CW, Thank you.

You are correct and I appreciate your kindness about what my generation faced back then. There are many forms of courage. It took courage to resist the war also. A good friend of mine packed up one night after his draft notice came, and he went to Canada. No one can tell me he was a coward. He cried. His family cried. And he drove off alone, into absolute uncertainty and doubt. To feel so strongly that the war was wrong that you would denounce your own mother country and leave was not an act of cowardice, but of conviction and courage. I made my choice, he made his. Ironically, we both got just about the same indifference when we came home.

That the Vietnamese are very gracious to returning American soldiers I am sure. Most of them were not alive or old enough to remember all that. I believe you when you tell me that many old Nam vets are shocked by the hospitality they get there. Veterans come in all varieties. Because I traveled and worked in S.E. Asia for about 10 years (except for Vietnam) I have no doubts. But I have to chuckle to think that some of these 60-something year-old pilgrims would jump off the plane thinking that there would be a rocket attack or an ambush on the road to Vung Tau.

I'm intrigued about what you said about the "spiritual connection" to the place and the people and the closure I would get. I like the word picture you painted. I'm going to keep that one in my head for a while. Perhaps you have inspired me enough that I'm going to make that trip within the next year or two. Maybe that's what I need to heal my soul.

But I can connect with a real Vietnamese person any time I want, right here, in the form of a war refugee who runs the gas station/convenience store near my house. Ironically enough, he's so unabashedly Right Wing and pro-Bush it's hard to have a decent conversation with him without him blowing up like Donald Duck! He's a rabid anti-Communist. His family got out of there on a fishing boat, crossing the Gulf of Thailand, dodging pirates and spending four years in a Malay refugee camp. He doesn't have much good to say about his homeland at the moment. He still thinks they'd kill him if he went back.

Oops! I forgot, this is a forum for book discussions. See Fodor's Vietnam for some great places to stay!

If I were Karl Rove, I'd be getting on the phone to that fat-ass gob of redneck snot known as Toby Keith. He's probably between Ford truck commercials right now and looking for a new jingle to fire up the hillbillies.

If it starts to look like Tony Snow's orders to downplay two missing G.I.s as nothing but business as usual, then the best way to counter the country's sympathy and anger with Bush over two human beings who are in the deepest shit, would be to make these two unfortunate guys larger than life heroes in the tradition of Audie Murphy and Sgt. York.

Toby, are you there, buddy? Why don't you whip up another instant country radio hit? I loved that "Boot-in-your-ass" thing you did a couple of years ago. That was a classic.

Maybe you could do something along the lines of Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Beret." Really hoke it up for the rubes this time. Include lots of images of American flags flappin' and bullets flying. Then go for the money shot, include the mothers at home who wait for news through the endless nights.

It just might get America all fired up and angry enough to start supporting Bush's war again.

But on second thought, maybe Rove and Bush don't want any more attention brought to their failures in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. It's too close to the fall elections.

Anyway Toby, you hang in there OK? We'll call you.

Don't worry, we are not about to call Daryl Worley instead. He really put us in a bad spot with his "Have you forgotten" (about Bin Laden) song. That thing backfired on us big time!

Some jerk whining about how the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans and there ain't a whit of difference between the two of them, and how we better get a third political party going instead of mindlessly following the increasingly right-wing Democratic machine into hands of our corporato-fascist slavemasters.

Anybody ready for another dose of Ralph Nader?

Bah!

That's priceless Tim. But what, no Medal of Freedom to go with it?

I wish Barbara and G.H.W. Bush would have practiced early withdrawal and we wouldn't be in this mess.

Beat the Bible and wave the flag, throw in a terrorist threat or two and The Great American Dumbass will clap and bark like a trained seal.

Start talking about issues and he gets grumpy, then falls asleep. He doesn't want to listen to a bunch of sanctimonious ninnies preaching about complicated stuff.

Rove knows this. P.T. Barnum knew this.

The DNC knows this too, but they are helpless to stop it. They over-think everything. They have the mistaken notion that The Great American Dumbass actually cares about issues.

The Great American Dumbass lives to feel pleasure and avoid pain and nothing more.

Republicans give The Great American Dumbass what he thinks he wants. As long as Dumbass's belly is full and his house is not on fire, he doesn't give a flying fuck if the rest of the world starves or fries.

Until the Democratic Party figures this out, they will continue to lose.