Presidential Talk of War and Nuking Vietnam

Recordings of Kennedy~McNamara, Johnson~McNamara, and Nixon~Kissinger. The first two are from The Fog of War. I highly recommend that you see it in it's entirety. The last one is from War Made Easy. Fortunately these conversations were recorded for posterity. It amazes me to think of the horrors Nixon contemplated....... Most Americans have never heard of this.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Kennedy
• Johnson
• Nixon
• McNamara
• Kissinger
• Vietnam
• Nuclear
• Bomb
• Hiroshima
• Tonkin
• 60's
• 70's

[0Ddawg22]

what does he mean take the dikes out now?

[shikutaku]

@0Ddawg22 Much of Vietnam is close to sea level. There are dikes that if taken out would flood entire areas and could have drowned 100,000 civilians.

[grumpytosnowwhite]

Jesus...look at the difference: JFK wants to get the hell out of there, Johnson doesn't want to promise anything or look bad, and Nixon wants to nuke them. What a huge difference between them all.

[jimwalsh2001]

"Think big Henry, for Chrissakes..."

Worthy of "Dr. Strangelove"...

[sniperdude5236]

@pat442389 yea, i agree. but i think nixon here is being sarcastic. he's trying to get the other person to think big, come up with better plans for the war. nixon however, is arrogant and he doesn't care about the civilians of vietnam, that, we could see, is extremely obvious. so he definately doesn't care about the causalties, he just want to whip their ass and win the war.

[pat442389]

its really weird thinking what were nixons motives? we see LBJ wanted a war maybe he was told or promised campaign cash or that so and so will go easy on you. but i wonder if the powers that be wanted nixon to escalate this small vietnam war into a huge global conflict. because ppl like to shit on presidents but nixons was a brilliant man politically. say what u will about the scandals but he was a bright guy. so i find it weird he thinks dropping a nuclear bomb isnt that big of a deal