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.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

Today we have two Vietnams side by side North and South exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam but they are living side by side.

In the seventies a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money no market and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened everything in America was being questioned.

It was definitely a part of our life. I mean my mom had both her brothers and her fiancee in Vietnam at the same time so it wasn't just my dad's story it was my mom's story too. And we definitely grew up listening to the stories.

He's a novice but he's had these - he's experienced in leadership in tight circumstances. He started - he dropped the first bomb led the first air strike into North Vietnam.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.