it wasn't too obvious that unisys was behind, khrushchev would have no choice was all clinical reason but to escalate the problem in west berlin and the john kennedy would have no choice but to escalate somewhere else. so that's how this worked. he'd worked on so many different levels but if there's one thing i have learned writing this book is that you don't want to be a president certainly during the cold war. i mean, you were faced minute by minute with these life-and-death decisions and they are incredibly difficult. i will end by saying the point that the moral for me is that when people write about the bay of pigs, talk about the baby pigs, there's so much anger and fall. there has been over history. and a lot of blame goes around. my impression was that most of the people involved in this on all ends were doing it for what they thought were the right reasons. they were basically good people trying to do the right thing for

the country. the problem was that it was a very difficult thing, to. and the way they did it was not the right way. now, you know, what the answer should have been still is a really clear to me. john kennedy have done in the u.s. military entirely? well, we can say yes to that and we had to ask what would have happened afterwards. what if he had done that? what is the marines had gone into cuba in april of 1961? it's hard to know how that would have played out. what we do know is what happened, and what happened was tragedy. thank you all very much for coming tonight. i really appreciate it. thank you. [applause] ..

>> this is about an hour. >> the title of the event is "vietnam: an american war in asia." american and vietnamese perspectives. i'd like to call your attention to two things up here. these two canvass, as many of you probably are aware, a program started in 1995 here in charlottesville called the vietnam graffiti project. this is material found on a troop ship. the graffiti left on these birthing canvass was created by young american soldiers going to seat that many in 1966 and '67.

it is a tribute to their service. we display them here because the virginia foundation for the humanities has been sported -- supportive of our effort, the vietnam graffiti project, and we thank them for that as well. we'd like to begin the session with general ira hunt who served with the ninth infantry division in the mekong delta, and his book is "the ninth infantry division in vietnam: unparalleled and unequal." general hunt? >> good afternoon, and thank you for coming. can you hear me well? >> yes. >> good. this book is a story of how the ninth division with a student management employing all sorts and intelligence coupled with aggressive, innovative tactics was able to achieve combat effectiveness. the book also shows lots of stories about the bravery and dedication of the ninth division soldiers. now, the war in vietnam, as far as the communists were

concerned, was all about grabbing land and people. they needed that for two reasons. one, the cache it gave them in the united nations, but secondly, they were fighting a grer ril la war -- guerrilla war and needed land and people to support them. their primary focus was on the mekong delta. the vast alluvial plain was where the bread basket of vietnam and most of the people were. so that's where they were concentrating. in 1965 things were going poorly in the delta, and the government of vietnam asked the americans if they would send a major unit to go down there and help the security of the delta. that was approved. and mac v, that's the top echelon in vietnam, said there are two requirements for that outfit. one, they have to be located deep inside of viet cong territory and, two, they had to have a river operation.

they found that the french were very successful when they were there with river operations. so in first of february, 1966, the ninth division was formed in kansas, the only american division activated to serve in vietnam. at the same time, the navy was told to come up with the ships necessary for river operations. and so then the ninth division arrived in vietnam on the first of february, '67, one year later. they were located in the delta. i show hear bearcat, if you could read it well, that's our headquarters 15 miles east of saigon. the camp being made was down on the river, dong tam, and that was where the river reinforcement was going to be located. we kept highway 4 open, the other at bearcat saving the installations there, and the marines had kenwa province, the home of the national liberation

fund, and that was a hotbed for viet cong activities. about this time the north -- in june, the tango boats arrived. they were the navy ships, the assault craft. we called them river reinforcements. the reason for that was simple. viet cong always expected an attack by land, and they used the water for an escape route. they'd escape by water. now the riverring came in from the water, and they were program in booze led. they didn't know what to do. we're going to start our general offensive, and that will lead to a general uprising of the people. and that means they would no longer go at night, they would no longer have small units, they were going the attack in the daytime and with battalions. and the first phase of the general offensive, general uprising was tet. and they attacked all the cities in vietnam.

the ninth division, the only unit south of saigon, had its work cut out for us because there was so many big cities in the delta. the third by -- brigade, the first brigade by land, the second brigade went by water. you go to throw them out. the second brigade threw out people from five or six major cities in the delta. at the end of a month, month and a half, the viet cong were eradicated from the villages and cities. results of tet were interesting. first, it was a big defeat for the viet cong. terrible defeat. yet you wouldn't know it from walter cronkite. second, there was absolutely no uprising. but, third, which is probably more important, that the viet cong infrastructure -- those embedded in the cities -- had to rise up when their battalions attacked, and they were

eliminated. so now the government of vietnam controlled all the cities without question, and they wanted to move out in an oil bob sort of strategy in order to pacify the people. and that's what the war in vietnam was about, totally about pacifying the rural people. both sides were trying to do the same thing. i remember then many -- in may, middle of may 1968, the division artillery officer came rushing into our tactical operations center at 3 1:00 at night -- 11:00 at night and said our radar has picked up a huge attack on saigon by the viet cong. at daybreak they met at the wide bridge in saigon, and for eight days there was a battle in saigon that recalled the battle of saigon, the papers called it mini tet, the north vietnamese called it the second phase of their general uprising.

but they were defeated. now at the end of may the division found itself in a pickle. we had 2500 casualties from tet and mini tet. we had two headquarters, one at dong tam and one at bearcat. and we also had all these guard duties. but in july of that year everything changed. dong tam was ready, this huge camp that they built out of alluvial sand. we then started to eliminate our overhead, and the fist thing we said -- first thing we said we'll put all these extra troops we thought were support troops back in their units. we were really disappointed to find these troops were infantrymen, and they had a debilitating foot problem. we called it immersion foot. they could not go back out into the paddies. we had to do something about that. you know, in the delta you couldn't take a break. you had to sit in the water. you couldn't have an operation,

you had to walk in the water. so with the help of walter reed at the end of two months, we'd solved the problem. it was very simple. after 48 hours in the water, immersion foot went up asymmetrically. so we said you can't keep the troops out there more than 48 hours. one company had to always be trying out. but our organization didn't support that. we wanted pressure on the enemy, so we asked if we could go from a three company battalion to a four company battalion. that was approved. we went from 27 infantry companies to 39 infantry companies. so now we had instead of a thousand men in the field, we had 3,000 men, and we wanted to support them as best we can. we wanted to get more tiger scouts. who were these? these were the people, the viet cong that surrendered to the government. they went to an indoctrination camp. they were then graduated and said, please, find them a job. we were looking for them.

they were great. they were loyal, they knew the language, they knew the viet cong tactics, booby traps, so we wanted one for a squad and one for a platoon. now that we had the men in the field, healthy men, we had to support them. two ways: you had to have good intelligence and good aviation assets. as far as intelligence go, there are two types. you have human, when which you get from humans, and you have sensors which you get from machines. our best machine intelligence we called the airborne intelligence protecter, we called them a people sniffer. you fly over and somebody down there, you get a reading that says viet cong's down there, you can jump on 'em because that was realtime. as far as the human goes, we had the med cap. what is a med cap? we sent our medical people out every day to treat these people. this was so well received, it was unbelievable. these were peasants. they'd never seen a doctor. and it was so well received, we

said let's do it in the viet cong villages because, after all, we want to get them into the government. we said, we'll get a lot of intelligence there. we got no intelligence. and the reason for that was in the village there were only women. the men would come back at night, but they were not in the village. so we called and said we want some women tiger scouts. i made the call, they laughed. they said, they're crazy, what are you talking about? send us some. we put them on our i caps, now we had a lot of information. the next thing we had to do was get our aviation assets up, and the guy that did this was a mechanic. wonderful people, these mechanics. unbelievable. couldn't fight a war without them. we had operational readiness up to 80%, and now we're ready to go. so the first thing we looked at then was tactics. we'd been looking at tactics all along, of course. and the tactics mac v said you cannot attack a position unless you have an artillery prep ahead of time. we said this delta if you have

an around artillery prep, the ey will know you're coming. we don't want one. so we didn't have one, but we always had artillery no matter what. never was anybody in a fire fight without artillery coverage. the second thing was mac very said you have to attack with ten choppers, ten hueys. a huey can carry seven men, you have to have 70 men. we thought that was too much, we said, no, we want five. if we found something, the other five would come. if we didn't find something, then the other five would go to the next target. if they didn't find anything, they'd go to the next target. we called that jitterbugging. by that way, we always found the enemy. our intelligence was good, but we could go to six or seven targets if necessary. we never had to go to more than two or three. now we had the area covered in daytime by our helicopters. viet cong did not move in the delta in the daytime but at night, oh, my gosh, it was

constant moving. they had their positions. they had to stay -- they could not stay long. they had to move from position to position or we'd find them with our personnel people sniffer. that they had to get reinforcements of people, reinforcements of ammunition. they had to -- they couldn't talk on the radio, so they had to have runners. everybody was moving in the delta, therefore, we had to get new ambush techniques. we had many. one we called a checkerboard. we'd insert an infantry company at dusk, three platoons, three squads. they would predetermine a position for each squad. these squads would go out, these men of eight or ten men, and we had nine ambush sites. that would cover a square kilometer. that wasn't very much. we had to have more in the delta. the thing that changed the delta for us at night was our snipers. we want snipers. we went to the army unit at fort

benning, we got 44 sniper rifles, the unit to come over and train our people. our fist class graduated in november, and the snipers went out. one sniper, two infantrymen. man, that changed the whole idea of the division. the rest of the soldiers saw these three guys can go out and have great results, we can do it too. so they weren't afraid of the night. they went out, night was just as easy for them as daytime. this is our number one sniper, sergeant wald on. he has two dces. this guy was phenomenal. he could hit a fly on your head at 500 yards, i'll guarantee it. it was absolutely wonderful. so now we had a small area covered at night, but we needed to cover a large area. we had to do it with aircraft. we came up with the idea of putting a night vision device on a helicopter. we have a soldier looking down, he sees somebody running on the waterways. he'd fire a tracer bullet, the attack helicopter would come in

and shoot them up. we kept improving that and improving that, but the most interpreting one to -- interesting one to me was the night raid. a young captain came to me one day and said, colonel, if these vc come back to the village at night, why don't we go after them at night? so we decided we'd land two choppers in the middle of a village and have coverage with two attack helicopters and command and control. and the first operation we did that was in march '69 led by hudson, and it captured five vietnam, threw them on the helicopters, killed four. from that time on, the viet cong were not safe anywhere. and so this will show you in this slide -- i don't think you can read it too well, but we had squad platoon company operations. we had 50% more nighttime operations company, but we had 3,572 operations. only 1120 made a contact. ma means 2400 -- that means 2400 was a walk in the sun, no enemy.

in this a nine month period we had 22,300 operations that never saw the enemy. 85.5 percent did not see the enemy. why do i bring that up? a lot of people say the reason the ninth had such great results is they put pressure on the troops to come up with something. we had great leaders. we hand picked our leaders. our company commanders, our battalion commanders and, third, we had a lot of enemy. the place was full of enemy. now, i've been talking about security, but security was purpose only. the end game in vietnam was pacification. that meant control. how do you measure control? mac v came up with an idea, they called it the hamlet evaluation survey. they went out -- you won't believe this -- they went out over month to 10,000 hamlets, graded them on 165 questions, put them in order, safest to not so safe. a and b were considered safe. you couldn't get in the village, you were v.

so let's show our area. excuse me, this is the most important thing in my talk, and i almost forgot it. when general abrams came down in april '69, the cr division -- we're talking about the security aspect -- this is what he had to say. the performance has been magnificent, and i would say in the last three months it's an unparalleled and unequal performance, and that's the title of the book we have. this is our operations at delta, our four provinces. we had 1.7 million people. look to see at that time at the end of may, we had more viet cong than we had people under the government. you'll notice at the beginning of tet which is the top one to the end that, actually, they lost stroops. there was -- troops. there was no uprising. the viet cong lost people. the most important thing i want you to watch is the 662,000 contested people. this was what the tug-of-war was all about. these were the people we wanted to bring into the government of vietnam through security and

through their work that they did with their rural redevelopment people. and so now when the ninth division left a year from there in july of 1969, we had brought 410,000 of these people into the government control, that we had almost completely pacified the delta in our area. how did we do it? first of all, we worked with the army. they were good soldiers. we went on operations with them, but most of all they gave us intelligence. they had the language. they knew what was going on. without their intelligence, it helped us. but also we built roads, we built schools, we took orphans for a walk. in a four month period with our med cap and i caps, we created 45 villages a day. 45 a day. we treated 344,000 vietnamese. the government was so happy with what we were doing, they gave the ninth division the civic action medal. that may not mean something, but up to that time no military unit had ever been given a civic

action medal. of course, they gave us an award for our security forces. the cost of gallantry, they called it. without any question, they were introduced to access to the resources and improved security. the political social aspects of the pacification program could occur, and that mission was done. we said so, the south vietnamese said so, i want you to mow the north vietnamese said so. in 1973 the intelligence, the j2 had access to top secret papers that they got from north vietnam. you know, there were leaks. leaks from us, leaks from them, leaks all over vietnam. you never knew whether the other side knew what you were doing. this was quoting the north vietnamese. they said phases one and two of the general uprising was a debacle. they made a mistake, but what i want you to look at is the bottom line.

>> that was our job, and that's what we did. i'd like them to quote one more guy, general westmoreland. here's what he had to say. >> and that concludes my presentation. [applause] >> thank you very much, general hunt. and i think everybody in the audience would like to thank you for your service. our next speaker is james zumwalt. his book is "bare feet; iron will," and it's a little bit of a different perspective on the vietnam war from the other side. jim? >> thank you. good afternoon. general, i want to thank you for a very illustrious career in the army. i salute you, sir.

"bare feet, iron will "represents a journey. that journey culminate inside the writing of my book. but i think it's important to understand from where that journey began. every male member of my family served in the vietnam war. my father commanded the naval forces, my brother was a swift boat commander under his chain of command. i was the black sheep of the family, i joined the marine corps and served as a platoon and company commander that was part of a battalion landing team. all of us returned from that war unscathed, or so we thought. in 1983 my brother was diagnosed with lymphoma, and normally you either have hodge kins or non-hodgkin's lymphoma. he was one of half a dozen cases in the medical history that had both. he also had a son that was born with severe learning disabilities. he fit the profeel of many of our veterans -- profile of many of our veterans who were returning and suffering from agent orange exposure.

the bit el ironny for my family was it was my father who had ordered the spreading of agent orange in vietnam. let me explain briefly why that was done. the navy was experiencing a 72% casualty rate. anybody who served one year in the brown water navy, a 72% chance of being killed or wounded. and the reason for that was they were traversing these narrow waterways with heavy vegetation on either bank, affording the enemy great concealment in which he could set up his ambushes, and the boat would be in the middle of an ambush before it could respond. with the introduction of agent orange and the exfoliation on the river banks, the casualty rate dropped from 72% to 6%. so from a military standpoint, it made a great deal of sense to use agent orange. probably tens of thousands of leaves were -- lives were saved and, unfortunately, we would learn later that thousands of lives would be lost because of it being carcinogenic.

my brother died in 1988. when there's tragedy in your family, there's two ways you can take it. one is to convert that into positive energy and to do something constructive with your life. the other is to let the negative energy consume you. in my father's case, it was the former. he threw himself into the agent orange issue and desperately to win benefits for veterans who had been exposed. i, on the other hand, let the negative energy get ahold of me and became very negative about the war and the enemy we fought there. in 1994 my father was taking a trip to vietnam to meet with the president of the country to see if he could get him to agree to do a joint study on agent orange. he asked me if i wanted to go with him, and i was reluctant to do so, but i did join him. we had a week of meetings, and about halfway through i felt the anger welling up inside sitting

across the table from their veterans who had been responsible for the loss of 5,000 on our -- 58,000 of ours. that changed on the third day. i had a meeting one-on-one with a major general who had been a medical doctor for the north vietnamese army. he started the meeting off by extending his con do lenses for the loss of my brother, and we started talking about the war and its impact. i noticed the general became teary-eyed. i learned later that he, too, had lost a brother. and when he shared that with me, it was kind of like a light went on. i asked myself, was the loss of a loved one any less significant just because it occurred on the other side of a battlefield? the answer was obvious. it had been devastating to both of us. in my case, i had been fortunate because i was with my brother, i knew how he died. the general had spent 17 years looking for his brother's remains, and the vietnamese culture it's very important that the body be return today the village of birth because it

continues the cycle of life, the spirit of deceased passing into the soil, the soil nurtures the crops, and the crops are consumed by the surviving family members. but it was after that conversation that i realized i needed to return to vietnam and learn more about what the war was like there their side of the battlefield. between 1994 and 2004 i made over 50 trips, interviewing hundreds of their veterans to get a better understanding of what the war was like. and e very quickly came to learn that war is universal, and the impact is universal. just like we had suffering, hardship and tragedy on our side of the battlefield, they had it on theirs too. and the other thing i was very impressed with, though, was the ingenuity. what i'd like to do in the next few minutes is kind of give you some snapshots of what some of their stories were. so you can an idea of what i mean. and let me start by talking about a doctor. in 1966, a colonel in the army,

medical doctor, was ordered to form a field hospital and take it down to ho chi minh trail. for those of you unfamiliar, although it had the name trail, it was a network of roads, basically seven north/south roads and dozens of east/west roads. by the time they got down south, they'd been attacked by air and had lost about 90% of their supplies. so by the time they got down south, they were a hospital in name only and had to start to look for ways of replenishing their supplies. they found a very unlikely source, the u.s. government. one of the things we were doing, we were dropping parachute flares at night to monitor activity on the ground. the next day the colonel would send his soldiers out to collect these parachutes. they'd use them as bandages, they'd use the lines in the parachute as sue curs -- sutures, they could even use the container as a stethoscope.

if they came across a crash site of an aircraft, they would take the piping and cut into it sections and cut it lengthwise so it could be used as a brace for a broken arm or leg. they would strip -- they would take the insulated wire and strip the wire out of it leaving the rubber tubing which then would become a tube for their ivs. nothing went to waste. when we weren't a source of supply, they turned to mother nature. empty coconuts became thive bag that -- iv bag that they would stick the rubber tubing up. bamboo chutes were used for tracheotomy. they had very limited writing supplies, and they had to keep medical records of their patients. they would cut bamboo, again, cut it into sections and lengthwise, put a string around it, put the string around the patient's net and write on the inside of the bamboo, and it became a mobile medical chart. their operationing rooms were

underground. although they had generators for the most part, they didn't have the fuel to be able to operate them, so they would hook bicycles up to the generator, and soldiers would pedal the bicycles to provide electricity during the surgery. because they didn't have electricity on 24/7 bases, doctors and nurses would have to donate their own blood. conditions that were totally unfathomable by our way of life but were standard to theirs. food was in short supply. the patients usually were provided for, they had sufficient rice for them. but the doctor would have to send his medical staff out on hunting and fishing parties. they basically would kill anything that moved; tigers, monkeys, elephant. he described the first time they killed an elephant. they spent about an hour trying to cut through the hide and were unable to do so. they finally, the surgeon

suggested they cut through the belly of the elegant, which he -- elephant, which he did, and crawled inside and started cutting meat from the inside out. i interviewed vo hung li, and after meeting him he proudly showed me his six wounds, two he had incurred fighting the french, four fighting the americans, the most severe of which had severed his right hand. he only had half a hand. you would have thought he was a front line infantry soldier. he was a brain surgeon. unlike our medical personnel who strictly focused on healing the wounded, their medical staff often found themselveses in the front lines with their soldiers when they were undermanned. but he talked about having to do brain surgeries and not having the anesthesia to be able to do them. they had novocain, so what they would do was deaden the scalp, cut the scalp flap back exposing

the skull. then they would take a drill and start drill ago series of holes -- drilling a series of holes. normally, you have a surgical drill that limits how far you can penetrate through the skull. they did not have surgical drills and used regular household drills. so they had to be very expert at knowing how far they could penetrate. but they would drill these holes in a circle, they then would take coarse wire, stick it through one hole and out through the other and start breaking through each one of these holes until the, that part of the skull came out. they would conduct the surgery, and oftentimes did not have the metal plate to put back in, so they simply sewed the flap of skin back over it, and the soldier was sent up north to get a metal plate put into position. dr. li said, quote, we constantly were forced to come up with creative ways to treat the wounded. it was much like the treatments by the egyptians thousands of

years earlier. one technique they applied was for an amputee to briefly place his bleeding stump into oiling oil. this caused veins to shrink and, as a result, reduced bleeding. while medical conditions were nightmarish, li said, it was the price we paid for victory. nowhere was the ingenuity of the viet cong more obvious than along the ho chi minh trail. on my first trip back after the -- i went over with my father, i had kinner with a chi -- dinner with a chinese-vietnamese dinner. and he said you must ask them about the invisible roads. i tried to get him to tell me more about it, and he wouldn't. every soldier i started interviewing i asked them what they knew about the invisible road. i finally interviewed a colonel. the ho chi minh trail was divided into sections, and when i asked him if he knew anything

about the invisible roads, he got a smile on his face and said, quote, you cannot openly hide a road that is visible, but make the road invisible, and you can hide it in the open. he then went on to explain. they noticed during the war these primary north/south roads that they had were parallelled by rellivetively -- relatively shallow rivers and streams. what we were doing -- we knew parts of the road existed. we sent aerial observers out to monitor activity to see if they saw any signs that a convoy had come through there, and then they would try to identify the convoy. knowing this, they had engineers go into shallow rivers and streams and they would send their convoys through the river beds and have them come back on o the ho chi minh trail in a more concealed area. so they very cleverly were able to circumvent the points we were observing on the ho chi minh

trail. something else they did, they had to be crossing rivers at certain points, and we, obviously, were on the lookout for bridges. they would build bridges for the sole purpose of us have having a target to attack. they then either upstream or downstream there that bridge would use a couple of different concepts. one was something called a submarine bridge. the a bridge platform that was built about a foot and a half under the low water mark. and for those of you who served in vietnam, you know why they call it brown water, because you can't see anything underneath the surface. from the air you wouldn't be able to see a bridge platform. they would put guides on that bridge platform, and at night they would guide the convoys on either edge of the platform. they existed for the due riggs of the -- duration of the war, and we never knew about it. another concept they had was the buoy bridge. thousands of truck inner tubes were interconnected with a bridge platform on top.

at night they would turn on air pumps on either side, inflate the tires, the bridge platform would come up above the surface, they'd secure it in place and then sent foot traffic across it all night. just before daybreak, they'd turn off the air pumps, deflate the tires, and the platform would sink underneath the water. again, a way of getting across the river that we never knew about. let me conclude with an observation. 2500 years ago a brilliant chinese military strategist wrote a book entitled "the art of war." he espoused certain principles of war that a commander should master before engaging the enemy. one of those was you never engaged an enemy on the battlefield unless you know that enemy. 2500 years later another author by the name of tom brokaw

described our world war ii generation as america's greatest generation, which i agree with. it was a great generation. as i reflected on su's comment and tom brokaw's comment and i looked at the fact that the vietnamese between 1945 and 1975 fought and defeated the japanese, the french, the americans, the cambodianss and the chinese, finally i came to realize that our biggest shortcoming in not knowing our enemy was knowing that we were probably fighting their greatest generation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, colonel zumwalt, and thank you for your service as well. >> thank you. >> we'll open up the session to questions and answers, and i think we have microphones available. anyone with a question?

>> thank you, gentlemen, for coming here today and speaking to us. >> thank you. >> over the years i've heard a lot about the destruction of viet cong's infrastructure during tet and mini tet, and a lot about the perception that was created in the united states by tet and mini tet. i was wondering if you two could both -- do you have any idea of what the perception might have been from particularly the south vietnamese people's per sective -- perspective and the viet cong and north seat vietnamese's perspective of that whole situation and also how much infrastructure of the south vietnamese government was damaged by tet and mini tet? >> well, i served in vietnam '73-'75 when the americans were

gone. and the vietnamese had a great infrastructure, the south vietnamese. it's interesting that we had no problem of getting our equipment to the front lines because we had the rail, we had the automote motive, we had the ships. the trouble we had in '73-'75 was getting the equipment because congress cut off the money. you didn't have any bullets, any oil. on the other hand, the north vietnamese had no trouble getting equipment from the russians and the chinese, but they had a terrible time getting it down to south vietnam. so the infrastructure problem was just the reverse. one had all the equipment they wanted, the other didn't have the transportation. we had aerial photography of the ho chi minh trail. i tell you this, i have pictures of three trucks abreast, you

know? it started out as a trail, it ended up as a highway. it used to take them three or four months to get down from north vietnam to saigon area. at the end of the war, it took them one week. so the infrastructure was just the opposite. one had the roads and the equipment, the other didn't. one had the equipment, the north vietnamese, and we didn't because the congress cut our money off. does that answer your question? >> if i may just add from the north vietnamese standpoint, i interviewed a general who commanded the viet cong forces, and he told me that, as the general has said, tet of '68 was an absolute disaster for them. they were on the ropes. he saw no way that they could win the war, and-astounded when he saw -- he was astounded when he saw that the american media was reporting it as a defeat. he said it renewed his hopes and reinvigorated them to be able to

persevere and see that war through to fruition. >> well, i want to make a comment, if i may. first, i apologize for speaking too rapidly because we're given 15 minutes. but secondly, i'm pleased to be on this program with colonel zumwalt. his father was in charge of the riverring forces that we used to go into combat, and i thought it was just happenstance that the two of us would be here today, and i was very pleased with that. >> thank you, sir. >> we had a program last night at the marine corps league, i was in the marines during that period as well, and colonel zumwalt told a rather interesting story about one of the officers you interviewed who had a role in preparing a surprise for your father. would you care to -- >> i asked to interview the commanding general of the tunnel fighters, a massive tunnel system about 340 miles outside of saigon. we were never able to drive them out of those tunnels.

but my focus in the interview was to learn more about how they had built the tunnels, and they came up with some very clever ways of building these tunnels and how they were able to deceive us with the entry and exit points. at one point he said i was responsible for conducting attacks on and around saigon, he started rattling off a list of targets, and he said the navy headquarters. with that, i said do you mean the u.s. navy headquarters? he looked at me and smiled. i said that's in the saigon. he smiled and said, yes. by any chance would that have been 1969? he smiled is and said yes. turned out, he had authored an assassination attempt against my father in many 1969. now, to learn the planning that went on the other side to make that attack successful just kind of sent chills down my spine. when the interview was over, we stood up and shook hands. my father was still alive at this point, and he said when you see your father next, give him

my apologies, but tell him i was only doing my job as a soldier. i said, well, general, forchew that itly -- fortunately, you missed. by the way, dad, i gave him your new address. [laughter] fortunately, he has a very good sense of humor. >> yes, sir. the microphone is coming to you. >> my question is for colonel zumwalt. with the openness of the folks that you interviewed and the relationships that you've developed, do you feel like they're being open with us now in finding as many missing p.o.w.s as possible? >> yes, sir, i do. matter of fact, i met with the -- as i document in my book, i have a chapter dedicated to that. i met with the mia search teams that had been over there, and they said that their biggest shortcoming was making it clear to the american people that there was very good cooperation with the vietnamese. and they gave me several examples as to how that was

going on. the agreement said that if, if we said that there was an area we wanted to inspect, within 24 hours they had to give us authorization to go in there and inspect it. there was a report that came in that there was a dark-skinned american being seen in chains with guards, and we got the coordinates, got authorization, went in there. turned out that they were loggers, and these were logging chains that the guy had draped around him as he was carrying the logging chains. so it was a very innocent -- the person who had reported it really thought that it was a p.o.w., but it turned out to be just a very innocent situation. but the point being the vietnamese government has been extremely cooperative. and in my book i give several examples of how they've really gone overboard, even to the extent of allowing us to do something we would never tolerate, and that's to go into one of their cemeteries where we had gotten a report there was a

p.o.w. that had been buried there and dig up plots in their cemetery. >> that was after '75. '73-'75 they still took shots at us. we lost several people, what we call the jcrc, that's the joint casualty resolution center, and we had several people ambushed and lost lives looking for soldiers. the american government did everything humanly possible to find our dead and missing. it was a wonderful try. >> just one other thing to put things into perspective. you know, at the time the vietnam war ended we had about 2200 m. i.a.s. the vietnamese had about 300,000. and if you compare that to the respective populations that existed at that point in time, it works out to something like one in every 10,000 americans being affected by the loss of an m.i., it worked out to about one

in every 80 vietnamese being affected by the loss of an m.i.a.. this kind of gets back to my point about the hardship and suffering being universal on both sides of the battle feel. battlefield. >> down here. >> i'm from egyptian descent, and i don't understand why people like you don't speak out about all the engagement in wars that we don't understand whom we get engaged with. >> well, i do talk quite a bit about our ongoing wars, and a lot of times i'm asked, you know, since i seem to be telling the enemy side of the battlefield here, i must be oppose today the wars we're -- opposed to the wars we're fighting elsewhere, and identify got mixed -- i've got mixed emotions about it. i look at some differences between the war we fought in vietnam and the wars we're fighting today. you know, losing the vietnam

war, the vietnamese didn't follow us home. losing the wars today in iraq and afghanistan, they will follow us home, and they have already followed us home. i also see a very big difference between the motivation of the north vietnamese and viet cong soldier that we fought and the motivation of the extremists that we fight today. the vietnamese, for all intents and purposes, were motivated by the same things in life that we're motivated by. they wanted to return home to their families and pursue a livelihood and happiness. that's not what the enemy we're fighting today is looking to do. they're looking to, to kill us and to die on a battlefield so that they can reap their rewards in the afterlife. it's a much more dangerous enemy we're dealing with today than we dealt with in vietnam. but to answer your question, i try to speak about it as much as i can. as long as i can get people the listen.

>> we were, vietnam was 30 years ago, 40 years ago. what would you feel about trying to wage a war, wage a conflict in today's instantaneous communications, reporters embedded in your -- in every company that you have or many companies that are there, televisions, skype, that type of thing? >> well, let me say, first of all, we did see journallests embedded -- journalists embedded in the 2003 ip vegas into -- invasion into iraq, and they were right there in the thick of it. but i think most of the reporting we've seen since that point in time have been from reporters who are using stringers who give them stories, and they report it second or thirdhand. which, i think, really undermines the role that the journalist is supposed to, the

the -- is supposed to play. let me give you an example of what i mean. i'm sure many of you are familiar with what's happened in abu ghraib, the prison. most of what they did was prisoner abuse, it wasn't torture. but the media grabbed ahold of that, wanted to show pictures of the abuse going on and everything else they could do to make it more dangerous for our soldiers in iraq and afghanistan. i'm now going to share a story with you, but i doubt if anybody in this room has heard about to show you what goes on on the other side of the battlefield on the extremist side, and this was reported, and it only got one small blurb in a military newspaper. i haven't seen it in any civilian newspaper. there was a group of extremists who were trying to convince parents in the outskirts of baghdad to join al-qaeda. and the parents refused to do so. they invited one set of parents

to lunch. the parents came to lunch, and a ply -- platter was brought to the table, and there on the platter was the baked remains of one of their children. they said, this will happen to your other children if you don't join our cause. had anybody heard that story? the yet you've heard of abu ghraib. i think that tells you that our media's failing to do it job today. does that answer your questionsome. >> but, sir, we always had newspaper men in vietnam. they were everywhere. i think they were motivated not to write sensational stories, but to try to hone to the line. and i think a lot of it has to do with the outlook of the press today versus the outlook of the press in world war ii, it's even different. but we always had people. >> question over here, please?

>> would either or both of you care to comment about the role of women in fighting the vietnam war? on the other side? >> women were very effective in fighting on the other side. and they were, a lot more of them were involved in that war than we realized. but i think that they were probably considered among the most efficient fighters that took to the battlefield. they did a tremendous job for the wrong side, unfortunately. >> i have another take. whenever our soldiers after battle was over would see that they had killed a vietnam woman, it upset them terribly. the americans just revolted the fact that the women were there and they had to shoot them.

so the opposite side of the story. >> i was in the delta in '69 and '70 and had the experience of pulling ambushes against the local viet cong with women fighters, and i agree with the general, it was a terribly upsetting thing to be the one pulling the trigger. and that may be just a sociological thing associated with a lot of, you know, western men or men in general, i don't know. but it, it was really a tough, a tough thing. i would like to comment, also, though i lived in a small village then in the delta and fought with the local militia soldiers using the navy pbrs

and the boats and all of that as well. but being in the village dealing with the district chiefs and the village chiefses and the local soldiers and the people in the village, i come away, i think, with a different opinion than kohl null zumwalt -- colonel zumwalt about the wisdom of engaging in wars on the ground where cultural differences are so profound that society simply does not understand each other in the way that we, we think. and i can give an example that always comes to my mind. actually, with regard to the ninth division who were above us a province or two. with all of their successes and with all of the efforts that they did, i can tell you that, you know, our local villagers

and my small team of men were glad no large american unit was around us because of all the difficulties that brought up with the local people and the way soldiers interact with civilians. and i don't mean out on a mid cap or something. i just mean every day the, you know, the squad walking around through a village and just a thousand different kind of interactions that are very difficult to come away with any sort of positive sense. on either side. and i think our efforts in iraq and afghanistan as we walk away from it -- whether that's one year from now or ten years from now -- within a few years after that we probably will be back to square one, i think. >> let me just, you covered a

lot of material there. let me just respond to what i can remember. as far as the women go, the question was asked as far as on the enemy side of the battlefield what kind of fighters were, so that was what my answer was addressed to. i totally agree with the general and with you that seeing women on the other side of the battlefield is very disconcerting, and so i'm in total agreement with that. um, the point you made about the different cultures and so forth, that gets right back to what i said about sun su. you never engage an enemy on the battlefield unless you know that enemy first. and i've tried to think of any war we've fought where we really knew the enemy we were fighting, and the only one i can think of is our own civil war. but other than that, it's always been a catch-up game. >> general, can -- anything to add to that?

any other questions? ma'amsome -- ma'am? >> i would like to hear both of you give your per tseng of the -- perception of the relationship between the north and the south vietnamese today. we have traveled over there a number of times, and it has been a remarkable experience, and i would just like to hear what your impression is. thank you. >> [inaudible] >> having made trips back between 1994 and 2004, i feel that i've been able the sew a transition -- see a transition take place. clearly, when i first made the trip back in 1994, it was much different than what it was in 2004. in 1994 i sensed that the relationship between north and south probably wasn't too much different than what it was like in this country after our american civil war.

there's still quite a bit of animosity in the north about the fact that their southern brother es had taken arms against them. i think as the focus got away e e -- got away from that and more trying to build up the economy, you know, when saigon fell in 975, the general who was commander in chief of the ho chi minh trail was given the task of taking over the agricultural program, rice production. they were having to import two million tons of rice a year to feed the people in both north and south. he struggled for three years to get them to develop rice production. the only way he was able to do it was to introduce capitalism. and in 1978 things really took off. they became the leading exporter in the world, i think, of rice. i think today they're number one and number two. and they're number one and number two in coffee exportation

as well. so this is an industrious people that now is recognizing a much better standard of living today than they did in 1975 or 1995. i had a discussion with a south vietnamese gentleman who had been, had owned quite a bit of property during the vietnam war that he leased to the americans. he became a millionaire, multimillionaire. and when saigon fell in april 1975, he decided to stay on even though he knew he'd probably be thrown into a reeducation camp. he spent three years in a reeducation camp, was tossed out and living on the street and, gradually, as the vietnamese government realized they had to turn to capitalism, they felt he was a good capitalist to turn to and got him involved in helping them start the economy moving again. and when i interviewed him in 1995, he was worth probably

about $35 million. he had gotten into the concrete business and there's really been quite a bit of building there. but he said it best, i think. he said, you know, there's about 10,000 millionaires in saigon. 10,000 millionaires in saigon. and these people when they have money, they want a good education for their children. and they send them to western schools to be educated. he said, these children will come back, and they will build this country and leave this country to democracy. he said what the united states needs to understand is it has to happen at our pace, it can't happen at the pace that the united states wants to see it done. but he felt that vietnam would be move anything that direction. moving in that direction. >> we have time for one more question. sir? >> this is for both of you. i just finished the longest war, and bergin spends quite a bit of

time talking about the pundits saying that this is obama's vietnam. and yet he says there's no comparison, that between the state-sponsored viet cong and the number of troops that they had versus the number of troops that are available for the taliban or al-qaeda. would both of you comment on that based on your background? is. >> well, i would exhibit the fact that it's not state-sponsored. you've really got to understand what's going on in iran. iran is like an octopus, and they have got tentacles out in every hot spot in the world today. whether it's lebanon, whether it's gaz gaza, whether it's iraq, whether it's afghanistan. they're active in bahrain, they're active in venezuela. there's -- hezbollah, which is a terrorist group started by iran, has actually formed, setting up bases in venezuela with the