Sir, - Not content to re-write Irish history, Kevin Myers has now turned his attention to Vietnam (An Irishman's Diary, January 28th). He asserts that, were it not for the invasion of Vietnam by the United States (and its allies, whom he omits to mention), North Vietnam would have invaded Laos, Cambodia et al, and that the Western military intervention in fact saved the world from Communism! In his attempt to justify the actions of the United States, Mr Myers is long on fiction but short on facts.In total 3,140,000 Americans served in Vietnam. Officially 58,153 Americans were killed or listed missing in action. The South Vietnamese suffered 223,748 deaths. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fatalities are put at over a million. Approximately 4 million civilians, 10 per cent of the population of Vietnam, were killed or injured during the war, many in the North by American bombing.Kevin Myers asserts that "the war deaths over a decade barely exceeded the annual cull on US roads". By "war deaths" does he refer soley to US fatalities, or is he including Vietnamese deaths? - Yours, etc.,Mark Dorman,
Mulgrave Street,
Dun Laoghaire,