In his more than 40 years of reporting, Joe Galloway has been witness to the horrible and the sublime. Speaking to students and guests in a Journalism 62 class at De Anza College on Oct. 18, Galloway described a career in war correspondence filled with events that, at times, even bring tears to his own eyes. For the most part, though, few things set him off today more than a discussion of American foreign policy in Iraq. “Invading Iraq was the dumbest thing we ever did. Dumber than Vietnam – and Vietnam was dumb,” Galloway said. He should know. In 1965, when he was only 23 years old, Galloway was sent to Vietnam as a reporter by United Press International. While there, he took part in the Battle of Ia Drang with the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. Hal Moore. During the battle, Galloway braved enemy fire to come to the aid of a badly wounded soldier, an act for which he was later awarded the Bronze Star with “V” for valor, the only such medal awarded to a civilian by the Army during the Vietnam War. Galloway was later sent back to Vietnam, not once, not twice, but three more times. Each time it was against his will. “When I first left Vietnam, I thought ‘I never want to come back here again. I never want to hold dying people in my arms and watch the light fade from their eyes again,'” he said. But Galloway’s remarkable career not only took him back to Vietnam, but to Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Iraq. He was a UPI bureau chief in Moscow during the Soviet era, and covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War. Not bad for a kid from Refugio, Texas, population 5,000. But then, serendipity seems to have been a constant companion to Galloway. As a young reporter in Missouri, he found himself – through an amazing set of circumstances – being mentored by none other than former president Harry Truman. Then, decades later, after having witnessed numerous conflicts first hand, Galloway decided to offer his services as a consultant to Colin Powell at the US State Department. Incredibly, this veteran reporter – reluctant for so long to take a position in federal administration and, as he puts it, “go over to the dark side” – was sworn into government service on one of history’s greatest “days before”: September 10, 2001. Today, Galloway is busy working on a sequel to the 1992 book he wrote with Moore, We Were Soldiers Once… and Young, which chronicled the Battle of Ia Drang and was made into a movie of the same name starring Mel Gibson in 2002. His greatest devotion, however, remains acting as an advocate for the common soldier. To that end, he is involved in numerous veterans’ organizations and maintains a column on national defense affairs, in which he has written numerous critiques of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.”War isn’t noble,” Galloway said at the end of his speech, “but I believe soldiers are. The bible says, ‘No greater love hath man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.’ And (in Vietnam) they did it every day for 10 years. That’s nobility.”