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thedrifter
10-13-03, 05:48 AM
U.S. Navy will make port call in Vietnam


By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES



HONOLULU — The first U.S. Navy vessel to dock in Vietnam in almost 30 years is due to arrive there on a landmark port call in November, according to a military source and a former U.S. ambassador.
The military contact is the first since the United States pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, withdrawing from a war that cost the United States more than 58,000 lives and left an estimated 1.3 million to 3 million North and South Vietnamese dead. There are an estimated 1,200 American POW/MIAs still unaccounted for.
A military official said Friday the ship would dock for five days in what was largely a symbolic gesture reflecting the deepening bilateral relationship between the United States and the communist republic.
A spokesman for the Navy's Pacific Command declined to comment, citing security reasons.
Bilateral ties between the United States and Vietnam have been improving slowly since the former foes resumed diplomatic relations in 1995. A bilateral trade agreement was signed in 2000, and a deal to resume commercial flights between the two countries was signed on Thursday.
"The military-to-military aspect is in a developmental stage," said former Ambassador Charles B. Salmon Jr., currently a foreign policy adviser at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, a Pentagon-funded think tank.
Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra is due to visit the United States later this year, Mr. Salmon and the military source both said. It will be the first visit by a Vietnamese defense minister since the end of the Vietnam War. Mr. Tra's visit takes place after Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien's recent trip to the United States.
Mr. Salmon said that despite the growing relationship the issues of POW/MIAs and human rights violations in Vietnam were still of significant concern for many Americans.
The communist government, which tightly controls religion, has clashed and arrested dissident Buddhist monks and refused to recognize Pope John Paul II's appointment of Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man as Ho Chi Minh City's new cardinal.


http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031011-113020-4505r.htm

Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

Sparrowhawk
10-13-03, 08:34 AM
that while the Navy is docked in Vietnam they may be able to send a couple of guys just a few miles south pass the Song Thu Bon River, into an area we used to know as Arizona and pick up a young kid.

He's a skinny fellow about 19 years of age, helmet cocked on one side. People there say they still see him carrying the M-60 over his right shoulder. The kid ran out of ammo during an operation in that area sometime ago and has been in a dream like state for over 35 years.

http://vietnamdiary.bizland.com/cook65.jpg

Marine Corps records were never stamped showing he returned to the states, so they may find his shadow sitting with his back up against a gravesite waiting for the Marines to come back and get him.

All this time his soul has just been wondering around between that world and this world and sometimes I don't know which is which.

Semper Fi

Marines

USMC-FO
10-13-03, 08:37 AM
Nice tribute, and a nice piece of writing Cook ! Puts a lot of things in perspective.

MillRatUSMC
10-13-03, 08:55 AM
http://www.leatherneck.com/photopost/data/500/212ricardovietnam.jpg
Cook, while they're looking for that young kid.
I wonder if they might also look a little northeast of the Arizona for the young man on the right.
He was a tad older, twenty-seven years young.
But his mind keep wandering back to a point in time.
Known to some as the Vietnam War.
"The Vietnamese knew that our bodies were leaving, but our minds would always be back in time known to some as the Vietnam War".
We wish to forget, but things just keep come back.
Dreams of incoming and screams in the night.
Incoming up north and screams in night in the area northeast of the Arizona.

Semper Fi
Ricardo

PS Thanks for your diary...

MillRatUSMC
10-13-03, 08:58 AM
If we had known that all that suffering was going to end, with Bilateral ties between the United States and Vietnam.
WHY, in hades did we kill them and them us?
DON'T make sense to this old jarhead.
An INSANITY bar none.

Semper Fi
Ricardo