User talk:Lester Pederson

Page - on Ho Chi Minh
I am not a Ho Chi Minh scholar or expert. However, reading this page strikes me as aggressive anti-communist propaganda. Not a moment is missed when Ho can be disparaged, doubted, criticized, demeaned, or attacked. This is intolerable from an information source from the nation that illegally manipulated Vietnam developments from the end of WWII until 1975, especially one that attacked Vietnam in 1965 using an excuse -- Gulf of Tonkin -- that has since been revealed as false and disproved hundreds of times.

Of particular historical note is the account of the build up to "elections" in 1956. The distortions are the endless, coercive narratives about how good the US was and how illegal was Ho's and "North" Vietnam's actions. This is such a one-sided account that it should be deleted entirely. What is especially and dangerously omitted is the fact that Ho Chi Minh led in virtually ALL national polls in Vietnam that Ho would win the presidency for a united Vietnam at 80%. That's the reason the US sabotaged all efforts to have the elections. Omitting this is beyond historical revisionism and slops into historical lying.

Even the unqualified endorsement of "North" and "South" Vietnam is a warped representation of the geographical record. Ho's forces and the entire NLF and Viet Minh never conceded that the division to North and South was a credible action and certainly not an actual agreement to create a state of South Vietnam.

Several contributors have attempted to correct the record here but the page is a page out of the Johnson and Nixon administration and maintained as such. Hopefully legitimate scholars can address the severe misrepresentations located in the Ho Chi Minh page.

Doug Paterson