Talk:Vietnam War POW/MIA issue

Cleanup needed
Sections in this article should be either decade-based or topic-based, but not a combination of both; sub-sections would also make it easier to navigate. The lead section should also be rewritten in some way to reduce its length and redistribute its content to the relevant sections, but I eventually opted for the “cleanup reorganize” maintenance tag instead of “lead rewrite” or “lead too long.” Nemoschool (talk) 04:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Like many history articles, the sections in this article are topic-based but flow in loose chronological order. I have now reshaped and retitled the final two sections to get rid of the explicit decades in their titles, which I hope should resolve this objection.  However I disagree about the lede being too long.  This article is 34 kB (5597 words) readable prose size, and per MOS:LEADLENGTH that correlates to a lede of three or four paragraphs.  This lede is two full-sized paragraphs and one short paragraph, which lands it well within that guideline.  Furthermore this is a contentious, often emotional topic, and trying to summarize it in an overly brief manner would not work out well.   Wasted Time R (talk) 14:05, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Heavy bias
This article handles what many academics (H. Bruce Franklin, Susan Keating) and The Kerry Committee to be more or less a conspiracy theory. At no point in the article does it cite the core critics that the MIA POW issue has been false from the beginning. The language is overly positive about POW MIA groups and supportive journalists. Nearly all of the discussion of the Kerry Committee has been to paint it as a conspiracy itself, while downplaying its conclusions.

Many of the headings are problematic. The "Effects on Popular Culture" can likely be shortened and moved to the end of the article. Honestly is Rambo very important for this serious issue? "Normalization with Vietnam" is loaded with unproven theories about the dishonestly of the Kerry Committee, which frankly could just be shortened considerably and appended on the Kerry Committee heading. "Diminished in Impact But Not Gone" is overly sentimental to a hourly contested issue. "Continued Accounting" just makes this article overly long.

I think a good point is agreement is that criticism of this debated issue should take (relatively) the same amount of space, "Criticism" deserves its own heading, and overly praising language like "who had won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1970..." needs to be removed.

I apologize for any typing errors (I'm on mobile). Rest assured, this isn't a fly by tagging and I will continue to help update this page. Stix1776 (talk) 16:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I am the author of most of this article. It emerged out of a long, contentious discussion that you can see at Talk:Missing in action (which is where this subject used to be handled, before being split out into a separate article here).  As you can see from that discussion, I was dealing with an existing article that bought into the "live prisoners" belief lock stock and barrel, and I was trying to get it into a more neutral position grounded in reality.  It was me who added the Susan Keating book as a source which is currently cited in seven different places, for instance.  In doing this I bent over backwards to try to represent the views of the "live prisoners" believers, all the while indicating that there was little to no credible evidence behind those beliefs.  So in an attempt to keep the peace I did not try to explicitly state in the lede that it is a conspiracy theory.  If you want to try doing that, go ahead, I won't object.  If you want to add more of what Keating says to the article, that would be great.  Ditto H. Bruce Franklin.  However I would object to diminishing the popular culture/Rambo material or moving it to the end.  That is an integral part of this whole tale, such as the mention of 'Grey Flannel Rambo' types in the Keating book.  Popular culture, politics, and conspiracy theories are usually intertwined in various ways and need to be described accordingly.


 * As a separate matter, there were a lot of recent additions by an IPv6 editor that I let stay in with some in-text attribution, but in retrospect I should have reverted them. I have now done that. Wasted Time R (talk) 19:25, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

It's been a month since the tag went on, with no further edits or comments from the tagger. Accordingly I'm taking the tag off. Of course improvements to the article are always welcome. And I am being more vigilant in terms of seeing that unsupported and fringe IP edits get reverted. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:52, 25 January 2021 (UTC)


 * The "live believers" have fallen into a cult mentality...after fifty years it is highly unlikely that any surviving POWs could still be alive in Vietnam or in other countries.
 * Rambo is only relevant as a Hollywood fantasy for the "let's refight the Vieetnam War and win this time" types who were still bitter over having lost but who had a certain amout of influence in Hollywood at the time. 172.78.175.74 (talk) 05:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Citation needed in Origins section?
A paragraph in the origins section says

"During the late 1970s and 1980s, the friends and relatives of unaccounted-for U.S. personnel became politically active, requesting the United States government reveal what steps were taken to follow up on intelligence regarding last-known-alive MIAs and POWs. When initial inquiries revealed important information had not been pursued, many families and their supporters asked for the public release of POW/MIA records and called for an investigation"

But no source is cited. It seems important to have some sourcing on this part because whether the US pursued usable intelligence about POWs post Vietnam War is a pretty central conflict in the POW/MIA movement. Am I ok putting a citation needed note on the paragraph?

80.115.104.219 (talk) 13:18, 18 January 2024 (UTC)