An unnamed source deep inside the defense establishment has broken his silence to national security analyst James S. Robbins – senior editorial writer for foreign affairs at The Washington Times. Robbins will break the story in tonight’s online version of The Washington Times, which will hit newsstands tomorrow. The source – who provided supporting documentation – has revealed that the Pentagon has decided radically to cut back a Congressionally mandated program to honor the nation's Vietnam veterans and is forbidding the commission charged with planning the Vietnam Veteran Commemoration to reach out to veterans groups, schools, libraries and interested citizens. The move feeds the strong perception that the Obama administration is anti-veteran and anti-military.
In 2008 Congress authorized the Secretary of Defense to conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, and to thank and honor the veterans who were denied the respect they had earned on Vietnamese battlefields. Robbins believes that radically cutting back this program is a betrayal of those who served to protect our nation. “The Vietnam Vets were dishonored once," he said, "they must not be dishonored again.”