There never would have been 2 separate Vietnams, if not for USA interference in the process there in the late 50's, following the defeat of the French. There would have been one Vietnam, the Viet Minh (under Ho Chi Minh) would have formed the government, following the negotiated departure of the French colonial administration, and their would have been NO separated South Vietnam and North Vietnam and NO war.

The USA deliberately prevented that from happening...and the war that followed was basically a war of national reunification to get the USA and its southern puppet regime (run by the Catholic Vietnamese minority over the Buddhist majority) OUT of there.

That southern puppet regime apparently needed 500,000 foreign troops and the world's biggest military power to help it fight...and it STILL couldn't win. That tells you just how legitimate it was as a real representative of the Vietnamese people. Read the history books and see. That wasn't an invasion of the South by the North...it was the slow, very costly ejection from ONE ancient country of a foreign occupying power and its unofficial colonial surrogates, nothing more than that.

But that is what CNN would rather you never knew or even thought about, I expect. In time people forget the sordid details of such history, and they believe only the popular mythology...