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I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people; we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids, our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe. My children and grandchildren could read your words and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bald-faced, unprincipled liar and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Sen. Kerry, to bypass character, integrity and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life.

There had to have been individual soldiers and groups of soldiers who tried to help the ordinary people of Vietnam, but that was not the policy of the government we were supporting. I've seen interviews with VietNamese farmers who claimed that the VietMinh had given them land taken from absentee landlords (they had been sharecroppers with no hope of owning land), only to have the South Vietnamese government retake the territory, and hand the land back to the absentee landlords.

That's not the sort of cause most people would fight for, to say the least. That's sure as hell not the cause you draft anybody for.

Can't speak for S.V. policy - but my Dad was a Colonel in the southern part. He normally worked 6 1/2 days a week, then spent Sunday afternoons helping at a nearby orphanage.

After his death in a helicopter in Apr 72, his brothers raised money and the oldest traveled to Vietnam to give it to the orphanage.

After the fall, my uncles tried to contact the orphanage. They never heard from anyone at the orphanage again.

The cause was just. The government of SV may not have been good, but it was good enoough to allow the orphans to be cared for, and to allow Americans to help.

My Dad's third war was his last - but I'm confident he never raped, tortured, or abused folks for fun or for policy, as JFKerry so slanderously charges!