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From: LEE NAGELE
T1: MTtke83
Date: 10/6/97
Time: 9:50:52 PM
Remote Name: 152.163.195.242
Lee Nagele Vietnam War M.I.A. 10-7-97
One of the paragraphs that I found to be most interesting started on page 89 and continued onto page 90. Franklin is discussing the number of prisoners that the United States is calculating versus the number that Vietnam and the Pathet Lao actually released or accounted for. It seems to me that the U.S. should have had someone in charge of writing these numbers down, because maybe then the numbers would have remained consistent. Itıs a funny thing about lies, if you donıt keep track of them you seem to forget what lie was told. The inconsistent records that the United States published was the reason that they were being questioned as to their accuracy. Even members of the MIA/POW groups were becoming suspicious of the United Statesı motives in the publishing of these inaccuracies. It wasnıt long before these members started questioning out loud if there was ever going to be an end to the war and if this was a ploy by the United States to continue the war. It is amazing to me that so many people were sucked into believing the U.S. and their numbers in the first place. I wonder how many people wear those MIA bracelets now.
Lee Nagele Vietnam War M.I.A 10-7-97
The second passage that I chose was on page 23 and continues on page 24 and deals with the question of prisoners versus deserters. I had not realized how many deserters there were during the Vietnam War. The number given in the book was staggering; 503,926. This number reflected the number of ³desertion incidents², which the book does not define. Although even the 28,661 draft violations still at large in 1974 seemed to be a large number. It must have been fairly easy to ³get lost² in Vietnam if so many soldiers did just that. I also found it ironic that these same deserters were in a way helping the United States in the falsification of the MIA/POW numbers. Many of these deserters were listed as MIA/POW, instead of deserters. How ironic is that? These soldiers who escaped the war by deserting were actually helping the U.S. to perpetuate the war by being included in the numbers game. I guess this was a way that the United States could sidestep the issue of deserters. I was also unaware that these same deserters would still be charged if they turned up now. The possibility of prosecution again perpetuates the myth of MIAıs and POWıs.