Just Read "Five Days at the End of the World." As a former Vietnam vet (three tours) I wish I could shake your hand! Well done!

This has to be one of the best, if not the best, articles I've read on war, anywhere, at any time. If we didn't live in a place where the major media is controlled by Western culture-hating former yuppies without an ounce of military experience, this would be on the front page of a major newspaper and you would be doing daily pieces on prime time. Unfortunately, we are part of a society that is hell- bent on cultural suicide, a situation which this student of history has found to be without parallel. Do the French hate French culture? The Czechs? (do the Czechs have a culture?). Only in America do we have a vast, all- encompassing media machine that says "good" to everything anti-American, and "bad" to every expression of traditional American values.

In this context, it must be depressing to the nth degree for our men out there fighting for American and Western culture, to know that not only are they unappreciated, but their efforts are deprecated, ignored, or worse.

Under such circumstances, the only surprising thing is that there isn't a smoldering anger at those back home responsible for the media attitude toward this war and the soldiers fighting it. However, the feelings of the soldiers on the political and cultural situation at home is understandably not addressed in your article. Perhaps you could do a story on how these soldiers view our political and cultural leadership.

The wonder of the last few elections is that people weren't shooting at each other, and that there hasn't been a movement for parts of the country to leave the union. Who knows what the future will bring? And, should the social fabric truly start to fray, what will these worriors do?

As always, your piece was first rate, however, in the middle of your article, you threw every Vietnam- era "warrior" under the bus:

"So where are the dupes, the abusers, the kill-crazy crackpots who populate the armed forces in Hollywood’s ideology-driven depictions of the War on Terror?...These guys are the real guys. That Vietnam-era army of rueful, ill-educated draftees caught up in a conflict that they can’t comprehend is gone."

As a CAP Marine, I was proud to serve with mostly non-draftees, and I assure you, rueful was not a word I would use to describe them. They were as passionate, and compassionate, as the good men you so ably describe. It was if, to make your point about the inherent goodness of our contemporary soldiers, you had to the throw the Hollywood leftists a bone. But by doing so, you slandered a lot of great men.

Semper Fi