GEORGE Bush, in his speech of August 22, claimed: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people', re-education camps' and killing fields'."
In fact, the killing fields were a genocide committed by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, not by the Vietnamese who, after US forces left in 1973, invaded Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot's vile regime. The US and Chinese governments continued to support the Khmer Rouge as the "legitimate" government of Cambodia, however.
The boat people were also a legacy of the destruction of the Vietnamese economy by the Japanese, French and American occupations, not to mention US sanctions from 1975 onwards which were only eased in the 1990s. No surprise that Mr Bush's spin doctors don't know their history and have no interest in the truth.
Duncan McFarlane, Beanshields, Braidwood, Carluke.
It is accepted in the US that George W Bush was a draft-dodger. He avoided combat in Vietnam, while others gave their lives and limbs or took the principled pacifist route of protesting to end the war. The Bush family connections got "W" a safe spot in the Texas Air National Guard.
Bush now opines that the US has only intervened in foreign wars such as Vietnam and Iraq, reluctantly, and then only to promote the ideals of freedom and democracy. On the other hand, General Smedley Butler, the most highly-decorated member of the US Marine Corps in his day, looked back on his 33 years' service by concluding: "War is a racket."
Butler wrote: "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism."
Who do we believe regarding the motive for US intervention abroad? Did the US invade Iraq for high ideals or big oil deals?
Tom Minogue, 94 Victoria Terrace, Dunfermline.
George Bush lost the right to comment on Vietnam when he got his daddy to shoehorn him into the Air National Guard, a "stay at home" outfit for rich boys who liked the idea of war but not getting hurt. Our brave future President hung around in the air guard for 12 months; now he has the brass neck to wear his old flying jacket.
The main points of comparision between Vietnam and Iraq are the lies told to justify the conflicts: the Gulf of Tonkin attack on a US boat and the dodgy dossier in Iraq. Then there is the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents in both conflicts. Mr Bush's peculiar way of bringing about democracy seems to be to slaughter everybody in sight while leading from the rear.
Dickie Alexander, 32 Marlborough Street, Edinburgh.
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