"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." The POW/MIA issue in the United States remains controversial. It is a very difficult subject area to sort "fact" from "fiction" in, since a great deal of the literature available on the issue seems to be biased and slanted to an extreme degree. On the one hand, some individuals believe that the US government consciously abandoned hundreds of Americans held as prisoners of war in Southeast Asia following the formal end of hostilities between the US and Vietnam in 1973. They argue that a cover-up of this intentional act has been perpetuated through each successive US presidential administration to the present. Directly refuting these claims, some past/present government officials maintain that although many American soldiers remain unaccounted for in SEA, no government conspiracy exists (or ever did) to cover up an intentional abandonment of American POW/MIAs. |