PHOTO: lesson learned: Iraq Embassy has bigger roof for evac choppers than Vietnam

[yurbud]

I saw the photo of the US Iraq embassy in a story about cutting its staff IN HALF. It sounds like they already know which way this story is going.

[zipplewrath]

1. Except that's not the US Embassy

that photo isn't of the US Embassy in Vietnam

http://www.mishalov.com/Vietnam_finalescape.html

"...the helicopter was actually on the roof of an apartment building in downtown Saigon where senior Central Intelligence Agency employees were housed."

[Vincardog]

2. The LESSON still applies

[yurbud]

3. like JAWS--we're gonna need a bigger boat.

[zipplewrath]

4. Not sure which lesson you mean

That we should be careful messing around in other countries civil wars? Yeah, I'm all for that.

That we should build bigger roofs? Not so much.

[yurbud]

11. it's sarcastic. Trying to prop up puppet governments leads to need for bigger roofs.

[pinboy3niner]

5. Aerial view of U.S. Embassy in Saigon:

[yurbud]

10. that looks like there's only room for one chopper.

[pinboy3niner]

14. Yep. The chancery had a single helipad on the roof.

iirc, some evacs there were also done from the ground. But roof size obviously was just a hook for, and not necessary to, the actual point of the OP.

btw, I still have a photo of the embassy that I took from street level in 1969. When I returned on several trips in the '90s, it looked exactly the same. Our embassy is now in Hanoi, and there's a U.S. consulate in Saigon (the Saigonese never got into caling it 'Ho Chi Minh City'). The consulate reportedly was built on the site where a U.S. building was razed, but I haven't checked to see if that was the old embassy or not.

[yurbud]

12. and they were going on a sightseeing tour...

[Major Nikon]

13. Here you go

[zipplewrath]

18. That's a Chinook

Dat be a BIG heliocopter!.

I wonder how many of those would fit on the Iraq roof.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Lesson not learned: Starting wars that you will lose isn't such a hot idea.

[yurbud]

7. correct: my point was similar to saying a drunk learned how to get away from a hit and run

which is working on the wrong end of the problem--sort of like the War on Terror.

Instead of thinking about how to kill people who attack us because of our business driven foreign policy, we ought to think of ways to make fewer people want to kill us.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Obviously, you are sane. Which disqualifies you from any discussion of foreign policy in the USA.

[yurbud]

9. we should make a list of axioms of foreign policy in DC that are dead wrong

LIKE: We can invade and kill a country into doing what we want on an ongoing basis (which only worked in Japan and Germany because they were more afraid of Russia than US).

What transnational banks and corporations want is good for America (because people forced to work for pennies in sweatshops and on plantations and whose corrupt governments give away their natural resources NEVER get pissed off at us and become terrorists).

Elections are only valid when they produce governments subservient to international banks and corporations.

And so on.

[Nevernose]

15. It is bertte to continue with a failed policy

It is better to continue with a failed policy and appear strong than to change a broken policy and risk being viewed as weak.

[yurbud]

16. I don't think they care about how it appears, just who signs their donation checks and

paychecks after they leave office.

[Withywindle]

17. Damn shame that's one of only two things they learned.

The other is: censor the media more. "Embed" journalists so they don't report independently. Don't let the news show death or tell any independent truth about what's really happening "over there."

[yurbud]

19. I think the unspoken new rule is: embed or dead...

more journalist killed in Iraq than Vietnam and even World War II:

139 between 2003-2009 in Iraq War

• Central American conflicts: Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, lists 89 journalists killed for the years 1979-89.
• Argentina: Freedom Forum lists 98 for the years 1976-1983.
• Vietnam: Freedom Forum lists 66 journalists killed covering the conflict in Vietnam from 1955-1975. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, which surveyed the years 1962-75, lists 71 journalists killed.
• Korean War: Freedom Forum lists 17 journalists killed.
• World War II: Freedom Forum lists 68.
• World War I: Freedom Forum lists 2.
http://cpj.org/reports/2008/07/journalists-killed-in-iraq.php

I saw a FRONTLINE video early on of US troops firing at someone on the top of a building, and when they see the video camera crew across the street, they turn their fire on THEM.

It's worth noting that the only war that came close was one of the South American dirty wars by a US backed kleptocracy. Maybe the less was theory was tried out there first.

[Withywindle]

20. Yeah, that's pretty blatant.

Kill the messenger. It's open season on the truth right now.