text: I look forward to seeing this. I start to get an opportunity this evening. 
  
  However - if a major thesis is that the USA got into it through a series of "mistakes" - best check that.  
  
  Ho Chi Min had successfully led a struggle for national liberation from French colonialism.  The north and south ... after being divided ... were to have a referendum about union.  The USA leaders feared the south would vote for unification with the north ... so didn't allow it. 
  
  Meantime - in a majority Buddhist country, the South Vietnamese president was Catholic; one got promoted faster in the military if one was Catholic; USAID went preferentially to Catholics and Christians ... "better dead than red" remember.  
  
  A collaboration between the CIA and the Vatican that began in WWII continued ... to the detriment of so many around the world ... 
  
  Like so many national liberation movements during the Cold War ... usually mislabelled "communist" ... . 
  
  and like WWI - usually about imperialism.