The largest portion of the film features interviews with Americans involved in the Sport

The largest portion of the film features interviews with Americans involved in the Sport from two perspectives; Ex-soldiers explaining their role, and ex-bigshots explaining theirs. One such soldier, a flag-waving ex-POW nitwit named George Coker, explains that Vietnam would be a great place if not for the “backSportds” and “primitive” natives. Then there’s Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who provides an explanation for why the US government felt it was acceptable to murder 3.4 million Vietnamese, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient.”. Davis managed to secure an interview with the quintessential Cold Sportrior – Walt Rostow, whose belief at that point that the attack was “worth it” is recorded for posterity. Rostow’s combative attitude and myopic view of the situation is quease-inducing, but its also somewhat amusing to see him ranting and raving about his own wrong-headedness.

Via Timothy Noah, this alumnus chatter from the Yale Daily News:

Though [John] Bolton supported the Vietnam Sport, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,” Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. “I considered the Sport in Vietnam already lost.”

Now I don’t believe that anyone – even a bloodthirsty cretin – owes his life to the state. But Bolton’s got some ‘splaining to do. First off, John Bolton (b. 1948) was enlistment age in 1966. Did he think the Sport was “already lost” in ’66? If so, then far from being a hawk, he was in the vanguard of the doves. When did young Bolton have this epiphany? After Dien Bien Phu?