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America's top UN diplomat has high praise for 'Hanoi Jane' [W:306]

Although we share some common interests with our politicians and large corporations, they have plenty of their own interests that are contrary to the public interest. Politicians want campaign donations and to get re-elected, and most of them will do anything for those goals. Corporations want to maximize profits and nearly all of them will do anything for that goals.

There is a fairly unknown and ugly story behind the USA's foreign policies that many of you seem to know little about. I recommend the book Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner to start learning about it.

"From Publishers Weekly
Is the Central Intelligence Agency a bulwark of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to spread American imperialism? A little of both, according to this absorbing study, but, the author concludes, it is mainly a reservoir of incompetence and delusions that serves no one's interests well. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent Weiner musters extensive archival research and interviews with top-ranking insiders, including former CIA chiefs Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner, to present the agency's saga as an exercise in trying to change the world without bothering to understand it. Hypnotized by covert action and pressured by presidents, the CIA, he claims, wasted its resources fomenting coups, assassinations and insurgencies, rigging foreign elections and bribing political leaders, while its rare successes inspired fiascoes like the Bay of Pigs and the Iran-Contra affair. Meanwhile, Weiner contends, its proper function of gathering accurate intelligence languished. With its operations easily penetrated by enemy spies, the CIA was blind to events in adversarial countries like Russia, Cuba and Iraq and tragically wrong about the crucial developments under its purview, from the Iranian revolution and the fall of communism to the absence of Iraqi WMDs. Many of the misadventures Weiner covers, at times sketchily, are familiar, but his comprehensive survey brings out the persistent problems that plague the agency. The result is a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy....

Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his writing on vital issues of American national security. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in Washington, and reported on war and terrorism from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and many other nations over the course of 15 years. "
Amazon

Weiner's book is deeply wrong headed.:peace
 
I would let it rest guy. There are people who will never understand how one can be serving our country in Vietnam and look across the DMZ to Hanoi and see this gal sitting at on that anti aircraft gun with her pith helmet on aiming that gun skyward toward her own countries plane and her fellow Americans who flew them. She is a hero to them. Yes, in my book it was aiding and abetting the enemy. But there are somethings others will never understand with having been there and experienced it.

I look at it this way, what I did in Vietnam and Laos, I hope made it possible for those who hold her in high esteem and put us who served in Vietnam and the surrounding counties down to continue with their free speech and to continue to enjoy their freedom. There is a time one must just let it go. I use to hate her with a passion, I don't anymore, hate accomplishes nothing. But I haven't forgot or forgiven. Neither have most other Vietnam Vets. My advice, just let this threat pass into oblivion.

Welcome home.

I concur....

NP, it's nothing but a thing... don't get caught up hating her ( or anyone else)... hate is bad for the soul.
besides, the bitch isn't worth it.
 
I concur....

NP, it's nothing but a thing... don't get caught up hating her ( or anyone else)... hate is bad for the soul.
besides, the bitch isn't worth it.

Amen brother.
 
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