VN News [19 June] McNamara Back in Vietnam

["Toan" <toan@usa.net>]

>From AP source:

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McNamara Back in Vietnam 

Thursday, June 19, 1997; 1:02 a.m. EDT 


HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Robert McNamara is back in Vietnam to reexamine a
costly war the former defense secretary now considers a mistake. 

McNamara arrived in the capital, Hanoi, late Wednesday to attend a four-day
conference on the Vietnam War and its long-term consequences, an organizer
said Thursday. 

McNamara first returned to Vietnam in 1995 to meet his wartime adversary
Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap and open a dialogue on the war that cost the lives of
58,000 Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese. 

Two years ago -- and two decades after the fall of Saigon -- McNamara said
he felt the Vietnam War had been a grave mistake stemming from a failure to
understand the conflict. 

In his memoirs published in 1995, he said U.S. forces ought to have been
pulled out of Vietnam as early as 1963, when American casualties stood at
only 78. 

``Although we sought to do the right thing -- and believed we were doing
the right thing -- in my judgment, hindsight proves us wrong,'' McNamara
wrote. 

McNamara will begin meetings with his Vietnamese counterparts to discuss
the war Friday. Among the questions they will examine: 

--how the war could have been cut short through better diplomacy and
communications 

--how the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson misjudged
communist North Vietnam's ambitions in Indochina 

--how Cold War fears of the 1960s may have masked the true nature of the
conflict. 

McNamara will also meet with former North Vietnamese Nguyen Co Thach and
other officials. 



© Copyright 1997 The Associated Pres
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