Oliver North, John Kerry and General Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap: Birth of an Urban Legend
Walter F. Wouk 28 Mar 2004 15:25 GMTThe claim that Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap said that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S., is a lie.
On February 10, 2004 NewsMax.Com ran a story entitled, "Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S." 
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/10/222651.shtml
The story claimed that "In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen.Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North."
The Giap quote is a lie. According to WashingtonDispatch.com columnist Greg Lewis , who researched the alleged quotation, "no such volume exists." http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8268.shtml
Lewis wrote, " A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an "urban legend." Specifically, based on a "news" item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated."
The bogus Giap quote has been repeated as gospel in numerous articles, blogs, commentaries and pseudo-news reports criticizing John Kerry. In the past General Giap is also alleged to have made similar statements about Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, though there is no evidence that he did.
The fact is, there is no credible evidence that General Giap ever considered surrender an option during the Vietnam war.
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The author is the director of the Thomas Paine Project and a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
[article.email.prefix]: tpp@wintersoldier.org
[article.homepage.prefix]: http://www.wintersoldier.org
General Giap
Gary Sudborough 28.Mar.2004 17:16
General Vo Nguyen Giap was the Vietnamese general who decisively defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and forced their withdrawal from the country. I sincerely doubt that he ever considered surrender to the Americans. The Vietnamese guerrilla fighters had the support of the majority of the population, and the only way such a war can be won is by destroying most of the population. The United States could have done that with nuclear weapons and militarily won the war, but would have lost heavily in world public opinion, besides spreading radioactivity over a wide area. This is just more propaganda by Oliver North designed to instigate animosity towards antiwar protesters.
Giap's comments
John Doe 14.Jan.2005 21:38
In General Giap's book "How we won the war" Giap refers to the "Anti-war friends" in the US as being instrumental for the cause. Though Giap doesn't mention Kerry or Cronkite, and I recently read and interview which does mention Fonda's name. But that's no news; I mean she went up there to pose for pictures whith the communist North and even renounced the US during the war.