Re: [Salon] Iraq 20 Years: The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates

[Tom Pauken <twpauken@sbcglobal.net>]

Todd, read my book “THE THIRTY YEARS WAR:  The Politics of the ‘60s Generation” which fully explains my views on Vietnam. I also wrote an article for U. S. World & World Report in late 1969 which provided my assessment of the state of the war in Vietnam. In that article, I said that, while I hoped we would win, I feared that the way we were fighting the war we were going to lose. As my book notes, the first, great strategic mistake we made in the war was when Kennedy officials, Roger Hilsman and Averill Harriman orchestrated the overthrow of Diem in 1963 and replaced him with Big Minh, who had Diem and his brother assassinated the following morning. (See historian Geoffrey Shaw’s book for a full discussion of the events surrounding Diem’s overthrow). Afterwards, it became America’s war. I also put the principal blame for our strategic failure on Robert McNamera and his “civilian whiz kids” (who had high IQs, but were brilliantly wrong) who directed our failed strategy thereafter. Was the war winnable for South Vietnam ?  I believe so, had we followed a different strategy to defeat the North Vietnam Communists and the Viet Cong along the lines advocated by such men as Edward Lansdale, Sir Robert Thompson, and Douglas Pike, among others.
As for my views on the neoconservative takeover of American foreign policy in the post-Reagan period of American politics, they are articulated in my second book BRINGING AMERICA HOME. The specific chapter is entitled “ The Neoconservative Conquest of American Foreign Policy. 
Todd, don’t put  words in my mouth that don’t reflect my thinking. Tom Pauken

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 21, 2023, at 4:58 AM, Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com> wrote:
> 
> With all respect Tom, didn’t you tell me a few years ago in an email that I still have, when you first "chastized” me for my criticism of the Vietnam War as “unwinnable,” as General Weyand had said while it was going on, that it was “winnable?” If only we had waged the war like Barry Goldwater called for; “unlimited,” and up to and including the use of nuclear weapons? I’m not saying that was your position, but it was Barry Goldwater’s, which is relevant today as we “hear calls" for returning to the “Traditional Conservatism” of Goldwaterism. Which is the “Godhead” of "Traditional Conservatism,” as you’ve said, as well as of Neoconservatism, which you avoid admitting. And now also of "National Conservatism,” the “New Right,” variously pushing for the election of Trump, or DeSantis, making their identical ideology, and its genealogy, relevant to the present. 
> 
> And thereby justifying and legitimizing Scoop Jackson Democrats (Neoconservatives) as well who deliberately and consciously adopted the precepts of Goldwaterism to better compete electorally with Republican “National Security State Ideology” fanatics. With those war fanatics festering in both parties today, and fully apparent as to which faction is worse everytime a vote is taken to increase the US War Budget, with no need to guess their “true nature” by their votes. With the only distinction being that Republicans always insist on an amount of increase about 25-35% above the highest amount the Democrats call for (“look it up,” as one fiction writer made a refrain of in a long ago story, with that replaced today with: JFGI).
> 
>> On Mar 20, 2023, at 8:45 PM, Tom Pauken via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Excellent analysis by Ray McGovern. As a military intelligence case officer and intelligence analyst for J2, Strategic Research & Analysis in Vietnam, I saw the abuse of intelligence where higher ups had their conclusions of what they wanted and worked backward to get the “right intel”. Those who operated like that were military careerists who didn’t care about searching for the truth. Here, you have neoconservatives with their own agenda who wanted to find intelligence to support their interventionist plans and certain careerists willing to go along. Tom Pauken
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>>> On Mar 20, 2023, at 7:34 PM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2023/03/19/iraq-20-years-the-uses-and-abuses-of-national-intelligence-estimates/
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