Boomer remembers Saigon … Kabul is so similar … Helicopters evacuating people from rooftops and parking lots … the boat people … South Vietnamese pilots flying their planes to anywhere but Vietnam … aircraft carriers dumping planes over the side to have room for refugees … Operation Babylift to save the mixed race children from a lifetime of severe discrimination.

God have mercy on the Afghan people and America (but not Biden, Austin, nor Milley).

Fall of Saigon - CIA station chief's last cable

“This will be final message from Saigon station. It has been a long fight and we have lost. . . . Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off.”

CIA Vietnam station chief Thomas Polgar, 30 Apr 1975

https://img.ifunny.co/images/107d42d5d53375f38b57b660b954e76c1c968c407e8c585323d0d0f9def8d217_1.jpg

Long blog post where Polgar discusses the last days of Saigon:

SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2013

Tom Polgar Remembers

Thomas Polgar

"We Were a Defeated Army"

https://lde421.blogspot.com/2013/01/tom-polgar-remembers.html

Obituary of Tom Polgar:

Thomas Polgar, CIA official during the fall of Saigon, dies

By Matt Schudel March 31, 2014

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/thomas-polgar-cia-official-during-the-fall-of-saigon-dies/2014/03/31/f11d6f36-b6a5-11e3-a7c6-70cf2db17781_story.html

>>14394721

Dunno, given all that we've learned in the last four years.

>>14394705

More similarity between the fall of Kabul and the fall of Saigon

Blog where Polgar discusses the last days of Saigon:

SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2013

Tom Polgar Remembers

Thomas Polgar

"We Were a Defeated Army"

https://lde421.blogspot.com/2013/01/tom-polgar-remembers.html

One day I had an opportunity to ask Mr. Kissinger what he thought of our intelligence. Not speaking of Vietnam, but generally. He was getting this big flow of intelligence from CIA world wide at the time. What did he think of the value of it? And he thought for a moment and then he said, "Well, when it supports my policy, it's very useful." And I think we are here at the heart of the problem. It is that American policy is not formulated in response to what the intelligence shows. We first formulate the policy and then we try to find the intelligence to support it.

The three principal collectors of intelligence in Vietnam were Military Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the CIA. There was actually very little problem with that. There was no conflict between the intelligence that was being collected. We never had a situation where the DAO-DIA would say something entirely different from everyone else. And we coordinated very closely with Bill LeGro who was the intelligence chief for DAO throughout most of the period after the Paris Agreement. That was not a problem at all. The problem was that American policy was based on the premise that the Vietnam War was finished. The American forces were out and there was no way whatever that President Ford was going to risk his reelection chances by reintroducing American forces into Vietnam.