg Lewis retracted his initial accusation against Kerry with: “A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an ‘urban legend.’ Specifically, based on a ‘news’ item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap’s 1985 “Memoirs,” I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven’t been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated. My apologies to Colonel North and to WashingtonDispatch.com readers for including inadequately verified material in my piece on Kerry.”
Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8268.shtml.
In light of the nutjob cons running around trumpeting that “the surge is working!” when it really isn’t, I figured it was time to get this debunking revived in time to counter another revival of this variation of the Dolchstoßlegende.
Mercury Rising 鳯女 