Mr. RUDMAN: You know, Colonel North, I go back to Korea in 1951. We won
and then we lost, and we were in a position to win again, and
Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower who succeeded him recognized that although it was a crime to leave the North Korean
people to the subjugation of North Korea, we walked away. We
could have won that war at that point, we could have liberated the
North, and many of us who were there wanted to. But the people
didn't. They had enough of the killing: 550,000 casualties. Lyndon
Johnson wrecked his presidency on the shoals of Vietnam.
I guess the last thing I want to say to you, Colonel, is that the
American people have the constitutional right to be wrong. And
what Ronald Reagan thinks or what Oliver North thinks or what I
think or what anybody else thinks makes not a whit.
If the American people say enough, and that's why this Congress
has been fickle and has vacillated, that's correct, but not because
the people here necessarily believe differently than you do, but
there comes a point that the views of the American people have to
be heard.