At 01:54 AM 9/16/96 GMT, John Young wrote:

The Washington Post has two heart-breaking pieces today on a new book about Vietnam, "The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives," by Paul Hendrickson.

The book tracks the disaster being formulated in 1965 by DC top-down policy interleaved with savagery to five grunts in bloody battle.

There's a laudatory review of the grim book, and a long magazine piece gives an excerpt which includes some of Life's photos of a Marine copter gunner's transition from happy-go-lucky, to butchery of buddies, to grief-stricken collapse. It reawakens what's never forgot.

That April, 1965, Life photo-essay, "One Ride With Yankee Papa 13," turned up in a sidewalk stall today so we'll put 18 photos on our Web page for a glimpse back to the future of power-mad policy begetting slaughter.

ObAP comment: A few weeks ago, the tv show "60 Minutes" ran an item about a group of Jews who, after the end of WWII, vowed revenge on the Nazis, down to German soldiers, plotting to kill as many as they could. In their biggest coup, they killed hundreds of Germans in a POW camp by poisoning their bread. My reaction? As you might expect, I think that the main thing they did wrong was to not kill enough of them, but more particularly to not target the higher-ups. The way I see it, the fundamental reason that people will continue to participate in holocausts, even today, is that they see no real prospect of being punished for their crimes. Unfortunately, society has been conditioned if not to "forgive and forget," at least to not punish where it has an opportunity to punish. I suggest that this is no accident: It is in the interest of tyrants everywhere to let the other guy off easy, lest he be in the same position someday. This is why numerous African and South American dictators were allowed to "retire" in peace, rather than being killed. How would an AP-type system treat Robert McNamara? He'd be dead in a second. To those who say, "What good would this do?" I respond: Anyone in the American government today who is considering an adventure which MIGHT turn into another Vietnam should be deterred by the knowledge that sometime, in 30 minutes or 30 years, he could be killed for what he did. Robert McNamara, presumably, did what he did because he thought he'd never be punished. The best way to deter future governmental abuse is to remind these people that they _will_ be punished. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com