and as many as fifteen million people were also directly sprayed this spring continued long after vietnam the east and american doctors began reporting the destructive effects on the roads and for nearly two years after american scientists proved the agent orange connection to birth defects general william westmoreland was picked to run the war. i can say categorically that never and the history of warfare certainly never in this trail of the use of american arms as more attention then given to or the thought insists of in castle is the way did it not. from the top down the orders came and then the body count became the most important statistic of the war and search and destroy became the operational method for increasing it. if a battalion commander or

a company commander figures kazan we're told that everybody's enemy. and we can get this big body count which was the number one career enhanced meant statistic in vietnam. for example we get this report of a v.c. . or we don't have any evidence that it was at the scene no weapon no equipment no nothing you know just a suspicious situation if it's just counted which it is counted and condoned then there are elements of people down at that level that would figure hey that's an easy way to get a body can. testimony at the winter soldier hearing in one thousand nine hundred seventy one revealed some of the atrocities this policy led to. some testimony here

on the burning of villages cutting off a tree not with colleen artillery on villages for games women raped napalm on villages could you go into just a few of these to let the people know how you treat to be enemy civilian. the calling of artillery for games the way it was work would be the mortar forward observers would call in are we could pick out certain houses and villages fairly listed and border forward observers would call in order to until the point that house and then. artillery forward observer would call it artillery until he destroyed another house and whoever used the least amount of artillery they won and we got back some would have to buy something else here. and there in this video we used testimony from many sources to bring home the ground truth of the war in vietnam this is what it was like on the receiving end of an artillery game.

she found out that they directed artillery fire into the area where i live. yeah to that really need. all the houses and trees were destroyed them that. i am. also. pounds of the. piece of kerosene and gasoline and so their homes first into flames when they were hit by the rockets the yellow but some. do not now. yeah. old folks children and pregnant women who could not sleep in their home. computer. you must

tax dollars went directly to increasing the body count to the vietnamese and became the currency of the kill. cam some of you may have seated scary looking individual i think i've ever seen in my life. he was a mercenary and. they got paid by the years that they produced pairs of years as a navy seal p.r. you advisor makes clear these rules were set from the top p.r. you was the in foresman of the phoenix program and the phoenix program was the cia organized program of assassination and terror in vietnam among other things americans on these teams would often carry out operations while dressed to look like the viet cong they brought back a gun they got paid for it if they brought back a prisoner they got paid for if they didn't bring back the whole prisoner they used

to get paid for bringing back identifiable parts ok i didn't set these rules up this is the rules that the that they played by when you try to change those rules you're going to resistance i didn't want people bringing me back years and me having to pay for it. i don't want to live people dead people. here's a story from a cia agent in vain long. i was sitting in there and we had an old french villa we. were these irregulars came in with the district. just you know. just been come back from a battle they had five or six weapons and they threw the weapons down and they were just discussing with the whole situation they were going to prove something came up through a bag on the table and the bag had eleven ears on it and he just looked at us and said you don't need to try. and.

well. the winter soldier hearings looked into the treatment of the. prisoners. i've never seen of john are. behind me but. we had a couple of guys. from that. used to blindfold the guys with safety wire and pull. the light. and safety. and contest to see how far they could throw the bodies out of the airplane and you. can see. the american soldiers they took care of p.o.w.'s in vietnam like to take pictures

so the winter soldier hearings involved a few slides ok there is an interrogation going on here it's a big production and these are all the marines sitting around giving the various. this man here is a warrant officer a. typical vietnamese. these are national field police this man came over. and put a. i can spoon it's a vietnamese spoon and he put it in my fire and he's burning the skin off the back of the man's neck. and finally the man in fear of his life method that one time he had given tanks to the v.c. but you can't prove that i heard earlier today that they used to be yes well marines used about a c. s. this particular man wouldn't come out of the hole and they threw two c. s. going to i personally a score of this man back to division and he died of gas doesn't kill i don't know

what killed him. it's just something that you have that you really want to show. the first blind you can see. shows a prisoner of war in a way that they try to get him to talk. by making him stand in front of a pile of combine that we picked up the same p.o.w. was forced to set. for probably from six to eight hours by the pile of bodies in the house. the shadow of five or six g.i.'s going through the body looking for souvenirs in this picture there's a lieutenant in a captain overlooking what's going on at. all first as were present at all times yet feel great officers were present were present. and the next slide is

a slide of myself. i'm dreaming shameful of and i'm showing and hope the new people never been involved ever let this happen to you don't let ever let your government do this to you come. to my mind if i want to didn't hear. the slaughter was organized from the top you can't defend a place like that by setting on your daddy box you've got to get out and aggressively patrol and that's what our people are doing and one thing i am precise to them all i was out there was to find these the common carrier. one time i went there to the headquarters for some reason and they had all these boards drawn up showing the kill ratios in each for gade and it seemed to me like it was. like one hundred percent. search terms people watching were going to

perturb torino he was trying to find them. it wasn't. from the train our life or south america. was the first big helicopter. and that's how much of the killing was done i was a helicopter. cobra gunships pilot. i worked with another aircraft at all times in what was called a hundred killer team. i was told. by the other pilots in the unit how to tell a v.c. from a civilian. if they were running their v.c. . because they were standing there they were well just people well just a v.c. shooter many. still still told me that when we were flying over a village or your village if people started to leave civilians.

it was a good sign if there were v.c. in the area. that they were expecting a fight. call speaking with us with my future me she says when american helicopters come through people run they think they're going to be killed. so you put these two things together and you see you know civilians are in kind of a bad spot. the office is covered by helicopter support. the temperatures ninety five inside into the air conditioned the music is always to. november of sixty eight in an area called the wagon wheel which is northwest of saigon went on

a routine search and destroy mission gunships were to be providing security and cover for us in case we had any contact were circling overhead no contact was made and the gunships got bored so they made a gun run. with many guns and rockets when they left the area we found. one dead baby which was a young child. very on its mother's arms and we. we found them a baby girl about three years old they were dead. some people still with the technology. the prisoners that. captors are having i just say that this is the most feared weapon as i had to be there today. because the amount of ammunition we carry

a very tight level of them out of that we can stay off station. as many us soldiers in vietnam were infantry their main mission was search and destroy we were given orders whenever we moved into a village to reconnoitre by fire this means to. step into a village to fire upon houses anything to our discretion that looks like there may be someone hiding behind behind or under well sometimes when we come to the village . amid the means would run out of the bomb so you know for fear of being caught so consequently this surprise would startle any individual and they would automatically turn to fire. killing civilians but i've given him a chance before he opposed the iraq war in the u.s. senate. jim webb was a combat marine in vietnam people would flash you have really good people had one individual who was

a terrific marine who. we were in one operation and his best friend was killed and we made this week two days later through a village and this guy killed a civilian as payback and in his own mind he was sort of justifying it and one village we wanted. women and kids going into the village and when we got in there this was and we got in the village i mean another guy we were treating two unconscious babies not babies but like five six year old kid and one man lying in a hammock and i told all ten of these people have to be evacuated because it's not evacuated but it is like a trap and i want to kids trapped i want them they were unconscious i was up in fact we're going to die he said well forget it doc we have time to stay and wait we went up on the hill right above this same village we fired down on this village the next day while people trying to bury the dead we fired down on the village at the people while they were doing their a burial ceremony and we when they killed another piece. but another

a person in the village. also we went down that same that same day to get some water and there were two little boys playing on a diaper and one sergeant just plugs in sticks to the shop. the other boy tried to run. but he shot this other guy and was like lying on the ground kicking so he shot him again to make sure he's dead. many of the refugees created ended up in the squalor of saigon where morning is safer open the c.b.s. news bureau in one thousand nine hundred sixty five. first appeared that the marines had been snipe gas and that a few houses were made to pay shortly after an officer told me he had orders to go in and leveled

a string of hamlets that surrounds village and all around the common paddy field that cedes these hamlets. five hundred sixty homes were leveled in retaliation for a burst of gunfire. on the first operation that i was on and country. went into a village called five fingers and it was a typical koran in search which is you surround a village and then you sweep through it and hopefully when you're sweeping up anybody running from you they're going to run into the of course the surrounding troops on the other side and they get wiped out but we received fire as we walked into the village and we took no casualties but we did end up with a body count no weapons were found so apparently they were civilians the next day in the morning should i say they rounded up the entire village. all of them

and marched them out you were all prisoners of war all of them men women children made no difference we built to do some apps they were just relocated man just moved away. i have hardly ever heard the term vietnamese they were always. there is no difference between a good one and a bad one except the good one at the time is no weapon but he still fair game. the games that some of the marines in my outfit played myself included would be to find the older papa sound with the long whiskers and which i guess was a symbol of his identity in their culture and they would just be cut they would be anybody who complained. we would move into a village and we would just step down we own the village while we're here these people would do what we told them or they wouldn't be allowed to stay in their own

how are they would be beaten inside the house we were on our first operation and it was there was an operation so it just followed this procedure they were used to and we were just shown how you destroy a village and they just cried and carried on we don't know what happened to them that was the only village. in immediate vicinity so we cleared the area more or less everything was set on fire my squad leader personally ignited the first two jews and then just told us to take care of the rest. when we went out i would say fifty percent at least of the villages we passed through would be permanent to the ground there was no difference between someone we burned and the ones we didn't burn it just put some we had time and we burn the. we came here today to begin an operation aimed at clearing this area and mopping up

the viet cong to bring security to all of you. we understand that among you there are some who have naively listened to the vietcong propaganda and have joined the rebels among them are some of your husbands your brothers so please advise them to come back we are ready. during this pacification program to admit them back to society and to assist them. one hundred children around as did comic suspects. and lieutenant around him up as call the caps on the radio and he asked what should be done with them the captain simply repeated the order that came down colonel that morning the order came down the colonel that morning was to kill anything that moves which you can take any way you want to take it and when the captain told lieutenant this then i rang up i got

up and i started walking over to the captain thinking that the lieutenant just might do it because i'd served in his platoon for a long time. as i started over there the captain i think the captain panicky thousand and ten might do it too and this was a little more. atrocious and the other executions that our company participated in only because of the numbers. but the gap and try to call him up try to get him back on the horn and wouldn't he couldn't get a hold of him. and i was walking over to my turn i looked in the area i looked where the v.c.s. were supposed to be c.s. and two men are leading a young girl broccoli one thousand years old very pretty out of a hoot she had no clothes on. sume she had been raped which was pretty s.o.b. and there i would stare operating procedure for civilians. and she was thrown around the pile over one thousand women children and five men around the circle

open up on full automatic with them sixteen. for every three receiver for a railroad trestle illusion river each side that is nearly currently ready trigger too late the people who are really really inside really just really really like the newspaper said operation still rake world war two movie there we just set up there wait the movie will show to. two hundred million people who. remember the americans when they burned and destroyed and killed. i didn't see anything really. only believe. that out of one hundred seven villages in this area hundred and six were burned to the ground some of them many times over. this area was

a free fire zone. anything that moves could be shot. you saw stand out ten feet away we got it. these people are aware of what americans are already doing so not sure if they try to hide the young girls. we found one night in a bomb shelter in sort of the basement of her house. she was taken and raped by six or seven people in front of her family. everybody most of the villagers. are deceased this wasn't just one instance this is just the first one i can remember i know of thirteen or so strangers instances at least i was really i mean for goodness. oh. we didn't just call it a serial. all vietnamese were on our. air and also now are they

were married to us markets where we were a civilized. and out it we think about those people. sadly most americans are not aware of how many of the in these were killed in the insurgencies many of put numbers at less than a hundred thousand the shameful facts are that between three and five million vietnamese were killed in that war and the vast majority of them were civilians. after the first gulf war george bush sr announced that vietnam syndrome was buried in the desert sands of the arabian peninsula. to help us get over the vietnam syndrome presidents reagan and bush. quick military victories against small

countries in which thousands of civilians died in grenada panama nicaragua. and el salvador. in reality in the vietnam syndrome is a code for we need to induce a kind of national amnesia about the true history and facts of the vietnam. as we witness to the buckle of the iraq war has become you can see that they have been largely successful. and especially around the results. in the iraqis most of them civilians have been killed in the. law school and motivated by greed. and the policy that created continue. those who refuse to remember their history are condemned to repeat. this one most in. this coliseum list in fall time must not forget.

we must learn from it and proceeds. than.

culture is that so much of the definition is a huge musician the person trying to market came changers events continue to unfold in egypt what kind of middle east just coming into being and give democracy is indeed on.

drama unfolding on the streets of cairo as a pro and anti mubarak demonstrators clashed a new round of unrest in egypt as those demanding the president's resignation come face to face with his supporters in the capital streets. russia called the deportation of his diplomats are morally allegedly committed to spy scandal on unfriendly aren't. serious crimes against. the us mainstream media has found a new opportunity to demonize iran a book on suicide bombers found in the arizona desert is reported as an omen for a domestic attack. and in a business program ross now shares are trading down on the day after london's hyde park altered the deal between b.p. and a russian oil giant i'll have more on that in about twenty minutes time. you're

watching r t six pm here in moscow welcome to the program well we begin with egypt where clashes so flared up on the streets of the capital cairo with three members of the opposition and protesters rallied to support the current president hosni mubarak all the country's leader announced he won't seek reelection in september's vote for more than a week of violent demonstrations across the country urging him to step down well ortiz polis lior has more drama unfolding on the streets of cairo as pro and anti mubarak demonstrators clash. pro and anti mubarak demonstrators clashing entirely square sincerely also this morning the pro mubarak groups have steadily been gaining steam in the last fifteen twenty .