one villagers and as many as fifteen million people were also directly sprayed this spring continued long after the in 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 he never and the history of warfare certainly never in the history of the use of american arms. as more attention then given to the avoidance of a civilian casualty is the way did it not. from the top down the orders came and in 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 in a 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 of ears train up 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 the vietnamese civilians. the calling of artillery for games the way it was work but being the mortar forward observers would call in art with big out certain houses and villages fairly and the border forward observers would call in force until the point that house and then. our choice forward observer would call it artillery until he destroyed another house and whoever used the least amount of artillery they won when we got back some would have to buy something else here. and there and then in this video we used testimony from many sources to bring home the ground truths of the war in vietnam

this is what it was like on the receiving end of an artillery game. and i'm safe how they directed artillery fire into the area where i live the. yappy that really need. all the houses and trees were destroyed them that. i am. also proud. of came a. 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. yet. old folks children and pregnant women could not sleep in their home. computer. do is

tax dollars went directly to increasing the body count to the vietnamese and became the currency of the kill. keep the most you may have ceded 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 peers of yours as a navy seal p.r. you advisor makes clear these rules were set from the top p.r. you was the in forstmann 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 vietcong 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 they're 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 don't talk. here's a story from a cia agent in vain long. if i was sitting in there we had an old french villa we live down. where these irregulars came in with the district chief 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 looking to the treatment of these p.o.w.'s this one might be helpful for prisoners. i've never seen in front of my airplane because it's behind me but. we had a couple of guys. from philadelphia. used to blindfold the guys with safety wire and pull. out the lighter. and by the end save the. contest to see how far they could throw the ball bodies out of the airplane and throw out a surprise 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 so you go around giving the various . this man here is a warrant officer. typical vietnamese who is found. 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 the us 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 eat and i personally scored this man back to division and he died gas

doesn't kill i don't know it killing. is just something that you know that you really want to show. the first slide you're going to see. shows a prisoner of war and the way that they try to get him to talk. by making him stand in front of a pile of combine that we checked out 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 venture there's a lieutenant in a captain overlooking what's going on at. all first as were present at all times yes the other 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 never let this happen to you don't let ever let your government do this you can just. turn them on about what a boon. 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 while 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 are showing the kill ratio is in each brigade and seemed to me like

it was kind like going on your horn or something and the. search terms people but you were going to territory he was trying to find them. and kill him and listen to him from the trade and from our allies for some errors. back in. naam was the first big hill a copy war and that's how much of the killing was done. i was a helicopter. a cobra gunships pilot. i worked with another aircraft at all times in what is 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. if they were standing there they were well just well disciplined v.c. shooter many. still full told me that when we were flying over a village or near

a village if people started to leave the village civilians. those beside us there were v.c. in the area said they were expecting a fight. all speaking with those with my coach 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 see you know civilians are in kind of a bad spot. the emphasis probably helicopter support. the temperatures ninety five inside into the air conditioned the music is always to. be a. november of sixty eight in an area called the wagon wheel which is northwest

of saigon on a routine search and destroy mission gunships were to be providing security and cover for us in case we had any contact or circling overhead no contact was made and the gunships got bored. so they made a gun run on a hooch with many guns and rockets out one day left the area we found. one dead baby which was a young child. very young in his mother's arms and we thought. we found him a baby girl about three years old they were dead. some people fell in love with the technology of. prisoners that. we captured are happening as you say it just seems fair to weaponize that if it is . not an issue we carry

a. little bit of time we can say a station. as many u.s. soldiers in vietnam were infantry their main mission was search and destroy we were given orders whenever we moved into a builders to reconnoitre by prior this means to where we step into ability to fire upon our houses anything to our discretion it looks like there may be someone hiding behind behind or under well sometimes when we come to a village there was a bit mean to going out of the bomb shelter you know beer being caught so consequently just to pry it would start out of any individual and they would automatically turn to fire thereby uselessly killing civilians but i'll give an image to you 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 and one

individual who was a terrific marine who. we were in one operation and his best friend was killed and we made a sweep two days later through a village and this guy killed a civilian service payback and in his own mind he was sort of justifying it and one village we won't. women and kids going into the village and we got in there there's going to also and we got in the village i mean another guy we were treating two unconscious babies babies like five six year old kids and a woman lying in a hammock and i told tenant these people have to be evacuated because it's not evacuated but this lady had shrapnel one hundred kids had shrapnel in them they want qantas step in a back way they gonna die he said well forget it doc and i have time to stay and wait we went up on the hill right about 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 here

a burial ceremony and we and they killed another face they ran obviously but another of perth in the village. also went down that same that same day to get some water and there were two little boys playing on the dice and one sergeant of police and six to the shop where the other boy tried to run the by this other. he shot this other little boy up. and like lying on the ground kicking so they shot him again the mix was dead. many of the refugees created ended up in the squalor of saigon where morning safer open the c.b.s. news bureau in one thousand nine hundred sixty five. first appeared that the marines had been smite 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 fifty homes were leveled in retaliation for a burst of gunfire. on the first operation that i was on in country. went into a village called five fingers and it was that typical koran in search which is you surround a village and then you sweep through it and hopefully when you're sweeping if anybody is 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 train 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 were brutalized 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 it 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 pillage. immediate vicinity so we clear the area more or less everything was set on fire my squad leader personally ignited the first two 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 burned 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 burned the. we came here today to begin an operation aimed at clearing this area and mopping up

the hidden viet cong to bring security to all of you. we understand that among you there are some who have naively listen to the vietcong propaganda and have joined the rebels among them are some of your husband 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. in ninety one children around as did comic suspects. and a lieutenant around him. asked call the caps on the radio and he asked what should be done with them the captain simply repeated the order that came down from the colonel that morning the order came down colonel that morning was killing the 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'm going to put to him for a long time as i started over there in the cabin i think the captain panicky thoughtful exam idea too and this was a little more. atrocious and the other executions of our company participated in only because of the numbers. but the captain tried to call him up try to get him back on the horn and it 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 to where the v.c.s. were supposedly 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 so i assumed she had been raped which was pretty s.o.b . and there that's their operating procedure for civilians. and she was thrown out of the pile over one thousand women children and five men around the circle open up

on full automatic with sixteen. for every. receiver for a real interesting illusion river on each side that is nearly currently pretty trivial to lay people really really inside really just really really like the newspaper said operations through a quote or two movie theater where we just set up their way the movie will show to . two hundred million people who. are the americans well they burned and destroyed and killed. i didn't see anything real and. only believe. that out of one hundred seven villages in this area. 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 standing at ten feet away we got in. these people are aware of what americans always do and so naturally 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 that i know of thirteen or so strangers instances at least i was really i mean for goodness. oh. we didn't just call the base. all vietnamese were on our. air and also an hour they were married to us

we were markets 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 series many you put numbers at less than a hundred thousand the shameful facts that between three and five million vietnamese were killed in. 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 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 the vietnam syndrome is a code for the need to induce a kind of national amnesia about the true history and facts of the vietnam. as witness to the buckle of the iraq war has become we can see that they have been largely successful. and especially around the results. in 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. just one must in. this cause you must in fall time must not forget.

we must learn from it and proceeds. to. the arab. news.

the latest headlines in the week's top stories on our t.v. changing promise to egypt as the government reaches agreement with the opposition in a bed stave off revolt. up to thirteen days of chaos and colas that president mubarak to step down constitutional reform is on the table join me from a test in a few moments. plus russian investigators hunting two men with possible links to the suspected gunman dead at the airport the suicide bomber it comes as russia's most wanted out of the ship. also look fresh start for moscow and washington as the new nuclear arms reduction treaty gets the official stamp. where's the barricades of hide and seek in kiev as ukrainian officials search for the city's leader who's been

a wall. in moscow i match reza giving you today's top stories and a look back at the week's news here on r t egypt's the government has agreed to make changes to the constitution after a landmark talks with the country's main opposition groups the measures include greater media freedom and legal reform as an attempt to end almost two weeks of protest against president hosni mubarak's rule this comes as a gyptian is accuse western countries of hypocrisy for now criticizing a regime that they propped up for three decades artie's paullus leader has more from cairo. well the latest is that a decision was reached to establish a committee to investigate a constitutional reform and this is obviously to deal with the government's stance that president mubarak cannot step down despite the demand from.