[Gay State Conservative]

All other facts aside, it was my opinion then and now that the Guardsmen were poorly trained and led.

That's certainly possible.Even if some (or even many) of the Guardsmen had real experience in,say,Vietnam I would think that that wouldn't qualify them to handle a riot.My feeling is that handling riots requires a very special kind of training and back then the National Guard was known pretty much to be a joke.

[Little Bill]

Training was part of the problem, Pols were the other. They didn't want anyone hurt and the rioters knew it.

I am not saying that busting heads was the answer but if they put many of them in jail and had them do a year or so consistantly the problem would have been smaller. If I recall correctly hippies didn'r have a lot of nads at least in Boston.