It is my understanding from reading about it years ago he was an Iranian but I don’t believe it reflected on the Iranian government.
I was with the First Marine Regiment in Vietnam at this particular time. We kicked the communists out of Hue, and when Walter Kronkite came to town when the war was over we offered to show him the mass graves that were the product of a massacre which the communists perpetrated in anticipation of an uprising in their favor which did not come to pass.
In operations in the surrounding area immediately afterward, the evidence that the commies were on the ropes was everywhere. We went where we wanted and when we wanted to. When we were shelled, most of the time the incoming did not explode, because no one was left in their units who knew enough to put the fuses on the rounds and rockets.
We won the war at that time but it was stolen from us. And anyone who could look at the little tigers of Asia who so prospered economically since Vietnam and contrast their success with Vietnam’s backwardness would easily see that if Vietnam had been allowed to take the capitalist rather than the communist route, it would have been a major success instead of a retard among Asian nations.
If there was one merit to the late sixties it was this: the men were separated from the girlie boys, and although it looked for a while like the girlie boys might prevail, reality set in after a few years, and the odds and sods have been declining in influence where it actually counts ever since.
I was heartened to learn recently that McSumpthin’, the little anti-vietnam wimp who ran for president and lost just about every state, was still alive. Until I found out where he was, I did not know exactly in which direction to fart, and a fart is a terrible thing to waste.
Like Imam in Iran there was the ruthless Ayatollah khomeini