The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration especially in the Pentagon where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war with disastrous results.

Throughout the 20th century the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.

I'm not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I'm going to say I'm opposed to war. But I'm also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights.

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.

The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war just as I opposed the Vietnam War because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

When I grew up in Taiwan the Korean War was seen as a good war where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was of course the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that.

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

I wanted to have the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and Sydney and have the chance to work there.

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest it is not empire it is not foreign bases it is not domination. It is simply put just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

I think Operation Smile is in more than 22 countries mostly Third World. It just happened that my schedule opened up at the time they were heading to Vietnam.

I have been to several wars to draw. I went to Vietnam. And made drawings in Vietnam during that period of the war there and found that to be a very very sad situation.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible and Vietnam is the place.

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.