thank you very much you're welcome. the. industry is rapidly developing leaf mold argy. were the first russia. where the indigenous people were the first target she's not a good and where russia's glorious history is still visible. russia blows up. her.

watching our t.v. live from russia's capital moscow where it is two thirty in the morning now a look at your top headlines at least thirty are hurt as a car bomb rocks a bustling city center in southern russia hours after a suicide bomber kills one and injures three policemen in the republic of north. running out of time former u.s. ambassador john bolton says that if israel is to attack iran's nuclear plant it's got just three days left to do it because any military strike after the facility goes live later this week would risk of radioactive catastrophe. taking matters into their own hands afghanistan's president wants to stop private security. operating in the country prompting fears that nato troops will struggle

to cope without. dropping visas for football fans and a new state of the art stadium built from scratch there the key selling points to a visiting. russians bid to host the soccer world cup eight twelve years time. next we look back in history what were american and vietnamese soldiers dying for thirty five years ago in southeast asia. southern vietnam province klavan forte was a us marine in the one nine hundred sixty s. against vietnamese communist guerrillas today for mob boss or is recalled 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 had the means to camouflage about hiding. using the jungle for their advantage the course of the war shifted when the

soviet union sent. military specialists to vietnam in his first action targeting u.s. aircraft. kolesnik broke down for. its reach the targets and exploded then the second and the third i can still picture these clearing skies many of the local fighters trained by soviet missiles 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 forests. did fifty eight thousand u.s. servicemen and over a million vietnamese soldiers dying full how of the war 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

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. that it was necessary for americans to come to vietnam to help people. but now he lives in vietnam south with his girlfriend he first came here with a u.s. marine unit after his eighteenth birthday now only a few faded photos with his friends remind him of that period in his life.

his name is richard. this. by the one nine hundred sixty s. the 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 of the war is francis ford coppola's film apocalypse now. vietnam us troops stop short of nothing in a bid to achieve their objectives. the jungle hideouts of vietnamese. but they also used a chemical weapon called agent orange to smoke to the fullest. i

just assumed it. was right and that we needed to be here but after a few months i started to change my mind. that we were doing a good job. but. i still. couldn't just leave. the. new trees. destroyed the forest nearly forty years ago. but the chemical weapon has had effect on the people. in many villages there are many with. these people. but the effects were passed to them genetically many years happened to be in the agent zone. these children live in study in a special village near hanoi they are under the constant care of doctors and psychologists. has been here for more than ten years she only visits her parents

during the holidays. to. primary school children. to play with friends. to be a doctor when she grows up so that she can treat children with. chemical weapons. many of. those american and vietnamese soldiers civilians felt the effects of agent orange. and she died when she was six months old. and one of the first questions dr asked me was. so. but they still. side all over the country.

nine hundred sixty five. the u.s.s. often. around the same time defense units hold massive training exercises. constantly. defense force during the exercises he heard rumors about getting ready to go to a far away country to take. it before was sent to vietnam we get strict orders not to tell anybody we're going to distant places. what that place was. the defense missile system was to be tested for the first time in history in

vietnam in military conditions. crew. i know this. i felt it's all over and checked it thousands of times. the first soviet rocket specialists came to vietnam in april one thousand sixty five here they were officially called military advisors they organized a crash course training the vietnamese to copy help a soviet teams did their work. and. the vietnamese were generally not very tall rather short actually. it was hard for them to load the rocket launcher. so when one of us was enough to load two or three vietnamese had to do it.

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. know war was our towns were being bombed so we had to hurry. we learned the make up of the hardware down to the last bolt 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. 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 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. that we learned to become a fire soviet rockets was. the place for them but as usual it was near the high tree 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 the 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 about flame which soviet anti-aircraft missile systems took part was crammed with success they pulled down three american aircraft. and. music tree

came less than a month later. it's destroyed for want to go. and . kolesnik was in command of the launch of that brought them down. we see all three rockets explain. 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 of the national museum of the armed forces it centerpiece is

a giant created from the twisted components of downed bombers. the united states of america is waging war within its own army. jono advantage 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 sacks in the army. each year nikolai kolesnik the former commander of a crew of soviet rocket specialists visits 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 if tasted and looked like nothing when you say 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 ed 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 villagers in the north to 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. burnell soviet specialist died in rockets towards other targets as we looked. we were overjoyed to know that all had been here that was our first victory. yet. despite that such a change that tactics assumed soviet anti aircraft missile systems. in an attempt to evade soviet rockets they had to fly into nowhere.

the found made them easy prey for the vietnamese women who served. through. different emotional turns in the process making. a mission. return to base. you are totally exhausted and probably. pilot pete peterson was downed over north vietnam in september one thousand nine hundred sixty six he returned home to seven years in captivity nearly a quarter of a century later after official relations between the two states were finally restored pietersen became the first u.s. ambassador to vietnam today he lives with more than just memories of the. probably somewhere back. somewhere.

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 the twenty ninth one thousand nine hundred sixty seven he was on duty near the lake. plane 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 among them . dragged him ashore.

i couldn't understand how he felt. a knife in my belt 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 ward. 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. imprisoned u.s. pilots jokingly called the prison the hanoi hilton. during the war

captain chang jones who it was the jails warden. his job was ideological work with inmates including john mccain. when a deal 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 try 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 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 fast and other episodes critically undermined the morale among u.s. troops stationed in vietnam. there was a lot of drug use there was 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

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 coochie is a district twenty kilometers from hoochie minh city formerly known as saigon ex

marine greg played in. a former 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 vietnamese 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

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. enemy could attack the freedom fighters got them medicine and weapons from north vietnam there was a whole system of secret supply routes locals called it the hoochie minh trail american forces to effectuate. 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.

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 largest heavy bombers strikes since the second. into leaks of continuous raids u.s. aircraft dropped 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. absolutely normal its explosions and. devastation caused by. the same time i think it also persuaded. that. it was time. to. that diplomatic source in. the city of hanoi the wreckage of one of thirty u.s. b.

fifty two bombers is still buried in a lake here the consequences of the military operation called 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. that happened right here. because it was subjected to very heavy bombardment. 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

to become an electrical engineer but he meets several times a year with his comrades in arms who served with him in vietnam. the former u.s. marine greg klavan returned to vietnam in one nine hundred eighty six he makes a living by giving private english lessons when he left vietnam after being wounded in the war it never occurred to him that someday he might come back let alone share a table with vietnamese guerrillas so coming back and seeing. develop in people. getting jobs and going to school in a normal life made me feel better that we didn't completely destroy all of the army and all of the things that we. have gone through i wish that the people. united states the people of vietnam and all nations 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 but 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 the joint ventures college undergraduates domes to modern pop music near a monument to soviet leader of libya met lending. but one thing remains the same. team in mosul liam is guarded around the clock by the soldiers of the vietnamese army the army the guadalupe.