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South Vietnam had to be built from scratch and, from the very beginning, depended far too much on the Western superpowers. As in the case of a person on public welfare, this dependency, which became greater with each day, was quite difficult to shake.

South Vietnam faces total defeat, and soon.

What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.

From its inception, South Vietnam was only considered to be an outpost in the war against communism.

The fact is that the Vietnamese held Americans after 1973.

Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal.

I went to Ft Bragg and learned that Delta was indeed gearing up for the rescue. Still I was concerned the Reagan staff would not be willing to take the risk of sending an official military force into Laos.

President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.

There's never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it's mostly a fabrication.

They were so exhausted and seasick and all they could do was crawl up those beaches. And thousands of them lay dead in no time at all. It's unthinkable.