(gentle music) - [Sam] This film is about the truths and myths of the Vietnam War.

It was produced by veterans who served in the war.

They want you to learn about the war, and they've provided information here for your consideration, much of it not reported in other films, or mentioned at schools and universities.

We owe it to these veterans to listen to what they have to say about the war they served in.

They consider this film to be their enduring legacy for future generations, and they wanna thank you for watching it.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) (air whooshing) (helicopter blades whirring) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - The Vietnam War was a very significant event in our history.

Over 2.7 million Americans served during the 16 years of our involvement in that war.

One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty.

Over 300,000 were wounded and over 58,000 were killed.

Roughly three in 10 Vietnam veterans remain alive today.

The intensity of combat is reflected in attrition of planes and helicopters.

Over 4,000 fixed wing aircraft were destroyed, and of the 12,000 helicopters employed during the war, at least 5,600 were lost.

The purpose of this documentary is to provide future generations with factual information about the Vietnam War.

It was produced by the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association Foundation on behalf of veterans everywhere.

They hope you will find it helpful.

(upbeat music continues) (gentle music) - Several years ago, we brought home a group of fighting men who had fought as bravely and as well as any Americans in our history.

They came home without a victory, not because they'd been defeated, but because they'd been denied permission to win.

- That statement by President Reagan correctly reflects the feelings of most Vietnam veterans today, about 90% of whom are proud of their service and would do it again if called upon.

However, many of those veterans have become increasingly concerned that much of what has been written, reported, presented in films, or provided in schools and universities regarding the Vietnam War is neither factual nor complete.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - The Vietnam veterans who came home, many of them were treated very poorly by Americans, particularly activists who were here protesting the war.

They were called baby killer.

They had things thrown at them.

They were even spat on.

Today, many progressive activists say that that is a myth, that in fact, no one was ever spat on who came home from the Vietnam War.

But I've spoken to veterans who can testify to the fact that they were spat on, that they were maltreated, that they were shouted at, and for some of them, this was not the America that they had left behind.

- We arrived at Travis Air Force Base, California on a Continental Airlines charter jet.

Now, a couple hours later, joyously, we are walking out of the gate, and along comes a hippie bus that tosses out crap upon us, just stuff, feces, whatever.

And suddenly I'm thinking, I've got this dissonance.

I can't wrap my mind around the thought of how happy I was, how proud we were to have served our country, answered the call to arms, and return, and now this.

And I just, I couldn't quite get this placed properly in my mind.

And so we leave there.

Eventually, I'm at the airport in San Francisco, about to travel home, and I sit on a bench.

Suddenly, people disappeared.

Started looking around, is there something wrong with me?

And eventually concluded that I've got a uniform on and no one wants to be around the military.

- So we landed at San Francisco International around 7:30 or so in the morning, and I was walking along, kind of feeling like I was walking on eggs through the terminal, and after a minute, I became aware that a small group had amassed itself around me, six or seven pretty filthy-looking hippie types, and they were yelling insults.

And one guy stepped up about a foot and a half from me and spit on me.

He got me right here in the chest.

That was a very different experience than I would've anticipated after we landed, but unfortunately not all that unusual.

And there are several other guys who underwent the same sort of treatment when they arrived back home stateside.

- When I landed at Chicago O'Hare, it was very a chilly reception.

I mean, people would look at you, but not look at your eye.

They wouldn't make eye contact with you.

And if they were walking down the ramp or the hallway, I mean, they would get way over to one side.

I did not have anybody spit on me or anything, but it was extremely uncomfortable.

You felt like a stranger.

And so, it was a funny feeling, because here you're so glad to be back into the US, and yet it was extremely uncomfortable with the chili reception.

I went into one little restaurants in the airport to get something to eat, and they did not serve me.

Now, they didn't tell me they didn't serve me for any particular reason, other than they claimed to be busy and I waited and waited and waited, and finally decided to leave.

I was getting the message.

That was my experience.

What I care about most is the men and women serving our country today and what can we do to welcome them home and make them never go through what our group went through.

(indistinct chatter) - So I boarded the plane and I was sitting by the window seat and a man sat down next to me and he said, "Where have you been?"

And I said Vietnam.

When I said that, he said, "Oh," and then he stopped talking.

I picked up one of those magazines or something and I fell asleep.

I woke up about an hour and a half later and the stewardess, she was kind of shaking me, and I said, by the way, what happened to the guy that was sitting next to me?

And she said, "When he found out you were in Vietnam, he asked to be moved."

So that was my first experience with somebody rejecting us.

- The Vietnam War correspondent, Joseph Galloway, probably stated it best.

"They were the best you had, America, and you turned your back on them."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (indistinct chatter) (helicopter blades whirring) - In the midst of the unparalleled political and media malfeasance were the unprecedented humanitarian actions taken by our soldiers, very often at the risk of their own lives.

I personally witnessed a typical example involving the 54th Medical Detachment.

It was a 40-man helicopter ambulance unit.

In 10 months, they evacuated 21,435 patients, including 8,904 civilians and 531 enemy soldiers.

Another example was the civil action missions performed by the 5th Special Forces group that was between 1964 and 1970.

It included the creation of 1,003 schools, 398 medical clinics, 6,436 wells, 1,939 kilometers of road, 670 bridges, and 129 churches.

And these were just some of the things done by just one unit.

Thousands of other examples could be cited.

More humanitarian acts than any war in our history.

It was a humanitarianism unmatched in the annals of warfare.

I've often said that humanitarianism was our great victory in that war.

(gentle music fades) (ominous music) (ominous music continues) - The anti-aircraft battering are opening up.

- [Presenter] The strategic implications are clear.

- [Presenter 2] Infantry men with tanks.

- This is (indistinct) after the attacks.

- Con Thien is here.

- [Presenter 3] Marines have moved up more battalions.

- [Interviewer] Have you felt what you've been doing here is worthwhile?

- As to the issue of media bias, we know that it certainly was.

People have to realize that the Vietnam War was a two-front war.

In this sense, there was a military front and a political and propaganda front.

The leaders of North Vietnam at least had the wisdom to study history.

They remembered that a key reason for their success against France in 1953 and 1954 was their focus on undermining the will of the people of France by propaganda.

With the help of the Soviet and other communist allies, North Vietnam began to sow the seeds of protest throughout the United States through communist front organizations, sympathetic media and radical community organizers, all of whom were able to influence the anti-war movements.

- I went to Vietnam in late 1968 briefly as a journalist.

I lived in press centers.

I traveled around the country and I got to know a lot of journalists.

They didn't know what was going on.

They did not want to leave their hotels, and they had South Vietnamese employees who they sent out to get stories.

Well, we later learned that many of those South Vietnamese employees were working for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

- Pham Xuan An was hired by US news agencies in Vietnam, and he was seen as being a credible source.

He was working for American news agencies, including Reuters, New York Times, Harold Tribune.

He brilliantly manipulated both US government officials and members of the US press.

After the war it's made known that he was a spy and he becomes a general in the North Vietnamese army.

- In recent years, a report by Walter Cronkite made in Saigon on February 13th, 1968 has become available.

He correctly reported that the 1968 Tet Offensive was a major success for both the United States and the government of South Vietnam.

- First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat.

Its missions proved suicidal.

If they intended to stay in the cities as a negotiating point, they failed at that.

The Vietnamese army reacted better than even its most ardent supporters had anticipated.

There were no defections from its rank, as the Viet Cong apparently had expected, and the people did not rise to support the Viet Cong as they also were believed to have expected.

- Just 13 days later, on February 27th, 1968, Walter Cronkite made another very different report from New York, written by his producer, apparently, stating the exact opposite of what his previous report from Saigon had said.

- For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic yet unsatisfactory conclusion.

- The second report seen by millions on the CBS evening news was very inconsistent with his earlier report and caused public opinion to turn against the war.

According to several sources, it greatly influenced President Johnson to not seek reelection after stating, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

The truth is the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong were defeated in their attacks on more than a hundred cities throughout South Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Communist forces suffered about 10 times the fatalities they inflicted on the United States and South Vietnamese forces, and in all but one of the areas they attacked, they were driven out within days.

General Vo Nguyen Giap later admitted it had been a devastating military loss.

The Viet Cong would never again be an effective fighting force thereafter.

The rest of the war was fought largely by North Vietnamese regulars.

Despite the significant victory by the United States and South Vietnamese military forces on the ground during the Tet Offensive, the news media frequently and misleadingly reported it to be a defeat.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - Another myth is that anti-war groups were noble and self-funded.

When North Vietnam realized the anti-war protests and an increasingly anti-war American media had turned a devastating military defeat into a resounding political victory, it bolstered their resolve to persevere and pay even more attention to agitation and to propaganda on the US home front.

While initially the anti-war movement only had a minor impact on the vast majority of the American public, it had a major impact on Congress and the news media - Anti-war organizations during the Vietnam War were funded with large budgets by the Soviet Union and the American Communist Party, all in support of North Vietnam by using effective lobbyists and informants.

Many of these organizations had very significant influence on Congress and the news media.

Some examples, Soviet funded agent, Wilford Burchett, guided anti-war New York Times reporter, Harrison Salisbury, quote word for word, number for number, and according to Colonel Stanislav Lunev, a defector from Soviet military intelligence, the KGB and the GRU together, had a budget for anti-war propaganda in the United States greater than it did for economic and military support to fund about every anti-war movement and organization in America and abroad, including Vietnam veterans against the war, often using money laundered through prominent organizations, including the World Council of Churches, Russian Orthodox Church, and World Peace Council.

- The anti-war movement perpetuates many myths.

One of the most significant is that about Ho Chi Minh.

He gets depicted as a noble nationalist leader, similar to George Washington, but he's actually a diehard communist.

He implements a Marxist regime in North Vietnam.

He rigs elections and wins 99% of them and kills thousands of his political opponents.

Ho Chi Minh sends thousands of his surrogates to South Vietnam to create what they call the National Liberation Front, which is supposed to be non-communist, but it's really controlled by Hanoi, and we also know it as the Viet Cong, and they use brutal repression, violence to coerce people of South Vietnam into supporting their guerrilla movement.

Another myth is that the United States wrongly deprived South Vietnam of elections in 1956.

The truth of the matter is that the United States and South Vietnam never signed on to these elections, and that even had they taken place, the North Vietnamese would have used their superior population to rig the outcome.

(gentle music) - Several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis from their experiences in Vietnam.

They told the stories of times that they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, raised villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.

- The truth is John Kerry helped to organize the so-called Winter Soldier Protest in Detroit and threatened at least one of the young veterans who did go with him from Maryland to Detroit that if he did not give testimony about witnessing war crimes in Vietnam, he would have to find his own way back home to Maryland.

I spoke to that veteran and he said he came up with the best he could, not wanting to lie.

It turned out that many of the so-called witnesses had not served in the military at all.

One had been a helicopter mechanic in Germany, another a supply clerk in South Carolina.

Very few had actually seen much war in Vietnam, and several of them later retracted their statements when pushed.

30 years later, when John Kerry appeared on "Meet the Press", he was asked about his earlier testimony.

And on May 6th, 2001, John Kerry testified with respect to the charges of war crimes that he had made in his 1971 testimony.

And I quote, "Those were the words of an angry young man.

I think our soldiers served as nobly on the whole as in any other war, and people need to understand that."

Unfortunately, the damage was already done back in 1971.

(gentle music fades) (relaxing music) - Jane Fonda was an American actress and she was also an anti-war activist.

She was invited to North Vietnam on an observation tour where she posed with an anti-aircraft gun, wearing a North Vietnamese helmet.

She was fed a bunch of lines to repeat to the media, and generally represented herself as someone who was a concerned citizen, who was very worried about the conduct of the war.

So Jane Fonda was in Hanoi during the bombings that were taking place, and she was telling the American servicemen who were doing this that it was illegal, telling the sailors out on aircraft carriers and the pilots that the bombs that they were dropping were illegal weapons of war, that they could be tried as war criminals, and things that were just the propaganda lines of the North Vietnamese, but coming from an American actress to give it more visibility and more authenticity.

This was a totally false statement that even today many Vietnam war veterans would still regard as treason.

(gentle music fades) (air whooshing) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (indistinct radio chatter) (gentle music continues) - Another myth is the war was unwinnable.

The apparent lack of decisive progress in the war was largely due to flawed strategies politically imposed on military leaders, despite their strong objections.

The war could have been won at many different times using sensible strategies, thereby saving thousands of lives and casualties.

The argument the war was unwinnable is not valid.

- After sending the first ground troops on March 8th, 1965, president Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara adopted a strategy called gradual escalation, or gradualism.

This was strongly opposed by the joint chief of staff and other military leaders.

This strategy was conceived by so-called Whiz Kids from the RAND Corporation and the Defense Department, and it was contrary to classical military doctrine and to all the lessons learned over centuries of warfare.

It included the limited bombing of North Vietnam called Operation Rolling Thunder.

This took place between March of 1965 and October, 1968, and involved mostly secondary targets selected during regular Tuesday meetings at the White House when no military leaders were present.

Military advice that advocated Soviet surface to air missile sites should be destroyed during construction was ignored.

As a consequence, during subsequent attacks on military targets in Hanoi, we lost over 1,000 pilots and crew members and about 50% of the F-105s ever built.

The bombing was temporarily stopped 16 different times in an effort to appease North Vietnam and hopefully induce a negotiated piece, a futile effort that conspicuously fail to recognize that communists do not negotiate in good faith.

The bombing halts were merely exploited by North Vietnam as an opportunity to build up strength for continued aggression against South Vietnam.

This failed strategy of gradual escalation was described by Admiral US Grant Sharp, commander of all US forces in the Pacific, as the most asinine way to fight a war imagined.

As a result, Defense Secretary McNamara was forced to resign by early 1968.

- US forces in Vietnam had to fight under highly restrictive rules of engagement, which helped protect civilian lives, but also led to greater US casualties.

The Johnson administration also imposed prohibitions on sending ground forces into Cambodia and Laos, which made it impossible to cut North Vietnamese supply lines.

The policy of gradual escalation that Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara implemented kept the bombing at a low level and gave the enemy time to build up its air defenses and limited the amount of damage we could do.

It's important to remember that the Johnson Administration's refusal to go into Laos or Cambodia and to bomb North Vietnam more intensively based on a fear of Chinese intervention, a fear that China, and possibly also the Soviets, would go to war with the United States.

In the 1990s, we received confirmation from former Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, and also from Chinese premier Zhou Enlai that in fact, neither the Soviets nor the Chinese ever intended to fight the United States and Vietnam.

These unfounded fears of the Johnson administration prevented the United States from going into Laos in Cambodia, or intensifying the war against North Vietnam.

Averell Harriman, the Assistant Secretary of State, proposed an agreement to neutralize Laos where both the United States and the North Vietnamese were supposed to leave, but only the Americans leave.

The North Vietnamese stay behind and continue to use it, and it's for this reason that this infiltration route, which we sometimes call the Ho Chi Minh Trail, is referred to as the Averell Harriman Memorial Highway.

On several occasions, president Eisenhower informed Johnson and McNamara of flaws in the strategy of gradual escalation.

He recommends to Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara that they take forceful measures in Laos and Cambodia and intensify operations against North Vietnam, but they choose not to listen to the man who had been the supreme ally commander in World War II.

(gentle music) - In July, 1969, president Nixon began a strategy called Vietnamization.

The plan called for the withdrawal of US ground forces and the replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.

The death of Ho Chi Minh in September, 1969 allowed additional time for making Vietnamization a military and political success.

US Troops strength declined from a peak of 543,000 in April '69 to 335,000 by the end of 1970, with over 90% of South Vietnam relatively secure.

However, this plan failed to address North Vietnam's continued and highly effective use of sanctuaries in neutral Laos and Cambodia, where they could mount attacks upon South Vietnam, withdraw to safety when necessary, and continue the shipment of weapons, ammunition, and supplies, which were provided in unlimited quantities by the Soviet Union and China.

In response, President Nixon authorized a successful invasion of Cambodia on April 30th, 1970 that enabled American Troop withdrawals to continue.

Predictably, this invasion was very unpopular with protesting anti-war groups.

And on December 22nd, Congress passed legislation to prohibit the use of US force or advisors in Laos and Cambodia.

Under international law, however, it was legal for the US to enter both Laos and Cambodia, a very important point that many of our political leaders either did not understand or did not want to understand.

- After some hard lessons, Nixon eventually learned that negotiations with North Vietnam were largely futile and decided to use the strategy recommended by the joint chiefs of staff and other military leaders since 1965, a strategy that involved intensive strategic bombing of all North Vietnamese military, logistical, and transportation targets, including many previously off limits in Hanoi and Haiphong.

The first major bombing campaign, called Linebacker I, began on April 10th, 1972 during a major invasion by North Vietnam called the Easter Offensive that only involved the South Vietnamese army and no US ground troops.

The bombing damage was severe and had more impact on the war making capability of North Vietnam than was achieved by three and a half years of Operation Rolling Thunder.

By early October, 1972, the leaders of North Vietnam recognized that their invasion had failed and negotiations were preferable.

(upbeat music) - As 1972 drew to a close, US troops strength was down to 24,000 for support and none for combat.

With a new anti-war Congress to be seated in January, it became apparent that North Vietnam was stalling the negotiation process.

Under these circumstances, Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II that began on December 18th, 1972, and involved the mining of Haiphong Harbor, the destruction of all surface-to-air missile sites around Hanoi, as well as railroads, power plants, and fuel and storage plants.

The damage was so extensive, it precipitated the Paris Peace Treaty signed on January 27th, 1973, and all but 50 US troops left South Vietnam.

Article VII of the Paris Peace Treaty committed the United States to sustain South Vietnam with the same level of air support, equipment, weapons, ammunition, and supplies that existed in January, 1973.

However, Congress reneged on these commitments by reducing our funding support for South Vietnam from $2.8 billion in 1973 to only 300 million in 1975.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China increased their support to North Vietnam by over 50% during the same period.

And in June, 1973, under pressure from anti-war lobbyists in Congress, they passed a bill that prohibited any funding for airstrikes in Laos and Cambodia.

Without the funding for air support, equipment, ammunition, and supplies promised by the United States, north Vietnam decided to ignore the Paris Peace Treaty and once again invaded South Vietnam in early 1975.

On April 10th, president Ford asked Congress to approve emergency funding for military and humanitarian assistance to South Vietnam.

The request never even came up for a vote, and Saigon surrendered on April 30th.

(gentle music) - Within three years, 3.5 million South Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians had been murdered, starved to death, or drowned fleeing communist brutality.

This is a terrible tragedy.

It is almost comparable to the Holocaust of World War II, but this has been erased from history, practically covered up by the US media, the educational establishment, and the political establishment.

- The gruesome reality is that more Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese died in the 10 years after the Communist takeover than were killed in the prior 20 years of war.

(gentle music continues) - The war was winnable years earlier and with far fewer American casualties, had President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara listened to professional military advice, including that from former President Dwight Eisenhower.

As the counselor on international law to the Department of State, during the 1973 negotiations on the Paris Accords, I personally witnessed how the full application of American military power by President Nixon brought the war to close literally in a matter of weeks.

At any time in the previous 16 years, the war was winnable by applying the following normal war fighting recommendations that had been made to President Johnson and Secretary McNamara.

Victory did not require an invasion of the North, did not require use of nuclear weapons, did not require bombing of the North Vietnamese civilian population, or other extraordinary actions.

Rather, it merely required normal war fighting 101.

- There were many alternate strategies and actions that could have been taken that'd have shortened the war, been more decisive, I think, and more effective and would've saved the lives of thousands of Americans and South Vietnamese.

I can give you several examples of this, one of which would was recommended by the joint chiefs of staff many times as early as 1965, but even subsequent to that, and that was to use our very powerful air forces in a massive air campaign, a strategic air campaign against North Vietnam.

It took a massive bombing campaign in 1972 by Nixon that finally had the telling effect of bringing them to the negotiating table.

So had we used this strategic bombing earlier on, the war would've been shortened and I think the outcome would've been much more favorable.

There were many other opportunities to change our strategy or take more decisive actions.

This was especially true in 1967 when the North Vietnamese were unable to make up their manpower losses, or their logistical losses.

And clearly, it was obvious in 1968, following the Tet Offensive, that they were in a very, very serious position, and we could have changed our strategy and won the war.

The war definitely could have been won had we gone into Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

This was recommended by General Westmoreland, who was in charge of all the American forces in South Vietnam.

It was also recommended by Ellsworth Bunker, the Ambassador, and by the US joint chiefs of staff, and by other military leaders, but that was rejected by our State Department and by President Johnson.

- I have now ordered that all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam cease.

- This strategy of cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Eastern Laos would've eliminated the need for the US to protect the 1,400 mile border of South Vietnam with Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam.

It would've changed the requirement from defending 1,400 miles of border to just the 225 miles along that barrier from the East China Sea to the Mekong River.

It also would've required fewer troops in country.

In addition to that, there was an added advantage.

We would be fighting this war in an area that was largely unpopulated and where American firepower could be used without restrictions.

This strategy also would pass on pacification to the South Vietnamese, which were culturally and politically better adaptable to do this mission.

Our military would be better served actually fighting the North Vietnamese army in Laos and Northern I Corps where we could use US military firepower to defeat them.

Probably the best evidence that cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail was the means of achieving success and victory was a statement made by Colonel Bui Tin.

Colonel Bui Tin was the official communist who accepted the surrender of South Vietnam in April, 1975.

In 1995, he was interviewed for a article in the Wall Street Journal, and the journalist asked him, "What could the Americans have done to win the war?"

And his answer was to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos."

Had LBJ, or President Johnson, allowed Westmoreland to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, north Vietnam could not win the war.

(gentle music) (gentle music fades) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - The domino theory was often maligned by critics of the war who argue that it was disproved when South Vietnam falls in 1975 and you only see a few of the dominoes falling, but I believe that it was true in 1965 when it caused the US to go into war.

And in fact, our intervention in Vietnam is what accounts for the fact that most of the dominoes don't fall.

And most important among these is Indonesia, which clearly was saved by American intervention in Vietnam.

- Today, we know from a half century of evidence that the following are truths about the Vietnam War, counter to persistent myths about that war.

The war began when North Vietnam opened the Ho Chi Minh Trail to attack South Vietnam in clear violation of the United Nations Charter.

The United States was lawfully assisting in the defense of South Vietnam against this North Vietnamese aggression.

Now, the American media, which had initially supported the war, turned against the war.

That was a significant factor in undermining the United States' national will to win.

While war crimes such as My Lai did take place on the United States South Vietnamese side of the war and were a serious failure harming the war effort, they were counter to US policy in the war, were prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by the United States, and were not even close to the official and systematic brutality of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

The war in the end was not decided by a gorilla struggle, but by a Korean War style 21 Division, regular army North Vietnamese tank invasion in violation of the Paris Accords after the United States Congress forced an end to effective American assistance.

Even at that time, had American air power up been turned loose on that regular army invasion from the north, South Vietnam would be a free nation today.

(gentle music) (gentle music fades) - There are several lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War that can prevent us from making the same mistakes again.

We should never enter any war without the will to win it.

McNamara, who was incredibly ignorant about military matters and had disdain for the generals he oversaw, ignored both their advice and the advice of the intelligence community that hitting the enemy softly was not only not going to work, it was actually encouraging the enemy.

We should be wary of international agreements with enemies who routinely ignore their commitments.

We made an agreement to keep Laos neutral, for example, and even after Hanoi had violated it openly time and time again, we kept our military from doing things that would've speeded up the war and produced a different outcome.

We need to have knowledgeable national security lawyers involved in the process from the start.

There were many things the United States might have legally done to fight the war, but lawyers who did know this area of the law assumed they would be illegal and kept us from doing it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Perhaps at this late date, we can all agree that we've learned one lesson, that young Americans must never again be sent to fight and die unless we are prepared to let them win.

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