News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Bob Necci & Carol Hrdlicka, Andi Wolos
(POW-MIA FaxNetwork)

Re: Cornerstone Ceremony

Date: June 28, 1997

'Those Who Cannot Remember The Past, Are Condemned To Repeat It."

Albert Camus

With the ink barely dry on a spanking new trade agreement bewteen the US and Communist Vietnam, Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, posed prettily for photographers and laid a cornerstone in a ceremony to annouce the opening of the new US Consulate there.

One might wonder if this wasn't already a done deal... trade agreement one day and ceremony the next. Given that everything is so heavily regulated in Communist Vietnam, a ceremony of this importance was certainly not planned on the spur of the moment.

The brick laid as the cornerstone of the new consulate should have come from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of bricks sent by family members, activists and veterans to the White House some years ago. The notorious stonewalling of the Badministration had prompted such outrage, that a symbolic gesture of sending bricks to Washington, De Ceit, was the norm. It would be fitting, too, being that the rapid 'progress' bewteen the US and Communist Vietnam have come at the expense of our POWS and MIAs and their families.

Albright stressed the new consulate would focus on economic ties and tourism. "To be able to look forward toward the future while standing in the shadow of the past is a very special event,'' she said after laying the cornerstone for the consulate.

Being that Secretary Albright sees everything that has transpired between the two countries in a 'past' tense, we would like to offer a little something for Madam Secretary to think about -

It is not an old issue, something from the 'past'... it is very much a part of today, the present... for those who live with the continued burden of NOT KNOWING.

"The past is not dead... it is not even past."