These are 17 critical points I noticed. They are in chronological sequence, but I did not note their precise time in the program:
1. He anachronistically intersperses maudlin vignettes, incongruous scenes of US combat, & statements of US war veterans with what is ostensibly a chronological historical narrative.
FACT: Most of those vignettes, scenes, & statements do not match the parts of the chronological narrative where they appear.
2. He lumps the Vietnam statements of 5 US Presidents together, as if they were equally responsible for the conduct & outcome of the US role in the Vietnam War.
FACT: Only LBJ was responsible for the major escalation of the war & the restrictive ROE that prevented a decisive defeat of the NVA by the US military.
2. Ho Chi Minh was a patriot first & secondarily a Communist.
FACT: HCM was a professional Leninist & paid agent of the Communist International (Comintern) branch of the USSR government for decades before he returned to Vietnam. In 1954, he subordinated the sovereignty of Vietnam to international Communism by yielding to the demands of Communist Russia & Communist China for a divided Vietnam.
3. HCM rallied the Vietnamese people to resist the Japanese occupiers.
FACT: There was no significant Vietnamese armed resistance to the Jap occupation, & HCM was unknown to most Vietnamese during WW II.
4. Giap originated the Communist model of revolutionary warfare, beginning with guerrilla warfare.
FACT: Giap slightly modified the 3-stage model originated & successfully practiced by Mao, who subordinated the guerrilla phase to the semi-conventional phase & subordinated both of the first 2 phases to the decisive conventional phase based on the principles of war attributed to Clausewitz.
5. The first US advisors to the ARVN taught them conventional warfare, rather than counterinsurgency warfare.
FACT: The first US advisors to the ARVN from1957 to 1964 were the Army Special Forces, who taught them small-unit Ranger tactics & after 1962 counterinsurgency tactics.
6. Ho Chi Minh was pro-American.
FACT: Ho was fanatically pro-Lenin & only pretended to be pro-US for a short time in 1945 in the hope of getting US official recognition & aid.
7. The Vietnam War was a civil war.
FACT: Both North Vietnam (the DRV) & South Vietnam (the RVN) were diplomatically recognized as two sovereign, independent nations, just as North & South Korea & East & West Germany were. A war between two sovereign nations is not a civil war.
8. One interviewee says the US forces were losing the war, & no other interviewee disagrees.
FACT: From 1965 to 1973 US forces took every strategically significant enemy position they were ordered to take, defended every strategically significant friendly position they were ordered to defend, & killed more than ten times as many NVA & VC troops as they lost in combat with VC & NVA troops.
9. The US paid 80% of the cost of the French war against the Viet Minh.
FACT: False.
10. The Vietnam War was not part of the Cold War of the US against the USSR & Red China.
FACT: False.
11. Eisenhower said HCM would have won an election for President, implying HCM's popularity in both South & North Vietnam.
FACT: Eisenhower did not say that HCM would have won a free, UN-supervised election, because HCM would never have agreed to such an election in the totalitarian DRV. The only kind of election HCM would have permitted in the DRV was a rigged election, in which the larger population in the DRV would have outvoted the smaller RVN population.
12. Many anti-Communists left North Vietnam in 1954 & 55.
FACT: Many more people tried to leave, but were prevented by the DRV government from doing so.
13. HCM was idealistic & patriotic, but Diem was Machiavellian & authoritarian.
FACT: Diem was far more idealistic & patriotic than HCM, who was more Machiavellian & far more totalitarian.
14. Diem prevented the peaceful unification of the two Vietnam's.
FACT: HCM wanted the unification only under Communist control, which Diem rejected, as did most of the RVN population.
15. HCM did not plan a conventional invasion of South Vietnam.
FACT: After Le Duan became First Secretary of the ruling Lao Dong Party, HCM was an irrelevant figurehead. Le Duan & the majority of the Party's Politburo did want a conventional invasion of the RVN & attempted it in 1965 & 1972 before finally succeeding in 1975.
16. The RVN was never a real nation, but the DRV, by implication, was a real nation.
FACT: Both the RVN & the DRV were diplomatically & equally recognized as sovereign nations.
17. Diem's anti-Communist actions were the cause of the VC terrorism, which was a form of popular resistance against Diem.
FACT: The VC terror campaign was ordered by the DRV as stage 1 of Mao's 3-stage model to destroy the RVN government.