Word: vietnamize
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Returning home from Vietnam with the rank of captain and five medals, including three purple hearts, John Kerry became a leading protester against the war. He used his newfound prominence to launch a bid for Congress, but failed. After a stint as a high-profile prosecutor in Massachusetts' Middlesex County and then a term as Lieutenant Governor, he finally gained national office when he was elected to the Senate in 1984. Yale, Vietnam and the Senate are the biographical highlights that the Kerry campaign is using to introduce the candidate to voters. But it was his earliest years that formed...
...they have been known to break into French. But when he tried to flaunt his credentials as a favorite of foreign leaders and a better bet to navigate the now hostile waters of world opinion, the Republicans pounced, suggesting that he is some kind of Eurosnob--forcing Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, to remind people that he had fought for his country and has served it as a public official for most of his adult life...
...felt a need, almost 30 years after he retired from the foreign service, to write a book about it--he often changes the subject. John talks instead about his mother, who died of respiratory complications in 2002--how influential she was and how warm, or he skips ahead to Vietnam and how that experience shaped his world view. Richard moves in and out of the picture like a shadow, looming large especially in childhood as John fought to win his approval, but ultimately shrinking as John found his place under the hot lights. By the time...
...describe the onset of PTSD," says Lieut. Colonel Carl Castro, a Walter Reed psychologist, who led the study along with Dr. Charles Hoge. Many experts believe that early identification of symptoms and early intervention could help prevent the kind of massive psychological devastation seen in veterans of the Vietnam War. Some 30% of Vietnam vets eventually suffered PTSD--a grab bag of psychological effects that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, emotional numbness and violent outbursts. "Here we were trying to be proactive, to better support returning soldiers," says Castro...
...reconnaissance unit, and his Generation Kill (Putnam; 354 pages) is a pungently written combat narrative and a close-range study of a bunch of twentysomething warriors trying to get a handle on who they are. At times they come across as cynical adrenaline junkies: "If the dominant mythology of [Vietnam] turns on a generation's loss of innocence," Wright observes, "these young men entered Iraq predisposed toward the idea that the Big Lie is as central to American governance as taxation." At the same time, their loyalty to one another under fire is touching. Instead of losing innocence in combat...