Black Market, Drugs, Prostitution, Corruption: Run by Senior NCO's

America's real military tradition.

What is going on?

(CINCINNATI) - Lying about the Vietnam War is a way of life. When some of those who “served” in Vietnam became old enough to gain power, hiding much of the truth of the war was critical to keep questions down. Everything bad in Vietnam was blamed on minorities, “bad eggs” and draftees.

This is total hogwash. Vietnam was our most corrupt war in history with a Mafia within our military stealing, not millions, but billions in food, weapons, uniforms, supplies of every kind, often leaving troops in the field without food, weapons, medicine and supplies.

Ships would unload in one port and things would be either sold on the black market in Vietnam or shipped back out for places unknown. The scale was massive. The network that allowed it blackmailed officers through widespread prostitution, payoffs and physical threats.

The biggest source of money was drugs, not a few ounces sewn into corpses like the internet rumors tell of but containers of heroin and bundles of cash big enough to fill the trunk of a car. The culprits: Senior non-commissioned officers in the Army and Marines, some arrested but most promoted and retired honorably, some as multi-millionaires.

When there was no turkey dinner on Christmas or Thanksgiving, it had been sold. When boots rotted off the feet of troops in the field, there were no replacements, they had been sold too. When malaria pills were unavailable and thousands got sick, they had been sold. Tens of billions in food, equipment, every kind of consumer good in the world was shipped to Vietnam by a grateful nation for its men in the field.

Almost none of it ever reached those it was intended for. Troops ate aging C-Rations, designated for disposal as having “gone bad,” used weapons slated for destruction like the M16E1 and wore uniforms taken off the wounded and dead.

While a few thousand fought in Vietnam, thousands more lived like kings; exotic food, luxurious living, boy and girl prostitutes daily, maid service, waxed and polished helicopters and jeeps and a life of total leisure. This is the Vietnam we saw, those of us who served in the Marines, Army, Special Forces, Navy, those of us who fought.

I wait for denials about this, but there are too many of us who know the truth and are willing to talk, including a lot of highly decorated vets and retired officers with long records of service who were more than happy to supply endless details of their personal experiences which had an unpleasant consistency.

There developed, over the Vietnam War, starting with NCO's transferred to Southeast Asia from Germany, a long history of ties to the American and Corsican Mafia with the ability to distribute heroin on a worldwide basis. That business came into flower after 1965 as club operations in Vietnam became the backdrop for one of the biggest crime syndicates in world history.

Today we have a couple of issues we are ignoring. One, of course, is that senior NCO's are meant to be the “backbone of the Army” but are also capable of manipulating acquisitions, shipments, and disbursements of any supply or equipment. Billions went mission in Iraq and nobody has been blamed. We even misplaced 250,000 weapons. How hard is it for a hundred thousand of those to have made it into the hands of terrorists? For every massive cost overrun, and their were thousands, there is someone inside the Army looking the other way.

The entire War on Terror was one cost overrun, one missing shipment, one “lost” anything after another, on and on forever with nobody being blamed, just spend and spend, ship more and more and let more and more be stolen. With billions and billions spent in Iraq, medicine, fresh water, electricity, schools, everything that was paid for, sometimes paid for twice, seems to have evaporated in a cloud of corruption. The only thing successfully built in Iraq over 5 years was fat bank accounts in Switzerland.

Complicating this even more is the fact that our military is, again, operating in the center of the world drug production and trafficking. They have access to not only production but worldwide banking, and the ability to ship narcotics around the world in aircraft designated for supply to our secret prisons with terrorist suspects meant for torture. This cloak of secrecy has created a cloak of silence around the $50 billion dollar, at wholesale, vastly higher at retail, narcotics business run out of, not only Afghanistan but Iraq, Pakistan and India.

With the CIA and its funding front thru the State Department, the USAID and their endless contractors managing projects overseen by no one, all theoretically fronts for “secret spy business” it doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure out that “monkey business” is much more likely, especially with secrecy to hide behind, mercenary enforcers and the full logistical capabilities of the United States at your disposal.

It would be easy to blame our tens of thousands of military contractor/mercenary companies, who are, undoubtedly, a major part of the drug trafficking and also “enforcement” and finance. But, who are these companies?

Surprisingly, they are many of the same NCO's that were involved in Vietnam, risen from the dead, the Vietnam “oldsters” or the younger generation, now retired also, all senior NCO's, using their lower level management expertise to make millions, often hiring security personnel from the poorest and most backward countries on earth, but also being seen under highly suspicious circumstances in the banking capitals of Dubai, Mauritius, Zurich and Geneva.

With 700 billion slated for the military by President Obama next year and a running war in Afghanistan and Pakistan in areas that should have no American security personnel, no Taliban, no reason for violence at all, I wonder how much of what is going on under the guise of terrorism is a gang war between drug cartels that include traditional warlords of Afghanistan but also Americans and key players from many other nations including Israel, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Iran and Russia.

How do we guarantee resupply or air support when the supplies may be sold and the air support may be carrying opium? How do we manage our secret rendition system when our bagged and tagged terror suspects are sitting on bales of heroin?

How do we make decisions as a democracy when billions of dollars of drug money may be flooding into Washington DC? How much does it cost to buy Congress or the Pentagon? What has been bought already? With year after year of one scandal after another and no serious effort to investigate anything, assuming that something has been amiss and that many were bought and paid for years ago is obvious.

He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change. Gordon is a lifelong PTSD sufferer from his war experiences and he is empathetic to the plight of today's veterans also suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to feature Gordon's timely and critical reports on Salem-News.com, a news organization staffed by a number of veterans, particularly former U.S. Marines.

You can send Gordon Duff an email at this address: Gpduf@aol.com