I have never been more infuriated at TV programming in my life than the insult I just now (3:30am Central, 4 Feb. 06) witnessed on The Military Channel. A leftist hatchet job worthy of a Michael Moore endorsement for its dishonesty and contrived, tortured context video.

PETER ARNETT as featured commentator, for crying out loud. A disgraced hack who is historically and brazenly anti-American in every impulse, the crafter of the "Operation Tailwind" hatchet job that was, eventually and grudgingly, exposed for its blatant falsehoods (and grounds for CNN firing him) -- and this dedicated prevaricator about all things military is who The Military Channel believes deserves even one second of air time to opine about the war in Vietnam?

One can only wonder if Noam Chomsky's or Ward Churchill's views on the US military might not be in production as I write. Will you air that crap on The Military Channel as well?

The Military Channel owes every veteran of the war in Vietnam a very groveling apology for airing that leftist tripe in a venue purporting to be at least not [openly] hostile to the sensibilities of military veterans. That was "Winter Soldier" and "Operation Tailwind" and Dan Rather-esque bullshit and an insult to honest documentary. Hereafter, please leave that disgusting crap for MoveOn.org and thier ilk.

You have done the reputation of The Military Channel a great disservice by airing that bit of leftist/Communist propaganda. Please cease and desist.

I just acquired The Military Channel & the Peter Arnett "Into the Killing Fields" was one of the first episodes that I watched. I agree strongly with pterodactyl's negative comments, and I cannot believe the the U.S. Military would permit this leftist revisionist totally inaccurate piece to be presented on a show that purports to give a reliable history of military operations of the past. (I suspect that the U.S. Military has no Editorial input or control, and that The Discovery Channel is fully responsible for this blatant piece of Communist, anti-war propaganda.
To be more specific, here are a few of the deliberate inaccuracies and distorsions contained in the Arnett piece:
1. Two specific references to [America's] "Indescriminate use of fire power" (vs most restrictive Rules of Engagement of any war to date) - resulting in utterly devastating destruction of [civilian] regions of the South - including destruction of schools and hospitals. etc. Inference: The destruction was deliberate and callous.
2. Innocent women and children (vs Viet Cong families and supporters in military contested areas) were regularly included in the body counts - on the assumption that they were enemy combatants.. Inference: That we routinely targeted innocent women and children and torched their villages (vs removing them to safe areas before destroying Viet Cong support areas).
3. The Vietnam War was not a "noble cause". We cannot "celebrate" our actions, but must "confront" [our unnecessary participation in an unjust war]. Arnett said, "It seemed at the time to be a convenient place to hold the line against Communist expansion, but it was not critical to the interest of the U.S., and when the costs got too high, it was convenient to just withdraw". Ken Berez and the other vet (neither of whom had any schooling or expertese in military history and who didn't seem to have a clue about the history or objectives of the war - on either side) opined that Westmoreland's strategy of attrition was "doomed to failure" and that "we could have poured in a million more troops and had the same results...) (Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs advocated for cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail and attacking the sanctuaries in Cambodia, but LBJ and McNamara foolishly refused to permit the generals to prosecute the war correctly. Admiral Sharp opined that we could have won the war by mid 1967 - if LBJ and the doves would have let him carry out his planned strategic bombing of the North [with conventional weapons](See "Strategy for Defeat"). One of Nixon's biggest regrets was that he did not do precisely this two years earlier than he did. The Arnett piece even used that quote that "a war should never be left in the hands of the generals". [Nixon won the war and forced the Paris Accords and agreement to bring home all POWs - in two weeks following the strategic Christmas bombings in 1972] [Congress and Watergate prevented Nixon from enforcing the Accords and gave the Russians and Chinese over two years to totally rearm and resupply the North and to achieve the disasterous victories in 1975 over our South Vietnam and Cambodian allies - while Congress disgracefully cut off all bombing and most of the promised supplies to the South](See Nixon's "No More Vietnams" Chapters 4 & 5 "How We Won the War" and "How We [Congress] Lost the Piece") (The Arnett piece was based upon nearly all of the 22 False Myths that Nixon convinceingly debunked in his excellent above referenced book)(This book should be required reading for all students and college professors - instead of the revisionist histories of the left...).
4.Arnett promoted the myths that noble President Ho Chi Minh was just going against American "aggression" and that he was denied the free elections that were promised by the Geneva Accords. He forgot to mention that the Vietnam War was a proxy war between the U.S. and the Russian & Chinese Communists - who's objectives were to conquer and enslave all of S.E. Asia [and ultimately the entire world], and that Ho was a Moscow trained Communist who founded the French Communist Party and later tried to steal South Vietnam by infiltrating tens of thousands of Northern Communist agents and political operatives and Communist front organizations into the South - to rig and steal the "promised free elections". [Eisenhower cancelled the elections , when he determined that Ho would not allow free and honest elections]. Arnett also totally distorted the causes of the Budist emulations, as well as just about all of the other political facts concerning the French and American envolvements in the Viet Nam Wars.
5. Again, The Discovery Channel should be ashamed of the Arnett piece - and should apologize for it and quit running it on The Military Channel. The U.S. Military should try to acquire some editorial control over the materials presented in it's name on The Military Channel - or at least require that a prominate disclaimer of content accuracy be posted on all military episodes presented on The Discovery Channel. Shame!

I have to echo the outrage of the first two commenters.

This was a slanted and lopsided analysis of the war in Vietnam. Please ask the producers of this tripe: what transpired between the Tet offensive of 1968 and the notorious "Fall of Saigon" in April of 1975?

Arnett and the producers just non-chalantly gloss over this, the most significant period of the war. Utterly irresponsible. You barely allude to the massive military defeat of the North Vietnamese after Tet, and then go on to imply that Tet somehow led to the defeat of the UN/US forces in Vietnam.

But so much of the history of conflict is left out by this piece. It effectively re-writes what actually happened.

The most notable: After the North Vietnamese had been DEFEATED by the UN/US/South Vietnamese forces, a cease-fire was signed in 1973! The war had ended, and all American combat troops had by the end of that year been withdrawn!

The second most notable: The Democrats took control of the Congress after the 1972 elections. 1973 and 1974 brought legislation that cut all aid and support to South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviets and the Chinese made a massive push to supply arms and training to the North Vietnamese. While we cut off all support of an ally recovering from a decade of civil war, our enemies in the North were preparing to re-invade.

To the naive west, we signed the ceasefire to end the conflict. The communists signed it because we'd beaten them, and the ceasefire gave them time and breathing room to rebuild their military.

What's worse, the ceasefire gave the communists allies in the US time to legislatively force us to abandon our allies in South Vietnam.

The UN Forces (which the US was a part of) backing South Vietnam defeated Soviet-backed North Vietnam and the Viet Cong on the battlefield, as reflected by the ceasefire keeping North and South Vietnam as separate nations (as was the original goal of the conflict from the UN/US side).

This piece is a disgrace, and should be pulled from the Military Channel's rotation. It is sickeningly false leftist, anti-war propoganda.