In "He Beat Us in War but Never in Battle" (op-ed, Oct. 7), Sen. John McCain omits the two most significant factors in Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap's victory over the U.S. One was his strategic use of horrific atrocities against his own people in order to subdue them, a point shamefully ignored by many American commentators. As a longtime West German correspondent in Vietnam, I came across evidence of Viet Cong butchers torturing to death a pro-Saigon village chief, his wife and 12 children. According to Reader's Digest (November 1968), at least 100,000 acts of terror against the South Vietnamese people were recorded by the end of 1967.

The second factor was Giap's realistic assessment, quoted in Bernard Fall's "The Two Viet-Nams," that "The enemy (meaning, the West) . . . does not possess . . . the psychological and political means to fight a long-drawn-out war." Sen. McCain's eulogy, though at least restrained, seems to prove Giap's point. By Nuremberg standards, Giap should have been tried for crimes against humanity rather than honored.

Uwe Siemon-Netto

Laguna Woods, Calif.

All the obits I've seen on Giap fail to include an account of the monumental defeat fueled by his arrogance and miscalculations in trying to turn Khe Sanh into another Dien Bien Phu.

This wasn't the limited capability of 1950s France he was fighting; he was up against the most powerful military force the world has ever known and failed to respect that fact. We had determined, dug-in Marines backed by ample resupply capability and the most massive artillery capability in the world in the form of round-the-clock B-52 raids, each capable of dropping 104,500 pounds of bombs.

From my many B-52 sorties in support of Khe Sahn, I saw firsthand the wholesale destruction of Giap's North Vietnamese army. Our intelligence told us he had originally started with an estimated 50,000 troops when he began his siege, but departed with a mere 17,000.

Roy Laferriere

Fleming Island, Fla.

As Sen. McCain observes, "Countries, not just their armies, win wars." Perhaps we won the Cold War because we never lost sight of what was at stake, the struggle of freedom versus tyranny and a clear moral vision of good versus evil that sustained us.

Phillip S. Cronin

Ventura, Calif.

John McCain is wrong that the U.S. "lost the war." The Vietnam War ended with the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. Congress abandoned the Republic of Vietnam when it passed the Case-Church Amendment in August 1973, preventing the U.S. from providing any assistance to the RVN when the North invaded in 1975. The U.S. Congress, therefore, lost the Republic of Vietnam.

Bob Powers