[Vwdiesel] Rabbit Droppings #161

[Scott Kair]

>>The latest for me was to see     Hanoi Jane   and Robert McNamara
shake hands.
>>He admittet that Nam was wrong  --- see there is hope ?   EH
   --- I am a great admirer of
Jane Fonda   and the stand she took at that time.  ----Yeah OK she was
young and stupid to
get on that Gun. <<

    Somehow I missed McNamara shaking hands with Hanoi Jane, and he
didn't mention her in "The Fog of War."  That would seem to be
"newsworthy," at least moreso than Fuchida thanking Tibbets for ending
their war.
    Posing on the AAA cannon wasn't the low point of the trip.  One of
the POWs she visited slipped her a note about the torture, and she
promptly burned him to the guards, rendering great aid and comfort to
the other side.
    A couple of theories compete as to why she wasn't prosecuted for
the only crime defined in the constitution.  One is that there wasn't
much upper echelon faith in the ability of federal prosecutors to
obtain a conviction that would stand the appeals process, that crime
being exceedingly difficult to prove, by design.  The other is that
she was being run, that someone in her entourage was on the pad of an
agency and no one was willing to blow his/her cover.
    The end result was that her publicity stunt hardened postures here
and extended the tragedy through a couple of more unnecessary years.
    Scott Kair