Vietnam

WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton moves toward recognition of Vietnam, administration officials and their allies are insisting that the POW-MIA issue should no longer be a barrier to normal relations between the two former enemies.They say Vietnam's cooperation in joint field investigations has been excellent -- and would go even more smoothly if the two nations had full diplomatic relations.They also say the most promising unresolved cases now number fewer than 100, and they point to Hanoi's recent release of documents pertaining to MIA cases.

WASHINGTON -- Wayne T. Gilchrest is not going to let voters forget that he served in Vietnam while Rep. Roy P. Dyson, D-1st, was a conscientious objector.Today, Adrian Cronauer, the former Air Force deejay whom Robin Williams played in the hit movie, "Good Morning, Vietnam," will say, "Good m-o-r-n-i-n-g, Maryland," while taping a radio campaign commercial for Gilchrest, Dyson's Republican challenger.In the 30-second message, Cronauer will emphasize the war record of "Gilchrest, a Marine who won the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star in Vietnam."

WASHINGTON -- In early 1973, Army Chief of Staff Creighton W. Abrams Jr. received some bad news from the service's chief of criminal investigations. An internal inquiry had confirmed an officer's widely publicized charges that members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had tortured detainees in Vietnam. But there was a silver lining: Investigators had also compiled a 53-page catalog of alleged discrepancies in public accounts of his war experiences by that officer, Col. Anthony D. Herbert.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's decision to normalize relations with Vietnam, 20 years after the war in which he avoided service, is certain to revive criticism among some Republicans not only about the decision itself but about the lengths to which young Clinton went to stay out of the military then.The rantings of professional hawk and long-shot presidential candidate Rep. Bob Dornan of California -- he referred to Clinton as "the triple draft dodger" on NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday -- certainly will go on with Dornan's accustomed bluster.

BAGHDAD (Nov. 21) - More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq's Oil Ministry and two hotels Friday - attacks dismissed by a U.S. general as "militarily insignificant" but which also exposed weaknesses gathering intelligence on insurgents."

Michael Murray Brown, a Marine who served in the Vietnam War, died of mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, Friday at his Severna Park home. He was 60. His military service also included stints in the Army Reserve Special Forces as a Green Beret and the Maryland National Guard. Born in Washington, he grew up there and in Rochester, Mich. For 27 years, he worked as an electrical engineer for the Joseph E. Seagram/Diageo Corporation in Relay. Mr. Brown, an outdoors enthusiast, managed the Boater's World shops in Easton and Glen Burnie.

MUDDY BOOTS AND RED SOCKS. By Malcolm W. Browne. Random House. 366 pages. $23.THERE are two types of journalistic memoirs.One recounts news events the reporter has covered, all-but-forgotten wars and dreams as well as ones better remembered. For instance, the accounts of the '20s and '30s by Leland Stowe, Hallett Abend, Vincent Sheean and others add color and insight that you can't find anywhere else.The other kind of memoir is autobiographical, written by a reporter who thinks his life and thoughts should be of interest to humankind, or at least to that portion of humankind that still reads books.

Eddie is watching the television set with admiration and with envy. He sees Marines in the Persian Gulf but remembers himself in Pleiku. He sees the wives of soldiers weeping happy tears in a school auditorium and tries to understand for the thousandth time why America never wept for him.In a narrow row house on Highland Avenue in East Baltimore, Eddie hits the TV remote control like a man on a mission."

"If they made it to the Sanctuary, they had a good chance of making it home," Jane Bolduc says.She's a Calvert County nurse and Vietnam veteran who spent a year or so tending to wounded troops aboard the USS Sanctuary, an old Navy hospital ship now docked at an old pier in South Baltimore. This Friday, Jane, who started her tour of duty a week after the Tet offensive of 1968, will lead a delegation of nurses back to the Sanctuary, the first time they've seen the ship since the war."I've warned them," she says, "to be prepared to see an old, rusting ship.

He knows he should not be saying this. He knows America does not want to hear it. Not now, not while we are all so happy."I see all these parades for the gulf war vets," he said. "I see all the TV specials. I see the ads about how they can get cheap airline tickets and all the rest. And it makes me sick. It just makes me sick."His war was Vietnam, and he didn't get any parades or airline tickets. What he got from his service to his country was a drug and alcohol problem that he now says he has licked.