[Vision2020] Unexploded Munitions in Vietnam

[Tony]

I think you need to hit the caps lock key, Dr. Gier.  I have offered every bit as much references as you.  You simply disagree with my politics and so dismiss any person or book I cite.  At the same time you rely on sources a 3rd grader would recognize as suspect.  Fine, it's a free country, but don't demand that everyone grovel at your feet, worship at your alter and swallow your every utterance as gospel.  THAT is what allows evil to flourish - folks without the confidence to stand up to authority figures.  Folks who assume that just because some fellow appends a lot of pompous accolades after his signature, he is automatically more astute.  NOT SO.  The fact that I don't view my countrie's every action through a prism of suspicion and loathing hardly makes me an ignorant rube.  My failure to cite enemy propaganda as gospel hardly makes me uninformed.

As for our abandonment of the South Vietnamese, you have NO reliable numbers either as to the numbers of unexploded munitions  related casualties OR the number killed after our withdrawal, so we are left only to rely once again on your best "guess."

I'm sorry professor but that simply won't do.  It would not pass muster in a court of law and when accusing your country of horrendous deeds, a certain fair standard of evidence should apply.

Yours for a short winter,    -T
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nick Gier 
  To: nickgier at adelphia.net 
  Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2006 10:00 AM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Unexploded Munitions in Vietnam


    Greetings:

  Let me get this straight: someone on this list, who has yet to offer any documentary evidence in support of any of his views, always insists that others do what he has never done.  And when the person produces the evidence, it is deemed slanted or insufficient.  And then one who has no teaching credentials has the audacity to "grade" the success of the documentation!

  Since the Vietnamese sapper, who has cleared unexploded munitions for 11 years, and his international supporters are somehow "Commie" liars, let me take a more deductive approach.  

  It is well known fact that modern battlegrounds and areas that have been bombed are littered with unexploded ordinance.  Even today exploded German bombs are found in England and over the years they have killed many people.  U.S. supplied cluster bombs dropped by Israeli jets are now killing dozens of civilians in Lebanon.

  In terms of weight dropped, the U.S. bombing of Vietnam was three times that in both the European and Pacific theaters of World War II. "The United States Air Force dropped in Indochina, from 1964 to August 15, 1973, a total of 6,162,000 tons of bombs and other ordnance.U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft expended another 1,500,000 tons in Southeast Asia" (Clodfelter, Michael. (1995). Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1772-1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland).

  We don't have to take the sapper's word for it: we only have to embrace the logic of this evidence.  There are tons of unexploded ordinance in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

  My argument therefore stands:  Vietnamese killed by U.S. forces during the war and after because of unexploded munitions and Agent Orange far outnumbers the total who died by Communist hands after the war.  And we are still waiting for the evidence of how many deaths that might be.  I would guess that far more died by the hands of pirates than by those ugly Commies.

  Yours for fair and accurate history,

  Nick Gier



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