Troll, if you want to hate the folks that started the Viet Nam, as Pogo(a cartoon character in US newspapers some time back) said, "We has met the enemy and he is us." We, the OSS, forerunner of the CIA, armed the Veitnamese guerilla groups during WWII, promising that if they fought with/for us against the Japanese, we'd support their eventual bids for independence from the French colonists after the war.

After the war, we were trying to keep a peace with the French - we lost - as well as assure the flow of natural rubber, much of which was tapped in Vietnamese plantations, so in the name of political expediency, we rolled over on the Vietnamese people who had helped us, during the war. I might add we treated large numbers of the mountain tribes like the Hmong who formed irregular fighting forces during the Viet Nam War very similarly, after the war began to wind down and it became apparent that the South Vietnamese would not be able to hold.

With lots of help from many communist countries, the Viet Mihn tossed the French out of their country following their disaster at Dien Bien Phu - a battle definately staged at a dificult place to hold. We had a similar battle forced upon us at Khe Sahn, but close air support and resupply carried the day.

IMHO, Jane Fonda, daughter of a good movie actor, never rose to the position that her background might have supported/warranted. She was an adequate movie star, but never great, not one to be mentioned in the same breath with Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyk, or, say, Lauren Bacall, who in similar circumstances went to Washington with her husband to appear before the House Unamerican Activities Committee in support of many persecuted movie stars and writers.

This whole issue has not been in vain as Fonda still has her picture prominently displayed on the backsplash of the urinals of countless American Legion and VFW halls, more puhblicity/notoriety than her films could ever have given her.

Dave