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Originally Posted by bulldogg To the veterans, was it common knowledge at the time among US personell that the VC had decimated themselves? |
I don't know about other people who were there, but by the time I got there, 2 yrs. after Tet, there were no VC to be found and we didn't expect to find any. Once in a while, we would run into NVA trying to pose as VC but it was pretty clear who they were. We captured Chinese "advisors", Czec, and Chinese, and Russian weapons by the hundreds. The VC didn't decimate themselves, we did. One of the main purposes of Tet was to stir up a civilian revolt but it never materialized.
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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 Its unfortunate that the American public did not know that the Vietcong self-destructed in the Tet Offensive. From the Military point of view, the enemy came out into the open and was absolutely demolished by the resulting US/SVA counterattacks. To use the Castle image, the enemy opened the gates, lowered the drawbridge, went charging headlong right into vastly superior forces and got their asses handed to them. Charge of the Light Brigade all over again, and they took an unrecoverable number of casualties. But anciently or in modern times, the immediate result is that everyone on the opposing side assumes that their enemy must be a lot stronger than previously believed. Afterall, nobody would be stupid enough to commit suicide on the field of battle, right? But the Vietcong did exactly that. |
It's called selective reporting. The only people who considered the communists to be superior were those whose only source of information was that selective reporting by the mainstream media.