Is I asked those I knew well and I listened to what was said. All I can tell you is that everyone I talked to who was there, in all the different services does was not screwed with upon their return in the ways that the right wing insists happened (but many were screwed with in different, I would say worse, ways). Everyone I talked to and none of their buddies had this happen to them. Not having served in vietnam does not disqualify someone from holding an opinion on this. Not being old enough does not disqualify someone from having an opinion on this. I respect that you were there, that you served, and I find it sad that you were treated badly on your return and knew guys who were. But I'll also say that you are the only one I know who was treated that way. Could be most of the vets I knew came back to Oklahoma, which was and still is a different country in a lot of ways. Take that as you will.

I will also say that almost all of them felt abandoned by the services they served in, betrayed by the assholes who sent them there and forgotten by those who asked them to do the dying, and came back strangers with big dark holes in their head with nobody to turn to. Some of them still pay- more then a few vets I know came back from vietnam with infertility and strange diseases that never really went away, and recall how the agent orange sprayings were constant... And yep, some of the older ones I know have been off and on the bottle all their lives.

One of my old friends from back in college came back from the gulf war with GWS so bad he was in and out of the hospital with pericarditis, lung infections, blackouts and arthritis so bad he walked with a cane... he looked 50 by the time he was 25, his fiance left him. He sought out 'hippie types' because the people who wouldn't leave him alone, called him a liar and a faker were all military men, some of which were his family. The 'hippie' types were the only people who would accept him and not always question if he really was faking it.

So my point is that its more than just the apocryphal story of the vietnam vet abused by pot smoking hippies. Vets of every generation are forgotten by those who have the luxury of forgetting, because they didn't take the blows that war dishes out. And those who take the blows can't forget. There are examples every which way.

While you're right I am too young to know what those times were like, and I didn't serve, I think its much more complicated than the 'just so' story that history has boiled it down to.