government could avoid embarrassment and let the pain of Vietnam die off.
Anyway, rather than try rescuing them, they felt that by 'liquidating the merchandise' i.e. MIA's/POW's are from this secret war that no one was supposed to know about. fought in Laos in the late sixties and early seventies. In the early eighties, Ronald Reagan tried to establish two rescue missions but stopped them at the last minute because their rescue would bring up a secret war the U.S. Many of them however have been moved over to Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union.
It's true that there are hundreds of leftover POW's still alive in Vietnam. Although done in the way of a mindless action film, this movie is steeped more in reality than you might think.
