There have been many takes on Bob Kerrey's Mekong Delta memories, but one we don't seem to hear from the brain-damaged Information Mandarin Class is its usual chestnut: It's time to move on. If there were innocents killed in the Vietnam war, there were plenty of belligerents masquerading as innocents killed in that conflict, as well.

Pulitzer prize winning Ellen Goodman's article "Bob Kerrey's--And Our--Long Journey Into A Horrific Past," covers many aspects of the Vietnam era, and not surprisingly, is wrong on just about everything. Perhaps in the distant past, the Pulitzer meant something, but recent winners have included such as David Moats, editorial page editor of the Rutland (Vt.) Herald, for an "evenhanded and influential series of editorials commenting on the divisive issues arising from civil unions for same-sex couples." Fair enough, I guess, but try wading through his mind-numbingly bad writing.

Goodman's Pulitzer came way back in 1980, for Distinguished Commentary, and one suspects that she pleased the powers that be with merely a younger version of the same liberal drivel for which she is known, and loved in certain quarters. Maybe, in 1967, when Goodman was hired by the Boston Globe, it was to present the woman's point of view. In reading her stuff, it's often hard to detect if she HAS a point of view, or even if she's a woman, but I digress.

Let's take a look at the Kerrey piece:

She makes a big point of Vietnam still being a contentious issue in her generation...

"Will we be sitting at dinner in a nursing home when suddenly an argument breaks out: Who was the real traitor, Robert McNamara or Jane Fonda?"

***Sounds clever, Ellen, but actually they both were. McNamara for orchestrating a disastrous policy that cost untold lives, and Fonda for aiding and abetting our enemy.

"Today we look back admiringly and wistfully at "The Greatest Generation." We forget that their war produced the acronym SNAFU - situation normal, all fouled up - and their war had its Dresden bombing, its combat chaos, murdered innocents, its memories and silences. But World War II was unequivocally just. And that is the difference."

***I would never call them "Greatest," Ellen. Most gullible or most exploited would be more fitting. Please, Little Miss Radcliffe, go sell your "unequivocally just" to the millions enslaved by Communism in Eastern Europe, or the 2200 guys given up by FDR at Pearl. We rid the world of Hitler, only to preserve it for Stalin.

"In the days since this story broke, old doves are talking again about how we lost our innocence in Vietnam. Old hawks are talking about how we lost our nerve."

***Close, but no cigar. It depends on what group constitutes "we." If the doves lost their innocence in the sense that they realized they shouldn't believe what the Government tells them, bully for them. The grunts in the jungles didn't lose their nerve; rather, it was the politicians back home, who sold them out, by not having a clear plan for this miserable war.

In fairness to Kerrey and all vets, we should never forget the one war in our history, that not only had atrocities, it WAS an atrocity. I'm referring, of course, to our Civil War, pitting brother against brother, and for what? 70,000 books later, the best answer one can give to the question "How did that farmer from Pennsylvania end up impaled on that fence in Cold Harbor?" is just this: He was drafted.

Ellen, although you are far too self-absorbed to appreciate this, there are more than enough horrific pasts to go around. Your generation is by no means unique.

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