Two editorials (1, 2) look at the Myths of the Vietnam war. For the most thorough look at the Vietnam war, however, I can't recommend Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent enough. The section on Vietnam looks at the facts of the war, and how they were consistantly selected and distorted by the media. The rest of the book is more or less essential for anyone who reads newspapers or watches TV news, too.
Hate to be picky, but don't you mean you can't recommend Manufacturing Consent enough? Totally changes the meaning of that sentence.
Indeed. The perils of self publishing. :
It's my standard first comment about the book, but I'm really enamored of it, so I'll repeat it here: that is one of the 5 best social science books published in English in the 20th century. (Up there with Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures.) And, as Dru hints, it's merely indispensable if you want to understand the world (and you want to understand it first if your goal is to change it).
The other big myth about the Vietnam war is that it was stopped by a bunch of white liberal college students having protests on their campuses. For some reason white liberals have a real problem with the idea that the Vietnam was was stopped because Vietnamese people were kicking our ass, and soldiers were killing their commanders and/or running to Canada. The whole "white liberals save the world" thing really bugs me.