World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.

We wanted to see this country win the war just as much as those advisors did. We felt we would help to do that by reporting the truth. And so there was the moral outrage over this general and the ambassador in Saigon who kept denying the truth we would see.

The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldnt bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

You remember all those phrases about how these people - Asians - dont value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese.

People talked to me in a way I think they would not have talked to somebody who hadn't shared the experience; they gave me their papers, they gave me their diaries. I found people constantly opening up to me. And I think they did because I had shared that experience with them.

World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.

We had a military and political leadership at that period which was genuinely deluded.