Could this be true? I thought early on targets were picked from the White House, I can't imagine this.

The US's secret plan to nuke Vietnam, Laos
By Richard Ehrlich

BANGKOK - The US Air Force wanted to use nuclear weapons against Vietnam in 1959 and 1968, and Laos in 1961, to obliterate communist guerrillas, according to newly declassified secret US Air Force documents.

In 1959, US Air Force chief of staff General Thomas D White chose several targets in northern Vietnam, but other military officials blocked his demand to nuke the Southeast Asian nation.

"White wanted to cripple the insurgents and their supply lines by attacking selected targets in North Vietnam, either with
conventional or nuclear weapons," one declassified air force document said.

"Although White's paper called for giving the North Vietnamese a pre-attack warning, the other chiefs tabled it, possibly due to the inclusion of nuclear weapons. Seven months later, the proposal was withdrawn," it said. The 400-page document, titled, "The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The War in Northern Laos 1954-1973," was written in 1993 by the Center for Air Force History in Washington and "classified by multiple sources".

It was made public - along with several other previously secret, war-era air force documents - on April 9 by the National Security Archive in Washington, after extensive Freedom of Information Act litigation. The Archive is an independent, non-governmental research institute in George Washington University.

White "asked the joint chiefs of staff for the green light to send a squadron of Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-47 jet bombers to Clark Air Base in the Philippines" to prepare for an assault on nearby Vietnam, the declassified report said. White's quest to unleash America's nuclear arsenal may have been inspired by an air force study titled, "Atomic Weapons in Limited Wars in Southeast Asia," it said.

That study "focused on the use of atomic weapons for 'situation control' in jungles, valley supply routes, karst areas, and mountain defiles to block enemy movement and to clear away cover", the declassified report said in a footnote elaborating on White's strategy. Such terrain forms much of northern Vietnam and Laos.

One year later, during December 1960 and January 1961, a Soviet airlift was supplying "food, fuel and military hardware" to local pro-Moscow forces in Laos, via Hanoi, the declassified air force document said. In March 1961, the US joint chiefs "countered with a plan calling for up to 60,000 men, complete with air cover and nuclear weapons".

"This inclusion of nuclear weapons by the military was a legacy of the Korean War. To the chiefs, it was unthinkable for the United States to embark on another conventional, strength-sapping war," the document said.

In 1968, just before their Tet Offensive, communist North Vietnamese troops and their southern Viet Cong allies attacked American forces in the center of the country, where the US kept Vietnam divided. In response, General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces in Vietnam, reached for the nuclear button.

"In late January, General Westmoreland had warned that if the situation near the DMZ [demilitarized zone] and at Khe Sanh worsened drastically, nuclear or chemical weapons might have to be used," said a separate 106-page declassified, "top secret" report titled, "The Air Force in Southeast Asia: Toward a Bombing Halt, 1968," written by the Office of Air Force History in 1970.

"This prompted [Air Force chief of staff] General [John P] McConnell to press, although unsuccessfully, for JCS [joint chiefs of staff] authority to request Pacific Command to prepare a plan for using low-yield nuclear weapons to prevent a catastrophic loss of the [US] Marine base," it said.

Throughout much of America's failed war, the US relied on massive aerial bombardments, plus napalm, in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but did not drop any nuclear bombs, despite the US Air Force's three attempts. After the US lost, communists achieved power in 1975 in all three countries.

With hindsight, the authors of the 1993 declassified air force document said it would not have been a good idea "to employ nuclear weapons to destroy insurgents and their supply sources" in Vietnam or Laos.

"It is doubtful whether any suitable targets for such weapons existed in the jungles of northern Laos or North Vietnam," it said. "More important, such an attack would have given the communists a tremendous propaganda victory and possibly spread the war to China and the western Pacific," it said.

Communist China supported the guerrillas in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia against US assaults. The document's mention of the US spreading its would-be nuclear war to "the western Pacific" apparently refers to involving the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and nearby islands, where the US had military facilities.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey! Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. His website is www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent.

(Copyright 2008 Richard S Ehrlich.)

Link
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southea.../JD17Ae01.html

This doesn't seem all that unusual to me. I'm sure we have strategic plans to use nuclear weapons against any country deemed a potential threat, just in case. This plan looks like it was just a contingency plan which never had a chance of being really enacted, seeing as how quickly it was shot down.

Let's be honest, when didn't the Air Force push the nuclear option during that time period?

Originally Posted by c/Commander

Let's be honest, when didn't the Air Force push the nuclear option during that time period?

Exactly. In the 50's and 60's and even the 70's the USAF response to most things was. "Nuke em till they glow!"

Course it was the only way they could make real the claim of Curtis Lemay that wars could be won by air power alone.

Yes and also there's a secret plan on how the President of the United States will greet visitors from outer space. But it is very much like how he will greet the Chinese head of state.

shhhh redneck, your not suppose to tell. the MIB will come get you in the middle of the night for that one.

Originally Posted by chronoserpent

This doesn't seem all that unusual to me. I'm sure we have strategic plans to use nuclear weapons against any country deemed a potential threat, just in case. This plan looks like it was just a contingency plan which never had a chance of being really enacted, seeing as how quickly it was shot down.

I bet there are plans for invading Canada collecting dust in a room deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, it's a great way to keep young staff officers busy and their skills sharp. Plus it never hurts to be prepared for any situation regardless of how remote the likelihood of needing the plans are. Look at Myanmar, because we had a military presence in the area just in case we were ready to fly in supplies immediately, of course the government of that nation was not ready to receive supplies till.... 9 or 11 days? after the cyclone hit.

But I will reiterate what other have already said, the Air Force was desperate to prove the viability of tactical nuclear weapons during that period, mostly because they had the market cornered, to increase spending on such weapons. Not that the United States didn't waste enough money on nukes already.

Invade Canada! Grrr I'm gonna go at ya with my Winchester 30-30, cowboy style!

The USAF has got plans for nuking everything, it's common for an Air Force to be unrational. Though, it would have been a good idea to end the war just like that with a nuke, same as they did to the Japanese. Would have saved many American lives, at the cost of many Vietnamese lives, OHHH THE LOGIC!

Nah, the politics of Vietnam would not allow such a course of action. Remember that in WWII we were dragged into the war by a sneak attack, we felt that we had the right to drop the bomb on the Japanese and do whatever else to them after Pearl Harbor, plus the after effects of a nuclear detonation were not understood as well in 1945 as they were in the 60's.