President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Laureate and human rights activist. Here is what he said on the Vietnam War.

"Well, the destruction was mutual. You know, we went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or to impose American will on other people. We went there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese, and I don't feel that we ought to aoplogize or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.

Now, I'm willing to face the future without reference to the past. And that's what the Vietnamese leaders have proposed. And if normalization of relationships there evolves trade, normal aid processes, then I would respond well. But I don't feel that we have, that we owe a debt nor that we should be forced to pay reparations, or at all. "

Later, he says "President Mobutu has been a friend of ours".

You can find the entire transcript under the heading "Transcript of President's News Conference on Foreign and Domestic Issues", New York Times, Mar 25, 1977. This archive is accessible electronically through the Harvard library.