Warning: thread drift....

WLD, I lived in and around Belfast throughout the troubles, talked to many soldiers, met many people they "policed," and saw them on active service. I never heard one talk about civil war. Quite the reverse: they were at pains to challenge the provo line that there was a war, because a war might have legitimised paramilitary action and would have given weight to those who argued that convicted criminals were political prisoners.

Re Vietnam, the country seems to have recovered remarkably well despite the defoliation and utter devastation visited on it by America. Whether it would have fared better under a US-installed Pinochet figure is debatable. What is surely beyond argument is that it would have been in immeasurably better shape without the war.

Oh, but I was forgetting - such considerations don't come into it. It's the contracts, duh.