We link here to Jim DiEugenio’s debate with Robert Buzzanco over Vietnam and who Kennedy was. Buzzanco was upset about the publicity Oliver Stone was getting on liberal sites promoting the JFK Revisited documentaries, so he invited Noam Chomsky onto his podcast Green and Red, where they both blasted Oliver, all three of his films on JFK, and Kennedy, who Chomsky compared to Trump and Reagan. The next week, Buzzanco issued a challenge to anyone from the film to a debate. Jim accepted this challenge, but stipulated that it happen on a neutral site, Aaron Good's podcast American Exception.

The efforts by the mainstream media to malign the accomplishments and legacy of President Kennedy continue in force almost 60 years after his death, so Jim DiEugenio expands his new series thwarting the LBJ apologists and hagiographers by examining the background and work of Mark Updegrove as part of these efforts and correcting the many flaws in his historical comprehension.

Lauding its brilliant dramatic conceit along with copious and fresh source material and alluring insights, Michael LeFlem reviews Dr. Greg Poulgrain’s JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia as one of the best reads in its genre.

Jim DiEugenio evaluates the new Showtime documentary, The One and Only Dick Gregory, and provides missing insight into Gregory’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his expanding agenda toward opposition to the Vietnam War and focus on the common class struggle that culminated in the Poor People’s March.

J.G. Michael, at:  Parallax Views

Dennis Bernstein, at:  CounterPunch

Bruce Riedel, at:  Brookings

Matthew Rozsa, at:  Salon

Oliver Stone’s interview with Paris Match, translation provided courtesy of Bill Simpich via Google translate.

Jim DiEugenio shows how distorted the lens is that CounterPunch writer David Schultz looks through to reach his own interpretation of the lesson of Vietnam that the U.S. should have applied to Afghanistan. The only lesson we learn from history is indeed that we learn nothing from it, if we rely on discredited sources like Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest.