BETRAYAL IN VIETNAM

Fanning disgorges six years of Executive and Congressional reports and recriminations re the Vietnam War, topping it off with President Thieu's pre-resignation salvo denouncing the US for ""lack of responsibility and inhumanity toward an ally."" He blames US withdrawal of troops on a handful of left-wing Democrats in Congress who engineered the resolutions and military appropriations cuts that jammed the US war machine in Southeast Asia. You know them well: Church, Cooper, McGovern, McCarthy, Hatfield, Fulbright. . . . The most sinister aspect of this assault on Nixon's ""peace with honor"" was the way Democratic Congressmen were influenced by war demonstrators, peace groups, and individuals (Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda) who were instructed and manipulated to ""carry out the politboro's orders in the United States."" The gist of Fanning's argument, if you can call it that, is that the groundswell of dissent in and out of Congress was Hanoi-inspired and Uncle Sam reneged on its commitment to the freedom-loving people of South Vietnam. One can only conclude that truth, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder.