VOICES

President Clinton’s decision to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam hit home with Vietnam war veterans, business leaders and members of Orange County’s Vietnamese community. The news brought anger, jubilation and hopeful talk of future cooperation. On Thursday, several people offered their thoughts on the decision.

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Errol Bond, 78, and his wife, Madeline, 73, are Fullerton retirees who have spent more than two decades trying to find out what happened to their son, Air Force Capt. Ronald L. Bond, who disappeared over Laos at age 23 in 1971. On their answering machine, the Bonds ask callers to “think about what you’ve done today to help the POWs” before the sound of the beep.

EB: “It’s kind of a shock. This happens to be the 23rd anniversary of my son’s going to Vietnam. The war isn’t over for us, despite the fact that that’s what they’re saying on TV.”

MB: “What promise do we have that they’re going to still keep looking for him?”

EB: Clinton “lied to us. He said he wouldn’t do it (lift the embargo) until he thought he’d done everything possible. He broke that promise. What assurance do we have that they’re going to keep looking for them?”

MB: “We fought a hard battle to try to get him home. We have no assurance that he’s dead, we have no crash site.”

EB: “This isn’t over for us.”

MB: “I don’t know what we’ll do, but we won’t close his book. People have told us there are still prisoners over there--how can we close the book on our son?”

EB: “How would you feel?”

MB: “How would anybody feel?”

EB: “You know what I put on all my envelopes when they go out of here, whether it be bills or anything else? I have a stamp that says, ‘You’d damn well care if it was someone you loved.’ ”

MB: “We just can’t close the book. We just can’t do it until they give us proof that he is dead. Until then, no way, you can’t. Not if you have any love or feeling.

EB: “We know our son was alive (immediately after the crash), so as far as lifting the embargo is concerned, we’re just going to continue fighting as hard as ever. We feel it’s pathetic, we personally feel it’s criminal. I don’t care what Clinton says, this is being done for money, by American business.”

MB: “I don’t know who’s pushing this embargo. It must be the businessmen, it has to be, because it’s not the families, it’s not the American Legion, it’s not the Veterans of Foreign Wars.”

EB: “Everything that Vietnam wants, we have given into. They haven’t given into anything for us. Even today our people can’t go any place (in Vietnam) without first telling (the Vietnamese) where they want to go. They have someone from the Vietnamese side with them all the time.

MB: “What can we do? We don’t know. We depend upon the government again.”

EB: “They’ve lied to us. They have sold us down the river, really.”

MB: “We feel we were deserted, and what can we do? What can we do? There’s not much, but we’ll try, we sure as heck will try.”

EB: “We’ll keep at it.”