[risk]

For what it's worth, Kerry's comment to congress asking them if they understood what it would be like asking someone to be the last soldier to die for a "mistake" kind of made sense. If we had lost our will to fight, then something had to be done for the grunts.

But that doesn't mean I want someone elected president who had those other lapses in judgement. And besides, what about the phrasing of that comment? Was Vietnam a mistake? I don't believe so. Leaving Vietnam was the mistake. I think it led to 9/11, in fact.

[swarthyguy]

I still remember the pictures of the evacuation of Saigon.

The helicopters tossed in the water. Panicked, fearful, screaming Vietnamese held back by US troops. Copters leaving the embassy packed with people.

That said, he can be clobbered by Bush.

VOTED AGAINST -

-Desert Storm 91
-87 Billion in 2003 for troops

VOTED FOR

-Regime Change in Iraq 98
-2002 War Resolution

The mistake comment is correct but facile and simplistic. Asking or being the one would be dreadful, to say the least. Useful for a debating tool, but ultimately focusing on Vietnam too much could cause him more trouble than its worth.

[Stultis]

Leaving Vietnam was the mistake.

The crucial mistake came long before that. In his memoirs, and the derived book on Vietnam, Kissinger claims that Ike, on leaving office, urged Kennedy to defend Laos at all cost, claiming that it was the essential strategic front against the North Vietnamese.

Clearly Ike had it right, and Kennedy screwed the pooch with his myopic focus on Vietnam alone (as opposed to the strategic big picture in Indochina). Once the NV had established bases all along the borders in Laos and Cambodia (and had secured, however perverted, the precedence that any attempt to dislodge them was a violation of Laotian and Cambodian sovereignty) the game was pretty much up. The North Vietnamese could then maintain a guerrilla insurgency in South Vietnam indefinitely. Short of a massive commitment (hundreds of thousands) of troops, we were basically screwed from that point on.