Thursday, January 13, 2011
Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley
Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley
Verity Press, Inc., 1998
592 pages plus 16 pages of photos, Appendices, notes and index
Description
The men and women of the Vietnam War deserved more than America was willing to give.
Three decades later, the war, which never left our collective consciousness, still ignites passion among its participants.
Slowly, the war has come back to haunt us. Legions of homeless Vietnam veterans are in the street, hundreds of thousands of them are suffering from Agent Orange or Post TRaumatic Stress Disorder, and more of them have died from suicide than died in the war...or so the social advocates and the media tell us.
G. G. Burkett in over ten years of research in the National Archives, filing hundreds of requests for military documents under the Freedom of Information Act, uncovered a massive distortion of history, a distortion that has cost the US taxpayer billions of dollars. Mr. Burkett's work has toppled national political leaders and put criminals in jail.
The author shows killers who have fooled the most astute prosecutors and gotten away with murder, phony heroes who have become the object of award-winning documentaries on national network television, and liars and fabricators who have flooded major publishing houses with false tales of heroism which have become best-selling biographies.
Not only do Burkett and Whitley show the price of the myth has been enormous for society, but they spotlight how it has severely denigrated the service, patriotism, and gallantry of the best warriora America ever produced.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part 1: The Image
1. A Year in Vietnam
2. Welcome Home, Baby Killer
3. Will the Real Vietnam Vet Stand Up
4. The Ragtag Brigade
5. CBS Hits "The Wall Within"
Part 2: The Trauma of WAr
6. Atrocities: The Good War Versus the Bad War
The Creation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
8. Rambo: An American HEro
9. Would I Lie to You?
10. The VA and the PSTD Epidemic
11. The Vietnam Veteran's guide to Tax-free Living
12. PTSD Made Easy
13. "Vietnam Kiled Him": Suicide
14. An Army on the streets: Homelessness
Part 3. Stolen Valor
15. The Purple Heart Flea Market
16. Fudging the REcords
17. War Stories and Other Lies: Writers Go to Vietnam
18. The Historian and the "Gay Berret"
19. The Minority Myth: Blacks in Vietnam
20. Baby, You Looked Like the Cong: Women and Vietnam
21. Bogus Guests at the Hanoi Hilton
Part 4. Victims and Heroes
22. The Myth of Agent Orange
23. The VVA: Vietnam Victims of America
24. America's WAiling Wall
Appendices:
1. Medal of Honor, Vietnam
2. Distinguished Service Cross, Vietnam
3. Navy Cross, Vietnam
4. Air Force Cross, Vietnam
5. US Military POWs, Vietnam (returned alive)
Endnotes
Index
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