The U.S. is accused of "monstrous crimes" as the peace talks begin in Paris...

.. and we accuse the North Vietnamese of "aggression."

North Vietnam's Xuan Thuy spoke first, for an hour and a half. "World opinion and progressive American opinion" are against the United States, he said, in words that were translated into French and thence into English. That the U.S. is in "a quagmire" is an idea the New York Times attributed to Thuy. Who knows what Vietnamese word led via French, then English to that NYT paraphrase?

But we readers of the NYT — we of "progressive American opinion" — know: Vietnam is a quagmire. Thuy insists that we stop bombing North Vietnam, and we seek "most earnestly" — in the words of chief American delegate Averell Harriman — "South Vietnam's freedom from attack and its right to determine its own future."

THE YEAR BLOG FORGOT IS: 1968.