CarolC - What you say is right, but you cannot change history after the fact to make it the way it ought to have been. Sure, US support for Ho Chi Minh in the early 50s would have changed subsequent events for the better. Sure, the Eisenhower had the right idea when he sought to limit intervention to the least possible means. Sure Kennedy made a major error in expanding the US role in what was otherwise a regional civil war. Sure, LBJ compounded that mistake by escalating the US role after Kennedy.

However, the only cards we have to play are the ones we have on the table at the time of the deal, and the issue of making Kissinger out to be a criminal for the bombing of Cambodia, in my view, ignores the role played by the North Vietnamese using neutral Cambodia as a route south to attack the American and allied forces there. That fact is one of those delt cards we wish we did not have to play, but we can't choose not to. I would argue that given the military situation on the ground at that place at that time, bombing Cambodia was the right thing to do.

And McGrath, I sure did notice it was the Vietnamese who got rid of Pol Pot, shortly after the abortive invasion of Vietnam by China.
In retrospect, America shold have welcomed the Cambodian liberation, but once again you cannot change history to what it ought to have been!

I suspect that we are probably more in agreement in our views than the direction this thread is taking would indicate. On the issue of Kissengerian criminality relative to Cambodia though, we may need to cordially disagree.

Mark