Reply #10: Bendell rebuttal

[thetone]

The Vietnam War Memorial has over 50,000 names of American service men killed in that atrocious war. For every American killed over 50 Vietnamese men, women, and children were killed by every conceivable wartime device that could be conjoured by a military superpower. Some by napalm, some by carpet-bombing, some by indiscriminate land mines, some by artillery, but most died from American hand-carried weapons--automatic rifles, shot guns, machine guns, grenades, and mortars. Body counts were the measure of a US military unit's effectiveness. John Kerry along with many others that served in Vietnam found that unconscionable and spoke out against it, while still others, like Don Bendell, chose to glorify it. Individuals have developed all kinds of ways to rationalize the absolute horrors of participating in that war. Some still cling to concept that US involvement in Vietnam was, at worst, benign while others know it was any but. At that time, no indigenous population had ever suffered as much as the South Vietnamese at the hands of a superpower in the history of modern warfare.