Wolverine,

You recall correctly. That picture alone did more to turn heads toward ending the war then anything else (except the burning Buddists). I call it just rewards myself.

Wolverine

Where did you get the information about “that little VC kid”?

ACTivist

The burning Buddhist, yes that, AND the little girl running down the road covered in flames from burning napalm.

“For those of you expecting any firearms that could be used to Hunt Deer, you can kiss our collective Asses!”

Don’t worry reindeer, these guys have no interest in killing beasts with FOUR legs. Tell Santa to “Ho! Ho! Ho!” real loud as there are plenty of loaded .357s on bed side tables. And watch out for the local slasher – he could be ANYWHERE….

“Don’t worry reindeer, these guys have no interest in killing beasts with FOUR legs.”

Oh yes I do, my Cracker Ass will be hunting for Prancers Virginia Cousins tomorrow and Friday. These days will be all about venison sausage. If my Cracker Ass is successful, maybe I can have some bambi jerky ready for distribution at the
NVTH Festivus for the Restivus!

Lovisa, I was in that war. Got sent home in a medevac plane about 4 months before the photo was taken. My stay in the military hospital really brought home to me for the first time the growing anti-war thing in CONUS. Can you imagine lying on a stretcher on a hospital receiving room floor with a bunch of wounded Marines (some so bad you could only see their eyes through the body cast and others who never stopped moaning in pain during the long flight home) and being told that, once we were ambulatory and able to go on leave, we should avoid wearing our uniforms in public because we would get spat upon, called names, and goaded into fights by our fellow Americans? Needless to say, we all paid a lot of attention to the news coming back from the front, especially the 1968 Tet Offensive, since we still had friends in the thick of it.

Speaking of the thick of it, that is where you will find a lot of Vietnam vets when it comes to supporting the troops to the max in Iraq, despite all the political contentiousness involved with that conflict. I may no longer be the young guy I once was, but, to quote a famous author of long ago, this old hound still has teeth and those teeth can still bite. I swear that if I ever see any of our young Iraq veterans disrespected by the current anti-war crowd in way we were, those teeth will start biting in remembrance of all those young Marines in those stretchers on that hospital floor.

That said, I went back and did a little checking. I apparently did misremember a bit on that photo. The family of the Police Chief was not the one killed. It was the family of one of his deputy commanders and a very close friend in Saigon. Story goes that the VC in the picture was part of an urban assassination squad directed at the families of police officials. They reportedly attacked the deputy commander’s family with machetes and sliced up the mother, father, and children in their own kitchen, along with a lot of other people in the area. The Chief was apparently reacting out of extreme anger, sorrow, and frustration. He paid personally for that photo for the rest of his life.

Eddie Adams, the AP photographer who took the principal photo, was initially skeptical about the South Vietnamese version of the story but then claimed to have verified it himself. He began opining that he or anyone else might have been sorely tempted to do the same thing as the Chief under those terrible circumstances. Adams actually claimed that he apologized to the Chief years later because one photo ruined the guy’s life after being flashed across the world without an explanation of the circumstances. THAT you can actually chalk up to chaps like Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America”, who somehow failed consistently to give us all the “other side of the story.”

All said and done, that photo and the little girl/napalm thing were indeed critical to the rapid change of sentiment in this country with regard to the war…along with Cronkite’s stupid assessment that Tet signaled defeat for us, even though the US/ARVN counterattack virtually wiped out the VC and forced the North Vietnamese Army to take over the bulk of the fighting.

The flaming monks I couldn’t have cared less about. They were “useful idiots” to the VC and North Vietnamese. Same goes for those pampered, wealthy, stupid students at the university in Saigon who, having wangled their way out of the South Vietnamese draft, were always agitating and rioting against the war. I often wonder how many of them wound up in “re-education” camps or worse after 1975 or, if they were lucky, escaped on those small boats, many of which sank at sea with terrible loss of life because the U.S. Navy was ordered to stand by and not help them.

cool story about Va woman who negotiated with Somali pirates, helping to end the stand-off–

http://patriotroom.com/did-one-woman-in-virginia-just-bring-down-the-somali-pirates/

E Troll:

The problem with Venison as sausage without pork or beef fat is it is A. hard to keep together in any form minus a casing and B. it tends to cook up dry , again lacking any fat.

I usually have mine made into Sweet Italian links.

My heart bleeds for thee, Virginia Whitetail. I shall avenge thee.