THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 21, 1995 TAG: 9504210008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 32 lines
Your editorial staff fails now to present the true facts of the Vietnam War for fear of offending liberals for the war and others (``A truth too late,'' editorial, April 13).
The war was justified. The North Vietnamese overran farms and rice paddies, killing and maiming those who did not pay an enormous tax to them to market products in nearby hamlets.
The South Vietnamese had nothing to fight back with but sticks and pitchforks.
If President Nixon and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had had the same guts as President Harry Truman and had dropped an atomic bomb on Hanoi in 1963 or 1964, 58,000 servicemen and women would be walking around now and hundreds of Vietnam wounded would have been spared.
I am a combat veteran of three wars and have seen the horrors of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Your writers should say it like it is and was and forget about offending liberals, historians and the North Vietnamese, now or in the future.
BRUCE H. BANKS
Norfolk, April 13, 1995 by CNB