President Barack Obama called America's treatment of its Vietnam veterans "a disgrace", as he vowed that soldiers returning from the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not suffer the same dishonour.
President Obama with his arm around Vietnam War widow Rose Mary Sabo-Brown in Washington
Speaking before a monument to the 60,000 Americans killed in Vietnam, Mr Obama said the war was "one of the most painful chapters in our history", especially "how we treated our troops who served there."
"You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor," he told an audience of veterans on Memorial Day.
"You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened."
He announced that the US would begin a 13-year programme of honouring the three million Americans who served in the conflict/
The words were spoken to former Vietnam troops, many now in their seventies, but will have echoes for younger soldiers coming back from Middle Eastern wars for which the American public has long lost enthusiasm.
The invasion of Iraq, which Mr Obama has often called "the wrong war", remains deeply controversial, both for the Bush administrations's promise of finding weapons of mass destruction and the 4,500 US troops killed.
Meanwhile, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, which Mr Obama has pledged to end by 2015, is opposed by up to thirds of the American public, according to recent polls.
"When our troops return from Afghanistan, America will give this entire 9/11 Generation the welcome home they deserve," Mr Obama said.
As with everything in an election year, the President's speech contained an element of politics. According to a Gallup poll, Mr Obama lags behind Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, by 24 points among veterans.
Former troops, who make up 13 per cent of the voting population, backed Mr Romney by 58 per cent to Mr Obama's 34 per cent. Among non-veterans Mr Obama enjoyed a four-point advantage, putting him in a statistical dead heat.
Mr Romney also used Memorial Day as a political peg, warning that Mr Obama's proposed cuts to military spending would put the US on "the pathway of Europe", where defence budgets came to second social welfare.
He vowed he would "preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world."
Mr Romney was joined at his San Diego speech by John McCain, the Republican's 2008 presidential candidate and a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison.
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