Entry 14:

Dan,

Thanks for indulging my nostalgia--I just knew you were holding back those repressed memories of the '70s. I was antiwar, too, scrawling "Out of Cambodia, Now" on my three-ring binder in seventh grade ... but let's not go there. Better to focus on Kissinger, who will probably never be held to account for his actions in Cambodia and Chile. Did you read the Christopher Hitchens column last year, reporting a priceless Kissinger quip? The story went like this: Introduced to a Nation editor at a party, Kissinger said, "The Nation? So I suppose that to you I am a war criminal."

"Yes," she said, "but we call Clinton a war criminal, too."

"Mr. Clinton," Kissinger intoned, "does not have the strength of character to be a war criminal."

I'm with you on the power of Vietnam photos, and so direct your attention to People magazine, whose Vietnam issue is not as cheesy as you might think. Check out their "Interactive Photo Timeline," boasting oldies-but-goodies like the Kent State photo and Hanoi Jane (in her Klute look, which I adore). More daring was Seth Mydans' story in the New York Times. He hunted down North Vietnamese men who shot the war and posted their rare snapshots here.

Moving on to Colombia: If all goes according to plan, Clinton might get a chance to prove himself a war criminal yet. Apparently you agree that the drug-war hawks on Capitol Hill make crack dealers look like moral paragons. But then why is mainstream media giving them such a free ride? I recommend two authors well-versed on Colombia: Alma Guillermoprieto, who's been to the trenches and just filed her third in a series for the New York Review of Books, and Arianna Huffington, whose March 14 column on Colombia is the best thing I've read on the backroom politics yet. Her points were amplified in a Newsweek story April 3. Surprise, surprise: Mike Isikoff and company call the Colombia initiative the result of "lobbying efforts by arms producers," who will pay big bucks to get product placement for their helicopter and radar planes south of the border.

As Isikoff and Huffington run down the special interests vested in the drug war, both tar Occidental Petroleum, whose controversial oil drill near the U'wa Indian reservation in Colombia has gone largely unreported in the mainstream press. (Larry Rohter's Colombia report in the Times last week gave no hint U.S. corporations are calling the shots.) Dan, the more I think about it, the more I think this might be a story for Jake Tapper! Let him know when he gets back from Hanoi.

Gently,
Cynthia