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I don't know how old you are, but I remember it personally. I was 1A, and I was weeks away from being sent to Vietnam. LBJ had declined to run for reelection because he had become universally despised. It is LBJ who turned the decades old conflict in Vietnam into a full-scale war. Most only know of Vietnam, but neighbors Cambodia and Laos were also involved. Nixon ran on a promise to end the war. He did.

But it's true that he didn't end it immediately. As he reduced USA troop numbers in Vietnam, he also authorized increased bombing of Cambodia and Laos. I was still sweating getting called up, and didn't know what to expect next. Why did Noxon increase bombing even as the war was winding down? I suspect that it was an effort to make the withdrawal safer. Nixon was definitely trying to take out the Viet Cang supply routes that ran in Laos. Anyway, it's absurd to think that Nixon just decided to bomb Laos for the hell of it. The war finally ended, and I didn't get a called up.

Today, Nixon is almost entirely known for Watergate. When you look at the dirty, filthy politics in Washington today, Watergate seems almost quaint. We are now a banana republic, and it took only three years to pull off. The people who have done this hope that you never stop looking at Watergate and start looking at them.

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