You won't find the name Mary Helen Hoff in any history book, but today's veterans might place her right up there with American flag icon Betsy Ross.

It was in January 1970 that Hoff and her five children learned that their husband and father's plane was shot down in Vietnam, making him one of the more than 2,500 Americans captured or listed as missing in action in that war.Odds were stacked against him ever returning to his family and home in Florida. Since World War I more than 200,000 Americans have been listed as Prisoners of War or Missing in Action.Less than half of them were returned at the end of hostilities, leaving more than 125,000 American servicemen Missing In Action since the beginning of World War I.Recognizing the need for a symbol of our POW/MIAs, Hoff created the idea for a POW/MIA flag. On Aug. 10, 1990, the 101st Congress recognized the black-and-white banner "as the symbol of our nation's concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the nation."Today the POW-MIA flag is flown over the Capitol, the White House, the Korean War and Vietnam Veterans War Memorials in Washington, as well as at every national cemetery, major military installation, VA Medical Center, and post office.Rick Perlstein, a liberal writer/historian, would like to end that practice.The Aug. 11 edition of Newsweek contained an opinion piece by Perlstein titled "It's Time to Haul Down Another Flag of Racist Hate."In it, he argues that the flag is nothing but a cult invented by President Richard Nixon "in order to justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim.""That damned flag: It's a shroud," he concludes. "It smothers the complexity, the reality, of what really happened in Vietnam."As in all wars, Vietnam had its share of war crimes and abuses committed by both our enemy and by our own citizens and soldiers.Perlstein's diatribe against an unpopular war and his attempt at political correctness ignores what the POW/MIA flag signifies, which is to honor those Americans who have sacrificed their own freedom to preserve liberty for all.Perlstein's article created an instant firestorm, and Newsweek's Facebook page was deluged with angry responders.His rant is one more indication of our politically correct or PC culture running amok and of liberal journalists attempting to rewrite American history.By JIM ZBICKtneditor@tnonline.com