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Notes -
This sounds like POW-MIA conspiracy theory mangled in retelling.
TL;DR: many more Americans than officially announced were captured by North Vietnam. US government knew about it, and deliberately let them die in captivity.
Mainstream history take
Conspiracy theory take
Oh the POW/MiA conspiracies are in my view true, and separate.
What I'm saying is that I was told directly, riding to a trade show with a one time Green Beret, that so and so got blown to bits in front of him and the name isn't on the wall. This is the same story I've heard from multiple vets.
Now, it's not impossible they were confused! They missed the name, the name he went under to his buddies wasn't his legal name that's listed on the wall ("James <estranged father's name>" legally; "Jimmy <Mother's name>" to his friends), the guy didn't die but was grievously wounded and 40 years of alcohol have conflated complex and traumatic memories, or they're flat lying to make a point about Vietnam. But the dynamic is the same: you have one guy claiming a few names are missing out of 59,000; well it's probably just an error and the overall narrative remains true. But how many errors can you cover up before the narrative itself is false?
Idk what that number that allows Chinese COVID dead to disappear into the ether would be. But it's more than they were reporting prior. At that point, a smart journalist could have collected enough names to throw numbers off. Now they need a big enough number that reporting its falsehood becomes difficult, impossible without setting off government alarm bells. Can you gather 100,000 anecdotes without getting into trouble in China? I doubt it.
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