very important thing in a young man's life and to be not just a soldier but to be a good soldier and to be in combat. that's where you belong. and that's the southerner in me in time of war that's where you belong. i left mississippi. probably due on my new year because. i needed to get out of mrs probably would have. been 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 and i want to live a adoption center there and signed up.

this is a cotton mill or there were five textile mill sure and i want to for about two months and looking for a job and finally. one of the whole neighborhood around for years said perry i get a job in the cotton mill. i want to strike the army recruiter. by griffin trailer park i grew up in a little small town called pear land texas 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 women and the reply afterwards 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 i and think unless you want to go into you know to go into the military the big. boys got married on day thirty at the d.s.m. for ninety six the fi show and i left on january third of nineteen sixty six go on a vietnam so i got spent more on a moment in vietnam along. we went from bomb tower to bin was where i dare for what they call red taishan peter

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 went back to my bed and i just couldn't sleep i. think i was going to be going to. the course the next day happened. and. somewhere at about three or four weeks we had an operation where they had helicopters i was circling waiting to go in this l.z. or landing zone to put the combat assault. and i heard the radio and the power of the one of the red flight said this is red lead were taken and.

now i try to relax and i try to forget about it. and it would scare right by this paralyzing kind of fear of knowing that i have to stop and. you have both hands full. as to. how. you're looking through a clear plexiglas window and the surrounding. flashes and you know that people are shooting to dissipate they don't hit you. from that point. i think i realized that it is possible to. get a. bunch

of thirty guys in a two and a half ton truck put in. place. and we couldn't find the division. we finally found it in the first thing they said to us when we got there i remember that. there was no. being a replacement which is the most god awful curse you can have on a human being. you're going to calm that 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 head 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 and 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 and. once we crossed into iraq we were roll into these towns from like a bunch of cowboys shooting the place. we went into the rashid. there was an actual military compounds in a huge military compound we pulled in there was an abrams tank that was parked at

one of the entrances. i 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 there said and you know chant and yell and i go behind my home beat and tear open an m.r.e. and all a sudden i hear a gunshot i step out from behind mom b. . as soon as i step out from behind the mom the ranger discharging their weapons and the demonstrators so on sling my weapon and i put the the stock up and. the blood of 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 we. center mass but i don't know who called cease fire all i know is it was kind of like simultaneously we all just stop 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 do you know i heard a gunshot that went over our heads and i said did you hear he's heard i say it was the open 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 seeing any any weapons

they were wearing traditional. jolliffe bows 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. a bunch of one arm. protesters. and then a little voice and then your head goes off in the service 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 basic out above these complex of toggles i'm so would lose people almost daily by sniper fire or at times of mortar fire. or felt that we had everything going against us where there was just the viet cong. the creatures of nature itself the snakes the 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 in 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 that and we had our end and that's our peer at that we were there that everything in black pajamas was in a me so we opened fire on them. and. we

were able to go and physically loka them and they had no weapons and they looked to be. teenage children. very are. cell 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 of course and that's never answered how. it looked. that experience of being fired is why 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 phasing them down because it looks like a constant strain. seeing people move. and seeing. women and children go into a house and be told that this isn't in any. location. you. have to aim. at this building and you have to far either rockets from machine guns and if you're. still not quite like shooting people. but i

think it presents a problem for most people if you think about taking a gun and shooting so. most people. a soldier has to be trying to do. initially it was pretty tough. to hope that it didn't hit anybody or you only saw the building explode you didn't see the people. the day i got hit the weather was exactly like this it was cold it was dead it was foggy was damp it was september in northern france. we left for 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 michele in my hand and then suddenly i was flying through the air like a huge sledgehammer that hit me thrown me way into the air and i didn't know it has come back to the ground going up and up and up and then suddenly i fell back. 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 the you could see the white fat in this huge hole in my but i remember always

lying there and. the medic 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 off 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 on hawk 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 see i didn't have any honesty here and they drilled with a drill to start taking all the stuff out 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 way. neighborly jan my cop and it was found out we were like can a pig where we were to be hit and the cop an age where converging and wipe an enemy out. there was a bright night you could. see long distances by them all we had been out for quite a while on this patrol and hadn't seen anything so we relaxed. all i want some bad kong stepped out of the bushes. and it's dago

ground to see off there and it startled me and. it was firing and i didn't how my weapon was on the di i brought my way up here off. so i managed to get. hagrid aids off my belt. cost a couple grenades. dealt with it but a guy. 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 and are ready to fire and couldn't get it we called in for permission to return we couldn't get in because my comment was getting over wrong. so welcome on the told us to 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 democracy on. his brains actually fell out as well we will we will move on now. that's still a stilted bit surreal and remember it said in that corridor on i with. 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. was very day and. sleep. 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 that 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 ship pull and. you find yourself. looking forward to the next. mission or for role. you get all right if it's like oh. i don't know why you do it but it's first kill is the same are you you think about especially. if you have to kill a close quarter is. it

up and you know where i killed with. weapon i like. my boys would build 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 answering the call of duty and it turned into something i said. that i hate that i had had growing up in the solve i think 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. as 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 his war crimes. the sergeant who had the ring of ears 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.

well see british science it's time to. go.

to the. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy because the reports. are glad the democrats republicans came together to approve my top national security priority for this session of congress the start treaty. stores arms reduction deal between russia and the u.s. goes ahead in both countries after washington's political games threaten to stall the agreement. and in other news this week tensions fly high on the korean peninsula as pyongyang threatens a sacred nuclear war and so continues to provoke it with more war games near the disputed t. border. war still questions russia's findings on

a plane crash which killed the former polish president but experts say moscow has conducted a thorough investigation. and the events will shape the year with the russian president dmitry medvedev shares his can of views with the country's leading t.v. channels. fortune r t live from moscow i'm marina josh will come to the program and this week the new nuclear constable between moscow and washington was given the nod in both countries the lower house of russia's parliament voted in friday to give an issue approval to the agreement which will slash the sides nuclear arsenals by a third it was approved for ratification by the u.s. senate a few days earlier following months of political wrangling but russian lawmakers will continue to debate in the new year over the ratification.