Rumsfeld boosts military ties with Vietnam

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Rumsfeld_boosts_military_ties_with_Vietnam.html?siteSect=143&sid=6781572&cKey=1149512971000

HANOI (Reuters) - Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday that U.S.-Vietnamese ties had reached a "new level" and that the former battlefield enemies would boost military exchanges and training.

Vietnam is one of several Asian states with which the Pentagon has built close ties to help its war on terrorism and to hedge against a rising China, which Washington says is too secretive about its military spending and its intentions.

Rumsfeld recalled after Hanoi talks with Defence Minister Pham Van Tra and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai that U.S. President George W. Bush and Khai had met last year and pledged to raise economic, political and security relations "to a new level".

"Certainly that has happened," he said as he wound down the second stop of a three-nation Southeast Asian trip.


My parents would have been proud, proud I tell you, to have seen me get drafted and sent off to Vietnam to die like a dog in some fecking rice paddy. Luckily people with more brains than my parents prevailed though, and the draft was ended in 1973.

It's just a shame it couldn't have been under much different circumstances 35 years ago; I can't imagine Georgie boy prevailing in a rice paddy without Poppy there to ease the way for him.