LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vietnam: South China
built 658 days ago
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) decided to commit American support troops to South Vietnam. Four thousand troops were sent in 1962. There has been an endless debate about what he would have done in Vietnam. He of course, did escalate American involvement by expanding the number of advisors there from 15,000 to 16,000. But there is evidence is there that he would not have Americanized the war to the extent that Lyndon Johnson did. He was skeptical of the military.
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Nguyen Van Thieu announced in desperation that he had a signed letter from Richard Nixon promising military help if it appeared that the NLF were winning in South Vietnam. However, Nixon was no longer in a position to fulfil his promise as he had been forced to resign over Watergate. The new president, Gerald Ford, a strong supporter of US involvement in Vietnam, tried to raise support for the South Vietnamese government but the Senate was adamant that as far as it was concerned, the war was over.
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This is the situation that John Kerry faced as a solider in Vietnam. In his speech before the Senate in 1971 testifying against the war, John Kerry charged that the Vietnam war was a lie, that the majority of the people were against the United States, and the only way for American troops to survive in the midst of a hostile population was to brutally kill and terrorize the South Vietnamese. In committing these violence acts and opposing the will of the Vietnamese people, Kerry argued, the United States was threatening its own democratic values and institutions. Having gone to Vietnam believing President Johnson's lies, veterans like John Kerry came home to challenge the lies and atrocities perpetrated by the United States government.
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This was at its peak from 1965 to 1969 when a maximum of 500,000 American troops were in Vietnam. A number of the front line troops were conscripts and not professional troops. They were young, usually from lower social groups and frequently from America's minority groups. They were trained in conventional warfare whereas the Viet Cong used guerilla tactics - hitting the enemy and then moving away; not wearing a standard uniform; merging into village life with ease etc. It was difficult for these young American troops to know who was the enemy and who they could trust amongst the South Vietnamese population.
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Crandall served in the Dominican Republic and two tours in Vietnam. His 750 combat operations in Southeast Asia included the famed Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, during which he saved more than 70 wounded soldiers and provided ammo critical to the survival of the U.S. ground unit. In 1966, Crandall flew two more night rescue missions which evacuated 12 wounded from a unit in heavy contact with the enemy. He received the 1966 Aviation and Space Writers Helicopter Heroism Award for this daring rescue.
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Several attempts had already been made to overthrow Diem but Kennedy had always instructed the CIA and the US military forces in Vietnam to protect him. In order to obtain a more popular leader of South Vietnam, Kennedy agreed that the role of the CIA should change. Lucien Conein, a CIA operative, provided a group of South Vietnamese generals with $40,000 to carry out the coup with the promise that US forces would make no attempt to protect Diem.
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