Editor:
Eisenhower, not Kennedy, committed the first U.S. military personnel to Vietnam, contrary to an assertion made in at least one local letter to the editor. The soldiers who got sent to Vietnam by Eisenhower were called “advisers.”
Kennedy inherited the commitment when he took office, but the sharp escalation in Vietnam came under Johnson who succeeded Kennedy. Kennedy reportedly was undecided as to how to proceed in Vietnam at the time he was assassinated.
The big profiteer in Vietnam was a Texas defense contractor called Brown & Root which had given Johnson a blank check when he first ran for the U.S. Senate. Johnson won by six votes in what is believed in many quarters to be the first big political election stolen in modern U.S. history. Johnson, who outspent his opponent many times over, mounted the most expensive political campaign for U.S. Senate up to that time, flying all across the Lone Star State to land even at crossroads communities which didn’t have airstrips in a helicopter provided by Brown & Root.
Brown & Root later was sold to Haliburton and headed by Cheney who later became vice president. Brown & Root became known as Kellogg Brown & Root and is abbreviated in news stories about the war in Iraq as KBR, presumably to mask the controversial Brown & Root connection with Vietnam.
Kellogg Brown & Root, i.e. Haliburton, supported Bush/Cheney for election in 2000, the second big election in modern U.S. history that was allegedly stolen. Kellogg Brown & Root has made enormous profits from the war in Iraq as did Brown & Root in Vietnam. Haliburton has recently sold Kellogg Brown & Root. I don’t know who owns the company now, but I’d bet whoever it is will support our next war.
Sterling Greenwood
Aspen
