Anyone watching the Egyptian Elections?

[BT]

Nixon was in office when the Paris Peace treaty was signed. Nice try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords

[Xavier_Onassis]

the war ended when ford was in office.

it was peace with anything but honor. had Nixon decided to withdraw the day he took office, it would not have been worse, and several thousand American troops would still be alive, not to mention how many Vietnamese.

[BT]

South Viet Nam was lost when Ford was in office because the dems in the congress did not honor our commitments to the South Vietnamese.

The peace accords were signed in 73. Nixon was in office until August of 74.
    Beginning on 27 January 1973 at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time — in Saigon time, 08:00 on 28 January — there would be an in-place ceasefire. North and South Vietnamese forces were to hold their locations. They were permitted to resupply military materials to the extent necessary to replace items consumed in the course of the truce.
    As soon as the ceasefire is in effect, U.S. troops (along with other foreign soldiers) would begin to withdraw, with withdrawal to be complete within sixty days. Simultaneously, U.S. prisoners of war would be released and allowed to return home. The parties to the agreement agreed to assist in repatriating the remains of the dead.
    There would be negotiations between the two South Vietnamese parties — Saigon and the Vietcong — towards a political settlement that would allow the South Vietnamese people to "decide themselves the political future of South Viet-Nam through genuinely free and democratic general elections under international supervision."
    Reunification of Vietnam was to be "carried out step by step through peaceful means."

[Xavier_Onassis]

the war was lost long before that. the democrats simply realized that there was no point in continuing to throw money at the corrupt south Vietnamese government. the war was a huge mistake from the very beginning.

[BT]

Which means that Ford didn't lose the war and the peace accords came under Nixon. So Nixon did have a plan and he delivered it, just as he said he would. Thus in this case he did not lie.

[Plane]

So Nixons secret plan was to hire Henry Kissenger, bomb and mine North Vietnam into misery ?

[BT]

Nixon's plan was to build up the South Vietnamese forces so they wouldn't need US forces to protect the south. Kissinger was the negotiator that hammered out the accords with the North. Peace with honor.

[Xavier_Onassis]

yeah, peace with honor, that's what it was.

Nixon never revealed his 'plan' because either what he had in mind would not work or his plan never existed.

what happened was an utter rout. they could have done that in 1969.

[BT]

Perhaps they could have surrendered in 69, but that wasn't the plan.
Because you disagreed with his plan does not mean, he did not have a plan, nor that he lied about having a plan.

[Amianthus]

Nixon never revealed his 'plan' because either what he had in mind would not work or his plan never existed.

"In the 1968 Presidential campaign, Richard Nixon stated that 'new leadership will end the war' in Vietnam. He never used the phrase 'secret plan', which originated with a reporter looking for a lead to a story summarizing the Republican candidate's (hazy) promise to end the war without losing. When pressed for details, Nixon retreated to the position that to tip his hand would interfere with the negotiations that had begun in Paris. Nixon never disavowed the term. In his own memoirs, Nixon stated he never claimed to have such a plan.  Nevertheless, Nixon's critics have continued to accuse him of campaigning on a 'secret plan' to end the war."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_promise#Case_study:_Richard_Nixon.27s_Election_promises

And I guess they still do...

[BSB]

It's exceedingly naive to think that we could have just walked away from Vietnam in 1969, for a plethora reasons. If you really want to understand that war read something about it instead of just going by a heavily colored memory of 1960s and early 70s.

XO, you sound like CU4 trying to grasp the first several years of the war in Iraq. You're not as lost as in the woods as he is, no one could be, but you're heading in that direction.

BSB

[BSB]

On this site ( http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-Viet4.html ) there are two graphs. One showing U.S. troop levels in Vietnam, and the second showing U.S. killed in action. During Nixon's first term the U.S. troop level drops from aprox 500,000 to under 30,000. The average monthly U.S. KIA rate drops from approaching 800 to just over 20. If that isn't ending U.S. involvement, what is?

As for ending the war itself, we weren't fighting ourslves over there, there were other belligerents involved.


BSB

[Plane]

     How does Egypt relate so well with Vietnam?

      Did President Obama have a plan that went this way?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't see much relation between Egypt now and Vietnam at all. We have no troops in Egypt nor do we have any agreement to defend Egypt from anything.

[Plane]

   We have a treaty with Egypt that includes us paying the equivelent of their defense costs.

     Is this leverage for us or for them?