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The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived.

These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam.

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.

We have as a nation been duped by those who use our guilt about how we treated the innocent pawns in the Vietnam War game - the soldiers - into missing the point once again about the utter senselessness that is war.

The conclusion that many uniformed military came away from Vietnam with was that political interference, dominance of strategy and even tactics were a very bad way to conduct a war, and that indeed, if that was going to be our practice, that we shouldn't wage conflict again.

War is war. Vietnam is no different from the Crusades.

A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam.

When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war.

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

I wasn't happy with the outcome in Vietnam. Now, I've never said that, but, you know, I'm getting to an age where I think I'd better start saying it... And I don't mean that to sound that I'm being critical of somebody or blaming somebody.