OT mysterious quote (was: Horcrus disposal (was Re: The List update))

[pippin_999]

> Now Eustace_Scrubb:
> Being a pedant (and a historian), I tried to find where
> Everything2.com was getting the source of the quote...and I can't find
> any direct attribution of this to MacArthur--only through the Princess
> Bride connection.

Pippin:
MacArthur met with JFK in April of 1961 and advised that "it would
be a mistake to fight in Laos" and that the line should be held at
Formosa, Japan and the Phillipines. 

ttp://millercenter.virginia.edu/pubs/prp_stories/macarthur_china.pdf

It seems that this became "it would be a mistake to
fight in Southeast Asia" in popular memory.

Noam Chomsky in Rethinking Camelot quotes an article by Raskin 
writing in The American Historical Review that MacArthur's successor Ridgway 
"argued in a continuous barrage of memoranda that the United States
should steer clear of an Asian land war." I haven't been able to trace this
one further though. Does anyone have access to the Raskin article?

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/rc/rc-c01-s26.html

Pippin