« Reply #13 on: July 10, 2006, 09:47:48 PM »
Originally posted by xrtoronto
I have a clip of Coulter insisting that Canada fought along side the US in Viet Nam:rofl
Was she talking about this?
During the years 1954 to 1975 Canada served on 2 international truce commissions and provided medical supplies and technical assistance. Canadian diplomats were involved in negotiations between Washington and Hanoi and successive Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative, maintained that Ottawa was an impartial and objective peacekeeper, an innocent and helpful bystander negotiating for peace and administering aid to victims of the war. However, Cabinet papers, confidential stenographic minutes of the truce commissions as well as top-secret American government cables revealed Canada to be a willing ally of US counterinsurgency efforts.
Canada's record on the truce commissions was a partisan one, rooted in the presumption of Hanoi's guilt and Saigon's innocence and designed to discredit North Vietnam while exonerating South Vietnam from its obligations to uphold the Geneva Agreements. Canadian delegates engaged in espionage for the US Central Intelligence Agency and aided the covert introduction of American arms and personnel into South Vietnam while they spotted for US bombers over North Vietnam. Canadian commissioners shielded the US chemical defoliant program from public inquiry, parlayed American threats of expanded war to Hanoi, and penned the reports legitimating both the rupture of the Geneva Agreements and the US air war over North Vietnam. Ottawa would later assert that these actions were necessary to counter-balance the activities of the Eastern bloc countries with whom they shared membership on the truce commissions.
Canadian aid during the war went only to S Vietnam, $29 million 1950-75, routed through the Colombo Plan and the Canadian Red Cross. Although humanitarian in appearance, Canadian assistance was an integral part of the Free World Assistance Program, co-ordinated by the US Department of State with the International Security Office of the Pentagon as the point of contact. In the field, Canadian capital assistance was regulated by the US-RVN Health Defense Agreement and administered by the International Military Assistance Force Office in Saigon. On a number of occasions, Ottawa stopped the shipment of ecumenical medical relief to civilian victims of the war in North Vietnam.
At home, 500 firms sold $2.5 billion of war materiel (ammunition, napalm, aircraft engines and explosives) to the Pentagon. Another $10 billion in food, beverages, berets and boots for the troops was exported to the US, as well as nickel, copper, lead, brass and oil for shell casings, wiring, plate armor and military transport. In Canada unemployment fell to record low levels of 3.9%, the gross domestic product rose by 6% yearly, and capital expenditure expanded exponentially in manufacturing and mining as US firms invested more than $3 billion in Canada to offset shrinking domestic capacity as a result of the war. The herbicide "Agent Orange" was tested for use in Vietnam at CFB Gagetown, NB. US bomber pilots practiced carpet-bombing runs over Suffield, Alberta and North Battleford, Sask, before their tours of duty in SE Asia. And the results of the only successful peace initiative to Hanoi--That of Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning--would be kept from public knowledge in order not to harm official US-Canadian relations. Ten thousand young Canadian men fought in the US armed forces in the war.
Or maybe this...
Larry Semeniuk of Windsor, Ontario, joined the US Army in January 1967. In December, he was deployed as a paratrooper of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 187th regiment, 101st Airborne Division to Vietnam. In January 1968, Semeniuk saved the life of an officer at the risk of his own. A few days later, he was killed in action. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.
Gary Butt was born May 9, 1951 in Montreal, Quebec. He enlisted in the US military at Plattsburg, New York in 1968. Since Butt had superior skills in marksmanship, the US Army gave him the position of rifleman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Butt volunteered for duty in Vietnam and served from July 1970, to April 1971. He was killed on April 3rd. At the time of his death, Butt held the position of sergeant with the 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade.
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