[BigSkyFreeper]

I'm watching Cheney's speech

Same here. I was too busy outside and I missed the first run. Guess I'll watch the repeat at 9:30pm Eastern. (7:30 in the time zone networks have forgotten)

[Carolinamom]

Clarke is not correct that more blacks were killed in Vietnam. Burkett in STOLEN VALOR discounts this claim:During the ten-year periodofthe war,7,257 African-Americans diedinVietnam, or 12.r percntof the KIAs, slightlyunder their proportion in the population of draft-aged males. (Eighty-six percent of those killed were Caucasian; 1.5 percent were of other races.) An examination of the casulty records indicates that the highetrate for black servicemen ws 16 percent in 1965, and almost all of those killed were volumnteers in elite units, not reluctant draftees involuntarily assigned to combat units. Black casulty rates dipped under their proportion in the population in most other years. In 1969, the war's peak, black deaths accounted for `11.4 percent of the total. (p.454)