tv Face the Nation CBS May 24, 2015 10:30am-11:31am EDT
10:30 am
>> schieffer: today on "face the nation." isis on the move and another american city on edge. cleveland authorities are on high alert after a white policeman is found not guilty in the shooting deaths two of african americans. we'll have the latest and as isis terrorists continue to rampage we'll ask the chairman of the senate armed services committee, john mccain. and top democrat on the house intelligence committee adam schiff what can be done to stop them. plus, on this memorial day weekend, a look back at vietnam and what's changed in the 40 years since the fall of saigon. it's all ahead because, this is "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs
10:31 am
good morning, we are beginning this morning in cleveland where the fall out overnight from the case of cleveland officer michael brelow who was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of melissa williams and timmy russell that was two and a half years ago. cbs news correspondent is in cleveland. >> judge ruled yesterday that the use of force by the from was justified under the circumstances. now right after that verdict was read, he was obviously overcome with emotion, he was clearly relieved. he hugged his attorney and cried. now outside the courthouse in downtown cleveland there was outrage from the victim's family and some here in the community. for the most part, saturday's protests remained peaceful however police say 71 people were arrested, mainly at night. now this case goes back to november of 201 as you mentioned, wriggle led police on
10:32 am
22-mile chase. police mistook the car's backfire for gunshots and shot at the car 137 times. yesterday the judge described bullet wounds explained why he could not conclude the officer shot alone caused the death of williams and russell. according to prosecutors kept shooting at the car when other officers stopped and prosecutors argued that he jumped on the hood of the car and fired the final 15 shots. now officials here and community leaders again have been able to keep the streets here peace of this is again thougha city that is waiting to see whether criminal charges will be pursued in the shooting deaths of 1-year-old. bob. >> schieffer: thank you so much. we turn now to the campaign against isis, islamic terrorists have been on the move have nauseased the iraqi city outside
10:33 am
baghdad and captured historic city and other key areas in syria. cbs news foreign correspondent clarissa ward is just back. she joins us from london. >> good morning bob. isis is taking control of another border crossing between iraq and syria fighters captured the crossing this morning giving them control of the two main ways between syria and ambar prove writtens the group has been pushing forward after taking the city of ramadi last weekend. iraqi forces launched counter offensive to try to regain some of the effort. among those forces are thousands of members of shiite militia. the concern there is that the presence of those she might militias in sunni dominated anbar will only have you will-out sectarian blood bath. the auto rocky government doesn't appear to have lot of
10:34 am
options, videos from ramadi last sunday showed iraqi security forces fleeing the battlefield, abandoning their bases. leaving behind weapons and equipment. this in spite of intensified u.s. airstrikes against isis in the run up to the fall of ramadi. just days later isis took the syrian city of palmera a strategic victory. but it also, bob, puts the future of some of syria's most precious cultural heritage in jeopardy. that ancient city's 2,000-year-old rounds are under isis fighters who have previously destroyed cultural relics that they deem to be unislamic. two significant victories in two countries in the course of a week really calling into question bob the effectiveness of the u.s. strategy for dealing with isis. >> schieffer: clarissa ward in london.
10:35 am
thanks so much. and for more on this now joined by the chairman of the armed services committee, john mccain. you heard what clarissa just said. you called disaster, what can what should we be doing about this? >> there's a lot of things we can do. first have the president recognize that he was incorrect when he said we're not losing -- armed services committee this week two architects of the surge that won. we did have it won until the decision was made to withdraw all troops. i won't get into that fight with you, but senator graham and i predicted it at the time that this would happen. i'm sorry that we were wrong. we need to have robust strategy. need more troops on the ground, more air controllers. 57% of those combat missions returned to base without having fired a weapon. because we don't have somebody on the ground who can identify a
10:36 am
static moving target. and we learned -- be talking about vietnam, we found in vietnam if you don't have the right strategy air power is minimal in its affect. but we need to have more air controllers, special forces, we need to have more of those kind of raids that we're so successful in to sear california we need to have a strategy. there is no strategy. anybody that says that there is i'd like to hear what it is. because it certainly isn't apparent now and right now we are seeing these horrible reports, executing people and leaving their bodies in the streets. meanwhile, the president of the united states is saying that the biggest enemy we have is climate change. >> schieffer: you know, senator, the president called these latest setbacks, he called them technical setbacks. something to that affect.
10:37 am
there's no appetite in this country, i think it's fair to say for sending a lot more american troops into iraq. but is that in the end going to be necessary, i guess the reason i would ask you that, is this posing a threat to our national security? >> first of all there is a larger number of americans that believe we ought to have more american troops on the ground. not the massive 82nd airborne but in the realm of number of thousands. so we can do the missions that i just described to you. beheadings had a profound affect on american public opinion as it should have. and your second question was -- >> schieffer: what can we do? >> as i say special forces, training equipment right now it's shia militia the same ones that we fought against during the surge now doing the fighting. the overall winner in this whole conflict right now is not isis. it's iran. it's iran who is in controlling
10:38 am
four countries now and on the move. >> schieffer: so where does that put us in relation to this arms deal we're trying to work out to limit newspaper with iran. in the send that a good thing or bad thing? >> i think it's a good thing if it's a good deal. in words of henry kissinger and george schulz and "wall street journal" went from from trying to prevent iran from trying to acquire to delaying it. of course, we continue to hear others say there will be no inspection of military facilities that their hangs sanction will be listed we're hearing two different stories, at least congress of the united states is going to have the role to debate this and to make a judgment on it. >> schieffer: you know, we're marrying in this campaign which is already well underway democrats are saying this is all george bush's fault for going to iraq in the first place. we're hearing republicans say
10:39 am
no, wait a minute, this is all barack obama's fault for pulling out our troops too soon from iraq. whose fault is it and does that really matter any more whose fault it was? >> obviously we don't want to -- but given information that was there, given to the american people and congress that certainly understandable. there's a lot of questions about it. then there should be the question should we have pulled everybody out and anybody who says we couldn't have stayed is not telling the truth because lindsey graham and i were on the ground there and know full well we could have -- could have had residual force or sustained force. do they realize that we had it won. the surge had succeeded. i called for the resignation of donald rumsfeld my own president's secretary of defense because i saw we were losing. and george w. bush at least had the guts to reverse and sponsor
10:40 am
the surge which we eventually then succeeded. i wish i i pray that barack obama would do the same thing. >> schieffer: you know, foreign secretary of defense bob gates was on our show last week. he said that in his words most of the republican candidates for president he said i'm not very impressed so far. and he said, you know, they really don't have very much experience on foreign policy. what do you think about the current republican field? >> obviously lindsey graham understands, he's been boots on the ground, he's air force colonel all this time and kabul. i'd say that, didn't have a lot of foreign policy experience but he surrounded himself with the smartest guys and people in america. i think that the next president whoever he is can do that as well. >> schieffer: do you think hillary clinton if she should win the nomination and be elected, do you think she would be a good president if, is she
10:41 am
qualified? >> i'm not here to judge her qualifications. i will be supporting whoever the republican nominee is. but i do believe it's legitimate question to say what were the accomplishments of her four years as secretary of state there. are still many unanswered questions about benghazi as well. i think that $150,000 a speech is in hawaiian missionary tradition. >> schieffer: all right senator, mccain. we're going to turn now to the top democrat on the house intelligence committee california congressman adam schiff. congressman, you heard john mccain, give me your analysis for what is going on right now? in iraq and syria. >> was a very serious set back one that is deeply felt by americans we lost a lot of our
10:42 am
troops in ramadi. we think abut those losses they weigh heavily on us. in terms of the iraq war itself there is an important lesson here. that is we won ramadi but it didn't say won because the political problems that preceded the first iraq war haven't been solved that is the sunnis have not been bought into the government adequately. sunni forces haven't been adequately trained until those changes are made, until iraq makes the political decision to fully incorporate the sunnis we can add more forces, we can win these battles but not going to stay won. i think that is the real lesson of the last iraq war and what is going on now. >> schieffer: years after we came through vietnam experience, i remember thinking, you know, we kept asking during that period are we winning? when you have to ask the question generally you're not winning because victory, it is always obvious. do you think we're winning now? >> i wouldn't say that we're
10:43 am
winning. i don't think we're losing either but i think we're seeing an ebb and flow, largely stalemate situation in the war against isis. i get concerned when i hear administration use metric of how many bombing runs we're doing. i think the more important metrics are how we doing stopping foreign fighters entering the country. in drawing up isis' resources, how are we doing in working with gulf allies on fighting the ideological fight within islam that we're not positioned to fight ourselves. how are we doing in terms of military support. on that latter point that's where i think ramadi comes into play. i think we still have a lot of work to keep the pressure on iraqi government to fully incorporate. to peel the strikes away from isis because until that happens we're not going to be successful. >> schieffer: what can we do in realistic senses it possible to turn around what's what seems to be happening right now? >> it is possible. i think we have to intensify
10:44 am
efforts first to bring those sunnis into the government and into the military. i think bringing in shia militia is the wrong answer that's just going to aggravate the sectarian tension. sending in our own troops isn't the answer. but we got to use all the pressure we to be get them to make the political fixes necessary. at the same time we have made little progress in dealing with the foreign fighter problem that intensify pressure on turkey to close down that border to foreign fighters coming in and trafficking back and forth across that border. and more broadly we need more help from our ideological struggle against this perversion of islam. >> schieffer: i'll ask you just what i asked senator mccain because i think for america it's the most important question. that is, is what is happening there really a threat to our security as a nation? >> it is a threat to our security. if isis is able to hold that
10:45 am
ground unmolested there's no question that they have the aspiration to attack us here. in fact they're already inspiring home grown radicalism as we've seen here in 'tax we saw in texas. they are a threat. again i think we have to make sure that we don't react the wrong way to that threat and we could aggravate by sending americans troops in and there's a particular risk of escalation if we do. >> schieffer: one other subject, congress failed to get a deal to extend the national security agency surveillance program which allows for the bulk collection of telephone numbers in this country. do you see any kind of a compromise on the horizon on this or is this program just going to to shut down on july 1 or june 1 i guess it isf it does, what will be the impact of that? >> well, ironically we had a great compromise that we passed in the house with over 330 votes, very bipartisan is
10:46 am
majority of support in the very same compromise. what happened this week in the senate i think was catastrophe in terms of rejecting a very well thought out broadly supported compromise that the intelligence community itself embraces. has the merit of reforming those authorities that end bulk collection but maintain surveillance tools that are necessary to protect their country. what happens right now looks like program is going to expire. i think senate comes back in i hope will see wisdom and pass what we passed in the house. only way to prevent real interruption. that's not just the authority for bulk collection that's going to expire another very important tools as well that deal with wiretaps that deal with lone wolf threats as well as the more rudimentary use of section 215 to get records like relation records or financial records. >> schieffer: we have to stop there.
10:47 am
thank you so much for adding to our broadcast we're going to be back in a minute with some reporters who had lot of experience dealing with all of this in a minute. weather forecasts with detailed data from local sensors. to predict where outages are likely to occur. and send crews exactly where they're needed, when they're needed. ibm analytics from the internet of things is making energy smarter every day.
10:48 am
>> schieffer: back now on analysis with david rohde and rajiv chandrasekan who covered iraq for the "washington post" now starting his own media company. david, you bring a lot of experience to this subject, you were even captured. but glad you're safe. what's happened here. a week ago we were talking about killing an important isis leader then here they are on the margin. it just doesn't seem to be very much good news here. >> it shows that this is a very
10:49 am
organized, very determined opponent. these are huge propaganda in jihaddists circles i saw this when i was in captivity. going to use this to recruit more and more people. are not shrinking the size of it they clearly control the sunni heartland in iraq and sear california you're asking the right question. it's not going away. we don't seem to have any answers. >> do you think it's a threat -- i do. i'm bias because time in captivity i was in another safe haven they had in pakistan. they do recruit young men they brainwash them they tell them to go be suicide bombers and i think -- more of threat toe europe initially but there will be isis inspired attacks i think eventually in the united states. >> schieffer: what do you think, they had established a califit something that will stay in play? >> certainly have organized semi organized system of government, military command and
10:50 am
control. with their expansion now into areas around syria. access to more natural resources there that they can smuggle out which they have used very desperately to fund their operation. they seize awful lot of material from iraqi forces in mosul and now presumably in ramadi area. the threat facing united states and our european allies is significant one. one that will continue for some time to come. according to u.s. intelligence community estimates there are more than 20,000 foreign fighters that are part of isis drawn from about 100 different countries, many are going to go home -- and women too -- eventually and some of them could well be behind the attacks of the future of those countries. >> schieffer: the president is saying in interviews he still thinks we're winning against isis. what do you all hear from people at level below the president,
10:51 am
national security officials. are they feeling the same way? >> they're not. i think they're discouraged this idea -- feel obama philosophy was to sit back and force iraqi to carry out the fight themselves. senior officials just said that iraqis didn't have the heart to fight they actually fled ramadi. i think they're very discouraged in the white house the strategy is not working. to be fair, white house there's no easy answer. the american public doesn't want 100,000 troops there again. how do you find a local power and empower that local partner to be fair to both sides there is no easy answer. >> schieffer: what do you see coming? what do the iraqi need? >> well, iraqis need a will to fight. also need significant outside pressure to really come together in a more pluralistic way to, address the political challenges they have in baghdad to get their military to get back into
10:52 am
the fight. some of that i think unfortunately will have to involve greater u.s. assistance on the ground. senator mccake is right you can't have effective care strikes unless you have on the ground spotters, those have to be u.s. military or close ally nations that can correct those airstrikes to prevent civilian casualties. you have to get the iraqi government in baghdad to make some meaningful steps to accommodate that sunni minority. right now they have been completely disenfranchised and they are acquiescing to isis. because they see that sadly as a bert option than central government in baghdad. what it's doing is opened the door to iran to come in and with the iranian-backed militias going through trying to retake those parts of the country from isis simply going to harden positions. unfortunately we're heading toward de facto split of the country. >> schieffer: we'll have to leave it at that. thank you both. we'll be right back i'll have
10:53 am
some personal thoughts. just stay calm and move as quietly as possible. no sudden movements. google search: bodega beach house. over 20 million kids everyday in our country lack access to healthy food. for the first time american kids are slated to live a shorter life span than their parents. it's a problem that we can turn around and change. revolution foods is a company we started to provide access to healthy affordable, kid-inspired chef-crafted food. we looked at what are the aspects of food that will help set up kids for success?
10:54 am
making sure foods are made with high quality ingredients and prepared fresh everyday. our collaboration with citi has helped us really accelerate the expansion of our business in terms of how many communities we can serve. working with citi has also helped to fuel our innovation process and the speed at which we can bring new products into the grocery stores. we are employing 1,000 people across 27 urban areas and today, serve over 1 million meals a week. until every kid has built those life-long eating habits, we'll keep working. here's to the explorers. those diagnosed with cancer who explored their treatment options by getting a comprehensive second opinion at cancer treatment centers of america. call today or go online to schedule your second opinion here. learn more at cancercenter.com
10:55 am
>> schieffer: this memorial day comes in a year when we mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of saigon when the communists came to power. they have still rule there but we all vietnam an ally now in the part of the world where we need friends. one of the countries which administration hopes to sign a massive trade agreement that will cover 40% of the world's gross domestic product. vietnam has become a place where americans are welcome now. a place where english is spoken as a second language.
10:56 am
much of the credit for that goes to senator john mccain who for five years was a prisoner of war there. yet it was mccain who went back to vietnam to reconcile with those who had brutally tortured him. so doing he opened the way to restore diplomatic relations and showed us that sometimes forgiveness can be as powerful a force for change any weapon we might possess. america learned hard lessons in vietnam, that may have been one of them. we'll talk about that with some of the reporters who covered that war when we come back. the beast was as long as the boat. for seven hours, we did battle. until i said... you will not beat... meeeeee!!! greg. what should i do with your fish? gary. just put it in the cooler.
10:57 am
10:58 am
a comprehensive second opinion at cancer treatment centers of america. call today or go online to schedule your second opinion here. learn more at cancercenter.com >> schieffer: some of our stations are leaving us now. for most of us we'll be right back with lot more "face the nation" including look back at vietnam 40 years ago.
11:00 am
>> schieffer: welcome back to "face the nation." this memorial day comes as we mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of saigon which ended the vietnam war one of the most divisive conflicts in american history, more than 58,000 americans died in that war m.2,000 are still missing. many reporters also died there and our friends at the museum here in washington have just opened an exhibit on the role the press played in reporting the war. it's been dedicated to our late colleague, bob simon who filed many reports from vietnam. to talk about it the parallels to today's military conflicts we brought together some veteran vietnam hands peter arnett an award for the associated press his new book is "saigon" has
11:01 am
fallen. david kennerly also won a pulitzer for photography while working there for united press international. laura palmer was 22 when she went to vietnam she there was for the fall of saigon and our own bill plante filed many reports for cbs news from there as well. then there was this young reporter who went there for the fort worth star tell gram in 1956, he seems not to have aged at all. welcome to all of you. i'm struck by -- when we think about the length of this war. i went there in 1965, peter you were there before i met you in sigh began. then by the time you got there it was a totally different war. peter, tell me about how the war changed as the years went by. >> well the earlier period when i was in '6 was kennedy
11:02 am
administration war. it was an advisors' war and it was conducted basically secretly. we made increasing observations of american military direct involvement with helicopter attacks, aerial bombardments and we sort of -- felt it was our job to start reporting on the direct american involvement because of the casualties being taken in the battlefield. it was said by administration to be accidental casualties. it was a very different conflict in 1965, of course, when american troops began coming in large numbers and when you arrived. >> schieffer: as the war went on in those very early days most americans really didn't know very much about what was happening there, by the time you got there david the country was very divided over the war.
11:03 am
there were demonstrations back here at home. >> that's right. our responsibility as photographers was to show what was happening to the people, whether it be soldiers or locals. we have died doing that. >> schieffer: i have heard you say david that a picture -- was actually a picture taken by mal brown may have been what caused president kennedy to say we need to try to do something to stop this. >> yes. because it was a burning buddhist monk, the fact that they were being persecuted by the catholic government. if you look at the trajectory of photographs, eddie adams' photo to the little girl running down the road. the whole arc of the war is really captured in photographs.
11:04 am
they go right to your soul. >> schieffer: bill, you were there pretty early, you were in and out vietnam over pretty long period of time. >> when i first went there in 1964 there were american advisors. we knew that they were helping out sometimes actually fighting, but we basically bought the notion that they were there to help south vietnamese. by the time i came back a second time in 1967, it was pretty apparent that the americans were doing all the fighting and the south vietnamese not doing much. another thing what we were seeing in the field didn't match what government of the united states was saying both in saigon and in washington. lyndon johnson was fighting a limited war and they had to sell it to the american public as such. but you could just go on any battlefield or out in the country and see that the facts didn't match the story. so, we got what they called the credibility gap.
11:05 am
morley safer used to wear "i was ambushed" the credibility gap. >> schieffer: laura there were at the fall of saigon. >> i was there from '72 to '74 then i returned in april of '75. i left on the chopper on the last day april 29th. >> schieffer: what did you feel while that was happening? we've all seen again these dramatic photos of that evacuation. it was remarkable that they were able to do what they did. it was the end of the war. >> the final american withdrawal from vietnam. >> it was the end of the war. i am part of the generation who was defined by vietnam. i started college in 1968, i protested the war the four years i was there. i went to saigon. it's where the rest of my life began. then there i was on the last day.
11:06 am
i was one of the youngest reporters there, and as the chopper lifted up from saigon, we were holding hands. and we were silent. and there was nothing to say m. times in those moments silence is the truest speech and we just watched vietnam reseed into the distance. it was over. >> schieffer: peter, you stayed. you did not leave. tell us what that was like. >> i stayed because at the beginning, several of my friends had been killed covering the war. and i had grown to believe along with my colleague, is that our audiences american public, the world, needed the kind of firsthand description of what was going on as i must say, i was intellectually ready for it. when i saw the -- the russian
11:07 am
trucks rolling down the street loaded with these young communist soldiers with their guns and looking up at the tall buildings hadn't seen tall buildings in the jungle. ivity he was come with an emotion i wept back up to our office and it was not easy to write that dispatch that saigon has fallen. >> i think one of the remarkable things about the evacuation, it struck me at the time and i still think of it now is that it was so peaceful. they never turned on us, the south vietnamese as we were clearly fleeing and abandoning them. it was a superb military operation, the marines who came in on the choppers for hours to rescue us were stellar. but we knew as we were waiting to get to the chopper that the north vietnamese had surrounded
11:08 am
the airportment any of those choppers could have been shot down with a heat-seeking missile but the decision had been made not to have a blood bath. they just wanted us to go. >> schieffer: do you think, bill, some said at the time, i'm not sure, there may still be a feeling by some. that the press somehow lost vietnam. what was your take on that? >> i don't think so. the television is usually what is blamed for bringing the war into american's living rooms people can see the horror of it. but the army's own official history of vietnam says it wasn't the press but the casualties that turned the american public against the war. it also says that the press reports were often more accurate than the public statements of u.s. officials. and that president johnson -- this is in the army's own history. advisors put too much faith in public relations. they were trying to fight a war
11:09 am
which had so many contradictions, that were so evident because there was no sensor ship, because we could go just about anywhere and she what was happening. that it was simply not winnable in that sense. >> schieffer: david, you were there, you were also involved in lighter american conflicts and photographed them. how different was the way the press was treated and where we were allowed to go as to what the rules are these days. >> if you wanted to go to a battle, part of the problem is trying to figure out where the action was. once you found out they were happy to take you there. you'd hop on a helicopter go into the battle. the thing that i really was remarkable to me was how much the g.i.s loved seeing us show up. we were there to tell their story of what was going on not as a political thing. i agree with bill, the press
11:10 am
didn't lose the war but when you started bringing up all the body bags coming back several from the high school i graduated from classmates of mine, class of '65 in high school, how can you win a war in public opinion. >> schieffer: if you were willing to go where the action was, to where these troops were, they were glad to see you. some cases they were just lonesome. i remember my assignment was to to -- for the "star telegram" was to track down kids from fort worth and go talk to them do a story about them. and send it back home and i'll always remember a young marine i walked up to him and he was in full battle dress and all that have, i said, your mom asked me to come by say hello. the kid full battle gear, just broke into sobs. if you were willing to go where they were, they were glad to see you. back in saigon, of course, they
11:11 am
weren't always so happy to see you. what was the hardest thing for you, bill? >> i think it was seeing the desperation at the end in the south vietnamese who had worked for the u.s., who had worked for their own government. i remember in april of 1975 standing outside the u.s. embassy, there were lines that went around the block of vietnamese trying desperately to get to the consulate and get a visa to the u.s. to get out of there. most of them of course, did not. they would come up to anyonea reporter anyone, thrust papers say, i work for -- i did i immediacy virginia -- i need video virginia all i could say i can't help you. the sense sense of abandonment by the u.s. for these people whose lives we basically control for so many years was one of the
11:12 am
11:13 am
>> schieffer: we're back with our panel. david kennerly after your work as war reporter you wound up being the white house photographer for gerald ford and he sent to you vietnam at one time. what was that about? >> well, right toward the end president ford wanted to stabilize the situation, i went with him. i took photos, i brought all these pictures back to the president and showed them to him. the pictures made a profound impact on him. it went right really, just struck him that he had to keep the door open for vietnamese.
11:14 am
and one of the things that i did was i put these photographs of refugees and people dying up in the west wing of the white house where normally it was a cheery party and pictures in color. at some point during the night first night they were up, somebody took them down because they were offended. the president got so angry he ordered that they be put back up on the wall. he said, you've got to know what is going on over there. and that's the power of the photographs. it really struck him it made a big difference. >> schieffer: peter you were involved in the first iraq war how, as all of this has evolved has relationship between the military and the press been different. >> my last reporting period was really most of the 2000s. i signed eight-page document that restricted basically everything except going to the toilet and maybe that was in the
11:15 am
fine print. it meant that no photographs of any wounded or -- not getting close to any sort of action, any interview i would have with anyone in the military would have to be approved and supervised. in each of these embedding periods i had i had sense that i wasn't sure what was going on. we have really what i feel increasingly draconian restraints on the press. i think that is not good for the public. >> schieffer: are you all struck by the parallels between vietnam and what's going on now in iraq? i say this, we went to vietnam not to conquer territory but to try to protect the south vietnamese from communist take over. we went to iraq not to conquer but protect and then we wind up fighting the war instead of helping those who were there fight the war.
11:16 am
and then once we began to draw down we leave we turn over the equipment and the whole thing collapses. >> it seems to me in both cases we've misjudged the enemy. we misjudged the north vietnamese. we were worried at the time about the dominos falling in southeast asia. that might indeed have happened. but south vietnam and north vietnam were one country that had been fighting the chinese for a thousand years. yet we thought the chinese were going to take them over. we didn't understand. i'm not sure we understand exactly what's going on today in the middle east. >> think is the most dangerous possible place to cover. i think it's more dangerous than vietnam. at least vietnam you had a safe place to go back to for all intense and purposes in saigon. but being an american or european correspondent in that area might as well throw big sign say "kidnap me" or "kill me" it's really tough. there's no independent reporting
11:17 am
coming out of there at all. they're picking up all sorts of isis propaganda but that's not how you want to get your facts. >> people say weren't you afraid in vietnam. it was a war. and actually we were very safe in vietnam. we knew which highways were dangerous. we knew where not to go. there were no suicide bombers. we are in such a much more dangerous world in terms of reporting. those who have reported from syria have taken such enormous risks to tell a story. i think that is a tremendous -- >> indeed it's dangerous. but we must realize that how do you measure the risk you take as a reporter for your news organization as against public interest and what you're covering. i had no doubt in vietnam that when me and my colleagues reported and went out in the field there was real audience
11:18 am
wanting to know what we were reporting. >> nobody was interested in what you were writing about in 1963. most americans weren't focused on that. where do you -- >> make that determination really. >> it was not interested because kennedy administration said, don't worry everything is under control. it became interesting when we discovered that the claims of the government were erroneous and fraudulent. that's where public and political interests grew in vietnam that somehow the government was obscuring. >> schieffer: the american people became interested when the body bags started coming back. that's when -- and there was also a draft. let me ask you this, bill, do you think -- i think vietnam changed america. before then we were the victors in world war ii.
11:19 am
we thought there was no foe that we could not conquer. we were in the midst of the cold war. then after vietnam we began to question a lot of things. not the least of which -- there was this divide between military and the civilian population. you didn't have that before, even with the draft. everybody felt like they had a stake in this. it seems to me since then, i think very sad thing, you have military community here and you have the civilian community here. i know people now who some of whom that probably don't know a single person in the u.s. military. i think that is very bad thing. >> which follows second world war that was one huge upheaval. the other was as you say the separation of the military and civilian population. the pressures of vietnam war
11:20 am
ended at the draft. many people believe that some kind of obligatory would be very good for young people but we're not likely to see it. it did set two separate classes of people apart. those who served and those who don't. >> just one point to remember in the past connecting those who served with the people at home. it was the ernie piles and plate 19th century made the connection, vietnam we're talking earlier about going out and writing hometown stories one of the great pleasures was to talk doing -- go back, say i got the clipping and that picture looked great. we were the connecting point. but restrictions that the military and government imposed on journalists today you don't have reporters telling those stories any more. this is a problem. we have a role to play when our
11:21 am
own people are committed to these foreign conflicts. >> schieffer: laura we really don't end wars, do we? >> one of the things that vietnam taught me and reporting i did subsequently after the war was that words don't end. they come home, it's the women and the children who fight them. there is a two find beauty and meaning in life again. there's sometimes a war to learn how to pick up a fork, how to tie a shoe, how to reconnect with a world that sent you to do something you never really thought you were going to do. and the aftermath of war is something that is profound. and i think -- we didn't recognize the soldiers enough after vietnam, i think one of the out rages was we blamed the war on people who fought it in
11:22 am
time learned to separate the warriors from the war. now sometimes you come home from war you get a super bowl ticket or you get parades but you still should not have to wait ten months to get mental health supported by the v.a. there's a tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done to help people make it home from the war. >> schieffer: some thoughts for all of us on this memorial day weekend. thanks to all of you. we'll be right back.
11:24 am
11:27 am
11:28 am
11:30 am
>> hi, everyone. i'm courtney thorne-smith. don't change the channel because in the next few minutes, you're gonna learn about a breakthrough product that could help take years off your appearance. but here's the thing -- you don't put it on your face. want to learn more? stay with us. >> announcer: next, a paid presentation from perricone md for cold plasma sub-d, the first-of-its-kind treatment for the area of your body that can actually age you most -- your neck, hosted by network television star courtney thorne-smith and featuring some of the most dramatic before-and-after photos you've ever seen, brought to you by guthy renker. when you look at yourself in the mirror, does your neck look older than your face? >> the texture just looked like crepe paper, like someone, you know, wrinkled it and gave it back to you. >> it was like, "this is awful.
123 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
KYW (CBS) Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on