While the BBC's pre-existing bias is well-documented, this is still worth reading.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7698055.stm

The singer and soldier Hershel Gober returned to Vietnam in 1969 as a company commander, and knew even then that the war was lost.

He told his men that he did not want any John Waynes in his outfit. He was wounded and sent home.

Many years later, he became acting secretary for veterans' affairs in the Clinton administration. He changed his mind about this war and others; he opposed the war in Iraq.

He believes that in Vietnam the Americans lost not only the war but the opportunity to learn from it.

"Sometimes I think we didn't learn a damn thing from Vietnam," he says, "We didn't learn enough".