I'm glad you took the time to write back. I understand your concerns and will try to at least clarify some of the points:

1. I am one of MANY people who believe the war was essentially won by the end of '72. Before they died, I discussed this at length with both former DCI Bill Colby (who knew the conflict as well as any American, in my view, having first become involved in the 1950s as CIA station chief in Saigon), and my good friend Douglas Pike (who was America's top authority on the other side.) But they are but two of the dozens of experts and experienced observers who have expressed this view to me over the decades.. I've written so many e-mails in recent months I'm not sure what I mentioned to you, but other than in Quang Tri province the "enemy" did not control a single population center. Every major city and town was in government hands, and the enemy was confined to hiding out in delta swamps or mountain jungles.

2. Even Hanoi now admits that the "VC" was effectively destroyed by the Tet Offensive of Feb. 1968.

3. Hanoi's major Easter Offensive was stopped by ARVN with U.S. air power.

4. For the first time in the war, we began serious attacks on important targets in North Vietnam that the JCS and CIA had been urging us to hit in '72. By late December, most of the key targets had been destroyed, Moscow and Bejing had cut their aid and urged Hanoi to "cool it" for a few more years, and Hanoi had exhausted its supply of SAM missiles -- which made them totally vulernable to U.S. air power.

NOW, having said that, your observation that the war ended in 1975 and that our side lost is exactly right. I know that well, because I was there for most of April 1975 and I came out with the final evacuation. (Oh, I also discussed the situation at length with Ambassador Graham Martin and the DCM, and both agreed we had essentially won the war by the end of '72).

What happened? The bombing forced Hanoi back to Paris to sign the 27 Jan. '73 Peace Accord. That could have been enforced by the use (or even the threat to use) our B-52s on Guam. But in May '73, Congress entered the picture and passed a statute prohibiting the expenditure of Treasury funds for "combat operations" anywhere in Indochina. That made it unlawful for us to continue helping South Vietnam, and that in turn led Moscow and Bejing to greatly step up their aid so Hanoi could conquer its neighbors by conventional warfare. (Mao, Giap, ChŽ, and other communist theorists all agreed that the final stage of guerrilla warfare had to be conventional war.)

Now to Senator Kerry. I don't know what happened during his very brief visit to South Vietnam. I do know that his CO and the doctor who treated his first "wound" said that others (both used the plural) who were on that mission told them there was no enemy contact and that Kerry had essentially injured himself while screwing around with an M-79. (My words, not theirs.) I am told that Kerry will not allow release of his medical records, which in my view does not strengthen his case.

Nor do I know what happened in the Silver Star incident. Brinkley writes that Zumwalt said he made the award as an "impact" award to improve moral. Kerry's M-60 gunner is reported by Brinkley and others to have once remarked that Kerry got his Silver Star by shooting an unarmed, wounded man in the back." Minus the "spin," that story strikes me as being consistent with the facts Kerry acknowledges. (Kerry claimed that the kid had reloaded his B-40 and asserts that, rather than trying to flee, he was merely trying to increase his distance to the boat so he could take another shot.) Everyone seems to agree that the VC had been shot by the M-60 and that Kerry ran after him with an M-16 and then killed him. I think it highly unlikely that we will ever be able to prove the intent in the heads of either Kerry or the VC.

I have not seen an account of this incident that suggests the VC was not alone at that location. (There are reports of fire coming earlier from a different spot on the bank of the river and perhaps the other side of the river as well.) But at the same time, I don't have any reason to believe that Kerry KNEW with any certainty that he was not running into a VC ambush. So I give him SOME points for his action, on balance. (I don't think the B-40 constituted a serious threat at the ranges involved as compared to Kerry's M-16, even if the kid had been better trained. I assume he was not very well trained by the fact that he fired the rocket from too close a range for it to arm, which a more experienced or better trained guerrilla would perhaps know.)

Now, is wanting to become President an evil dream? NO. Not at all. But motives are in my view often important, especially when evaluating claims of heroism.

It is noteworthy, in my view, that of the 20 officers in the photo Kerry used in his early ads, only 3 support his candidacy openly -- one of whom is Kerry himself. In contrast, a majority of them have signed a letter saying they view him as unfit for service as CinC. That's significant in my view. And the sense that I get from reading their stuff and talking to a few of them is that they felt he was simply doing the minimum required of him to credential himself for a political career. He wanted to follow JFK's footsteps. And in that context, I find it very easy to believe that the entire stunt of (contrary to clear orders) ordering his boat to shore so he could dispatch the wounded enemy guerrilla might well have been intended to get him a hero medal at relatively minor risk. But that's just a guess.

On a scale of 10, I'd probably give Kerry a 6 or 7 for his service in Vietnam -- which is a higher mark that I would give myself, even though I was there much longer than he was. For whatever it is worth, although I lied about medical problems to get into the military (having been thrown out of Air Force ROTC on medical grounds), and volunteered for assignment as an Infantry recon platoon leader, when I got to Vietnam my prior expertise about the enemy led the Embassy to have me detailed to work in their "North Vietnamese/Viet Cong Affairs Division," and I returned from the war without a scratch on me. I lost the wife I dearly loved because when I volunteered to return for a second tour she concluded I had chosen Vietnam over her, and I'd gladly have traded an arm to have her back. But I still feel guilty that I returned alive and healthy while better men came home in bags.. My real point in even discussing Kerry's military record is that he MAY not have been the great "war hero" he likes to pretend to be.

If you've seen "Saving Private Ryan," you may recall the attitude of the private when they told him he was going home. He didn't want to leave his men. He wanted to carry his share of the load. That is a common characteristic of soldiers--all the more so of true "heroes." Men who have been wounded three times ARE permitted to request to go home, and that was as much a lawful option for Kerry (despite the superficial character of his injuries--UNLESS, of course, you conclude that his first Purple Heart was based upon a lie about a "firefight"), and exercising that right was as legal as Bush's decision to seek a position in the Guard or Reserves. But I knew men in Vietnam who were on their second or third tours and had been repeatedly wounded seriously who would lie about their injuries so they could stay and help protect their comrades. They were the real heroes of the war in my view.

As a very important distinction of the law, killing an enemy combatant who has not been wounded to the point of being clearly hors de combat is NOT an act of "murder" because soldiers in wartime receive something we often refer to as "combatant's privilege"--a right to kill the enemy on behalf of their government. Several people have alleged that shooting a fleeing soldier in the back is a "war crime," and that is untrue even if he has thrown down his weapon and is screaming "HELP!" as he runs away. The theory behind this is that a combatant who runs away today may come back tonight and kill you. (This is why the critics who accused the United States of "war crimes" for continuing to kill Iraqi troops on the "Highway of Death" at the end of Operation Desert Storm were mistaken. If they can walk, run, or drive away and have not indicated a desire to surrender, they are lawful targets. (Normally shooting a sleeping human being who has personally done nothing to threaten you is an unlawful homicide and likely murder, but in war it is perfectly lawful to toss a grenade into a tent where enemy soldiers sleep or even drop a bomb on their barracks at 3 AM.)

To me, as I say, his performance in Vietnam on balance scores him a few points. I can't be certain of exactly what happened, and since perhaps the most important witness (the M-60 gunner who claimed Kerry shot a wounded unarmed man in the back) is now dead, I'm prepared to give Kerry some points for his conduct. (But I do have some doubts. If Kerry had really wanted to "serve his country" in time of war, he was already a trained pilot and the Navy very much needed pilots. The choices he made don't strike me as being those of heroes, and Brinkley (and others) use quotes from Kerry that strongly suggest he did NOT want to go into harm's way. It is clear, for example, that when he volunteered for Swift boats they were being used in a relatively safe role, and Brinkley says that when Kerry was told of the new mission he replied "Do I have any choice?" or words to that effect.

To me, and most of the Vietnam vets with whom I have spoken about Kerry, the biggest problem by FAR was his behavior with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This was a group that used to hand out leaflets in America alleging that U.S. infantry soldiers in Vietnam were "monsters" who routinely murdered people.

One might argue that Kerry was only in Vietnam a few short months and might well have had no idea what was really going on. But the Globe and Brinkley quote his "friends" at the time as saying he didn't seem "anti-war" until he withdrew from the Democratic primary and began looking for an "issue" to promote his political ambitions.

I'll overlook Jane Fonda's obvious treason because she was an unneducated Hollywood bimbo who was married to a Communist and surrounded by people with radical views. Some of her ignorance was almost humorous, such as the time she told Johnny Carson about the B-52 bombers taking off from the aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf. (In case you aren't into military hardware, a B-52 requires roughly a 12,000-foot runway.) And when she made radio broadcasts telling American sailors in the Gulf to refuse to load the bombs (because they were filled with poison gas that would make the sailors liable as war criminals after the war) she may even have believed it.

John Kerry had the finest education money can buy and military training as well. If he really was ignorant and simply duped by the Communists and Black Panthers he was dealing with, he should not have been undermining his country in a time of war authorized by Congress and he should not have been going abroad as an anti-war leader to meet with enemy leaders (a felony he acknowledged at the time he realized was a crime).

His fellow Swift boat officers say they weren't "committing war crimes" or "stoned 24 hours a day," and I find it hard to believe that his experience was all THAT different from that of other similarly situated officers.

There is a LOT more I could say, but I'm supposed to be finishing up a book tonight and tomorrow and suspect you don't really want to hear any more.

It is okay that we disagree on this. That's one of the wonderful things about a free society. In November the people will make a choice, and I will abide by that choice as American democrats have since the days of George Washington.

I don't know what I will say when I get to Boston in 2 weeks with Mr. Sherman. He has indicated that we are not gathering to discuss Messrs. Kerry or Bush, and I assumed my presentation(s) would focus upon the merits of the war and the factual arguments used against the war -- issues I researched and wrote about at length even before I entered active duty and well before I ever heard of John Kerry. If I speak critically of individuals, I would expect Robert McNamara to get a lot more attention than John Kerry. But these kinds of programs are difficult to really "script" in advance, and I'll likely play a few things by ear and "roll with the punches" if things get heated up a bit. It is my hope that everyone will maintain a civil attitude so we can have an honest exchange of views. I would personally love it if Sen. Kerry would designate a "champion" to defend his position on the war so we could have a serious debate on the merits. But I don't anticipate that will happen.

I want to talk about facts. I've spent a very long time -- off and on, nearly 40 years -- studying, writing about, and teaching about the Vietnam War. I don't pretend to have a monopoly on the facts, but I take pride in the fact that since my undergraduate days I have been willing to debate anyone and to defend my understanding of the facts. Just by the law of averages, I'm quite confident I'm wrong about some things I feel passionately about. And I think that's okay.

As Thomas Jefferson said in 1820, this University "will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

When people like Bill Colby, Doug Pike, or I say we believed that the war was essentially won by the end of '72, that is an _expression of OPINION -- but it is a conclusion based upon facts rather than values. (Saying the war should or should not have been fought would involved values.) I've spent a very long time studying these issues, and I stand ready to explain my views (and also to CHANGE them if I find more persuasive evidence during the ongoing search for the truth) to people of good will at any time (consistent with the other demands on my time, which includes my role as a single parent). I do not demand accord will my views as the price of my friendship, and I relish friends who disagree -- for, again to paraphrase Jefferson -- the man who corrects an error in my work serves me twice, by helping me find the truth and by preventing me from continuing to impart error to others.

Again, I don't ask that you accept any of my own conclusions. You are entitled to your opinions and I would not have you conceal them on the theory that they might cause me pain. I'm used to communicating with people who are shocked at some of my views, and I have concluded that above all other debts I must be true to myself in the search for truth.