Word: vietnam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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HONG KONG -- China announced plans last month to look for oil in an offshore area in the South China Sea that Vietnam claims ownership of. The dispute could lead to a confrontation because the area may contain as much as 700 million tons of oil, and Vietnam has already leased it to a Mobil-led joint venture. Vietnamese officials say they'd like to find a peaceful solution, but they also say that giving up the region is non-negotiable. A military analyst told Time that the Vietnamese defense budget has recently increased nearly 50%, largely to beef...
...Vietnam War has claimed its victims in various dreadful ways, but the death last week of Lewis B. Puller Jr. seemed particularly haunting. Puller, the son of the most decorated member of the Marine Corps in its history, served in Vietnam as a Marine combat leader. Both his legs and part of his hands were blown off when he stepped on a booby trap. He lived, and he became an attorney at the Pentagon and a respected veterans activist. Then, in 1992, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, Fortunate Son. Yet his life had recently come to seem...
...Congress in Virginia. His defeat depressed him. The following year, his first attempt at suicide failed because he was too drunk to turn on the ignition of his car and asphyxiate himself. "He was a person who was beleaguered and battered by life," says Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. "It is a great American tragedy." In a statement as eloquent as any, Puller's wife -- now a member of the Virginia house of delegates -- said, "To the list of names of victims of the Vietnam War, add the name of Lewis Puller. He suffered terrible wounds that...
There are no accurate statistics on suicide among the 2.7 million Vietnam veterans, particularly among the 300,000 who came home wounded. But veterans' groups believe the rate to be far higher than national averages. Puller's death sent waves of anguish coursing through veterans who have known similar despair and have also sought refuge in alcohol or drugs. But not everyone who shared Puller's experience of life after near death followed the same path. Senator Bob Kerrey, who lived in a ward with Puller during rehabilitation in Philadelphia, lost part of a leg in Vietnam but maintained...
There is no room on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial for the name of Lewis Puller. To be included, one must have died directly from one's wounds in the war. That will not deter Puller's comrades however. "There has never been a suicide placed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial," says Scruggs. "But we are going to find a special way to take care of Lew on Memorial...