Anniversary: USS Mayaguez, Bungled by a Bunch of Bunglers...
The mission of the USS Mayaguez was to ferry US weapons to certain
Southeast
Asian (SEA) allies in Cambodia who would stage search-and-destroy,
kill-and-retreat jungle assaults against North Vietnamese Communists (NVA)
attacking on a widespread front against the South Vietnamese government
(GVN).
The operation was hatched by Henry Kissinger and approved by Gerald Ford
but
opposed by dozens of generals including William Westmoreland (Retired) who
felt
American military aid should be direct and upfront regardless of the UN
regs
that prohibited members states from engaging in Mayaguez type ops.
Unfortunately, the Mayaguez operation failed because the right hand failed
to
tell the left hand what it was doing...
The Operational Plan (Oplan) was to convey tons of munitions to
anti-Communist
jungle operatives run by the CIA in Cambodia and Laos. The overt and
published
version was to convey tons of munitions to the GVN (that neither needed
them nor
possessed the capability at that time to receive or distribute them.)
The Oplan called for the Mayaguez to be "raided" by Khmer Rouge “pirates”
[footnote #1] and its cargo "stolen". However, the captain of the Mayaguez
(Charlie Miller) who was ordered to keep the real plan secret from his
crew
until the last moment failed to communicate the plan even after gunfire
was
first initiated by his crew against the "pirates" who were stunned at
being
fired at. The Oplan called for no weapons fire, no hostages, no deaths. It
was
supposed to be a three-hour operation that proceeded cleanly and without
fatal
or injurious incident.
By the time Miller finally decided to tell his crew about his CIA mission
and
orders there had already been three crew deaths... but by that time crew
that
partly did not believe Miller and partly didn't care whether Miller was
telling
the truth or not. (Two of the dead Merchant Mariners were said to be
"wives" of
two angered homo***ual Mariners who wanted nothing more than to avenge the
deaths of their "women".)
Murphy's Law kicked in bigtime... what can go wrong will go wrong under
incompetent or irresponsible commanders.
Upon learning of the deaths and a bungled Op the White House (WH)
panicked.
President Ford had no alternative but to disavow the secret Oplan and
address
the crises as what the news media did (and was pre-planned to) re****t it
as: an
attempt to capture an American-friendly vessel at sea that -- unplanned --
had
become hostile w/deaths.
Meanwhile, the Merchant Mariners and "pirates" -- both sides utterly
confused
and bewildered -- continued to exchange fire. The largely homo***ual crew
of the
Mayaguez angrily refused to relinquish owner****p. (Because homo***uality
among
Merchant Marine crews had become an "epidemic" by that year, and revealed
as a
result of Congressional (public) investigation of the Mayaguez "Incident",
Congress soon-after authorized and mandated the U.S. Merchant Marine to
allow
women to serve as Mariners. Women now serve with distinction as Merchant
Marines.)
The largely stunned CIA-trained "pirates" remained steadfast in completing
their
CIA mission, while the angered crew remained steadfast in their refusal to
allow
their cargo to be taken uncontested.
The WH, responding to American media re****ts of the action directed a
rescue
mission using Marines to "rescue" the Mayaguez... but a second edition of
Murphy's Law kicked in... the UMSC commander was not briefed with
instructions
to allow the contents of the Mayaguez to be off-loaded by the "pirates".
The WH
hoped the Marines would kill off all of the “pirates” and, thereby, kill
any
chance to the truth becoming known. But in his ignorance of the truth, the
hyper-patriotic Marine commander ordered his men to imagine themselves as
baby-John Wayne's and fight to the death.
In the end the Marines saved 39 Merchant Marines but lost 39 U.S. Marines
in the
process. The reconciled "pirates" eventually got the vessel's cargo but
promptly
sold it -- out of anger -- to Pol Pot who used the weapons to murder over
1
million of his countrymen and women in a merciless and bloody Holocaust
rivaling
Hitler’s slaughter of innocent men, women and children who happened to be
Jews.
The lesson of the Mayaguez remained in CIA and US military Lessons Learned
instructions guides for the next thirty years, only to be discarded by
Bush
Administration "neo-cons" (Israeli Americans members of JINSA and AIPAC)
who
ignored everything we did wrong in the Mayaguez incident.
Today a new version of the bungled Mayaguez is being played out in Iraq.
The
same Israeli-American "neocons" led by (former State Dept) Douglas Feith,
(Sen’s.) Leibermann and Kyl, and (General) Raymond Odierno (currently
scheduled
to replace Petraeus as commander of US Forces in Iraq) who wish to use
American
blood and money to involve the United States in multiple wars against
Islamic
nations have used -- for the past year-- Israeli-American news
correspondents to
fill news re****ts about Iranian-made weapons being flooded into Iraq.
However, only recently -- last week -- on 10 May 2008 did the GAO
officially
re****t that an exhaustive audit revealed that none -- repeat NONE -- of
the
weapons alleged re****ted by Petraeus and Odierno to be of Iran manufacture
or
origin are in fact Iranian.
Forgotten, it seems, were the re****ts made by prior Generals in Iraq
shortly
after the invasion who said: "Iraq is one huge weapons storehouse. Saddam
has
weapons everywhere. Anywhere and everywhere you look you will find guns,
ammo,
explosives...".
In short, Iran doesn't need to provide weapons to Iraq. There remains,
since
2003, vast storehouses of Saddam-acquired munitions from every weapons
producing
country on the globe.
The planned purpose of the Mayaguez was to continue the Vietnam War using
American armed and paid indigenous forces in Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) and
Laos
(Hmong) to replace US military personnel. The Mayaguez operation
terminated that
plan.
The plan and purpose of the current Administration is to fool the American
people into believing Iran is the cause for the continued problems in
Iraq.
The question for those of us who served in Vietnam is the following: Do we
vote
for John McCain who will continue the failed war in Iraq and open a new
war in
Iran, or do we oppose McCain by voting for a candidate who will use Truth
and
Honesty to battle our legitimate opponents?
FOOTNOTE #1:
Nixon had visited China in 1972 where Cambodia’s legal leader (Prince
Norodom
Sihanouk) dissed him. Because Nixon was pissed at Sihanouk for not
allowing
American military free-access to Cambodia in 1970 (“The Cambodian
Incursion”),
Nixon threw sup****t to Pol Pot who promised to fight eternally against the
North
Vietnamese in Cambodia. However, what Pot did not tell Nixon that he
intended to
murder any person in Cambodia who did not meet his personal Nazi-like
physical
standards. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese in Cambodia, along with
over one
million Cambodians of mixed racial heritage, were murdered by Pot using
the
weapons he obtained from the Mayaguez (and other sources of US origin).
Outraged, the American people responded by rejecting Ford’s re-election
request
in 1976.
POSTSCRIPT:
a. Several Hollywood movies in the works about the Mayaguez were
successfully
terminated by CIA to prevent further research and disclosures to harm
Gerald
Ford's re-election. Ford lost anyway despite the fact that he ordered
Congress
to establish and (tem****arily) fund the "Vietnam Veterans of America"
organization by buying off the leaders of "Vietnam Veterans Against The
War"
organization that haunted him at every campaign stop...
b. Since the Revolutionary War all presidents have consulted with former
Generals regarding future ops and military strategies. In fact, in 1812
Congress
ordered that all former generals and admirals (amended in 1947 to mandate
all
Four-Star generals and admirals) be formally consulted (when secrecy was
im****tant they would be ordered to re****t for duty at the Pentagon)
whenever any
major military operation or campaign was being planned or anticipated.
However,
one week ago on 09 May 2008 SecDef Gates officially ordered an end to all
formal, mandatory consultations with former Four-Star generals and
admirals...
it seems Gates and Bush don’t like what our former generals are telling
them
about their idiotic plans to initiate a war with Iran, Syria and Lebanon
before
the November elections.)
-- 30 --
REFERENCES:
1. Copy of a Memoradum of Events that was authored (for public release)
three
weeks prior to the event:
http://www.ford.utexas.edu/LIBRARY/exhibits/vietnam/750519a.htm
2. The names of the 39 Marines who died during the Mayaguez Operation are
listed
on the Vietnam War Memorial: http://members.aol.com/veterans/freecard.htm
-- Aaron (aaronwilson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
-- Otis Willie (Ret.)
Military News and Information Editor (http://www.13105320634.com)
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