I thought the Vietnam war was an utter unmitigated disaster so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.

I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war but it was a number of years before I had the profile the financial resources and the time to do more.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War.

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

The war on terror is the most insane and immoral war of all time. The Americans are doing what they did in Vietnam bombing villages. But how can a civilised nation do this? How can you can eliminate suspects their wives their children their families their neighbours? How can you justify this?

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.