Posted 3:31 PM by Floyd

From the Mercury News letters page:

WITH the appointment of Henry Kissinger to lead the Sept. 11 probe, the old chestnuts about Vietnam have been resurrected. A New York Times account which you published (Page 1A, Nov. 28) writes of the ``secret 1971 bombing of Cambodia.'' Why not tell it like it was and write of the secret bombing of the North Vietnamese army in Cambodia?

We conveniently forget that it was not President Nixon and Kissinger who got us into Vietnam. They got us out. I was a POW in Hanoi from 1967 to 1973, and I believe I would still be there if it were not for the efforts of Nixon and Kissinger.

Leo T. Profilet
Los Altos

I share less enthusiasm than Profilet about the brilliance of Nixon and Kissinger. But he is right on the money when he complains about the hypocritical indignation surrounding the "secret bombing." Let's try a thought experiment:

It is 1944 and the Allies are attacking German-held positions in France. The Allies have air superiority over France, and use it to ruthlessly bomb any German troop movement. An ostensibly neutral Switzerland allows German forces right of passage to avoid this bombing.

Do you think that it would be immoral or an outrage against international law if the Allies were then to bomb German forces in Switzerland? Of course not. Then neither was it immoral for the US to bomb the North Vietnamese supply line in Cambodia.