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50 Years Ago, A Marine Victory in Vietnam Was Considered a Defeat by the Media
[Hudson.org] A mainstream media that reshapes reality to fit a preordained political agenda isn’t something that started only recently. A half century ago America’s major news organization deliberately buried the true story of one of the crucial battles of the Vietnam War, and one of the Marine Corps’ greatest achievements: the 31-day battle for the South Vietnamese city of Hue that ended on March 2, 1968.

The fight for Hue set a standard for Marine courage and endurance that stands beside the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima and the Korean War Battle of Inchon.

But 50 years later, few Americans even know what our Marines accomplished at Hue because the battle didn’t fit a biased media’s narrative then and now ‐ the claim that in 1968 we were losing the War in Vietnam. The time has come to set the record straight.
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On Feb. 28, Marines moved to cut off the remaining NVA forces fleeing the city. On March 2 Operation Hue City officially ended, after 216 Americans had been killed in action and 1,584 were wounded. Communist losses were more than 5,000 killed and wounded.

For many Marines, the American flag flying over the provincial administration building on Hue’s Le Loi Street was a sight as inspiring as the flag that flew over Mount Suribachi during the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima.

But Americans at home learned almost nothing about this. The media was so set on painting the Tet Offensive as a U.S. defeat, and convincing Americans that the U.S. was (in Walter Cronkite’s words) "mired in a stalemate" in Vietnam, that they largely ignored how the Marines at Hue had achieved a stupendous victory.

The media also ignored the discovery of bodies of 2,800 civilians and captured South Vietnamese soldiers who had been ruthlessly murdered by Viet Cong death squads, including teachers, doctors, nurses and students.

Fifty years later, we need to honor what the U.S. Marine Corps accomplished during the siege of Hue.

We also need to remember that our liberal media has a long history of twisting the truth beyond recognition in pursuit of a political agenda ‐ and in the case of Vietnam, of cheating American servicemen and women of the recognition they deserve for their valor and sacrifice.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 2018-03-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=509603