Who are calling the shots in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Are the generals and admirals, at the expense of KIAs, WIAs
and MIAs acquiescing to the dictates of a circle of men dedicated to maintaining
a conflict of sufficient depth to satisfy the lusts of the political/industrial
complex?
On 24 July 2003, I spoke on the telephone with General Tommy Franks’
aide, LTC Chris Goedeke, expressing my admiration of the General and my
concern that he did not appear to have sufficient troops in his command
in Iraq to secure the population centers after they taken the area and cleared
the enemy out. I was led to believe, when told unequivocally that General
Franks had only received half of the numbers of forces he asked for to properly
conduct the war that General Franks had acquiesced to instructions from
the Secretary of Defense, and knowingly went to war with insufficient men
and women to get the job done. One who wishes to remain anonymous advised
that the staff who developed the invasion scenario for Secretary Rumsfeld
were primarily without combat experience.
My question to those who love this great nation of ours and who want it
to once again be known to the world as The Defender of Freedom is:
Why has the world press refused to publish the truth?
General William C. Westmoreland, as Commander of all American
Forces in South Vietnam from June of 1964 through March of 1968, aided and
abetted the enemy by permitting them safe havens inside the Cambodian territory
adjacent to South Vietnam and by permitting that same enemy the unrestricted
use of the Mekong River as a protected waterway to transport war materiel
through South Vietnam to their sanctuaries in Cambodia. It seemed obvious
to me, after putting all of the facts together, that General Westmoreland
considered his own position, rank and place in history more important to
him than the lives of American and Vietnamese warriors and South Vietnamese
civilians (men, women and children) alike or he would have demanded an end
to President Lyndon Johnson’s provision of safe-havens and protected
supply routes to the enemy. Lacking positive action by the President, General
Westmoreland should have resigned publicly, informing the American people
that he was leaving the service not wanting to be a part of the sham that
was Vietnam, the sham that supported the enemy while subjecting our forces
and our allies, along with the civilian population to death and destruction.
In General Westmoreland’s book, A Soldier Reports, he states
rather matter-of-factly and very clearly on page 218: “The enemy’s
obvious use of Cambodia as a sanctuary and refusal of Washington authorities
to allow me to do anything about it was frustrating.” He went on to
write, on page 219, of the proof of major shipments of arms and other supplies
“reaching the VC via international shipping passing through South
Vietnam up the Mekong...” It may have been “frustrating”
to General Westmoreland, but his lack of action to deny the enemy sanctuaries
and a protected supply route was indeed deadly to many tens of thousands
of Americans who depended on him for leadership. From what I was told by
officers in Saigon at the time, General Westmoreland wasn’t so frustrated
that he denied himself the playful pleasures of a daily tennis routine.
Strangely enough, General Westmoreland writes at the beginning of Chapter
XV (Reflections on Command) of having a quotation of Napoleon Bonaparte
under a panel on my desk which states, “A commander-in-chief cannot
take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order by his sovereign
or his minister, when the person giving the order is absent from the field
of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state
of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry
out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward
his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation
rather than be the instrument of his army’s downfall.”
The lack of strong moral leadership in this four star general is typified
in his own admission, on page 220 of his book: “For long all we could
do to the enemy in Cambodia was drop propaganda leaflets on our side of
the border whenever the wind was right to blow them across.” And,
on page 222, he states unequivocally, “My every request to inform
the world press of the enemy’s use of Cambodia was denied...”
Why then, inasmuch as our permitting of “the enemy’s use of
Cambodia” was somewhat akin to tying our soldiers’ hands behind
their back as they were ordered into battle, didn’t he take that matter
forward as the sole rationale for his resignation from the military service?
In 1983, Presidio Press published LTC Charles M. Simpson’s book, Inside
the Green Berets, included the account of how LTC Dick Ruble, a member
of General Westmoreland’s Intelligence staff, had without the knowledge
of the Special Forces Group commander, denied their access to intelligence
(“code word” documents) as retribution for Special Forces’
denying MACV non-airborne personnel, who were to be disguised as Green Berets,
access to Special Forces Camps (see page 181). The Special Forces Group
had been excluded purposely from their distribution list and would include
intelligence gathered by CIA resources. Many of those resources were highly
classified and compartmentalized, according to my source, who understandably
wishes to remain anonymous.
Directly related to this denial of critical combat intelligence, was a time
of solemn remembrance one summer afternoon in 1988 when I stepped through
the doors of the Special Warfare Museum on Smoke Bomb Hill at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, wanting to revisit my past. The Green Berets were, after
all, a very special organization that would and could tackle any mission,
anytime, anywhere and get the job done. No task was too dangerous, too onerous
or too difficult as “the impossible just takes a little longer.”
I was enjoying the many and varied exhibits in that small, but awesome collection
of unconventional warfare memorabilia until I was stopped in my tracks in
front of an exhibit honoring General William C. Westmoreland. I understand
fully that one should not despise another, but that singular word best describes
my feeling for that military man who, by his own inaction and lack of courage
before Congress and his military superiors, aided and abetted the enemy
in the Vietnam conflict, the same foe that had killed my four best friends,
all of them Green Berets.
My best friend Jerry, his name now engraved on THE WALL - Master Sergeant
Gerard V. Parmentier - was killed in action his fifth time in combat in
the Southeast Asian War Theater. Jerry, a fellow Green Beret and a number
of South Vietnamese irregulars, all mortally wounded in battle by Viet Cong
insurgents on 17 August 1967 near Dak To, South Vietnam, were also unsuspecting
victims of a power struggle between General William C. Westmoreland’s
headquarters and the Special Forces Group commander.
His son Albert, a Green Beret himself, was serving in a neighboring Special
Forces camp when he got word that his father had been killed. After learning
details of the battle and its aftermath from his father’s commanding
officer, Albert accompanied his Father’s body back to the United States
where he was interred with military honors, including a Special Forces Color
Guard, at Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
After the funeral I spoke with Albert and he confirmed what I’d suspected,
having learned from his father’s commanding officer that Jerry’s
unit had met defeat and suffered heavy casualties, with most KIA due to
faulty or withheld intelligence. The enemy force that killed Jerry was many
times the strength that had been gleaned from available intelligence. That
fact, in and of itself, was not uncommon in war, particularly in a counter-insurgency
situation. What was unusual and unforgivable in my judgment, was the fact
that the enemy order of battle was known but withheld from Special Forces.
Hard to believe? Yes, I would rather it had been a lie. But those facts
were told Albert by Jerry’s commander before he left Vietnam escorting
his father’s body to the US. Albert told me, just a few days later
and agreed it was important information for the book I was writing about
Special Forces in South Vietnam. We also agreed that it would be put on
the back burner until his mother was gone as it would hurt too much for
her to know the truth. When Jerry’s widow, Rose, died and was buried
in Providence, Rhode Island, I spoke with Albert shortly after the funeral
had concluded. I told Albert of my need to obtain his signed statement telling
of the facts of his father’s death so as to be evidence with which
I would demand an investigation and a public disclosure of facts.
I was to learn instead that Albert had retired from the U.S. Army and was
working for the “company.” Needless to say, he was then conveniently
forbidden from disclosing any knowledge relating to the CIA. No sense arguing,
the cards were stacked against the truth.
My book, Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert
Warfare, contains much detail regarding General Westmoreland’s
refusal to demand an end to the enemy’s safe-havens in Cambodia and
his lack of courage when given the opportunity to go before Congress and
tell them that American and Allied forces and innocent civilians were being
killed and maimed by the enemy operating out of the “sanctuaries”
that President Johnson had provided against the wishes of then Premier Nguyen
Cao Ky. He admits to these failures in his book A Soldier Reports.
Another fact of life in South Vietnam at the time I served as a Green Beret
in An Phu and Chau Doc was the absence of routine resupply of Special Forces
units by General Westmoreland’s Saigon depot. This was a great cause
of concern to me when stationed at the B team and responsible for logistical
support of Special Forces Camps under the wing of B-42 in Chau Doc in late
1966. That lack of logistical support by the Saigon depot forced me to “borrow”
a Landing Craft Utility (LCU) from the US Navy, pilot it down the Bassac
River and on into the Mekong to reach the Saigon Depot. We then “borrowed”
two of the depot’s trucks and drove past the fearful guards to pick
what we desperately needed from shelves, bins and pallet storage, loaded
everything on the trucks and then off loaded onto the LCU at the depot docking
site. From there we re-traced our way back to Chau Doc and returned the
LCU to where it had been tied up. Within a year of my return to the US,
while attending the US Army Career Course at Fort Lee, Virginia, Colonel
Pieklik, the former commander of the Saigon Depot - who had commanded it
at the time we were forced to steal supplies from that same depot, was a
guest lecturer and stood in front of our class at the end of his presentation
and responded to questions. I was class president and got to field the first
question. I was impressed with the fact that he answered unequivocally,
telling our class that the reason his depot was not supplying the Special
Forces needs in the IV Tactical Zone (the entire delta area) was that General
Westmoreland had ordered him not to.
I would learn that Westmoreland’s futile attempts to
convince the Commanding General of IV Tactical Zone (Lieutenant General
Quang Van Dang) of the need to permit the use of conventional American forces
in the delta had angered him to the extent that he refused logistical support
of all unconventional forces in the Delta area.
Is this of whom I write, the General Westmoreland you have pictured in the
past?
Dan Marvin was an Army “Mustang,” first enlisting
in June 1952 as a recruit and later holding the rank of Sergeant First Class.
He was then commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and went on to retire as
a Lieutenant Colonel. A fully qualified Special Forces Officer (Green Beret),
Master Parachutist and Combat Infantryman, he was experienced in covert
operations. A veteran of eight combat campaigns in the Korean and Vietnam
Wars, he was thrice decorated for heroism....
Marvin was schooled in unconventional warfare and learned
the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare, special demolitions and underwater
demolitions in addition to assassination and terrorism techniques, civic
action and psychological warfare operations. Taught by veteran Green Beret,
CIA and US Navy SEAL Team instructors, in 1964 he volunteered to organize
and command a covert operations team of eight Green Beret volunteers; the
first Green Berets to be prepared to employ the man-portable atomic demolition
device (SADM) with an explosive force equivalent to ten tons of TNT. Their
contingency mission was to blow the hydroelectric plant at the ASWAN High
Dam in Egypt, under construction at the time by the USSR That same year
he and Green Beret Master Sergeant Joseph Hill were involved in a bizarre
series of interactions with the leadership of the Boston area Mafia, giving
them personal insight into the unique alliance that existed between the
CIA, the Mob and the U.S. Army’s Special Forces when their unique
talents were needed to conduct extremely critical covert operations, including
assassinations and sabotage.
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