THREE AMERICAN servicemen have just returned from the prisons of North Vietnam. While these freed POWs journeyed home, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird refused to rule out the possibility of court-martialing the airmen for statements they made in captivity. Concurrently, Ambassador William Porter, the chief U.S. negotiator in Paris, warned the North Vietnamese that such releases of prisoners were an impediment to the peace talks. These very recent assertions fly in the face of recurrent charges by the Nixon Administration that Senator George McGovern has turned his back on the POWs. As The New York Times commented, "The implication is once again that the men (POWs) should not have left the prison until the President brought them home."

For seven years American servicemen have been held in the POW camps of North Vietnam. The North has been exposed to merciless and massive U.S. bombing raids. Negotiations with Hanoi have gained nothing. In the course of the war, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded. Are we continually to lose more lives, waste more money, and send more U.S. pilots to the prisons of North Vietnam in order to supposedly save the POWs? Senator McGovern put it this way on July 24: "The bombing is how the prisoners got into prison. It's the height of folly to think you're going to get the prisoners out of Hanoi by bombing Hanoi. How do you think they got there in the first place? They got there because they were shot down from bombing planes."

BY CONTINUING a hopeless policy of attrition that has not shown any sign of freeing the POWs, the Nixon Administration has, in effect, turned its back on American POWs trapped in North Vietnam. Seven years of persistent American involvement have produced the worst of both worlds: as more U.S. pilots become POWs, and the nation's resources drain in the form of "smart" bombs dropping on the North, our chances of retrieving the mounting number of POWs have consistently remained at zero.

1968: the U.S. Pueblo was captured off North Korean shores and its crew held in a North Korean prison camp. No bombing was required to release the American servicemen. No massive military intervention was initiated to convince North Koreans of our strength and integrity. Apparently, after the Pueblo was seized, the presence of 50,000 American troops in South Korea did not persuade the North Korean communists to release the crew. Only across-the-table negotiations were required to release all the men within a year.

To release the POWs (living symbols for the North Vietnamese of a policy that envelops their country in destruction) while bombs fall on homes would dishonor the very existence of the victims. The alternatives are clear. Either the United States can continue its present policy, bomb the hell out of North Vietnam, lose more American pilots to death or prison, and rest assured that after seven years of saying no the communists will stubbornly retain the POWs. Or, we can accept (yes, with honor) the other side's two well-announced conditions--stop U.S. military involvement in North and South Vietnam and cut off all aid to Thieu's regime. If those two conditions are met, the North Vietnamese have promised to release all the POWs. While both sides remain immobile in the Paris negotiations, President Nixon helps nothing by chasing an elusive shadow of blood-stained honor.

MRS. VALERIE KUSHNER, a POW's wife, said recently that "Nixon's final solution seems to be to bomb the prisoners and all of Indochina into oblivion." Our present policy only offers America flag-draped coffins, wasted money, more POWs imprisoned in North Vietnam, aging wives and dying mothers in the States, and hundreds if not thousands of screaming Vietnamese wives and children fleeing from the reign of exploding napalm so methodically dropped by men who should return to a weary America. Until January, at the earliest, the decision lies with a two-faced administration.