Robert McNamara

Re “McNamara Still Owes Vets a Debt,” Eyewitness by Ron Kovic, Commentary, April 23: We are blessed that Kovic’s voice has not been silenced. The 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam deserve to have their sacrifices preserved through his activism.

I concur that former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara “still owes vets a debt.” Now that his self-critical memoir is at the top of the bestseller list, he can expiate his guilt by donating the proceeds of his book to disabled American and Vietnamese victims. McNamara is 26 years too late to help our loved one, Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Patrick Rose, who died in Quang Tri province on Jan. 28, 1969.

THEODORA BELTSON

Beverly Hills

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Re “McNamara--Wrong, and Also Evil,” Column Right, by Harry G. Summers Jr., April 18: I would like to point out to Summers that he left out two very important Vietnam “scoundrels” from his list of blame. Those persons would be, of course, former President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger.

The shame is not McNamara’s alone. And it certainly does not lie with President Clinton.

JANET THOMPSON

Santa Ana

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Robert Scheer (Column Left, April 16) suggests a Medal of Freedom for “the Berrigans, Ellsberg and Fonda.” As a West Coast steering committee member of the Oct. 3, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium Day rally, I agree.

However, I will go Scheer one better. I suggest statues of Sens. Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse be put up across from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. They were the only two senators with the guts to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which President Johnson used to widen the war.

BURT WILSON

Simi Valley