In the interests of historical accuracy, the quote that begins the article that CarolC links to, the infamous "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," was invented by reporter Peter Arnett. This was his way of summing up a conversation in which an American advisor to a South Vietnamese Army unit told him about the destruction of much of the town of Ben Tre by the Viet Cong who were trying to take it from its Vietnamese defenders.

Also in the interests of historical accuracy, and since someone mentions this above, nobody came back from Vietnam in a body bag. Body bags were used for casualties until they could be evacuated to a rear area such as Saigon or Danang, and then they were embalmed and shipped to the United States in aluminum caskets.

There was enough wrong about the Vietman war and about the potential one in Iraq that it is unnecessary to invent additional things or to perpetuate old lies.