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From: Francis Hamit
Date: 2/19/2003
Time: 9:01:42 AM
Remote Name: 209.179.226.114
John: I had my own experiences with the anti-war movement when I returned to the University of Iowa in 71, after two years in Germany. A lot of it was nasty and personal. Vietnam Vets were targeted. As for LBJ, he was the victim of bad intelligence. Westmoreland basically cooked the books on the enemy strength figures. The result was that we were caught with our pants down at Tet. A few months before that my father, who was a full colonel in the Army Medical Corps, was on an inspection tour there. I've got a copy of his report and it makes interesting reading, He found it hard to believe we were winning when the VC could moratar areas in downtown Siagon and disrupt operations there. He'd been in WWII and Korea. He retired six months later while I was there. There have been entire books written about why we lost the war. You are right that it was lost in the streets here. At the Paris Peace talks an American Gneral allegley said to his Vietamese counterpart "You never beat us militarily", to which the Vietnamese replied "That is true. It is also illrelevant." I have my own bitterness which I may eventually distill into a novel. What is obvious to me is that we were arroagant beyond beleif, depended too much on our "superior" technology and didn't pay attention to the basics. The North Vietnamese won because they had the will. We didn't.