Vietnam War with successful POW rescue ops

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Name-Bright-Light-Efforts-Vietnam/dp/0440226503

Many authors on the secret war in Vietnam Laos & Cambodia discuss how there was Project BRIGHT LIGHT in place as a means for SOG to secretly rescue US aircrew & special ops personnel who'd been taken prisoner. However, none of these planned ops ever recovered any US POWs- even the highly successful Son tay raid (Op KINGPIN), due to factors such as SOG networks being compromised by VC/NVA spies. Now, WI there actually had been such covert rescue raids undertaken (in addition to KINGPIN), with at least some US POWs rescued by SOG ?
 
It sure would've embarassed the North Vietnamese, that's for sure. If POWs go in front of the cameras only a few days after being rescued, and tell what had happened to them, not just at that particular prison, but at others in the NVN prison system, you can bet the NVN would have lost a tremendous amount of face, and not only moved POWs into secure lockups in Downtown Hanoi (as they did do after the Son Tay Raid), but prison conditions would've improved, more or less on the same pace as they did IRL. And the "useful idiots" who persisted in parroting the NVN line on "lenient and humane treatment" would have had to adjust their line, or shut up, as who's going to be believed by the majority of Americans-a POW who's only a week or two out of a NVN prison, still with the physical scars of torture, or some idiot like Tom Hayden or David Dellinger, who's just parroting the NVN line, and had met POWs who had either been tortured into the meeting, or were collaborating just to save their skins from said torture?
 
I agree 100% with Matt. The other effect would be that there would have been more of a public demand for a complete accounting in 1973 before the collapse of S. Vietnam removed any bargaining capacity. Public opinion might have supported more support to SVN with equipment & intel after our pullout, and a credible threat of renewed unrestricted air warfare if we did not get full and complete info.

Even in 1973 we knew that there were POWs who had be captured, seen by others, and yet were never accounted for.
 
It sure would've embarassed the North Vietnamese, that's for sure. If POWs go in front of the cameras only a few days after being rescued, and tell what had happened to them, not just at that particular prison, but at others in the NVN prison system, you can bet the NVN would have lost a tremendous amount of face, and not only moved POWs into secure lockups in Downtown Hanoi (as they did do after the Son Tay Raid), but prison conditions would've improved, more or less on the same pace as they did IRL. And the "useful idiots" who persisted in parroting the NVN line on "lenient and humane treatment" would have had to adjust their line, or shut up, as who's going to be believed by the majority of Americans-a POW who's only a week or two out of a NVN prison, still with the physical scars of torture, or some idiot like Tom Hayden or David Dellinger, who's just parroting the NVN line, and had met POWs who had either been tortured into the meeting, or were collaborating just to save their skins from said torture?

After their release, many believed that the prisoners had been tortured after the release in order to look that way. Not even the appearance of men rescued from Son Tay or whereever, and looking like concentration camp inmates, will shake that mind-set. Some will say that the men are actors; others that the raid was earlier, sufficient to "condition" the man, some will say that the prisoners did it to themselves, and so on.
 
The problem with that is that even those newspaper editors and op-ed writers who were against the war, are going to say something like this: "We who are against the war in no way, shape, or form, approve of North Vietnam's treatment of our prisoners. Anyone who believed the North Vietnamese line of "lenient and humane treatment" ought to shed those beliefs as of right now. If the peace movement is to regain the support lost since the POWs' rescue and their revelations about their captivity, we must here and now distance ourselves from such conduct on the part Hanoi. Otherwise, President Nixon and his supporters will paint us as stooges of Hanoi, and complict in the North's behavior." The fringe who openly wanted NVN to win will say what they will, but the mainstream opposition to the war will have to say something along those lines if they want the average American to listen to what they have to say. Otherwise, Tricky Dick will paint those opposed to the war in every way he can think of (nasty campaign commercials attacking anti-war members of Congress, full-page ads in newspapers doing the same, etc.). And unless the Democraps come out and say "We're against the war, but are no friends of Hanoi", they will suffer the same disaster in the '72 election that they really did.
 
Top