tv [untitled] RT August 17, 2010 4:31pm-5:01pm EDT
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smaller countries then we have a problem and. i mean if if if russia. there is a place in the world for a powerful nation or culturally powerful nation. diplomatically powerful nation or resource rich nation to stand up for the rights of smaller nations it seems that role is almost begging russia to accept it i don't think it has accepted it but it's there thank you very much you're welcome.
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good to have you with us this is our commission on from the russian capital twenty four hours a day top stories now this hour a car bomb blast rocks a bustling city center in southern russia injuring at least thirty people suicide bomber kills one in just three in the republic of north. now israel has just three days to strike iran's russian built bushehr nuclear power plant before it's operational says america's ambassador to the u.n. john bolton. private security companies in afghanistan have been ordered to end operations within four months president's decision is expected to be met with resistance from nato which relies on them for many every day.
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russia has promised a visa free regime for the generation of the twenty eighteen or twenty twenty two world cup finals if it is awarded. inspectors that come in moscow scrutinizing the bid which pledges state of the art football stadia and sport mad country. but with more news more developments for us and thirty minutes from now in the meantime we look back in history what were american and vietnamese soldiers dying for thirty five years ago in south east asia that's our special report coming up next. southern vietnam province klavan forte was a u.s. marine in the one nine hundred sixty s. against vietnamese communist guerrillas today for mob boss or is recall the time when they could only look at one another through the cross as we got better and better at it but still never as good as the be at the means that camouflage about heidi. using the jungle for their advantage the course of the war shifted when the
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soviet union sent anti-aircraft missile systems and military specialists to vietnam in his first action targeting u.s. aircraft nicholai kolesnik broke down for almost. the first rockets reached the targets in exploded then the second and the third i can still picture these throwing skellies that many of the local fighters trained by soviet missile specialists later rose to the highest ranks of the vietnamese army we were so good at disguising soviet missiles with tree branches that american pilots could see nothing but thick forest that one did fifty eight thousand u.s. army servicemen and over a million vietnamese soldiers dying full how have the wars veterans fed sins. now think about thirty five years old. hanoi the capital of vietnam six am morning exercises in the city's main square
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the mostly in the center is the resting place of the vietnamese communist leader who team in the movement for the country's independence the vietnamese managed to oust their french colonizers but the united states was seriously concerned with a new state of mind in line with communists and they were willing to use force to prevent that from happening. i signed up to join the military because i thought that it was my duty that it was something that i could do to help my country i believed my government that it was necessary for americans to come to vietnam to help by. greg klavan was born in california but now he lives in vietnam south with his girlfriend he first came here with a u.s. marine unit not long after his eighteenth birthday now only a few faded photos with his friends remind him of that period in his life. this.
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is. this. by the one nine hundred sixty s. had been divided into two parts with the border with the seventeenth. communists led by control of the north washington politicians were. at its peak in the late sixty's the us supported them with more than half a million troops. thinks the most realistic. is francis ford coppola's film apocalypse now. in vietnam u.s. troops stop short of nothing in a bid to achieve their objectives if they burned the jungles of hideouts the vietnamese. but they also used a chemical weapon called agent orange to smoke them out of the forest.
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i just assumed that. was right and that we needed to be here but after. i started to change my mind. about it i still couldn't just leave. the. new trees to. destroy the forest nearly forty years ago. but the chemical weapon has had a sting effect on the people. in many villages there are many with birth defects these people were born to the war but the effects of them genetically many years happened to be in the agent. these children lived in a special village near there under the constant. and psychologists. jeanne
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has been here for more than ten years she only visits her parents during the holidays. so when i was at primary school other children often teased me and it was very difficult for me to join the community and to play with friends. to be a doctor when she grows up so that she can treat children with ailments caused by chemical weapons many are still hard to diagnose american soldiers as well as civilians felt the effects of agent orange. and she died when she was six months old. and one of the first questions were asked me. so they knew.
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but they still. side all over the country. nine hundred sixty five. asks the u.s.s. often. around the same time defense units hold massive training exercises. cruise around constantly. in the defense force during the exercises he heard rumors about defense units getting ready to go to a far away country to take part in. it before was sent to vietnam we get strict orders not to tell anybody we're going to distant places we weren't even told what that place was. the defense missile system was to be tested for the first time in
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history in vietnam conditions. crew. i know this the last little. i felt it all over and checked it thousands of times. through. the first soviet rocket specialists going to vietnam in april one thousand sixty five here they were officially called military advisors they organized a crash course training the vietnamese to be a teams did their work. and. the vietnamese were generally not very tall short actually. it was hard for them to load the rocket launcher around. so when one of us was enough to load the launcher two or three vietnamese had to do
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it but this. was one of vietnamese colleagues he served in the army throughout the war when he was discharged from the vietnamese air defense force he held the rank of major general today he's a frequent visitor to today's a defense units he tells young servicemen how vietnamese fighters learned to handle soviet rockets the hard way and how they used the rocket systems in real life fighting it. at first they thought a launcher crew would take eight months to learn the system you get a war was on our towns are being bombed so we had to hurry. we learned the make up of the hardware down to the last in a matter of two and a half months. the vietnamese army is still equipped with soviet military hardware and it's still in working order despite its advanced age engraved inscriptions in russian and kept intact as a sign of respect but but you know. what
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. most of the units of vietnamese army included men from small villages where people had never even seen so much as a simple radio set but still they quickly learned the a.b.c.'s of their defense and even invented some tactical tricks of their own. for example they camouflaged bulky soviet anti-aircraft missile systems so effectively that even that soviet instructors took home some valuable lessons. we learned to become a fire soviet rockets was. the place for them as usual it was near the high tree
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after the come of large american pilots most of thought it was thick forest. wartime films give an idea of what soviet rockets in vietnamese camouflage looked like. posts as well as launches were disguised. we see general. entering a makeshift command post it was from here that he controlled rocket launches twenty five of them hit the american bombers. while we rocket specialist spent a good deal of time trying to figure out american tactics that american pilots drop metal paper from their aircraft to distort radar pictures. and we did learn to tell genuine targets from fake wants. the very first bottle in which soviet anti-aircraft missile systems took pods was crammed with success. down three american aircraft.
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new victory came less than a month later. it's destroyed for obama's want to go. kolesnik was in command of the launch of the brought them down. we see all three rockets exploding one after another there is a flare each time the best of the sky is a glow the american planes fall to pieces and glide to the ground like smoldering pieces of wood. soviet and vietnamese servicemen manning rocket launches destroyed a total of more than eight hundred u.s. aircraft and helicopters during the war afterwards fragments gathered from across the country were taken to vietnam's capital hanoi today they are exhibits at the
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national museum of the armed forces it centerpiece is a giant all ballistic created from the twisted components of downed bombers. kirshner's the same of the article you know i've heard rumors but i believe that they nothing less than yes after forty years the so-called war on drugs is achieved preciously little nonetheless governments around the. the united states of america is waging war within its own army. kill no advantage it is on no one side. and human losses are quite significant. is it possible to win the war against sexual assault in the us armed forces sex in the army. each year nikolai kolesnik the former commander of a crew of soviet rocket specialists visits
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a restaurant in moscow to meet with vietnamese war veterans. they marked the anniversary of his crew's first victory. after that battle a table was laid for soviet specialists but the menu was filmore modest. and the food was somewhat exotic with never even anything like that before it tasted and looked like nothing when you were so we often ask the vietnamese to tell us about the food we were eating. the russians from vietnamese soldiers in the field will pull however they received additional supplies from local peasants air defense units were normally stationed close to villages. chante gum is ninety five years old both of her sons were guerrillas they lost their lives fighting in what was then south vietnam. she joined fellow villages in the north to
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help the launch a crew who took part in the first battle. i remember exactly how it happened. the acrobats wings fell to the ground on the house next to mine. when death to see their remains. today there is a thick jungle where joint soviet vietnamese crews for their first battle there's no trace left of the rocket systems camouflaged with tree leaves which were once stationed here. soviet specialist guided rockets towards their targets as we looked. we were overjoyed to know that all the targets had been here and that was our first victory. yet. despite that such a change that tactics assumed soviet anti aircraft missile systems.
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in an attempt to evade soviet rockets they had to fly into no well since you. made them easy prey for the vietnamese women who served as. you have. different turns in the process. you are. probably. a pilot pete peterson was downed over north vietnam in september one thousand nine hundred sixty six he returned home after seven years in captivity nearly a quarter of a century later after official relations between the two states were finally restored peterson became the first us ambassador to vietnam today he lives with more than just memories of the.
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way. at least in my memory. the truth lies in the center of the capital. there is a monument among its banks with the names of american pilots who were shot down among them is united states senator john mccain written in vietnamese. one of those who took part of the mccain prisoner was. on july twenty ninth one thousand nine hundred sixty seven he was on duty near the lake. right there. and headed for the parachute by boat. this picture shows members of a vietnamese militia units lifting mccain out of the lake the john lewis is among
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them. dragged him ashore. i couldn't quite understand how he felt. his face showed that he was. john mccain mistakenly thought that he would be killed instead he was immediately given first aid. he spoke in an interview for french television from his hospital. he served most of his term in this prison. it's housed in a colonial era building today it's a museum but in the one nine hundred sixty s.
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imprisoned u.s. pilots jokingly called the prison the hanoi hilton. during the war captain chang was the jail's warden. his job was ideological work with inmates including john mccain. finally one that he had strongly held beliefs. mccain never agreed that american pows seen vietnam was wrong but i had my own opinion he was a republican i was a communist the americans tried to establish their order the but we fought for freedom. five and a half years later john mccain returned to the usa and continued to serve in the navy. but as a presidential candidate in two thousand and eight he used rhetoric that not knowing his background might have even being considered pacifist america is the greatest force for good in the history of the world my friends we have gone to all
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four corners of the earth and shed american blood in defense usually of somebody else's freedom and our own so we are peacemakers and we're peacekeepers. evidence of war crimes against vietnamese civilians started coming out while john mccain was still serving his prison sentence. a horrific massacre took place in the rural community of my lai in one hundred sixty eight villages was suspected of helping the guerrillas will than four hundred people were murdered in a matter of hours. reports concerning vast and other episodes critically undermined the morale among u.s. troops stationed in vietnam. there was a lot of drug use there with a lot of murder of american officers by american soldiers there were a lot of units who refuse orders to go out and buy they said no we're not going to
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fight. in the united states meanwhile the movement. against the war in vietnam was gathering steam. there were mass protests antiwar rallies and the famed march on the pentagon organized by peace activists. later many vietnam war veterans joined the protests themselves former fighters would drop the medals they'd been awarded in vietnam in front of the u.s. congress. before the war i always thought i wanted to win a lot of medals i wanted to have a lot of decorations but afterwards i realized that they they don't mean anything they're not that important. i don't i don't i never kept the medal i never. i never did anything about it. is
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a district twenty kilometers from hoochie minh city formerly known as saigon ex marine greg klavan. a form of vietnamese guerilla. nearly forty years ago they were bitter adversaries fighting each other below them lie two hundred fifty kilometers of underground tunnels vietnamese guerrillas would dig them around the clock covering over the fresh earth and disguising numerous entrances to caves . going down there i don't want to try. even if the entrance to a tunnel was discovered it was hardly possible for most american soldiers to get inside but vietnam these guerrillas were able to crawl through even with rifles in their hands they would vanish into thin air after taking several shots from a camouflaged dug out. during a raid made by vietnamese guerrillas in the jungle
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a bullet fired by a sharpshooter narrowly missed greg klavan. on the one hand the jungle was very beautiful very exciting to watch and to be in but on the other hand it was very frightening knowing that any time the enemy could attack the freedom fighters got the medicine and weapons from north vietnam there was a whole system of secret supply routes locals called it the home team in trail american forces did effectually. with the help of the vietnamese peasants the guerrillas how to restore the trail constantly. the traces which led to the jungle routes were fully hidden to misguide the enemy. each time we were on the. tracks with a tree branch. and.
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december one thousand nine hundred seventy two the americans make a last ditch attempt to force north vietnam to surrender. operation linebacker two so the launch is ten people more strikes since the second . in two weeks of continuous raids u.s. aircraft struck more than twenty thousand tons of explosives on towns in north vietnam. that combined power much thought of the atom bomb dropped on hiroshima in one thousand four hundred five. just absolutely normal it's explosions and. at the same time i think it also persuaded. that. it was time. to. the city of hanoi the wreckage of one of thirty u.s.
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b. fifty two bombers is still buried in a lake here the consequences of the military operation linebacker two soon after that the u.s. troops started to leave vietnam. mean often brings his grandchildren here when the war was over he served in the vietnamese army for a further twenty years retiring as a general now he writes his memoirs about how his battalion took part in resisting the last american air raid. happened right here. because her lawyer was subjected to very heavy. and the wreckage of this aircraft is a good illustration of the defeat suffered by the united states here. unlike his vietnamese counterpart sergeant nicholai kolesnik decided against continuing his military career. after his return from vietnam nicholai left the armed forces
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to become an electrical engineer but he meets several times a year with his comrades in arms who served with him in vietnam. the film a u.s. marine greg klavan return to vietnam in one nine hundred eighty six he makes a living by giving private english lessons when he left vietnam off to being wounded in the wall it never occurred to him that some day he might come back let alone share a table with vietnamese guerrillas so coming back and seeing vietnam's develop in people. getting jobs and going to school did a normal life made me feel better that we didn't completely destroyed all of the farm and all of the things that we did in considering what we've gone through i wish that the people of the united states the people of vietnam and all nations
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always live in peace and understanding. since the end of five years ago many things in vietnam have changed in some can expected ways. one of the buildings of the jail with us in bates nicknamed the hanoi hilton is now indeed a moat and the hotel. the u.s. flag is often seen side by side with the vietnamese flag on the facades of joint ventures college undergraduates domes to modern pulp music near a monument to soviet leader lenin. but one thing remains the same. is guarded around the clock by the soldiers of the vietnamese army the the army
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