Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #155… “THE READ”… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-FIVE a return to the skies over North Vietnam and Rolling Thunder…
3 AUGUST… PAGE ONE OF THE HOME FRONT NEWSPAPERS… New York Times… A nice Wednesday for a walk in Central Park…
Page 1: “Johnson Urges Gun Curbs To Prevent New Tragedy”… “President Johnson deploring yesterday’s mass killing at the University of Texas today urged prompt enacting of gun control legislation now stalled in Congress. In a statement read to newsmen by Bill Moyers, his Press Secretary, Mr. Johnson declared: ‘The shocking tragedy of yesterday’s events in Austin is heightened because they were senseless, however, what happened is not without a lesson: That we must press urgently for the legislation pending in Congress to help prevent the wrong persons from obtaining firearms. The bill would not prevent all such tragedies but it would help to reduce the unrestricted sale of firearms to those who cannot be trusted in their use and possession. How many lives might be saved? The gun control bill has been under consideration in the Congress for many months. The time has come for action.'”… “A University of Texas medical staff spokesman said today that Charles Whitman who killed 14 persons and an unborn baby came to him in March for consultation, explaining he had intense periods of anger. Dr. Maurice Heatley said Whitman “sometimes found himself thinking about going up the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people.” The Dr. did not attach too much significance to the statement at the time. Whitman had a brain tumor that would have killed him within a few months…. Page 1: “Soviet Re-Elect Kosygin Premier“…”The Supreme Soviet (Parliament) convened in the Kremlin today and promptly re-elected Aleksei Kosygin as Premier.”…
Page 2: “Sarte On Panel to ‘Try’ U.S. Leaders”… “Kean-Paul Sarte and Simon de Beauvon will head an unofficial international war crimes tribunal organized by Bertrand Russell to decide whether American conduct of the War in Vietnam constitutes a crime against humanity. The tribunal to convene in Paris in November will consist of European and Latin Americans prominent in World affairs, political science, religion and the arts. The tribunal has no legal status. Its judges are private citizens in no loyal or official capacity. In an announcement yesterday in which the tribunal was named, President Johnson, Secretary of State Rusk and Secretary of Defense McNamara were listed to be tried as ‘war criminals.’… The announcement said the judges would make their decisions on the basis of the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and of complete scientific data on chemicals used in military operation.”… State Department response: “The United States does not seek a wider war. We do not threaten any regime. Military actions are carried out as they are necessary. Pentagon sources noted that the dozen air strikes across North Vietnam had concentrated on dispersed petroleum areas–camouflaged clusters of oil drums–as well as on oil barges and fixed targets. Until aerial photography photographs have been evaluated no details of probable damage can be given….
The President’s Daily Briefing… CIA (TS sanitized)… North Vietnam: Dissension in the Ranks… Some fairly soled evidence of infighting among members of the North Vietnamese politboro has recently come to light. The July issue of the North Vietnamese party journal has an article by politburo member Nguyen Chi Thanh who apparently has been in South Vietnam directing the war effort. Thant, a hard nosed advocate of the Mao Tse-tung line, takes some hefty swipes at his critics in top policy making jobs. Thanh is rankled by Monday morning quarterbacks trying to run the war from a desk in Hanoi. He reserves particularly caustic barbs for “some people” who apparently recommended that the Vietcong concentrate their military effort in the highlands even if it meant abandoning large parts of the coastal plain and delta. In keeping with the best tradition of comradely togetherness, Thanh names no names. But his message comes through loud and clear that one addressee is Thant’s long time rival, General Vo Nguyen Giap. giap is the soldier in North Vietnam’s top soldier and the much publicized victor at Dien Bien Phu. The very fact that the article appeared indicates the dispute, at least for the time being, has been resolved in favor of Thant’s strategy for warfare throughout the south….
3 AUGUST 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… NYT…(4 August reporting 3 August ops)…Page 1: “Buffer Zone Hit Again In Vietnam”…”United States B-52s struck for the third time in the demilitarized zone between the North and South Vietnam this morning. A U.S. military spokesman said the eight engine jets had bombed infiltration routes, suspected gun positions, and supply dumps. Tons of bombs fell within one square mile about 26 miles inland from the South China Sea and about one half mile south of the Benhai River which nearly dissects the six-mile wide buffer zone.” (NYT made no reference to the air war in the North)….”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson)… Three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 3 August 1966….
(1) 1LT T.L. HODGES was flying an F-100D of the 308th TFS and 3rd TFW out of Bien Hoa on a direct air support mission in South Vietnam and was shot down by ground fire. He ejected and was rescued by an Air Force helicopter…
(2) LT O. FRANZ was flying an A-1H of the VA-145 Swordsmen embarked in USS Ranger was flying a road reconnaissance mission in the lower portion of the panhandle and sustained damage from small arms fire and flew the aircraft back to se but 65 miles into the return to the carrier he was forced to ditch the aircraft at sea. He was recovered by a Navy helicopter… USS Ranger completed a deployment that saw the ship and air wing on the line for 137 days. Eleven aviators and 21 aircraft were lost in the air war…
(3) CAPTAIN R.C. JOHNSON and 1LT LESIEUR, USMC, were flying an F-4B of VMFA-323 and MAG-11 at Danang but deployed to Chu Lai where they sustained foreign object damage to one of its engines on a SATS launch and did not get full power to complete the launch and were forced to abandon the aircraft within seconds. Both survived the low altitude ejection and were rescued…
RIPPLE SALVO… #155… TEXAS HOLD’EM…
Our beloved country and its leaders play a lousy game or poker (especially our cookie cutters in the State Department)... Winning poker requires POWER (cards), POSITION (at the table at the time a face-off is called and it’s all-in) and RESOLVE (the will to compete and win)…Coincidentally, that’s what it takes to win at war: POWER, POSITION and RESOLVE. The United States chose a limited war strategy for our fight with North Vietnam. Bad choice. No question we had the Power, great cards. And we had a very good Position from which to play our cards. We had our enemy surrounded. What we didn’t have was Resolve. Maybe we had it in the beginning, say 1964 to mid-1967, but in the middle of 1966 we started to show some sweat–that is called a “tell” at a poker table. Our adversary, Old Ho, weren’t no green horn at the green table. He played the short pile of chips with uncanny skill. Short on POWER and in a tight POSITION, he was relying on RESOLVE.. He had to play cagey cards as he had done with the Japanese and French in the past… He knew when to hold’em and when to fold’em.. He relished the American choice of a limited war, or more appropriately, “gradual failure,” which was met by Ho’s strategy of guerrilla rope-a-dope. Hit and run while building a stash of chips (power) for audacious attacks. Wait. Wait. Build. Duck. Weave. “Hit like a butterfly…sting like a bee.” Ho was thinking: No hurry, we are going for 15-rounds and we know that the Americans have already chosen not to win… they haven’t even declared war… and they have yet to demonstrate the ability to hold their bite.
Cool Hand Ho, unflappable and unperturbed though a series of so called escalations designed to bring him to the table to dicker. So Old Ho would listen to the offers to talk with a wooden poker face…no “tell” there…Unfortunately, Old LBJ had a problem that ensured our destruction, or at least failure, at the Texas Hold’em game in Vietnam in 1966-67-68… The fatal “tell” for our side?… A wobbly will on the home front… Shakey Resolve… There was no hiding the lack of will, RESOLVE and the direction it was going by mid-1966… All Ho had to do was– be patient… He and his carefully mentored next-in-command played their vulnerabilities perfectly to win…
Did America learn anything from this shellacking?… Nope.
We refused, and continue to admit that our national nature makes us unfit for limited war, which is the name of the game for this century.
We are an impatient people — we do not have the level of RESOLVE required to git ‘r done.
As a nation, we have shelved the killer instinct required to win… so we are doomed to one quagmire after another that leads to retreat and defeat and a steady erosion of our POWER and weakening of our POSITION…
We have frittered away what was once awesome unity, purpose, true grit, military strength, forward presence, ability to deter trouble anywhere in the world, and, of course, our national will to fight and win… that’s my opinion… Brave and free?… Not without a will to win!!! Make America Great Again??? Not without extraordinary sacrifice by every citizen for a very long time… the very weakness that has led to our downfall…
Lest we forget…. Bear ……… –30– ………
