in time of war that's where you belong. to me. i had left must be. probably due on my junior year because of the anger i had to go out i needed to get out of necessity probably would have said no and. i came up to you ben arbor michigan to work on the harvest and that work i couldn't do i couldn't make money at it so i came back and while i was in jackson i want to live the induction center there and signed i believe. i haven't found peace in you to me. this is a cotton mill area there were five textile mills sure and i want to run for about two months and looking for a job and finally. one of the old neighborhood greats had been around for years

should get a job in the cotton mill. i went straight to the army recruiter. plan on coming. here and i'm ready to go. by group and trailer park i grew up in a little small town called para land texas just near galveston i remember sitting on the couch and watching. the first gulf war. two hours ago allied air forces began an attack on military targets in iraq in kuwait and watching it on the television seeing how quick the wind and the hoopla afterward i am from the liberated be too. awful great to be an american i had felt the we had lost the ghosts of vietnam. i remember sitting there on the cal said night and thinking most of you know you ought to go into you know to go into the military. be

doing. we got married on day thirty at the december ninety six the fire. show and i left on january third of nineteen six to six go on a vietnam so it was when i got spend more on a moment in vietnam all. we wanted from bonked out to ben was where i dare for what they call red tape here and you know to get used to the climate and to actually get used to the sounds of war.

the first couple of weeks i was terrified every not. and after my first briefing i want back to my bed not i just cannot sleep. all i could think of going to be going to shoot that many more because the next day nothing happened. and then somewhere after about three or four weeks we had an operation where they had thirty helicopters i was circling waiting on my turn to go in this l.z. or landing zone to put the combat assaulting up. and i heard the radio and the power of the one of the red flight said this is red laid we're taking fire and all i could hear in the background was just. and i would try to relax and i try to forget about it and it would just come right by this paralyzing kind of fear of knowing that i had to stop and be shot at. the helicopter pilot

you have both hands full so your gut instinct is to try to. hide. but there's no place to hide you're looking through a clear with plexiglass wonder at the surrounding woodland and you see little flashes and you know the people are shooting to describe it don't you. from that point. i think i realized that it is possible that. we were by bunch of thirty guys in a joint to have to on trucks put in as replacements no real training and we couldn't find the division. we finally found it in the first thing they said to us when we got their armor why did you take so long there was no welcome. being a replacement which is the most god awful curse you can have on

a human being. you're going to combat you don't know anybody they don't care about you and they were scared to death you were going to do something stupid and lift your it at the wrong time fire at the wrong time anything to attract fire that would get them killed. by january two thousand and three. i found myself sitting in the kuwaiti desert waiting to invade iraq. i told myself you know hey we're here to fight a war this is it you know this is show time and this is what eleven years of training you know has accumulated to my main goal was making

sure that my men came home alive hello to me care about i had to say it but i didn't really care about anybody that was outside of my platoon. once we crossed into iraq we were roll into these towns like a bunch of cowboys shooting the place. we went into the rashid. there was an actual military compounds and a huge military compound we pulled in there was an abrams tank that was parked at one of the entrances. and started asking me what was going on because there were some demonstrators down the road and. i asked him if any of them at any weapons and he said no. and so what do you think

the. you know they're going to stage a coup against sister anything like that and he said no they they're just down their set and you know chant and yell and i go behind my home beat and tear open an m.r.e. and all sudden i hear a gunshot i step out from behind mom b. . as soon as i step out from behind mom be my marines are discharging their weapons and the demonstrators so on sling my weapon and i put the the stock up and. deploy the rifle stock up on my shoulder and i start firing and i'm hitting i'm hitting the demonstrators no i am. and of course i'm aiming at the head i mean. center mass but i don't know who called cease fire all i know is it was kind of like simultaneously we all just stopped firing. the lieutenant he comes up to me

and he goes what the hell happened. i don't know you tell me sir you're the lieutenant. i said i do know i heard a gunshot that went over our heads and i said did you hear he's heard and i said well who opened fire. i don't know. where when we did the reconnaissance and as we're driving by. as we're driving by the bodies i'm looking down at the at the ground and not seen any any weapons they were wearing traditional. jalapenos and. of course they were soaked in red with blood. now i thought to myself for a split second i said. you know these people didn't have any weapons we just shot

at. bunch of one arm. protesters. and then a little voice and then your head goes off in a sort of well that's war. that's what happens in war. i just. chalked it up. i really did i chalked it up. you know. how did we know.

so when after we arrived in coochie we didn't know that we had built a base scout above these complex of toggles time so we would lose people almost daily by sniper fire or at times of mortar fire. i felt that we had everything going against us where there was just the vietcong. the creatures of nature itself the snakes they spiders. i don't know it's a different smile. it's space live you were in battle i know i've heard many people say you can't smell blood but to me that's a lie you you can smell it

i remember. early on i think it was then april. sixth the sixth we were out in noble woods and. it was people in a rice feel that we didn't know what they were the ad on the bike pajamas and it saw a hat and we had an hour and in that short period that we were they had everything in black pajamas was in a me so we opened fire on them. we were able to go and physically located at them and they had no weapons and they looked to be. teenage children are very are. so you have that doubt in your my one

while reality hit you you know. what did i kill that i kill innocent kids i was a call that base of course and that's never answered how. it looked. that experience of being fired while i had to stop. unnerving so i. asked to be transferred to the armed helicopters because they never stopped they shoot rockets and machine guns. i don't think i really thought about what your job was. but. at some point. you come

upon a situation where you see people that you have to show. and you have a machine we call it down because it looks like your conscious brain. seeing people move. and seeing. women and children go into a house and day and told that this is an enemy location. you. have to aim. at this building and you have to far either rockets from machine guns and if you're far enough away it's still not quite like shoot people. but i think it it presents a problem for most people if you think about taking a gun. and shooting some. most people can't. a soldier has to be trying to do. the national it was pretty tough i tried to.

not say. to hope that it didn't hit anybody or you only saw the building exploded and see the people. the day i got hit the weather was exactly like this it was cold it was that it was foggy was damp it was september in northern france. we left the gun that morning we were to cross the moselle we were on one side of the river and you were being destroyed by artillery shells coming the other way. i was digging a hole. in the dirt because we knew we were going to be attacked by artillery and i

was had michelle in my hand and then suddenly i was flying through the air like a huge huge sledgehammer to get me thrown me way into the air and i didn't know it has come back to the ground i went up and up and up and then suddenly i fell back to. put my hand up and i felt the peace of. some in my head and then i look at my hands and my would just scarlet with blood and i looked at my back at my butt and my butt was. if you could see the white fat in this huge hole in my butt i remember i was lying there and. the many came over and he tried to fix me up and he was leaning over me and i watched the tip of his nose disappear a piece of shrapnel cut out the tip of his nose and then the blood from his nose

merged with my nose and the next thing i knew i was in a stretcher i still don't honk yet because i was still paralyzed on my right side and then i had the operation on my head and what i still remember i grit my teeth is he i didn't have any honesty here and they drilled with a drill to start taking all the stuff on and i can still remember it felt like i had put my head on a railroad track and the train had run on. what i remember is being treated with the most enormous tenderness and.

sometime in may of six this was. a burly gym my company was flat out we were like can a pig where we were to be. a cop an age were converging and wipe an enemy out. there was a bright night you could. see longest by them all we had been out for quite a while on this patrol and hadn't seen anything. we relaxed. all i want some bad kong stepped out of the bushes. and it's dog over him to see us there that startled me and. he was firing and i didn't how my weapon was but on the die i brought my way up here off. so i managed to get. hagrid aids off my belt. cost

a couple grenades. now the to what i got. then we could see as far as we could see there would be a call that was coming up to our parameter. and we called in for an direct fire and couldn't get it we called in for the mission to return we couldn't get it because my comment was getting over wrong. so welcome on the tollers you just try to find a place and spend the night there. we told the marshy and he was on the one that was kill and one on a bomb crater and we sat there on night. eventually the mechanize unit came in and we loaded the marshy on.

his brains actually fell out as well we were we were moving in. the still a still good bit surreal and remember it said in that corridor on i was. aggro on them but it is a it sounded hollow. but it was easier to go back and kill more that's part of what what drove me.

it was very day and. sleep. sleep. sleep sleep. sleep. sleep sleep. sleep sleep. sleep some people i love animals. deer move for sale or whatever whatever suits their fancy. but i can also tell you that there is no other feeling in the world it comes close to hunting another human being. that's what you're trying to do. and the drawback

to it is the fact that you want to do it again. because you enjoy it. it's almost like a drug and you become addicted to it but after a while like with any like with any addiction. you know series you're fired and you get that first burst of enjoyment. they don't last so long and the high comes to a load. after wears off it felt to me like everything was muddy dark waters feels like swimming in a in a big well we've referred to in the marine corps as a shit hole and. you find yourself. looking forward to the next. mission or for role.

you get all right it's like oh. i don't know why you joy but it's first kill is same hard you would think about especially. if you have to kill a close quarter is. it up and you know where i killed with. weapon i. might hate what it was built in our forty's people and i wanted to kill. i felt good at the time when i when i did it bother me if i. didn't

get a chance to kill someone it went beyond a certain a call of duty it turned into something i said. that i hate that i had had growing up in the sol i think it had expanded. because of what was happening in vietnam because so knows and people. i feel i've become an animal i. feel no remorse. i literally saw young men turn into psychopathic killers. but the

great thing about the marine corps is the training process that the young men and women go through gives them all the ability to kill at least one time to put that warrior ethos in effect and then once you've done it then it's on you. so many things happen in a war that put you at odds with your sense of right and wrong. i've seen things that would be described as is war crimes. the sergeant who had the ring of yours who. is not a secret i mean he's walking around with a big wiring with human ears pushed through the low been there all hanging on the

ring these are people he has cut off their ears to try to get information. shooting civilians. you don't really call it it's not like you're shooting a scene. it's like. collateral damage.

leeches and discoveries. communicate with the wind. and become free. nature can give you.

we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from around the world. we are going to the future of coverage. i am glad the democrats republicans came together to approve our top national security priority for this session of caucus to start with. this is the most significant arms control agreement and barely two decades of washington and moscow held a historic nuclear cuts trini passing a final vote in the u.s. senate and becoming a new symbol of trust between both nations. a new fight for the lead in israel as the government's unfolded those same bedouin villages and operating in abit as some claim for a place that jewish settlers. lost there's only a small chance of catching the disease but there's great prejudice against it our team visits our russian community to see how

a lack of understanding of the outside world makes those makes me even those who who knows who are cured choose to stay. on the price of basic foods has skyrocketed this year we'll look at why in the business news in twenty minutes. two pm in moscow i match reza good to be with you here on r t our top story the u.s. senate has finally approved the new strategic arms reduction treaty with russia after months of bitter and divisive wrangling the decision has been hailed by both washington and moscow as a huge positive step nevertheless russian officials say they must study the ratification resolution in detail before approving the treaty the country's state duma chairman says if the senate document doesn't alter the text of the deal.