oops. didn't get it right and when i started out as a very conservative republican like every person in my army community and upstate new york in the fifty's. my father was a member of the john birch society he was very opposed to the new deal labor unions catholics jews i thought. he was actually not that

unusual for those attitudes to prevail. because i was a good athlete good in school and good in my church and a good boy scout my townhome was really proud of. in one thousand sixty-six as the u.s. military began ramping up its forces in vietnam brian wilson was drafted. i enlisted in the air force for a four year program to go into the army as an induction. and then i got my orders to become an air force sure ranger officer commanding a unit of forty minutes. and so soon i found myself in vietnam. my duty was to go and assess the success or failure bombing mission.

and in one week. we went visited five targets in. all the targets were inhabited fishing game. saturday. i defended. fishing. these villages were bombed at two hundred fifty to three hundred feet. five hundred pound bomb suspension shot and made off. so everybody needs filesystems either dead or just about dead and they were all black it is burned from them if. i watch as far as i could walk before the bodies were show thick i could walk any further and the found my feet. and i saw a young bean mees woman holding three children in her arms her eyes are opened her eyes are just staring up i was looking at my sister.

i looked into his eyes and it was all lies or was a lie and i suspect that everything i had ever been taught was a lie. my life completely radically changed. i do not know why i am here. i was in somebody else's village nine thousand miles from my farming village in upstate new york. oh are they doing there. or we doing there. i want to form our villages that we saw the same scene. then i realized i don't need to do this if these are not p.c. . these are mothers. these are some. children. if you

elderly. they were killing villagers in villages. calling in receipt please please please please please i said i was on the wrong side. this is how could this be good for you i'm on the wrong saeed. jalili story an honor society student council. all conference athlete. did everything right. and was all wrong. why must this nation. has and its interest and its power. for the sake of a people so far away. we fight because we must fight.

if we are to live in a world. where every country can shape its all if it. even crème fraîche believe all the fears and there are enemies out there. keep it charged to protect yourself from you and aids and realize we are the enemy. during brian's four years in the air force the vietnam conflict think recently polarize the american public. on the lord and his commanders about atrocities he had witnessed his reports were ignored he emerged from the military and vietnam with a profound sense of alienation. to

go to a country that about commit genocide. and still be they would. be obese people. much more two of. the officers treated. people one on the fourth of july like brian run kovac received the bronze star for valor and a purple heart after being wounded leading an attack in vietnam. even though i was paralyzed in viet nam in many ways i see that it was a blessing in disguise i've been able to recognize. that peace is so much more important in war of an understanding and compassion respecting the lives of each and every human being how many more bombs are we going to have to drop how

many more people are going to have to die we've got a profoundly changed. turn in my branch barack took work on art i locked my leg in vietnam i am totally opposed this war or carrying on over there i'm stuck to what they've got going until i stop telling your brothers they're the traitors stop all. night and states wage its own official war for nearly a decade. one nine hundred seventy one former military analyst daniel ellsberg released the pentagon. the start of. a new we were in the course of dropping the top of world war two. from vietnam. there was going to be no kind of.

concealment of this information for twenty five years has now led to the deaths of fifty thousand americans and several hundred thousand vietnamese in the last few years a couple of late in over twenty years of this involvement. and i think fifth the odds have been weighted in favor of secrecy the classified department of defense files revealed that since one thousand nine hundred forty five presidents truman eisenhower kennedy and johnson had misled congress and the public about unconstitutional military actions those beginning in the one nine hundred sixty s. included secret raids on cambodia laos and north vietnam richard nixon i know is to say that much the same way was continuing the war while presenting to the public that he was on the process of getting out and we speak of america's priorities the first priority must always be peace for america and the work. revelation of the secret pentagon documents for street protests and anger spread

across the country decorated war heroes and civilians marched together protesting the unconstitutional undeclared war asked the united states has been at war under every president since nine hundred forty one. ever since the end of world war two u.s. presidents have authorized the illegal and unconstitutional wars of aggression. according to the us constitution only congress can declare war but presidents have consistently found ways to wage war without congressional approval. between one nine hundred fifty and two thousand the us government has overthrown sixteen democratically elected government dropped bombs on over thirty nations and attempted assassinations of over sixty foreign leaders. millions die in these undeclared wars.

i was. six. years old and i was looking at. pictures in a book. i said to myself what a crazy way try to solve it. and as the years have gone by. even more bent. that seven year old. fear of communism remained at fever pitch in the early one nine hundred eighty s. . common president reagan turned his focus to the resource rich countries of central and south america central america to. be effective security and it will be . and central america is much closer to the united states than many of the trouble spots the concerns we knew.

in the system because for one hundred years two hundred years. three dollars. for every dollar we've invested so it's been tremendous source code for the. for forty years the united states received first choice on the ninety percent of nicaraguan exports in return the u.s. government supported the dictatorship of the some most of dynasty the family used land confiscation and political repression to rule over the nicaraguan people. in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine the samosa those were driven out after a long war waged by the popular sand in the east a pardon that by daniel ortega. one nine hundred eighty two in an attempt to thwart president reagan's plan. to overthrow the nicaraguan government

congress passed the boland amendment which prohibited u.s. military aid to the contras one thousand nine hundred four daniel ortega was elected democratically this government implemented new social services for providing free education healthcare and land reform. reagan used ortega's socialist policies and economic aid received from the soviet union to start a covert war using the national security council the administration sent secret aid to the mercenary soldiers known as the contexts. and. despite the passage of the boland amendment the arming and support of the contras became the most ambitious paramilitary and political action mounted by the cia since vietnam. knew sandinista government turned to the american peace activists for help.

to bring people down she says look. we want people to know. their country.

i don't want. as many as i need to know that if you're not a yank kind of whom keep it seemed any kind of ticking down when i say we need to move on to follow the one that you know enough to vote for i don't think. we should start with you to discuss where we can put chancellor merkel runs who said we have a lot of riches between germany and europe and russia. two through steroid good choices quite easy and really forced. to live through. social. responding will be missed out of need. but authorized by.

the telling. ya is this. going to employ is going to go at the bridge. from which i can already hear about it almost almost the whole cd i mean look just to get at them because you know has a funny but it was huge i loved it when you. write on the bank all of the work on the bayswater of chemical lights and this is going to that he would develop a new treatment there internationally know that these industries out of polluting good to simply ignore your money and most of them live even those and when he's also the mother of them like things we lost even this.

i knew that other u.s. americans were going to they're going to i would i don't i'm serving in a war zone and we literally sent thousands of people to see the war in iraq about whether they would come home wouldn't speak in their churches right up to and so on reagan was forced to admit that the us was actively working to overthrow ortega's democratically elected government. to gain political support to the president presented the contras as a people's democratic movement as a condition of our aid i would insist on civilian control over all military forces but no human rights abuses are tolerated that any financial corruption to be rooted out that american aid to go only to those committed to democratic groups is. what i

want an egg i want one thousand and six i was a johnny come lately. within the first week of contras these u.s. funded terrorists attacked three charring whopper chairs east arrest early and killed eleven eleven accomplice chinos. i saw five of those compazine i was coming in on a horse drawn wagons to us to the rest of the cemetery and open caskets and horse drawn wagons. the main contra targets of consistently been civilian homes buses or trucks which has helped destroy any public support they may have had. eight civilians were killed in this truck when ambushed by counter machine guns the sandinista government says that in the past six years over ten thousand civilians have been wounded kidnapped by the country. the contras also known as the nicaraguan democratic force. maintained affronted by

a civilian adult. who would earlier worked as the cia informed. more. skilled. procedures. what i discovered really for the first time my fish surely understood the pattern. to destroy people movements and i was one of the people i know was a power it is a fact that. the united states of america are you a legal entity and a mystic law. in fundamental standards of decency centers to. people all over the world and i wanted to demonstrate a minute shall there any with the people and my being men opposition to the power coming out of my own country. oh.

yeah against against. these things. because this may dangerous player country. in one thousand eighty six and one nine hundred eighty seven brian and the other veterans participated in the. veteran peace action teams of the past teams walked through nicaragua's war torn villages gathering proof of human rights violations by the us back country whose. sole who do not need to stay to. bed noting abstract is still who made the station. in central america. anything is going to happen to you it was going to be responsible for the .

we. in the course of. the truth.

sunday evening president reagan urged the american people to support. the truth. and the

brave men and women of the french resistance we cannot turn away. right. right versus wrong on what was two twenty one to. hire me because. i was depressed because your leadership gallery stood up which you're not supposed to do it. i down. in washington d.c. and this up to me. and. we both were. totally opposed to the war they talk to me about. charlie they. was planning to do

a fast death. and opposition to the us backed contras. before i did the fast i decided that a significant. could be. you know this very prestigious medal over the water and in protest of u.s. foreign policy in central america. is the most powerful statement that i felt that i could make outside of actually some way give you know your life well then following up on that came fast bryan and . fast needs to have strategic objectives. brian was really determined that the objective of this fast was to change u.s. policy foreign. i mean we've seen

people. i went to in washington as many did to support the parents gathered steps of the capitol and i remember the inspirational that i and others there. charles bryan. they were doing something that was martin. we were talking about nicaragua and what we were doing here but it was bigger than the karate purcell south central america it was white america and of course yourself. and what it meant to those on the receiving. end how this is all being carried out with our expert. this. president last week. it is not.

time it is a final song. in the face of justice and liberty as the fast got on to thirty five and forty days and that's approaching the time when people began dying from fast like this and although they were being monitored they were getting weaker and weaker and we were quite alarmed they were usually you might. think. the question can come up relative to fasting well is. when life could take your own life. i can to my own life if i want to do what i know. my

life. did fast on the steps of the capitol ninety six approach. which led to the f.b.i. identifying us as the best terrorist suspects. identified five hundred solitary actions around states that were acting in concert with us. and it was conspiracy conspiracy to change us. organizing. actions were. fasting from. the move to classify the veterans fast as terrorism triggered a reaction from an unlikely source the f.b.i. agent assigned to investigate them twenty two year bureau veteran jack ryan. i was in charge of investigating for the f.b.i.

. foreign counterintelligence and i get a lead that says investigate. for their fasting on the steps of the capitol jack ryan reviewed the veterans fast for life. and also those of other u.s. nationwide solidarity groups the investigation wanted to find out. was this group veterans fast for a wife and they were called terrorists under the sabotage statutes. concluded that the fasters were nonviolent and then refused to investigate further his superiors put him under review the bureau just came. to. flee with the shotgun that i was fired ten months shy of getting a pension but they came down big. to those of you. aid i want to say. but i have yet to receive an explanation that speaks from

a place other than mere bordering on a paranoia reminiscent of the makai be the idea that we were terrorists and it. was it is ridiculous. and a terrorist has no regard for human life whatsoever in the past like i don't see how they can possibly be construed as hurting someone else. donald trump bowing out of a meeting with vladimir putin doesn't seem like a big deal given the already polls state of affairs between the two countries most of the manner in which it was cancelled over twitter may sting the kremlin more than the cancellation itself is the mythical trump truth in a bromance finally over.

when a loved one is murder it's natural to seek the death penalty for the murderer i would prefer it be in the death penalty just because i think that's the fair thing the right thing research shows that for every nine executions one convict is found innocent the idea that we were executing innocent people was terrifying those just no room to present and that we were even many of the times families want the death penalty to be abolished the reason we have to keep the death penalty here is because that's what murder victims' families what that's going to give them peace that's going to give them justice and we come in saying. not quite enough we've been through this this isn't the way. we should start again to discuss where we can. chancellor merkel

runs has said we have built up a lot of religious between germany and europe and russia and to destroy bridges is quite easy and really fast. but to me proof would take a whole lot of. news review of the week the g. twenty wrapped up in argentina with a temporary freeze in the bruising trade war between the u.s. and china also look at the much shorter than anticipated conversation that did eventually happen between presidents trump and print. it was global concern is russia and ukraine were brought almost to the brink of a conflict after last.