(forwarded from PNEWS-L -
Egalitarian "Progressive" News & Views
<PNEWS-L at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>)
"The testimony was chilling. Veteran after veteran described the training and orders that led to the murder of civilians. Several vets admitted that they had tortured prisoners and had seen their comrades commit rape, arson, and other savage acts, all stemming from their commanders' policies. Dr. Bert Pfeiffer of the University of Montana presented the first public testimony at WSI on the toxic effect of Agent Orange. ...WSI (Winter Soldier Investigation) also broke the story--then classified--of the 3rd Marine Division's major border crossing into Laos, called Operation Dewey Canyon. Although the Pentagon immediately denied the story, its credibility was undermined by the timing of the testimony, which occurred the same day that marines publicly launched Operation Dewey Canyon II in support of South Vietnamese troops invading Laos.....The Winter Soldier Investigation provided a turning point, but not the one we expected. We naively believed that the testimony of 105 American combat veterans on the criminal nature of the Vietnam War would simply end it--that an America already shocked by war crimes would demand an end to the slaughter of innocents and the waste of our brothers." (August 29, 2004)
* John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against War http://www.g0lem.net/PhpWiki/index.php/VietnamVets
"In the bitter controversy over our Vietnamese policies which has raged across the nation since the President's decision last February to bomb North Viet-Nam, there is only one point which supporters of U.S. policy will concede to the opposition: the sheer, mindnumbing horror of the war. Despite the barrage of official propaganda, reports in the American and European press reveal that the United States is fighting the dirtiest war of its history in Viet-Nam. The weapons in the American arsenal include torture, systematic bombing of civilian targets, the first use of poison gas since World War One, the shooting of prisoners and the general devastation of the Vietnamese countryside by napalm and white phosphorus. Not since the days of the American Indian wars has the United States waged such unrelenting warfare against an entire people." (August 24, 2004)
* American Atrocities in Vietnam http://www.g0lem.net/PhpWiki/index.php/VietnamAtrocities
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