Fatal Politics
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Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam . . . Episode Two: End Date fatalpoli... - 149 views - 2 months ago
President Nixon blocked legislation that would have forced him to bring the troops home from Vietnam too soon for his political purposes. He did this by claiming that an earlier pullout would lead to Communist victory, while not admitting that a later pullout would do the same.
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Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam & the Biggest...Landslide, Episode Five: Decent Interval II fatalpoli... - 1,416 views - 7 months ago
President Richard Nixon used the diplomatic opening to China to negotiate a face-saving "decent interval" deal on Vietnam, one that would postpone, not prevent, Communist military victory. His own secretly recorded White House tapes captured him saying, "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway." He had told the American people the opposite, prolonging the war for four years and adding 20,000 American casualties saying the sacrifice was necessary so that one day the South could defend and govern itself. As his tapes reveal, he did not believe that day would come. He prolonged the war to conceal his inability to win it, and he negotiated a settlement that would put a "decent interval" between his final troop withdrawal and the Communists' final military victory--one long enough to make Saigon's fall look like Saigon's fault. "Weve got to find some formula," National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger said, "that holds the thing together a year or two."
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Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam . . . Episode Four, "Poll-Tested Bombing," Part One fatalpoli... - 899 views - 8 months ago
In 1969, Richard Nixon's first year in the White House, the Republican National Committee had a secret poll conducted on Vietnam exit strategies. The most popular strategy was a six-month plan to bomb the North and blockade Haiphong Harbor until Hanoi agreed to a favorable compromise. Nixon announced the bombing and mining of the North on May 8, 1972--exactly six months, minus one day, before the election.
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Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam, and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Three: Decent Interval I, Part One fatalpoli... - 710 views - 9 months ago
Historian Jeffrey Kimball uncovered documents revealing how Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger used the opening to China to secretly sell the Communists a "decent interval" deal -- a "peace" agreement that would merely postpone, not prevent, North Vietnam's final military victory.
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Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode One: Secret Timetable fatalpoli... - 2,391 views - 10 months ago
Fearing that the South Vietnamese government would collapse after he completed the withdrawal of American troops and that he wouldn't win a second term if the collapse occurred before Election Day, President Richard M. Nixon secretly decided almost two years in advance to delay the final troop withdrawal until shortly before or after November 1972.
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Ken Hughes, writer/director of Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam & the Biggest Republican Landslide, is a Research Fellow with the Miller Centers Presidential Recordings Program of the University of Virginia.

http://millercenter.org/

President Richard M. Nixon timed U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam to his 1972 reelection campaign. He negotiated a "decent interval" deal with North Vietnam to postpone, not prevent, Communist victory in the South. He played politics with American lives.

Publicly, Nixon said he would bring the troops home only when South Vietnam could defend and govern itself; privately, he realized it wouldn't be able to do either. To hide his failure, he sacrificed thousands of American soldiers.

Over the past decade, the declassification of secretly recorded Nixon White House tapes and Top Secret National Security Council documents has convinced a growing number of scholars that this President prolonged a war and faked a peace for political reasons.

Fatal Politics, a web documentary miniseries, is your opportunity to see and hear for yourself what the declassified documents and tapes confirm -- a President made decisions of life and death, war and peace, on the basis of political calculation. This is more than we want to know, but not more than we need to know.

Help spread the word. When you Digg, share, link, embed, or bookmark the Fatal Politics videos, you make it more likely that more people will see them. And the more people you let know about Fatal Politics, the harder you make for office-holders and office-seekers to prolong wars for political reasons and to place their careers above human life.
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