I took no offense at your questions. In fact, I did truly appreciate them and the spirit in which they were asked.

There are those who may come here, read and fail to understand what they have actually seen take place here. Z-dr and I cross swords often, not out of animosity but out of a twisted pleasure we take in tweaking each other's noses from time to time. I disagree with him on many subjects and ideas, but I do like the man because, to me, he is like all of us. I honestly believe he is trying to find answers to questions that seem to defy a rational answer. What others mistakenly take for vicious arguing is, in reality, nothing more than two very capable men beating one another about the head and shoulders with those stuffed "bats" shrinks like to get people to use on one another. That's how much real damage we do to one another and we would not have it any other way, if we could.

Would the North Vietnamese communists have overrun their southern neighbors had we not intervened? Absolutely! Would they have had to conscript villagers and carry out campaigns of terror on the hapless citizens of South Viet Nam? Look to the realities of what transpired after we abandoned those people. They conscripted people to be their eyes and ears among the polulation. They forced people into labor and "re-education" camps that rival the stalags of Russia and the concentration camps of Hitler's Third Reich and tehy conducted a modern day holocaust of their own socialist making. They slaughtered thousands upon tens of thousands to impose their "enlightened socialist" ways upon the people of that small nation. It was their intent all along for the anethema of tyranny is a free people.

Hiding our heads in the sand, ostrich-like, would have done nothing to alleviate the unnecessary suffering of those people. Look at the position and vulnerablity of an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. To me, it is the cowards' way out. Look how well the French have perfected the methods for doing this. Far too many of those 58,300+ were young men I knew personally. I served with them. I shared their hardships and suffering. We had a common bond of blood shed side by side. I commanded them. I gave the orders that resulted in many of them dying there so horribly. I am still suffering the agony of those events and those decisions, but I will tell you this... I would do it all over again were I called upon to do so. I would sadly make the same sacrifice of my friends al over again were I called upon to do so for I think we were trying to do the right thing there, even if we had to fight the enemy and our own people in the attempt. That, in a nutshell, is your answer.

Our political and military leaders have gone far out of their way to "unlearn" the lessons of our own history. I have seen some of the most idiotic, and to my way of thinking, demonstrably criminal betrayal of our fighting men and women by those political sleazes, diplomatic fools and military leaders. Despite all that, we canot undo the real need we had for being there. We bought those people time they would not have had if we had not gone there.

History is almost always written by the winners in any armed conflict. In the case of the Viet Nam War, it has been written by leftists and socialists who twist the truth until it fits whatever mold they wish it to fill. The American fighting man did not "lose" that war. Our politicians, diplomats and military leaders stole our possibel victory from us. So long as there remains just one of us alive who was there, tortured by nightmares for the rest of our lives as we may be, the perverted views they disseminate about those days and times will not go unchallenged.

I too have little faith in any elected official and even less respect for a bureaucrat. Our system has devolved to a point where the man or woman who has the most likelihood of being the right person to represent us has the least chance of being elected. Competency in public service brings its own punishments. We no longer have true "statesmen" who hold public office. We have hacks we send to Washington, D. C., to our state capitols and county seats whose performances are measured by the amount of pork they can "bring home" and the number of intrusive social programs in favor of one group or another they can impose upon us while taxing our productivity into the crapper. For the likes of Teddy kennedy or Hillary Rodham Clinton to have anything to say about the way our nation operates its military is a frightening thought for me. We hold Robert McNamara up to public accolades when I think he should have been tried and executed for treason. We have Colin Powell, a political animal who rose to the top of the ranks of our military not because of his military acumen but because of his skin color and his ability to kiss the backsides of liberal politicians. We elevate him and deride the "Stormin' Normans" who are the real, true strength of our American fighting men and women.

Were our men and women in uniform betrayed by our political leaders and fellow citizens? Yes, we most definitely were. When our leadership did the things that almost forced the North Vietnamese to abandon their efforts to subjugate their southern neighbors, our citizens, acting under the burden of false, hidden agenda misstatements of facts in our public forums and in the left oriented media, pressured our politicians to stop doing what it took to win there. Had we continued to bomb the illegal North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia. Laos and Thailand inot oblivion and to rain devastation on the North, Uncle Ho, General Giap and their minions would have gone to the peace table in desperation as they started to do, no matter what shape it was, long before the cowardly sell-out of the South Vietnamese people over which our mealy-mouthed politicians and diplomats presided in Paris. Somehow, I can think of no more appropriate place to hold such a perverted betrayal of a people than Paris, France. The French are masters at the art of surrender to tyranny.

And, to be very candid about my personal feelings, I was, and remain, disgusted with those who spit on us and called us vicious names, but their perfidy comes nowhere near the depths of the betrayal many of us felt and still feel that came at the hands of those who claimed to support the troops but were "only opposed the military or government." Their treachery is even more odious to me. I often have to fight back the urge to apply some ten knuckle re-educaton to some of those slimes when they mouth their crap to this day.

Have these answers helped your understanding, sir? I hope so. Oddly, I have found that trying to answer them thoughtfully and honestly in response to your questions has been somewhat of a pallative for me personally. Thank you for that gift. And, I did dream of that legless little girl's smile last night. Now I wish I had been able to buy her even more dolls while I was there.