RIPPLE SALVO… #376… …”what we are working for and what we are fighting for.”...but first…
Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX of a return to the skies over North Vietnam...
16 MARCH 1967… HEAD LINES and LEADS from The New York Times on a fair Wednesday with clouds of clouds…
Page 1: “Johnson At Grave With the Kennedys”…”Members of the Kennedy family and President Johnson stood together shortly after dawn today for a brief private ceremony to consecrate the new and permanent grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The ceremony took place at 7 am in a cool driving rain.”… Page 1: “Bunker to Replace Lodge; New Envoy Names; Pacification Plans and Growth of Economy to be Emphasized”…”President Johnson announced today that he would appoint Ellsworth bunker, a 72-year old diplomat with a reputation as a skillful trouble-shooter to replace Henry Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to South Vietnam.”… “Page 1: “That Note To Hanoi: Return to Sender”… “President Johnson offered an inside glimpse of the difficulties of diplomatic dealings with Hanoi. He did so in referring to an incident involving a United States letter handed to the doorman at the North Vietnamese Embassy in Moscow that was returned in a plain envelope to the American Embassy, but probably not before it was steamed open read and resealed.”… Page 6: “Ky Invited to Guam by Johnson Against Saigon Embassy Advice”… “Premier Ky’s disclosure this morning that he would fly to Guam this weekend to attend a conference with President Johnson next week caught the United States Embassy in Saigon by surprise. He was invited against the advice of the Embassy.”… Page 7: “Plane Shortage in Military Found”…”A Congressional study of military aircraft inventories and production rates has disclosed scarcities of certain types of aircraft and reduced numbers of planes in storage and reserve…delivery of tactical aircraft barely exceeds the rate of loss in Vietnam and operations worldwide…”
Page 1: “Pro-Mao Troops Control Canton”…”Army trucks roared through the street of Canton today announcing on loud speakers that pro-Mao Tse-tung troops had taken over Canton and the province of Kwangtung, of which Canton is capital. The center of the capital is choked with marchers and vehicles. Drums and cymbals, blaring loudspeakers, firecracker explosions, and singing, turned the area into a riot of noise.”… Page 1: “Cuba Said to Plan New Rebel Help”... “Political observers said today that the slashing attack on Venezuela’s ‘rightist’ communist party by Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba indicated a new, militant line of Cuban support for Latin-American guerrilla movements. Mr. Castro’s broadcast speech yesterday condemned ‘revolutionaries who don’t fight.’ It coincided with a recently published Cuban article indicating that Major Ernesto Che Guevara, a Cuban leader missing since last May (1966), was engaged in ‘instructional work on the international plane,’ presumably in Latin America.”…
16 MARCH 1967… The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized) CUBA: The U.S. press has failed to capture the full fervor of Fidel Castro’s blast on Monday night against Moscow’s policies in Latin America. Never before has Castro been so direct on this issue in a public speech. Referring to recent Soviet efforts to cozy up to such “oligarchic and treacherous” governments as those in Colombia and Venezuela, Castro charged that this amounts to helping those governments “repress the revolution.” Castro castigated pro-Moscow Latin American Communist parties for betraying the revolutionary struggle. He praised the Venezuelan guerrillas, implying that he would continue supporting them. The speech surely must be the last shovelful of dirt thrown in the Moscow-inspired agreement of November 1964 to work only through the official Latin American Communist parties…
16 MARCH 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (17 Mar reporting 16 Mar ops)…Page 2: “In the air war over North Vietnam Air Force and Navy pilots focused their bombing attacks on supply routes, supply boats and coastal defense positions. Air Force Phantoms based at Danang reported setting off 20 secondary explosions in a strike 26 miles northwest of Donghoi. Two American fighter-bombers were downed over North Vietnam (reported on 15th: Thompson F-105 and Frederick F-105), bringing to 487 planes officially listed as destroyed in the North. A third jet was shot down in the South yesterday bringing the total lost in the South to 160.” …“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 16 March 1967…
RIPPLE SALVO… #376… NEW YORK TIMES 16 Mar 67… Page 1: “JOHNSON DEFENDS BOMBING BUT INVITES PEACE TALKS”… byline Ray Reed from Nashville, TN… I quote…
“President Johnson chose this Upper South Capital Nashville, with its long tradition of patriotism and military pride for a strong defense and re-assertiveness of his Vietnam policy today. ‘America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated, ‘ he said with emphasis, adding that if this point got through to the other side, peace talks could start at once. He made a lengthy justification of the bombing of North Vietnam, repeated his willingness to end the war if the other side would show willingness and expressed his firm determination to stay the course. The President was addressing the Tennessee Legislature.
“The President went on at length to defend the bombing of North Vietnam. It has proved its military worth and usefulness, he said, by causing such disruption that half-million North Vietnamese are being kept busy repairing the damage. ‘I also want to say that it is not the position of the American Government that the bombing will be decisive in getting Hanoi to abandon aggression,’ he said. ‘It has, however, created very serious problems for them. The best indication of how substantial is the fact that they are working very hard around the world with all their friends to get us to stop.’ As for bombing civilians, he said the United States was making an unprecedented effort to hit military targets only. Any civilian casualties that result from our operations are inadvertent, is stark contrast to the calculated Vietcong policy of systematic terror,’ he said.
“President Johnson’s concluding remarks: ‘…and as these South Vietnamese warriors, heroes, come back to their homes, millions of Vietnamese will begin to make a decent life for themselves and their families without fear of terrorism, without fear of war, and without fear of communist enslavement. That is what we are working for and what we are fighting for. And we will not; we shall not; we will not fail.” end quote…
NYT Columnist James Reston had this to say about the Johnson speech under a headline “Tougher Johnson Stance”… “President Johnson looks more and more like a man who had decided to go for a military victory in Vietnam and thinks he can make it. He was tough down here before the Tennessee legislature today, not boastful or offensively pugnacious, but calmly determined, like a poker player who had made up his mind to raise the bet to bring the war to a climax and force either equal moves on both sides to reduce the violence and talk, or failing that to increase the military pressure on the North steadily.”…
Tougher Johnson stance???… There is no such thing as a tough stance when you’re an indecisive fence sitter.
CAG’s QUOTES for 16 March: BGEN B.J BUTLER: “This is our turn to walk as sentries on the wall of freedom.”… PATTON: “Your deeds have proven that you are fine soldiers. Look the part.”
Lest we forget… Bear