Embassy Evacuation Vitenam - Iraq

The biggest fear of the US Government about Iraq is an update of the iconic Vietnam evacuation photo to the billion dollar embassy in Baghdad.  I may be wrong but the photo is not of the embassy but the USDAO roof top.  I am sure that the the contingency plan for the next evac will not be from the embassy.  There are certainly clear standing orders that it will be from a secure base and in the dark.  However, the evacuee does not always get to choose the time, place and order in which a forced evacuation takes place.  The Pentagon is probably studying the withdrawal from Gallipoli

Somebody also had my thought here at this link.

Might the only lasting lesson really learned from Vietnam be that defeat will not be photographed?

Who will be the last to leave?  Will they be sure that the last to leave was really the last one present.  What if someone is left behind?  Not to be military at all costs.  What about American contractors.  Make sure that any contractors left are not American.  What about Iraq citizens working for the embassy?  Nobody will ever know about their fate.  Perhaps.  The fate of French sympathizers was well known and photographed.

Send John Kerry to be the last man standing on the ladder.

Saigon fell 30 April 1975.  Daily business at the embassy prior to that is reported in this 9 April Saigon Mission Daily Cable.

There could not be too many more reports from Vietnam after this one at Wikileaks.

The subject of this secret message on Wikileaks is:  "Last Message From Saigon"

There was a lot going on in the world of US Dipolmacy on 29 and 30 April 1975.  Browsing this list at Wikileaks for keywords associated with Vietnam and Saigon and evacuation is interesting but does not provide much information except by implication and context of history in the making in retrospect.

What will the future ever look back on at the communications out of Iraq in the last days of US presence there?  Will anything related to that time ever be seen?

My second ship was off Saigon on 30 April 1975.  Browsing the web for the events at that time I found this fascinating diary.  I had probably been on the same ship when it was offloading cargo in Danang.  The APL ships and the Lykes Line ships were among the ships delivering cargo as well as United Fruit for chill and frozen.

The story about the involvement of Marines on the SS Pioneer Contender is fascinating.  The picture of the Vietnamese on the barge in Danang is certainly one of the same barges that we offloaded cargo to in the harbor when I was there.