it's a very warm welcome good to have you with us. on the week's top stories here on r.t. the official report on last april plane crash that killed members of the country's political elite points to. accepted part of the blame lies with the polish side but said some points of not being addressed. to the world's major all companies. companies are struck a deal to explore the huge deposits of oil and gas buried on the continental shelf . between moscow and washington has been approved by russia's

parliament in the second of three readings but see the. third was given the go ahead by the u.s. senate just before the new year. will be with you in less than half an hour from now as news continues in the meantime it's all special report on the start of the vietnam war movement in the u.s. in the nine hundred sixty s. that altered the course of history. in the early one nine hundred sixty s. the united states government began sending combat troops to south vietnam if that's all it was made sure to go down or. ask yourself what's going to happen to all the other. america stated goal was to spread democracy and defend freedom but thirty years later the legacy of that ten year war which left fifty thousand americans and over three million vietnamese dead still remains unsettled and in the decades of debate that followed the end of the war some stories have yet to be heard.

today your soldiers sailors airmen marines and coast guard are better educated people are better informed. traditional american ingenuity and if they. are better as a post fast at my morale and understand what the war is all about. killing . linked. list. to misunderstand it might be. different to the good. one i viewed with the military are we near gurnall in basic training this farand reports it's a school or a school and i want to. really get over it i try to spend my whole

life having people live a better life and basically feel better that's what nurses still. they tried to trick me into a kill they tried to trick me into somebody who would take another life it's just one thing in my life i feel i could ever call. to say i didn't either. predator. in my hand. in my little theory you could say that there were probably. like. you know to those almost three in which server. there wasn't too much to do on a troop ship sold showed up on the docket like never read a lot of time to get to where we are what we're doing what it was right or off we go back and forth back and forth. we always end up including we're doing the right thing because as the world all. during the vietnam war an antiwar movement emerged

that altered the course of history this movement didn't take place on college campuses but in barracks and on ships that flourished in army stockades maybe briggs and the dingy towns and surrounded military bases. it penetrated elite military colleges like west point and it spread throughout the battlefields of vietnam. it was a movement no one expected least of all those seven hundred twenty prison and thousands into exile and by nine hundred seventy one it had in the words of one colonel infest the entire armed services. yet today few people know about the g.i. movement against the war in vietnam. and i was really proud of what i thought i was doing there earliest days of the war planted the seeds for the movement to come even among the first american troops in vietnam the elite green berets the problem i had was realizing that what i was doing was not good i was

doing it right but i wasn't doing the right. i was asked to train green beret people special forces men why were they training these guys to in dermatology while they were training them to do dermatology in vietnam because they knew that if they were able to offer a few simple remedies and help cure a few children of some simple bacterial infections that that would shape themselves to the vietnamese community and you know you remember the phrase the winning the hearts and minds of the people so this was this was how you were going to win the hearts and minds of the people and while they were offering the bandaids of helping to cure a few cases of him to tie go they were bombing the hell out of the villages. i was out on patrol. and near hip well and. we took a couple of prisoners and whether they were combatants or not you know. patrol was

led by americans but every vietnamese are in there and they were turned over to our and. our can use the old fashioned methods of interrogation and force torture that was pretty common practice. i tell you as bad as the bat is that treatment was the cynicism that attached to it was a part that was really sickening and death of everything i've been taught to be thing i've learned everything i grew up with this is just not the way you treat human beings. and it's all done for the good of the cause i guess. i got out of the military in one nine hundred sixty six because the things i saw the things i was doing and this reasons we were given for doing them was a personal protest it was just me getting out of the service and there was no movement to join i found the war. and i felt that i

just couldn't be a part of it eventually i said look i'm not training you guys anymore i don't agree with what you're doing i think it's immoral i think it's medically unethical and i just stopped the clinic. it took a few weeks for the army to catch up with that and when they did they invited me into the commanding officer office and said look what are you doing here and i told them exactly what i was doing i said i'm not training and they said well you know you should know the consequences of that and i said i'm perfectly aware of the consequences but i'm not training at that point it was obvious that it was going to be court martialled a few days later i got to. howard levy spent three years in prison. along with him three at fort hood who refused orders to vietnam and received five years hard labor and a dishonorable discharge army lieutenant henry how who carried a sign at a demonstration reading. fascist aggression in vietnam was sentenced to two years

and two marines william harvey and george daniel received six to ten year sentences for organizing a meeting about whether black people should fight in vietnam. and on march third one thousand nine hundred eighty six former green beret donald duncan was the featured speaker at an antiwar meeting at the town hall in manhattan i just wanted to do what i knew about it. and let people judge for themselves. i think the most startling thing to me occurred however as the court martial began what would happen was we would walk from the parking lot to the building with a quad washer was being held and it was the most remarkable thing when hundreds hundreds of g.i. s. would hang out of windows out of the barracks and give me the v. sign well give me that clenched fist this was mine but to me this was

a revelation and at that point it really became crystal clear to me that something had changed and that something very very important was happening. oh. i wouldn't i really don't know how many but i know how many i met and that is the majority of the men that i met in the service were opposed but really didn't know how to force their opinion. yes. nine hundred sixty eight was the turning point by then america had over a half a million troops in south vietnam during the lunar new year holiday called tet the enemy the north vietnamese the national liberation front arms launched an offensive that overran the entire country before being pushed back the tet offensive revealed

that the enemy had widespread support from the vietnamese people and america was mired in a war it couldn't win and the soldiers beginning to question the war in the wake of the tet offensive thousands began going to a wall were absent without leave many found their way to san francisco where series of events brought the emerging g.i. antiwar movement took a national stage. we joined together. right to sixty eight we took sanctuary in the church and changed our sense of ministers. we essentially called the press and said to them we're not going to get we were refusing orders and in fact we were resigning from the military to come and get it . the fact that it took them three days to decide how to deal with this to play great. had nothing to lose. and they had no idea what was going to come

and that's a free place it's a really free place you know you you know what's going to happen you know where you're going but you know what you're doing. and that was my introduction to the servants the scope presidio. the population for sure usually upwards it was i think it could hold like it be sixty and there were some sometimes double that in there. were crowded. toilets. guards were mean it was really fun. with the nine for peace held in military prisons soldiers throughout the bay area began planning for the first antiwar demonstrations in the country organized by g.i.'s and

veterans i was in a member of the medical committee for human rights we got together a number of times and talked about how we were going to organize active duty to go to the peace demonstration and then i remember also hearing about the b. fifty two bombers that were dropping leaflets on vietnam urging the vietnamese to defect and i thought well if they can do it overseas then. we can hire a small private plane loaded up with free flights and drop the leaflets on the trades. at one point we were a little concerned. but nothing. did pretty accurately that's what they testified to. and on my way. to the demonstration i decided i was going to wear.

my opinion. for. congress as an active duty person i certainly had the same rights that he did and i could wear my uniform protesting united states. sees in court martial by the navy for making a political statement while in uniform and following the march for a turn themselves into the presidio army stockade keith mathare was being held so had been assigned kind of by the movement people to go into the stockade and find out what was going on because they had been they had shot this prisoner and killed him or nineteen year old private michael bunch life in the army had been a little more than a series of a wall violations his last stop was here at the presidio stockade where he was fatally shot last friday while trying to escape from the work detail. for the

guards shot even killed him point blank. i want to be they're. going to war. for no good reason not unlike a lot of his brothers. you know. so . you reacted. this really. with anger and disgust and our bridge. here toward the jail we the wires the walls we rip the squawk box off the wall and then things start to calm down because we started playing we came to a decision that best thing we could do was to have some kind of a demonstration and it was at the roll call of formation we had a signal that was what we're supposed to break ranks and we did and we walked over here and sat down at a certain point commandant came out and read us. we just kept saying louder and

kind of linked arms and saying we were scared man i'll tell you we were really scared we have them right where we want to they're finally listening to us that's the first time i can ever remember anybody listening to us while i was in the military. the commanding general of the sixth army which was the jurisdiction and he said that they thought that the revolution was about to start and they really had to set an example you know come down hard and we were the guys that they decided to do that with and they did it i mean we were on trial for a life. you know i got a game it was unable and you know within two days of being the stockade i was on your space and that's. for singing we shall overcome. nationwide to the studio when he said.

i was wounded three times while i was in the bush and then third time i was wonder was on the december twenty sixth. and we got overrun by north vietnamese regulars a sort of like a human wave. all. and . me and he was.

good. and. i think you know. things like. nature and you find. people and your silence means that you're people. i mean i couldn't be so. but it was. the words.

he was fighting for. so i became. with more and more soldiers turning against the war. in the first of what would become a network of dozens of thing. war g.i. coffee houses located in the towns that hover near military bases. and the dusty texas town of killeen just outside fort hood which talented over twenty thousand troops became home of the g.i. coffeehouse known as the army officers right. the enemy army. here and then out right. i can fit here and i can get on any army that would be met in our system like. name only i was struck came

from a shock absorber on a helmet so that's what do yo yos throw it was it was a place where you go there and it's old soldiers and they had a record player and all the latest rock records and underground papers and using up right. and to go out on ambush like one period to go out on the ambush and sneak good to people you know the early morning and stuff. because they've got to get there right you know who's there. a majority of women and you know what they do right there right there are very. very good and they're there for him so that anyone or anyone thinks they can back out of this and hopefully be a part of the not and see any of that he's making a mistake because he's already.

you know put on one of his cropped up at several army bases these days a so-called underground g.i. press which consists largely of anti-war newspapers military authorities are clamping down hard on the papers recently when there was an underground newspaper laying on the bed. called the last harass they freaked out and they were freaking out this is the rise material and this is a person material here got a lot of how many copies this inside the barracks go. the paper. read. stuff like this paper like the bot it was the fact that the officers hated. every day they had had to be something that was. typed mimeographed printed. underground press exploded. fort benning georgia. fort hood texas.

station base and we used to distribute it. shortly after the first issue was published the g.i. who founded the press peterson was pulled over by fort hood police. following a two day trial in a texas court peterson was sentenced to eight years in prison for. the military's best efforts the underground press became the life blood of the g.i.

movement as the army's own recruiting slogan fun travel and adventure turned into the popular g.i. expression of the. press elite soldiers around the world and inspired many outside the military you know i grew up believing that if our flag was flying over a battlefield that we were on the side of the angels my father fought in the second world war he won awards and and medals. you know i grew up during the good wars here's this woman who steps out onto the world stage is a famous actress comes from one of the ruling class families in hollywood and makes a political decision to change sides she steps onto the side of the people and particularly the vietnamese people she stands with the chiapas and she stands with the movement she says i'm going to stand with this i'm going to give vent i'm going to help support it build it you know settle it that you have to be a show mr president that's a terrible demonstration by not outside all there's always

a demonstration going on outside but richard this one is completely out of control i want to ask you point this time brianna davis and all political prisoners out of vietnam now and draft all government officials we have people they care about their job you do your job and i'll do my job without you don't understand the storming the why how actors i better call it the third marine you can't richard why not the third marine. corps years program or maybe bob hope toured entertaining american troops but soon the cheers turned to jeers and a new kind of entertainment emerged. howard levy himself a celebrity within the g.i. movement he met with donald sutherland and me and he said what if we put together. an antiwar show that's you know the opposite side of the coin from the from the bob hope show. they took one look at mine.

after the army we always said free the army or fun travel and adventure but it really meant the army. here was a way that i could combine my profession my acting with my desire to end the war it just seemed like a perfect fit. this show that we bring to these bases is not trying to tell the people on the bases anything that they don't know we are coming in response to what is probably the most powerful movement going on in this country the movement of the man inside the military and women who are beginning to understand how they're being used and what the nature of american foreign policy is and we come there because

they have asked us to we come there because for the last year we have read in the newspapers from vietnam from from west germany from okinawa from the philippines from to what we want is entertainment we want people to speak to how we feel and the majority of us don't know why we're going over there that we don't know why we're being shot up we don't know why our bodies are being killed we don't know why we're killing those people. i'm sorry if you will be. washed i should. feel all dead weight should be exempt from all military. all really good life where she's right where you are. i'm not being a presenter. i'm not that. guys are coming from all over the country so you good people come in with different information about black palace trouble at

that time i mean you know black unity you don't feel real good about you so you want to really question what you believe. but i remember one day the first sergeant was talking about googs naive i was i was a racial slur i didn't really understand it you know one day he was talking about books and i remember like went over my head this is where the same thing is and then. things began to start clicking in my head like you wouldn't i don't know. for sure is that so much of it taxpayers' money i mean i think when i sit here and it really measuring the prospects imperence people all across the globe countries one after another claimed foul play and help others for value.

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