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>As to Kennedy...well, he gained historically as being a martyr, yet his track record in legislation was not so great. He behaved exemplary duing the Missile Crisis but a lot of his ideals never made it to law. It took LBJ, the loutish country boy, to enact historic civil rights legislation and he took the fall for Vietnam - which Kennedy started.

John;

Well, I would not say that Kennedy started our involvement with Vietnam. In fact the documents I have read indicate that President Eisenhower was involved to some degree. In fact the United States paid some 85% of the cost towards the end for French involvement in Vietnam. When the French left Vietnam, we stepped in with military advisors to train the South Vietnamese. This occurred around 1954.

The number of American troops in Vietnam from about 1954 to the beginning of 1964 remained at about 10,000. LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf incident as justification to have hundreds of thousand of United States service personal in Vietnam. I recall the words spoken by LBJ to this day. I can recall numbers like 650,000 ground troops and many in support capacities on ships of shore.

By the way the Geneva Accords scheduled elections in Vietnam in 1954 to decide who would rule the country. President Eisenhower refused to allow such an election as it was thought that Ho Chi Min, a communist, would win the election. Vietnamese people greatly admired Ho Chi Min as he had fought the Japanese and French and was considered a hero.

It seems that our history indicates that we believe in democracy if it suits us. The will of the people of another nation cannot be considered if it does not agree with those that are the administrators of our Federal Government.

To me LBJ is the worst President we have had! He did some good things and some bad things but all that is subjective.

As a Vietnam vet I listen to the rhetoric that 58,000 of our boys died in Vietnam. We neglect to mention the 3 million we killed.

Tom