In December 1972, on the eve of the signing of the Paris peace accords, Nixon’s internal polling showed that Americans—66 percent of them—would insist on the return of the country’s POWs. It was an unusual worry. The return of captives is generally an essential part of a peace treaty. But the suspicion that some had been left behind would roil conservative politics for decades. By contrast, Americans seemed wholly indifferent to the lofty freedom-fighting rhetoric that had drawn the country into Vietnam a decade earlier. Only 7 percent wanted to insist on a removal of North Vietnamese troops
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