Yup, What chance did he have when he got to a country where so few of the general population have a clue how their government works let alone the details of who or what he truly was.
Since when has the mass media let facts get in the way of a good propaganda photo? Had a friend who spent years in prison in Vietnam for the crime of graduating from Michigan State University and having a father who was a high ranking South Vietnam official. At least they didn't just shoot him as they did so many others.
I saw this on the tube the day after it happened. At the time, the meme was "A Viet Cong fighter that just killed the family of..." it was a wartime execution of a NV Army Captain - out of uniform and leading a team of killers targeting non-combatants. Only later had this begun the tortured metamorphosis into the "Military murders/war crime' stuff we see today. He who controls the past (ie teaches history) controls the future.... George was right after all - in way too many things.
The other famous pic... The well known photo of Kim Phúc, taken in Trang Bang by AP photographer Nick Ut, shows her at nine years of age running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack. Oh - the rest of the story? Phúc was removed from her university as a young adult studying medicine and used as a propaganda symbol by the communist government of Vietnam. In 1986, however, she was granted permission to continue her studies in Cuba. She had converted from her family's Cao Đài religion to Christianity four years earlier. Prime Minister of Vietnam Phạm Văn Đồng became her friend and patron. After arriving in Cuba, she met Bui Huy Toan, another Vietnamese student and her future fiancé. In 1992, Phúc and Toan married. On the way to their honeymoon in Moscow, they left the plane during a refuelling stop in Gander, Newfoundland, and asked for political asylum in Canada, which was granted. The couple now live in Ajax, Ontario, near Toronto, and have two children. In 1996, Phúc met the surgeons who had saved her life. The following year, she passed the Canadian Citizenship Test with a perfect score and became a Canadian citizen. In 2015, it was reported that she was receiving laser treatment at a hospital in Miami, Florida, to reduce the scarring on her left arm and back. The treatment is being provided free of charge.
