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Vietnam War
Topic Started: Jan 22 2013, 09:48 PM (618 Views)
Eric
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Figured I should make a topic for this since there isn't one for it already.

I'm interested in the Vietnam War, but unfortunately I don't know much about it since History lessons are focused on pretty much anything other than Korea and Vietnam so far. If anybody knows of anything interesting or simply a good place for me to learn more about it, that would be great.

This is a discussion for the Vietnam War, I just added in my say about this.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

I did learn a bit about the Vietnam War in History lessons, so I might know some basic stuff about this war. If I haven't forgotten it all, that is.
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Eric
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Well I do know that it was very different compared to other wars since the Vietcong would disguise their selves. So it wasn't the normal Uniformed Army that we were fighting against. The terrain was a big problem also.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Yeah, I do remember learning about that. If I remember correctly, they had helicopter traps made out of a bunch of sticks.

I know people complain that pikemen can beat a helicopter in Civilization games, but that's not a million miles away from what the Vietcong did :P .
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Eric
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Vietnam was also the first American war in which helicopters were used very frequently to transport soldiers. The Huey (I don't know the exact technical name for it) was the main one for that.

And there were many traps set up in that war, I would imagine the terrain made it very easy to do that, and it was useful for the Vietcong fighting style.
Edited by Eric, Jan 22 2013, 10:21 PM.
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Michelle
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I know about napalm and that orange stuff (forget what it's called). A pretty disgusting war if you ask me.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Are you talking about Agent Orange here?
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Eric
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That's the only thing I can think of that she'd be talking about. Yeah, napalm was pretty bad. There was an incident where Napalm was dropped on friendly soldiers moving to a location, and the person speaking about it said some of the ones that got hit by it were begging for him to shoot them. But he couldn't bring himself to do that. (If i remember right). I'm sure there were multiple incidents like that.
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Michelle
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Yes, that's it. If Eric is correct, I would not be surprised. Ewhhh.
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Eric
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Yep. Napalm is banned now, isn't it?
Nevermind. Usage of it against civilian populations is banned by the UN, but I guess it's not for warfare. Though, I haven't heard of it being used since Vietnam?
Edited by Eric, Jan 23 2013, 03:16 AM.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Well, given that it's not too hard to improvise napalm (it's just petrol with some kind of thickening agent), I'm sure it has been used since then.
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Eric
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Well I mean I haven't seen anything about something being used that would even resemble napalm. Though, I'm not following the wars or anything...
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Well, I just found out that the US Military still uses napalm as an incendiary weapon, although the napalm used today (known as 'Napalm B') is significantly different from that used in Vietnam:

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armyweapons/a/napalm.htm
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Eric
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I didn't realize older versions of napalm only burned for half a minute
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Well, this is interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

Apparently, President Lyndon Johnson considered running for a second term (after famously announcing that he wouldn't), because the 1968 Democratic Convention was such a shambles. More controversially, just before the election, Richard Nixon sabotaged the Vietnam War peace talks in Paris, in order to help his campaign by making it appear that Johnson was failing to negotiate an end to the war. Amazingly, Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey knew about all this (so he could have sunk Nixon's entire campaign if he wanted to) - but he said nothing, because he thought it would be too disruptive. He was under the impression that he was going to win anyway!

Certainly, that would have been scandalous had it been known at the time. It makes me wonder what else politicians might have done to help their own campaigns....
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Eric
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Well that makes me lose the very little faith I had in our politics... if there was any before. I wish it would've been revealed and have him tried for treason.

Separate from that, I'm going to be reading a novel about the Vietnam War written by a Vietnam War Veteran. So hopefully I'll be able to learn something from that to put in this topic.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Here's an article I found today. Did the US offer France two atomic bombs in 1954?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27243803

This exchange has been known for some years now, but I had no idea about it until I read that today. Fortunately, nothing ever came of it!
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Eric
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I've never heard of that before.
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