Advanced Transportation District

[JOEYHERNANDEZ]

A representative from the ATD will be at
J.J. Machos restaurant on Friday October 22, 2004
at 11:30 AM. 16216 Nacogdoches Road.


I asked for one of the reps to come because so many of the folks in SA do not know what the ATD is all about. I am not supporting or opposing the issue that is being voted on. I just wanted to get someone out to our side of town to speak about the proposed sales tax increase.


Joey Hernandez
For City Council District 10
www.joeyhernandez.net

[Hook Dem]

Just what we need....another 1/4 cent sales tax hike. :rolleyes

[exstatic]

Let's see...another chance for VIA to take and mismanage a bunch of money. No thanks.

[whottt]

why don't you guys elect less corrupt politicians in SA...that city is run like it is the junior UN

[exstatic]

It is a fact that in the entire Vietnam War we did not lose one major battle.
Name a major battle in Vietnam that we won.

[whottt]

Name a major battle in Vietnam that we won.

Uh...let's see the tet offensive for 1. We destroyed the Viet Cong...was propaganda that got us...propaganda that was aided by antiwar protests in the USA.

[whottt]

NVA casualties(total) in the tet offensive:

30,000 troops killed. 60,000 injured. 3'000 POWs.

US casualties:

1000

I'd call that a tad onesided....

Yet in the eyes of the American public we lost and were excessivly brutal(it didn't seem to matter they were attacking us and the NVA was totally invading the South), and with the way it was portrayed in the media that was the turning point of the war, thanks to our lovely war protestors.

The more things change the more things stay the same. At least back then they had the excuse that we hadn't been attacked.

[Yonivore]

Name a major battle in Vietnam that we won.
Name one we lost.

[exstatic]

Yoni - Other than Tet, there weren't any battles. It was a guerilla insurgency, and a damned effective one. The one battle, which they utimately lost, showed that with minimal manpower, they could at least take every provincial capital in SV, and that 500,000 troops wasn't enought to stop them. If the VC/NVA could just waltz in and take those cities, there was no way in hell to keep a corrupt Vietnamese government in place, even if we could take them back. The long term manpower commitment was prohibitive.

[whottt]

Yoni - Other than Tet, there weren't any battles. It was a guerilla insurgency, and a damned effective one. The one battle, which they utimately lost, showed that with minimal manpower, they could at least take every provincial capital in SV, and that 500,000 troops wasn't enought to stop them. If the VC/NVA could just waltz in and take those cities, there was no way in hell to keep a corrupt Vietnamese government in place, even if we could take them back. The long term manpower commitment was prohibitive.


You kill all the bad guys

[whottt]

And BTW, that was a last ditch effort for the NVA, they were counting on our own antiwar sentiment to weaken our resolve to win that war, it was truly their last hope.....the entire offensive was designed for propaganda purposes...Because they knew they couldn't beat us with military power.

They just held on long enough for us to beat ourselves and they drew hope from the protests...Kerry and VVAA was pretty much the final nail in the coffin...once the Vets were calling themselves baby killers it was done. Thank you Senator Kerry, I hope it was worth the notoriety you gained to elevate your political career.

[exstatic]

Why didn't we? We were there for the better part of 20 years, ramping up to as high as 500,000 troops over the last 10 years. Why couldn't we kill them, whottt? I'll give you some reason why Vietnam fell.

1) ARVN. Nuff said. There are more ARVN jokes than Clinton jokes.
2) An indifferent populace. They Vietnamese didn't give a rats ass about freedom, only wanting cigarettes from the commissary and GI cash for services rendered.
3) The South Vietnamese government. In the long history of the world, this is the only government I have ever witnessed that was more corrupt than any government ever ruling Mexico.

Vietnam could never have been anything other than a colony completely depending on us for defense at the cost of American lives, and people back home saw that.

[Yonivore]

Why didn't we? We were there for the better part of 20 years, ramping up to as high as 500,000 troops over the last 10 years. Why couldn't we kill them, whottt? I'll give you some reason why Vietnam fell.

1) ARVN. Nuff said. There are more ARVN jokes than Clinton jokes.
2) An indifferent populace. They Vietnamese didn't give a rats ass about freedom, only wanting cigarettes from the commissary and GI cash for services rendered.
3) The South Vietnamese government. In the long history of the world, this is the only government I have ever witnessed that was more corrupt than any government ever ruling Mexico.

Vietnam could never have been anything other than a colony completely depending on us for defense at the cost of American lives, and people back home saw that.
Are you always such a racist, condescending pig to cultures different from your own.

In fact, before we fucked them over, after WWII, and helped the French attempt to colonize (that ended disastrously), the Vietnamese had adopted -- in toto -- the U.S. Declaration of Independence as its guiding document for self government and were in the process of establishing a constitution.

They weren't apathetic during the Vietnam conflict, they were pissed. We owned them to stay and finish the job...I believe we had a moral obligation. But, John Kerry, decided to become a communist surrogate and lead the propaganda war back here in the U.S. -- it was effective.

[exstatic]

I call them as I see them, Yoni. Do you think that this may have been the reason that they didn't give a fuck about us or our freedom? They'd heard it all before...

In fact, before we fucked them over, after WWII, and helped the French attempt to colonize (that ended disastrously), the Vietnamese had adopted -- in toto -- the U.S. Declaration of Independence as its guiding document for self government and were in the process of establishing a constitution.

We owned them to stay and finish the job...
We'd still be there, spending young american lives so that Saigon hookers could ply their trade, and the SV government could bribe and lie.

[Yonivore]

I call them as I see them, Yoni. Do you think that this may have been the reason that they didn't give a fuck about us or our freedom? They'd heard it all before...


We'd still be there, spending young american lives so that Saigon hookers could ply their trade, and the SV government could bribe and lie.
That's bullshit, as has already been said by others, in this thread, and the NVA and VC commanders back then, they were on their last gasps. If it hadn't been for the collapse of American will (thanks to Kerry and his ilk), it probably would have been over before 74...before, we withdrew. But, after Kerry started his nonsense, it was all downhill.

Come to think of it, that's probably the last thing Kerry's ever been effective at.

[exstatic]

Yoni, if you want to find the guilty parties, look elsewhere. This police action was NEVER going to be over, because we were NEVER going to invade NV. As long as that existed, there would always be an insurgency. The politicians and the Military so hamstrung our forces with ROEs that they could not fight effectively. To think that Vietnam was "winnable" is sheer fantasy.

The best that we could hope for after Tet was a quiet SV for maybe 3 years until Charlie got his shit together, which is basicly what happened.

[whottt]

Yoni, if you want to find the guilty parties, look elsewhere. This police action was NEVER going to be over, because we were NEVER going to invade NV. As long as that existed, there would always be an insurgency. The politicians and the Military so hamstrung our forces with ROEs that they could not fight effectively. To think that Vietnam was "winnable" is sheer fantasy.

The best that we could hope for after Tet was a quiet SV for maybe 3 years until Charlie got his shit together, which is basicly what happened.

Translation: Our anti-war movement was why we lost that war.

[exstatic]

Uh, no. It was the politicians who decided NOT to win the war. It had nothing to do with the anti-war movement, and in fact preceded it by years. They simply, and probably correctly felt that an invasion of NV would bring China into the war. Korea pretty much showed that we couldn't beat China in a land war on their homecourt. If they felt that we could, it would probably go nuclear.

Were you even out of diapers when Saigon fell, whottt? Were you even born yet, or are you just buying into the conservative rhetoric?

[Yonivore]

Uh, no. It was the politicians who decided NOT to win the war. It had nothing to do with the anti-war movement, and in fact preceded it by years. They simply, and probably correctly felt that an invasion of NV would bring China into the war. Korea pretty much showed that we couldn't beat China in a land war on their homecourt. If they felt that we could, it would probably go nuclear.

Were you even out of diapers when Saigon fell, whottt? Were you even born yet, or are you just buying into the conservative rhetoric?
So, the anti-war movement was an unnecessary act that added much grief and torture to the P.O.W.'s left behind? How noble.

[exstatic]

The anti-war movement simply pointed out that American lives were being flushed down the toilet in a holding pattern that had no end and no possible victory, since an invasion fo NV would be necessary to accomplish that. I think that was pretty necessary. Without the AWM, the politicians probably would have dicked around for another ten years and we still would have ultimately withdrawn, and more lives would have been lost.

[timvp]

Ummm ... welcome to the forum, Joey Hernandez. Make yourself at home.

:smokin

[ChumpDumper]

I got here late.

Is VIA putting a park-and-ride in Hanoi?

[whottt]

Ummm ... welcome to the forum, Joey Hernandez. Make yourself at home.

:smokin

LMAO, I give exs a lot of credit...he managed to totally get out of answering my question about corrupt politicians in SA :).

[whottt]

We would have never won that war?

All the allies combined:
US
ARVN
South Korea
Australia
Thailand
New Zealand

COMBINED: 275,000 deaths.

NVA deaths: 1,100,000 deaths.

I assure you...we most certainly would have won that war with a 5-1 kill ratio...and those numbers are without being commited to winning it, those numbers were without ever really dropping the reigns on our airforce. You act like the Chinese are a bunch of war mongers that can fight indefinitely...they aren't. Their communist government would have become frayed quicker than ours. Hell they are barely holding together now.

We lost because we had a negative view...just like your view that we lost the tet offensive, when in fact, the enemy suffered over a 90-1 casualty ratio to ours in those battles.

The anti-war protesting did have an effect...You don't seem to realize that politicians have to worry about getting re-elected.

You generation just forgot one essential truth...don't fuck with America.

[whottt]

I'll be honest...I don't really have that big of a problem with the 60's anti-war movement...I do think it was the reason we lost the war but I don't really disagree that we shouldn't have been there in the first place.

In the 60's they were getting drafted, it was a tired fight against communism...we were drafting our own kids and sending them into war without being totally commited to doing whatever it took to win. I don't really blame a lot of those guys back then for saying to hell with going and dying in a half ass liberation of another country that was really no threat to us.

I have a huge problem with Kerry coming back and painting us as the bad guys...because what happened to the Vietnamese during that war was nothing compared to what happened to them after we left...or the 1.5 million Cambodians that were killed by the Communist Vietnamese when they invaded Cambodia.

I have a huge problem equating this war with VietNam...and unfortunately Kerry and his supporters view this war as much the same type of conflict.

Well, it is not even remotely close to being the same type of conflict...we have to win this fucking war. This isn't some idealistic quest. This is a war to keep medevil scumbags from turning our country into the same type of shithole that spawned them. Our kids over there now, are there by choice, they were not drafted....it is incredibly stupid to not support them and this movement 100%. It's too late to change it now. We are there. We must win. For our own benefit...it just so happens that liberating countries from dictators in this war helps us as much as it does the people unlucky enough to be born in this countries.


It's inexcusable to draw paralells between this war and Vietnam and that's exactly what our current anti-war movement is doing...and they want to elect a man whose foreign policy is forever locked in 1960's antiwar-movement. Dumb move...we aren't in Vietnam and the 60's are over.

What cannot be denied is that Kerry had no problems giving Vietnam to the communists...we can't do that in Iraq, no matter how bad it gets. We can't pull out and let the chips fall where they may...that's what got us into this terror war...

[whottt]

And yes I was in diapers then...but I can look at the casualty figures and see that...it would have ended on our side eventually.

I've also met quite a few Vietnamese...and I've never met one that thought we were the bad guys in that war. I've also never met a Vietnamese that's a Democrat either.

If W had been President we'd have won it...because he wouldn't have been cowtowing to a liberal voting base or been worried about who liked him.

[Useruser666]

Uhhhhh VIA sucks!

And so do most school boards!

Oh, and city council!

[1369]

Yoni - Other than Tet, there weren't any battles.

I would imagine that the men who fought during the siege at Khe Sanh or in the Ia Drang valley would disagree.

[CosmicCowboy]

Whottt, Vietnam was a fucked up mess. There were some honorable and patriotic Vietnamese in the ARVN officer corp but the Viet Nam government for the most part was every bit as corrupt as Ex said they were...they stole their country blind and redirected hundreds of million dollars of American aid/supplies to their own pockets. This is a fact.

As to the casualty figures at Tet...The Viet Cong and NVA had fought a very successful war up to that point with hit and run tactics that were bleeding the will of America to continue on that course. They knew that the Americans had overwhelming firepower and up to that point their military doctrine called for not letting the US concentrate that firepower on large masses of troops.

The Tet offensive was a POLITICAL decision to send masses of troops into the cities just to prove they could...knowing they were going to suffer large casualtys...but there were huge civilian casualtys as well...we got all those NVA and Cong kills by blowing the fuck out of those cities with American firepower...like trying to treat cancer with a 12 gauge shotgun...we got the cancer but the patient died.

Tet was the begining of the end. Seeing NVA troops kicking ass and taking names right in the middle of Saigon on the 6 o'clock news after being told for years we were "winning" the war was a real wakeup call for America...for the first time, "mainstream" America started to question if in fact we could actually "win" the war...

Fron that perspective the Tet offensive was an overwhelming success for the VC and NVA...

[spurster]

I think a VIA bus got hijacked to Hanoi.

[CosmicCowboy]

and VIA sucks.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/cph/3b40000/3b46000/3b46100/3b46143r.jpg

just say NO to VIA!

[Hook Dem]

Buy a car....it's the American way!

[Clandestino]

I got here late.

Is VIA putting a park-and-ride in Hanoi?

fuggn hilarious... i skipped a couple posts then all of the sudden the thread was vietnam casualties... too funny!