Vietnam: 50 Years Remembered

This is kind of an old fashioned documentary. Trying to be non controversial, yet cheerleading in a stodgy way for the soldiers.

And yet that doesn't stop them from sometimes being deliberately false. The Gulf of Tonkin is falsely shown as a straight forward battle. No mention at all of how much of it was simply made up to justify the war and get the Resolution passed. Protests are often vaguely mentioned. Nothing at all about how mainstream they were, over 7 million, conservatives and religious groups protesting the war too.

Again and again, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon press conferences are shown at length. No analysis. Much of this is military history, recitations of battles, body counts. No mention of how often those counts were inflated.

Other falsehoods- Troops were mistreated when they came home. That's been debunked endlessly. The Spitting Image shows how most vets reported being treated well, and many of them took part in antiwar protests. The claims of spitting were made up 20 years later, started by Rambo films.

If you want some accounts of soldiers wo were there, go ahead and watch. Skip past the rest. Otherwise it's not very good.