Vietnam and its complexities haunt race for White House
Iraq makes war a defining issue for Kerry, Bush
Mark Simon, Chronicle Political Writer
Saturday, April 24, 2004
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It is a war that will not end.
More than 31 years after the United States withdrew its last troops from Vietnam, the war and the domestic fight to end it remain a bramble of emotions and opinions still capable of snagging a presidential candidate.
The unresolved issues of the Vietnam War assumed the center of the political stage this week because it was 33 years ago that John Kerry, now the Democratic presidential candidate, made an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that propelled him immediately and permanently into the nation's consciousness.
As a highly decorated veteran of Vietnam, Kerry told the senators in dramatic and eloquent terms that the war was corrupting the soldiers who were fighting it, devastating a country we were purporting to help and alienating the generation of Americans that were supposed to be doing the fighting.
Kerry told the senators the military men and women in Vietnam were being asked "to die for the biggest nothing in history. ... How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
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