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A military official asks questions about counter-insurgency, effectively, why the US troops did not use many of the lessons in Vietnam in Iraq. For example - don't use roads if you have tracked vehicles because those could have bombs. Surround towns and see who tries to run out, etc.
Dr. John A Nagl (a distinguished Westpoint Graduate, and Army Officer for almost 20 years) answers in a remarkable manner - he sees when he went o retrieve classified information about Vietnam, he was told all classified information was deleted. All of it.
By a bitter military officer.
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The information on Vietnam, on how to conduct counter-insurgency did not just disappear, the books were literally burned. "
"When I was doing my dissertation on Vietnam, I went to the Armies General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth and visited the classified section of the library there.
"When I was doing my dissertation on Vietnam, I went to the Armies General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth and visited the classified section of the library there.
Basically he says when he asked to see the classified section on 'Nam and gave his clearances, he was informed by the clerk that they had no classified information on Vietnam. Nothing. And the reason the lady gave was this:
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About ten years after Vietnam we had a colonel running the library. Who had a really bad experience in Vietnam and he said "Vietnam was a bad war, we're not gonna study it here. Get rid of all the records."
And apparently, just like that, all the hard won lessons of Vietnam, lessons people paid for with blood and limbs and lives were lost.
How does this even happen? Is this common behavior among US officers? Do people get held accountable for this?
Can a General or Colonel really just go into a military library archive and just "delete" all classified information about an entire war?
The speaker then goes on to say this is why the military did not have a counter-insurgency manual, at least in part, for 31 years. That is why our soldiers went into Iraq, basically blind and unable to learn from a great deal of previous information attained in Vietnam.
I presume there are other archives, or at least I hope, with the same or similar information, but to think we could have a gap in our records of military campaigns because 1 colonel decides to delete them all for emotional reasons is pretty shocking imo. I'm surprised more of the public does not know about stuff like this. Has anyone else heard of anything like this before?
Edited by PaintedWolf, 01 May 2017 - 04:19 PM.
