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I had a lot of fun in Cambodia, much more so in Cambodia than Vietnam.

For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so.

The crimes committed by the North Vietnamese regime against the Vietnamese people were minor compared to the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodians, but for us on the left they were emotionally far more significant.

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Frankly, I would not have made any difference in Vietnam, but much more is what difference it would have made in me.

Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship,... Apparently some in the Vietnamese government don't want to do that and that's their decision.