By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

To the 18- and 19-year-old Marines fighting today in the streets of Najaf, the Vietnam War is a subject covered in their high school history classes.

Nearly 30 years have passed since the last U.S. helicopters lifted off the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, ending a bitter and divisive chapter in American history.

But the debate over Vietnam carries on, in the presidential campaign and even in the halls of the Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center at the national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

"It's just beyond me why this is still an issue, after all these years,'' said Tim Culbertson of Sycamore Township, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran who fought with the 101st Airborne Division. "It will never go away.''

In the presidential campaign, the service records of both candidates have swirled about as campaign issues and hit home this week as both President Bush and Democrat John Kerry came to Cincinnati to address the VFW delegates.

From the anti-Bush side, there has been talk of Bush's service during Vietnam in the Air National Guard - questions about whether he fulfilled his obligations to the Guard and intimations that, by joining a Guard unit, Bush did what many other sons of privilege did when the specter of fighting in Vietnam closed in on them.

From the anti-Kerry side, there are questions about whether Kerry, a swift-boat pilot who has three Purple Hearts, exaggerated his wounds to earn them and about Kerry's vocal opposition to the war he helped fight once home.

"Vietnam stirs a lot of emotions in people, even now,'' said Allen Ghimenti of Chicago, another combat-wounded veteran of the 101st Airborne Division. "A lot of it stems from the way those of us who served were treated when we got back. Like dirt. A lot of us are still sensitive about that.''

Some Vietnam veterans were angered at suggestions that Kerry's campaign biography of his Vietnam service may be exaggerated.

"I don't mean to be disrespectful to the president; he did what he did. Kerry did what he did. People should leave it at that," said Larry Redden, a Vietnam veteran from VFW Post 2899 in Bellevue.

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com