Title: Dead or Alive
Description: Written by Bernie Weisz Historian/Vietnam War  June 13, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florida   e mail address: Bernwei1@aol.com  title of review: "Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals To Be Used As Pawns For Foreign Policy"This review is from Robert Pelton's new edition of: " Unwanted Dead or Alive: The Greatest Act of Treason in Our History -- the Betrayal of American POWs Following World War 11, Korea and Vietnam" 
Henry Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany and came to the United States in 1938 and was naturalized a United States citizen in 1943. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1950 and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in 1952 and 1954. Furthermore, he was sworn in on September 22, 1973, as the 56th Secretary of State in the Richard Nixon Administration, a position he held until January 20, 1977. He also served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from January 20, 1969, until November 3, 1975. However, in Robert Pelton's new book "Unwanted Dead or Alive", Kissinger (referred to as "Bor") is quoted as making the statement: "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy". 

Robert Pelton angrily writes of the unjust betrayal of American prisoners of war following W. W. II (1939-1945) the Korean conflict (1950 and 1953) and especially the Vietnam War. American involvement in Vietnam is historically viewed from the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" of August 4th, 1964 to the signing of the "Paris Peace Accords" on January nth, 1973. South Vietnam ultimately fell into Communist control at the end of April, 1975. However, Henry Kissinger was a key player in America's exist strategy of this highly unpopular war. After the "My Lai Massacre" occurred, America's days in Vietnam were numbered. A mass murder was perpetuated by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968. Approximately 500 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children (including babies) and elderly people, were innocently killed. Allegedly, many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated. This notorious incident took place in the hamlet of My Lai. While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at My Lai, only William Calley, a lieutenant, was convicted. Serving only three years of an original life sentence while on house arrest, Calley served as the scapegoat and the incident became public knowledge in 1969. It prompted widespread outrage around the world. This massacre, along with the events of Kent and Jackson State (student protestors were killed), the killings of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the 1968 Tet Offensive debacle greatly increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War. 

With the false hope of enemy attrition, fruitless search and destroy missions, and inaccurate body counts not equaling an American victory, the will to fight in Vietnam vanished. Indeed, military leaders themselves recognized a crisis among American soldiers in the war's last years. "Combat Refusal", where soldiers refused to obey orders became rampant. GI's objected not only to what they saw as a suicidal mission squaring off against an elusive, tunneled in enemy, but to the war effort itself. In the last few years of the war, drug use amongst U.S. troops increased, and commanding officers saw their men wear T-shirts and combat helmets with peace symbols. The general feeling of American ground forces was that they were fighting a war for a cause that meant nothing to them. "Combat Refusals" became increasingly common in Vietnam after 1969. Soldiers also expressed their opposition to the war in underground newspapers and coffee-house rap sessions. Some wore black armbands in the field. Some went further. When one American killed another American, usually a superior officer or an NCO, the term "fragging" came into use. Although the term simply meant that a fragmentation grenade was used in the murder, it later became an all encompassing term for such an action. It is known that "fraggings" did occur during Vietnam, but the precise number is uncertain. 

From 1969 to 1973, "fragging" e.g. the shooting or hand-grenading of a GI's NCO or superior officer who ordered him out into the field increased dramatically. At least 600 officers were murdered, and another 1400 died mysteriously. By early 1970, the Army was at war not with the enemy but with itself. Desertion and Absence Without Leave figures were off the charts. Nixon, realizing American forces in a land war were no longer reliable, switched to both Vietnamization (handing the war over to the South Vietnamese) and to American aggression against the North Vietnamese strictly conducted by air. In December 1972, peace talks between the United States and the Communist-backed government in North Vietnam began to break down. Out of frustration, the Nixon administration responded by initiating "Operation Linebacker," the so-called "Christmas Bombings" of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh's capital of North Vietnam. From December 18 to 30, 1972, waves of American B-52's dropped nearly forty thousand tons of bombs on the mostly evacuated city. Although Nixon defended his actions as essential to the attainment of a cease-fire, domestic reaction from much of the country and the world was shock and outrage. Many accused Nixon and Henry Kissinger of enacting a policy of revenge and frustration. It is interesting to note that Pelton writes that Kissinger was seen as one of the most influential "Soviet moles" in American history. Nixon's domestic approval rating plummeted, but some three weeks later, negotiations between divided Vietnam and the United States resumed in Paris. On 17 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accord was finally signed, and America's long direct involvement in the Vietnam War at last came to an end. 

However, this massive bombing attack on Hanoi in response to stalled peace negotiations created much shock and anger in the United States and was denounced as an immoral terrorist act against the North Vietnamese civilian population. Nevertheless, "Unwanted Dead or Alive" focuses on the plight of unreturned prisoners of war after the war was over. Following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973, U.S. prisoners of war were returned during "Operation Homecoming" occurring from February through April 1973. Within this time period, 591 POWs were released to U.S. authorities which supposedly included a few captured in Laos and released in North Vietnam. Pelton points out that this is false, as no POW's (especially SOG forces, Air America and "Black Operatives") captured in Laos or Cambodia to date have ever been repatriated, despite Nixon's brazen announcement that all U.S. servicemen taken prisoner had been accounted for. Concomitantly, the U.S. listed approximately 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and sought the return of about 1,200 Americans reported killed in action and their bodies not recovered. The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office would end up investigating the fate of all missing service personnel. With the collapse of the Paris Peace Accords and the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, over the next ten years little progress was made in recovering missing POW's and finding unaccounted remains. During the late 1970's and 1980's, the friends and relatives of unaccounted-for American personnel became politically active, requesting the U.S. government to reveal what steps were taken to follow up on intelligence regarding live sightings of MIA's and POWs. Pelton lists the multitude of live sightings and how American authorities ignored them and swepping them deliberately under the rug. Many frustrated families and their supporters asked for the public release of POW/MIA records and called for an investigation. Bobby Garwood emerged in 1979, the only POW to surface following the end of the war and the 1973 release of prisoners. Garwood was considered by the Department of Defense to have acted as a traitor and collaborator with the enemy after he was taken prisoner, while Pelton argues he was an American POW abandoned by the military. It is interesting to note that Pelton calls Kissinger "Moscow Man Comrade Kissinger" who aside from working with the Soviets, practiced a career of Communist directed subversion, sabotage and sellout of America's interests. 

This book is unlike any other you will ever come across in regards to American POW's unaccounted for since 1945. Without overly saying it, Pelton expresses his disdain at America's abandonment of those who risked their lives in the line of fire by quoting Harriot Ison's inappropriate comment pertaining to their fate. As the "Charge d' Affairs of the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, Ison (as one of Kissinger's "clones" according to Pelton) remarked: "You do not understand...there is a greater destiny for our foreign policy in Asia and the POWs are expendable in that pursuit". Pelton comes out with some facts that are very hard to understand how this could be allowed to happen. According to Pelton, tens of thousands of American soldiers who fought in W. W. II against the Germans ended up after 1945 as unaccounted POW's and spent the rest of their lives in torturous Soviet slave labor camps. Supposedly, when the Russians liberated Nazi POW camps, the majority of POWS earned a one way ticket to the Siberian "Gulag". Then, after the conclusion of the Korean War, the U.S. deliberately abandoned unrepatriated American POW's to their sadistic Communist captors, never again to see freedom. Finally, in the Vietnam War, thousands of American boys ended up as permanent, lifelong POW's and spent the rest of their lives in Vietnamese, Laotian, Chinese and Russian slave labor camps. Pelton unabashedly calls it a blatant lie that the 1973 announcement that all unaccounted American POW's in S.E. Asia were dead and that even to this day, U.S. government officials continue to lie about their fate. 

This is just the tip of "Pelton's Iceberg". Pelton charges that the specialists from the U.S. Army deliberately misidentified the "purported remains" of dead American servicemen sent back by the dishonestly evil Communist regime in Vietnam. 
The North Vietnamese imported Cuban torturers to "reeducate" American POW's. Hanoi sold back Dien Bien Phu POW's to the French for huge sums of money and tried recently to do this again with American POW's. Taking a big chance at calling the U.S. Government the most colossal liar of all time, Pelton bravely points out that our rulers have the audacity to label over 1,400 unresolved reports of live and first hand sightings of American POW's in S.E. Asia as "no credible evidence". This book will carefully detail what Pelton calls a "carefully orchestrated whitewash" regarding the torture, death and abandonment of U.S. captured troops following the 3 aforementioned conflicts. He catalogs and describes the government lies, distortions and intimidation tactics used to obfuscate the veracity of American POW holdings after the end of these wars. The shameful denial of their existence and the subsequent abandonment the POW's humiliatingly suffered by America's leaders is nothing less than an unmitigated disgrace. This book is not an easy read. Detailed within this book is the shocking and horrendous manner in which they were starved, tortured and left behind by sadistic Communist captors. At the conclusion of W. W II, Nazi leaders responsible for the conflict and resulting Holocaust were held accountable at the Nuremberg proceedings. Likewise for the Nipponese leaders at the Japanese Far East War Crimes Tribunals. There exists a large number of repatriated U.S. prisoners of war memoirs that enumerate torture and inhumane treatment. Robert Pelton rightfully asks why no American leader has ever suggested that the guilty Vietnamese be tried for war crimes as well. Conversely, the individuals responsible for the "whitewash" of POW's" should equally be held responsible for the beatings, torture, death and abandonment of American fighting men. There will be a backlash of this explosive book. Names are named, and dastardly and cowardly acts are called out. The bottom line when "Unwanted Dead Or Alive" is finished, the reader can feel nothing less than righteous indignation realizing that as of today, abandoned American military men are still alive in Communist Captivity in S.E. Asia and the Soviet Union, suffering a fate that can only be called worse than death. This is an absolute must read and will change your perception forever of our government and our military, especially if you have a family member or close friend in the combat zones of today's hot spots!
Subjects: Betrayal of American POW's, Miscellanea, Missing in action, Prisoners of war
Places: America, Cuba, Korea, Soviet Union, United States, Vietnam
People: American POW's, Dieter Dengler, Henry Kissinger, Robert Garwood
Time periods: From 1945 to today!