Word: combats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Kennedy's overrighteous indignation at President Nixon's handling of the inherited Viet Nam war is short of ludicrous. How unfortunate that Teddy was so silent when his brother John ordered the first American combat troops of this war into action and is now so vitriolic against the President's honest attempts to reduce these forces. What irony that Teddy also insists that we now toss out the Thieu regime when it was, once again, his own brother who was directly responsible for the fall of Diem, leading to the rise of Thieu...
Hanoi knows that the war issue felled Lyndon Johnson. It heard Richard Nixon express the hope that he could beat Clark Clifford's withdrawal timetable, which called for all U.S. ground combat troops to be out of Viet Nam by the end of 1970. Hanoi watched as Nixon began to reduce manpower in South Viet Nam. And it heard Senator George Aiken, senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, predict that Nixon will announce "another troop withdrawal for Christmas, enough to make 100,000 for this year...
...superior officer, who will dress him down if he does not finish on time, loses eye contact with his audience, or uses slang. Strong men tapped to be briefers for top brass have been known to tremble or vomit before performing, as if they were going into combat. Had he lived to see them, Philosopher William James might have found a new moral equivalent of war in briefings. The same kind of detailed planning goes into them, the same energy; and casualties could be reckoned in terms of those briefed to death...
During World War II, U.S. Army field commanders discovered that they were losing more troops to combat stress than to the enemy. One man in ten was knocked out of action by battle-induced mental disorder; in 1943, more men were discharged because of psychiatric reasons than were inducted. Moreover, such casualties were usually eliminated permanently from the war; they were shipped home and discharged. Today in Viet Nam, the psychiatric casualty rate is down to one man in 100. And most of the victims rejoin their units within two days...
...Audie Murphy, who was one of only two men in the history of the nation to receive every decoration awarded for valor in combat. He entered World War II as a private, but emerged as a 1st Lieutenant, and was credited with killing, wounding, or capturing as many as 240 Germans throughout North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was persuaded to go to Hollywood, and starred in "To Hell and Back," the story of his own life and the only case of an actor portraying himself...