me today my colleague sean thomas will be here in less than half an hour from now in the meantime it's our special report on the antiwar movement in the u.s. that emerged during the vietnam conflict and how it changed the course of history that special report next free on r.t. . you dog when you meant a black soldier you know he had it debbie had a special handshake you could even you got to the point where you could even till what part of the country he was from because everybody had their distinctive death or handshake and they could tell if he was the new company because everybody knew everybody had to do what he did. you know the problem but i'm glad to see him i don't i don't know where they just check back. with you know we got to come. by. the slap is already this where the first list that high and the down this way like a sony always do as well and you know like

a break from don you around right. there you go that's it so that i can recall the blood oh it's just going to bases big a big big big hit even going to jail for the power would it be this is really what we think is when we believe that they've been going to jail the dog just don't. belong in jail because it just didn't the world. was pretty much just like jails in america playing them said black there was a lot of violence and in this prison a lot of stuff people would we pretty dire situation. a group of the inmates got together and we decided a new good excuse for this place. what happened was is that the result was alone be. the. cost to go. down the jail and he was dismayed by the people get killed. i'm so

badly so. i was going to survive them out what good did you come to the deceased and. you know when you're laying on your back that you can't move for day to day out you have a lot of time to think sue and think about what you did you know what you've done and things that you've done to the people that you cue people that are. i mean there's always something that reminds you. that you can be here and i think that you see then. you actually see what i saw what was going on in the states. due to running down the streets and wearing the same kind of uniform that i got. there in memphis there that

they've beaten up on people. when the minute we were over here beating up on people over here and at the same time you guys were in the same identical uniforms that i'm going to have and you're beating up on. black people dong the runner near where tanks are on the street. in the summer of one nine hundred sixty eight army and national guard troops were sent into american cities as thousands of black people rioted following the assassination of martin luther king. that spring troops were used against antiwar demonstrators at the pentagon. then in august soldiers at fort hood were told they would be sent to chicago where antiwar demonstrations were planned for the democratic party's national convention . we just come back from fighting the vietnamese not i want us to fight the americans. the night before the troops was supposed to leave there was

a meeting of black eyes they gathered up in a parking lot in the first armored division section and they were out there all night in a parking lot talking to you know. rally why they were opposed to going to chicago where making it clear that it was a genocidal thing is going to go on and how can i go and commit genocide on my people shoot my people and one hundred black jazz and the straight feel brothers came up and really started pointing on the end about you know discrimination and unfair treatment not getting the right needed about what was happening with the war as the meeting stretched into the night fort hood's commanding general showed up to talk to the g.i.'s he said i'm just a two star general let me go or talk to my boss and i have an answer for you in the morning so you know we just relax you know went to sleep i was cracked up sad to

me is sad to hear. you know you know what they had to go i know m.p.'s all around this man you know what are you going to be ten m.p.'s you know they came at us with baroness. you know you would have been. and in the area every now and then you open this formation up and grouper in peace come in and grip a brother and take him back and back and beat the shit i. hear screaming in the bed you know. and they were court martialed brought up on various court martial charges but it scared the hell out of the military then they went to around and went through a roster of all the units who were supposed to go and took off who they considered to be quotes of vs. so a number of people myself included. one of the most infamous events the nine

hundred sixty s. chicago police brutally attacked demonstrators in front of the democratic convention although the army had send a contingent of riot control troops to chicago from fort hood that kept them off the street. was no longer certain which side to. the military had a problem on and it was about to go from bad to worse. we were in. the practice line i believe it was a long line of assent and we see this commotion kind of started the being in the line and then start come up towards us and we could see people like one guy would turn to the guy behind them and they there'd be this excited conversation and then that guy would turn to the guy behind him and finally the guy and trying to make up the noose and he turns around and he says to me they're killing women and children in vietnam i said who's killing women and children the vietcong and he said no we are. march sixteenth one nine hundred sixty eight the soldiers of charlie company

eleventh brigade america division entered the village of me alive twenty four hours later over five hundred villagers men women and children lay dead brutally and want to leave murdered in cold blood around the world to me live massacre would become the touchstone fact of the vietnam war. for over a year the american military covered up to me live massacre claiming only enemy soldiers were killed and when the truth was finally brought to light by journalists the highest ranking officer blamed and prosecuted was william calley a lieutenant. in a cramped detroit hotel a new organization vietnam veterans against the war held an unprecedented investigation that exposed a much deeper truth i think the winter soldier investigation was to try to point out it wasn't really in defense of cali but it was going after the notion that the

policies of the u.s. military created things like me lie ok but it was a policy it was both a written and an unwritten policy and the truth has to be told you can't duck away from the truth you can't lie and put up a smokescreen and say oh this is a the words they used back then an isolated instance of aberdeen behavior you are just coming home saying i'm against the war you're saying this is what we did this is how we did it this was a crime this was wrong helped people to really cross the bridge and to see us in a way that i think the anti-war movement had not seen g.i.'s before america went through went through a choke ok because they didn't want to believe that these things occurred in the name of the american people supposedly is supporting freedom and liberation and democracy throughout the world and there was this terrible slaughter this turmoil in ames slaughter so i think the question was. why are they going after cali where

callee was doing precisely what we were all told to do when we were in vietnam essentially ok which is kill them all and sort it out later. inquiry city i had a friend who is he was an advisor with a group and one time he asked me would i like to accompany you into a village that was milieu with see how they act so i went with them and. they didn't find any enemy but they found a woman with bandages so she was questioned. about she was questioned by six when they questioned her was that she had bandages the. they shot as she was about twenty times that she was questioned. of course dead. this guy came over who was knowing him he was a former major. got hungry again and came back over working with the usa id eight international development and. he went over there and ripped the clothes off into

the night and. cut from all the way up well just about of her breast and pulled her organs out completely out of or cavity amount and then he stopped not over and commenced to feel every bit of skin off her body and left her there as a as a scientist something or other and i went and listened to the three days of testimony and absolutely came away from an emotionally drained and floored by i never grasped even up to that point how powerful was the genocidal plans and strategy of the us was that the enemy's people on every level. whether was agent orange and dow chemical we can figure it napalm because the napalm was a stick into the skin. and that was all of this just added to the overwhelming sense of the criminality the united states.

forces day and in many cities across the country there were the usual parades displays and with the recent surge of protest over the role in indochina cast a shadow over today's activities. some military bases where the presence of anti-war demonstrators. were putting up plywood or windows because the cops told it was going to. but then people change it. because you know we thought making fun of your enemy was. the second year nine hundred seventy one. three.

our army. is in a state approaching collapse but individual units avoiding or having refused combat murdering their officers and noncommissioned officers. and dispirited. by the pentagon's own figures during the ten years of the vietnam war five hundred thousand soldiers. in the face of the. war movement military near. the nixon administration the policy of vietnam the same . to shift the burden of the south vietnamese. north vietnam.

promised that american ground troops would no longer be involved in offensive combat. this is richard boyle firebase pace londoners' from the cambodian border sitting in a bunker doesn't run the first kept lot of people are kind of wondering if anybody back in the world knows you were on here you know like that only two batteries are tourist posters the grocery nobody we don't even exist. we just need. we're not supposed to be in combat that's why the american army tonight that they were there you know that far as america was before this i got there were no american troops on the border. between fighting a democracy and saying why no are you all fighting you go back home the north means were had they had two regiments to crack regiments stoli surrounding the fire

based on this plan so it's time to know. the series we start going out there will be sitting ducks you know the best thing to. think he's. going to try to hire a hired man they don't have to go on there he just sent us out into the captain crowed in order to six men to go out on a night ambush what was basically a suicide mission because he sent six guys out against two regiments and they said we're going to do it when you got to go and the only option it was was to get word out to the outside world and they wrote a petition at the ready we are under siege and firebase pace we are faced daily with the decision of whether to take a court martial artist a fate an offense to grow in the event of mass prosecution of our unit our only hope would be public opinion and police.

action was so afraid ordered that company pulled out they sent in a. another company they had heard about the refusal of alpha company the other company also refused to fight and after that no company knows troops would be willing to fight and said look we're not going to fight anymore. there are more problems to winding down the vietnam war than just holding the enemy and moving south vietnamese troops into the line one unforeseen problem is trying to keep up the morale of g.i.'s who know they're going on but not soon enough it has produced plenty grit insubordination shooting of officers by the wrong man and a deadly practice called fragging dual purpose my mind was heated to get me or intimidate to myself and all others in authority in the company in the time sergeant saying that some of his own men tried to maim or kill him but it's not an isolated incident since then one officer has been killed another wounded at this

base and there have been dozens of similar incidents all across south vietnam because the fragmentation grenade is often the weapon used the violent attacks on authority have come to be known as fragging and many g.i.'s talk openly about fragging and the military countermeasures say more than one big group meeting where . actually all they talk about is fragment as we call pigs. by picture talking about your senior enlisted men in your officers that's correct the most common terms. forced to rely almost solely on the air war of one thousand nine hundred seventy two the united states launched an unprecedented barrage of vietnam dropping more tonnage of bombs on that tiny country that were used during world war two and with the assault coming mainly from aircraft carrier sailors and airmen became the center of the g.i. movement on the u.s.s. coral sea twelve hundred signed a petition demanding the ship stay home and san diego california home of the care.

yes constellation and kitty hawk spawn the movement led by a group of navy officers and enlisted men. we truly believe what would stop that war was when the soldiers stopped fighting and still an active officer as were all these other guys and sailors and enlisted people as we sat around and brainstormed about what kind of a nonviolent action can we take that can actually touch sailors. around and we saw the aircraft the biggest ship in san diego harbor the most impressive. it's hard for people to realize this but that ship is not a naval ship anymore it's really part of airpower and we used to attack as it did so it's a weapon of a boeing weapon of aggression. the original concept cain well let's do something where we allow the people on board

that ship to cast a ballot as to whether or not they think they should go back to vietnam let's just hear their voice and then we said now this election should be held every shopping center in san diego county and every safeway store ought to have a little polling booth outside and we have to see how many ballots we can collect and we're going to point toward a day. they. may take a day they will they will. leave it in a. check out was a carrier qualified aviator and i gave me a lot of credibility with people earned or not or and even though i hadn't been in combat. people would give you a certain amount of credence of course because i knew all whole lot about how the military functioned. yes then.

as i got through the day. here. well the question is why do you people that look so weird. just look normal up. there was this inside out we would call it where we would where we were collecting more and more of the sailors to get them involved to give them up for you know if they want to end the war nations want. there's nobody from the captain of that ship to the mayor of the cities or did not hold a press conference about this project everybody was commenting on a u.s. senator for commenting on it you know even if the city folds for that ship to stay we're still going without thinking as though that's a big ever the ship says well i know there's

a lot of people on the ship who don't want to go but military is full of malcontents because it listen. now doc. while denying that the g.i. movement even existed the house internal security committee of the united states congress held a series of hearings in one thousand nine hundred seventy one that produced thousands of pages of testimony illustrating how broadly and deeply that movement had spread that same year the f.c.a. show tour de janeiro despite being banned from military bases worldwide the show performed in japan okinawa and the philippines for over sixty thousand soldiers and every stop g.i.'s took the stage with them we can no longer make silent about the

atrocities that are just. this being perpetrated by the united states military and peoples of other nations and other petty harassment of servicemen and women i made two hundred day after day with demand for all the remaining policies against persons because there are a jesuit demanded logic from a nation against first the first anti-war g.i. because they do not agree with us policies. new commitment media and go through all of our air and ground troops in c.i.s. vietnam as well as in korea open our japan the philippines israel cambodia thailand germany england panama. need it seems i'm sick of buildout that we could have done there. and that you could have a hall full of guys with their fists in the air sung happy . that we had come to acknowledge their reality.

do you most. and refuse to kill. you said no man will lose you and me. what is fighting forest to be. i used to love to watch the faces of the g.i.'s when she sang that it was like this shell attention would drop away and you would see the youth and the innocence and the vulnerability underneath stone to. stand strong on closets. what. is true. this is true.

then a staple of one nine hundred seventy one just five years after how it levy and donald duck and flown acts of protest thousands of vietnam veterans against the war converged on washington d.c. and threw their medals onto the capitol steps. we had to finally get me to take this step. you know it's kind of a unique opportunity it's very it's very rare i think in anybody's life that you have an opportunity to really think that you are changing history that you're a part of history at first they couldn't believe protests in a war that the buddha or minds or use those images in nineteen seventy they thought they did know our reactor there because they thought there were a bunch of them a good out there and. we all just thought it was i'm going to go barter i really learned so much joe just spent a day after day after do you know just people talking about you know what it's all

about how we're going to deal with this stuff and how we're really going to look forward change the world that's what we want to do for it would change the world we're pretty sure this sucks you know we're pretty sure those deserve to be here and so that didn't leave much room but to change the world you know people said we keep going back we went back to get not just keep going back to vietnam because i tell you what the other side does they're always going back and they have to go back the hawks you know the patriarchs they have to go back because and they have to revise the going back because they can't allow us to know what the what the back there really was continue think about this shit and say. dad damn. dad. did i exit the next ship. this government pushed me in two days she asked. what's the what's the pride in saying you're a veteran if you're what you're

a veteran something. like. being. a veteran of the massacre at some place or another you know i. know there's no crime. here and so don't talk about go away. so it's amazing to me that as many as many g.i.'s who were actually in vietnam actually there. then spoke out against it and demonstrated against it and. just. there was. that if there had been one hundred i would have been made that there was thousands missis. incredibly. brave people. would.

just. use the street. with that. kind of body expect them to me so i took out the forms to back them. that this and it. might be and as most thoughts of. this new having come up by. the way that he would be that god is . the theme. that we read to me like he was. going to send out so.

russia urges the u.n. security council to help ended the violence suppression of anti-government protests in syria. in libya rebels have surrounded one of these last remaining strongholds

east of tripoli with reports one of the colonels sons of be killed in the area. and other top stories of the week hundreds of thousands of israelis take to the streets across the country demanding the government improve living standards rather than spending money on settlements and of the military. moscow is a blaze of color with fireworks and a record breaking laser show as the russian capital celebrates its eight hundred sixty fourth birthday. with today's news and recapping at the top stories that shaped the past week this is r t live from moscow i'm sean thomas glad to have you with us the u.n. most powerful body should demand an end to the violence in syria and move all parties into a dialogue that's russia's view.