Iraq & Nam

A story in the New York Times about Iraqi soldiers deserting during the fighting in Basra reminded me of the first of two times in my career that I was every ordered not to run a story. It wasn't some editor who issued the order, it was my commanding officer while I served at Armed Forces Vietnam Network TV in Quang Tri, Vietnam. The story I had taken from one of the wire services to include in our nightly 10:00p.m. newscast told of South Vietnamese regulars in Laos with U.S. Forces. When the fighting got hotter than they could stand, the RVN's grabbed onto the landing skids of departing Huey's to hitch a ride out of the Hot Zone. "Bad for morale" the AFVN officer told me, "spiking" the story. Now the Hot Zone is in Iraq and a new generation of American soldiers is discovering that sometimes even the people who should be fighting the hardest don't always care quite enough.