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Awesome movie! The perspective of the Viet Cong soldiers was excellent. Mel did a great job.
60 minutes had an incredible piece with the real en. hal Moore and Gibson. Dan rather is interviewing them and asks Gen. Moore what he would he could say to sum up his Ia Drang experience. He leans in, looks Rather in the eye and says "Now get this right...Hate War...but the Love the American Warrior...you got that?" You could see Rather squirming like a puss. Awesome interview.
Please! Read the book. If you thought the movie was good. the book will blow you away! It is an incredible account.
I have not seen the movie yet. I am wondering if they go into the account of the battle at landing zone Albany or if they just stick to the fight at LZ X-Ray. If they don't, then you are only getting half of the story. It gets more horrifying. I had to put the book down several times because it was too emotional to continue. I hate crying while I read.
Thanks Kirkworld ,I didn't know there was a book. I'll be sure to pick it up.
"We were soldiers once....and young"
Hal Moore & Joeseph Galloway
I liked Pearl Harbour better.
Charlie Company came to Viet Nam in December, 1967. It located in Quang Ngai Province in January, 1968, as one of the three companies in Task Force Barker, an ad hoc unit headed by Lt. Col. Frank Barker, Jr. Its mission was to pressure the VC in an area of the province known as "Pinkville." Charlie Company's commanding officer was Ernest Medina, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican-American from New Mexico who was popular with his soldiers. One of his platoon leaders was twenty-four-year-old William Calley. Charlie Company soldiers expressed amazement that Calley was thought by anyone to be officer material. One described Calley as"a kid trying to play war." Calley's utter lack of respect for the indigenous population was apparent to all in the company. According to one soldier, "if they wanted to do something wrong, it was alright with Calley." The soldiers of Charlie Company, like most combat soldiers in Viet Nam, scored low on military exams. Few combat soldiers had education beyond high school.
Seymour Hersh wrote that by March of 1968 "many in the company had given in to an easy pattern of violence." Soldiers systematically beat unarmed civilians. Some civilians were murdered. Whole villages were burned. Wells were poisoned. Rapes were common.
My Lai village had about 700 residents. They lived in either red-brick homes or thatch-covered huts. A deep drainage ditch marked the eastern boundary of the village. Directly south of the residential area was an open plaza area used for holding village meetings. To the north and west of the village was dense foliage.
By 8 a.m., Calley's platoon had crossed the plaza on the town's southern edge and entered the village. They encountered families cooking rice in front of their homes. The men began their usual search-and-destroy task of pulling people from homes, interrogating them, and searching for VC. Soon the killing began. The first victim was a man stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Then a middle-aged man was picked up, thrown down a well, and a grenade lobbed in after him. A group of fifteen to twenty mostly older women were gathered around a temple, kneeling and praying. They were all executed with shots to the back of their heads. Eighty or so villagers were taken from their homes and herded to the plaza area. As many cried "No VC! No VC!", Calley told soldier Paul Meadlo, "You know what I want you to do with them". When Calley returned ten minutes later and found the Vietnamese still gathered in the plaza he reportedly said to Meadlo, "Haven't you got rid of them yet? I want them dead. Waste them." Meadlo and Calley began firing into the group from a distance of ten to fifteen feet. The few that survived did so because they were covered by the bodies of those less fortunate.
What Captain Medina knew of these war crimes is not certain. It was a chaotic operation. Gary Garfolo said, "I could hear shooting all the time. Medina was running back and forth everywhere. This wasn't no organized deal." Medina would later testify that he didn't enter the village until 10 a.m., after most of the shooting had stopped, and did not personally witness a single civilian being killed. Others put Medina in the village closer to 9 a.m., and close to the scene of many of the murders as they were happening.
As the third platoon moved into My Lai, it was followed by army photographer Ronald Haeberle, there to document what was supposed to be a significant encounter with a crack enemy battalion. Haeberle took many pictures. He said he saw about thirty different GIs kill about 100 civilians. Once Haeberle focused his camera on a young child about five feet away, but before he could get his picture the kid was blown away. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl.
An army helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson arrived in the My Lai vicinity about 9 a.m. Thompson noticed dead and dying civilians all over the village. Thompson repeatedly saw young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range. Thompson, furious at what he saw, reported the wanton killings to brigade headquarters.
Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. One who followed Calley's order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.)
Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.
Hugh Thompson, by now almost frantic, saw bodies in the ditch, including a few people who were still alive. He landed his helicopter and told Calley to hold his men there while he evacuated the civilians. Thompson told his helicopter crew chief to "open up on the Americans" if they fired at the civilians. He put himself between Calley's men and the Vietnamese. When a rescue helicopter landed, Thompson had the nine civilians, including five children, flown to the nearest army hospital. Later, Thompson was to land again and rescue a baby still clinging to her dead mother.
By 11 a.m., when Medina called for a lunch break, the killing was nearly over. By noon, "My Lai was no more": its buildings were destroyed and its people dead or dying. Soldiers later said they didn't remember seeing "one military-age male in the entire place". By night, the VC had returned to bury the dead. What few villagers survived and weren't already communists, became communists. Twenty months later army investigators would discover three mass graves containing the bodies of about 500 villagers.
WHEN WE WERE MURDERERS pick up a history book goddammit stop depending on hollywood grimms fairytale propoganda for an education just 1 reason why EDUCATED people hated this goddam war and dan rather squirmed like a puss because he covered this war and knows first hand the fucking farce it really was BUT he had the nads to give this old soldier his respect something i migh say flag waivers today would never give to conscious objecters to war so stifle you rah rah rhetoric and study history but thats too much to ask of kids who werent even born when this shit went down and want to use the flag as a hickory stick to bludgeon people who savvy enough to not be manipulated bullied into blind patriotism by people who have no fucking clue
<font color="#330033" size="1">[ March 10, 2002 01:51 PM: Message edited by: Favorite ]</font>
I saw this movie last night and I thought it was great. It was one of the most realistic war movies ever. A lot of American movies will have like 20 american guys blowing away hundreds of enemy soldiers. This movie actually depicted a realistic view of what really went on in Vietnam. For all you war buffs I think it would be a good movie for you to see.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations
April 23, 1971
I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
And.............your point?
thompson finally got his medal after being treated like shit he is the definition of soldier him i respect
COLD WAR Chat: Hugh Thompson
U.S. Army helicopter pilot at My Lai
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The following is an edited transcript of the COLD WAR chat conducted on Sunday December 6, 1998, with Hugh Thompson, U.S. Army pilot at the My Lai massacre. This discussion was moderated by COLD WAR Senior Editor Gregg Russell.
CNN Moderator: Our chat tonight is with Hugh Thompson, who on March 16, 1968, was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He landed his helicopter in the midst of the My Lai massacre. He stopped the killing of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers and helped airlift the survivors to safety. For this act he received the prestigious Soldier's Medal.
Chat Participant: What happened when you flew over My Lai that day?
Hugh Thompson: We didn't just fly over one time. It was our mission to recon out in front of the American troops. That's what we were doing. I had gunship coverage. It wasn't probably until my second time on station after refueling that we noticed a large number of bodies, which were in our minds unexplained. The reason they were unexplained is they were women, kids, infants and old men. We started questioning what was going on here. We had not received fire. We were not being shot at and it was just unexplainable to us. We had about four direct encounters with the American forces, trying to help and assist civilians that had been wounded.
Chat Participant: How did you decide what to do?
Hugh Thompson: It was clear to us that something was going wrong. And at one time we had asked for assistance on a wounded civilian and a captain walked up and shot the girl we'd asked assistance for. Another time, we'd seen an irrigation ditch full of bodies, of which some were still living. We landed and talked to the Americans on the ground, said there are some wounded civilians in the ditch, can you help them out. And we were told, yes, we'll help them out of their misery. I said, quit joking, how bout helping them, and they said OK. As I took off, they walked to the ditch, and we heard machine-gun fire. [Crewmate] Glen Andreotta, in a shocked type voice, said, "My God, they are firing into the ditch." That was two times we'd asked for help and got people killed. Shortly after then, we saw some Vietnamese who had just made it to a bunker and were hiding inside the bunker. On the other side of the opening, we saw the American forces coming toward them. We just kind of figured those people were dead in about 15 seconds if we didn't do something. That's when we elected to land the aircraft between the American forces and the bunker.
Chat Participant: Had you ever heard of anything like this before?
Hugh Thompson: No, I had never come in contact with anything like this before.
Chat Participant: Hugh, does a day go by that you don't think about what you saw at My Lai?
Hugh Thompson: I try not to dwell on it. I was not received real well after the investigation started. I had to go to all the hearings and investigations and trials. And I wasn't treated real well at those. The public sentiment by that time was in favor of [Lt. William] Calley and it was more concerned about me threatening to shoot Americans that day than the murder of over 504 civilians. My worst beating came when I was before Congress.
Chat Participant: Do you think the soldiers did this on their own instinct or were they ordered?
Hugh Thompson: They received from what I understand, they received a briefing just as we did. Supposedly in their briefing, it was a little bit more direct. I don't think that [Capt. Ernest] Medina stood up there and told everybody involved in the operations to kill everybody that moved. Whether he had any private conversations with Calley ... I have no idea. The things that went wrong that day were poor leadership, peer pressure and prejudice.
Chat Participant: When you intervened, did the "friendly troops" threaten you or did they stop their assault due to your action?
Hugh Thompson: No, I was very upset at that time, and I thank God to this day that they stood where they were, and didn't prevent me from attempting to do what I was doing. I would hate to think about what could have happened or might have happened. I do thank the good Lord many times that they remained at ease.
Chat Participant: Do you feel that the Army responded to the events at My Lai in an appropriate manner? Should it have taken them 30 years for them to recognize your actions? There seems to be more than a little bit of irony in the fact that the United States is currently trying to bring Bosnian Serbs to trial in The Hague for committing similar atrocities while Calley seems to have gotten off so lightly.
Hugh Thompson: No I don't think that My Lai was handled properly. You mentioned taking 30 years. That was 30 years to award a Soldier's Medal, which ... I don't feel was for me. It was for everybody who served honorably, especially Glenn, who lost his life. The United States Government has not officially recognized My Lai. Don't anybody think that they just found out about this, and volunteered to award me the Soldier's Medal.
Chat Participant: What was your course of action as you left the scene? Who did you report to? How did your superiors in the battlefield respond to your report?
Hugh Thompson: I reported it first to my platoon leader, Lt. Barry Lloyd. From there, we went to the operations van, and talked to the operations officer and then immediately to Major Watkes -- who were very supportive, very concerned. Later that night, I reported it to my chaplain, Chaplain Chriswell, and in two or three days, reported it to the brigade commander.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the atrocities committed at My Lai where inevitable given the nature of the war in Vietnam?
Hugh Thompson: No. Soldiers are taught to fight. Soldiers are taught to kill the enemy. This is not what occurred at My Lai.
Chat Participant: Sir, what do you believe the U.S. government could do in 1998 to alleviate the chance of any more recurrences of My Lai in the future?
Hugh Thompson: Well, I was on a panel two weeks ago at the University of South Carolina, at which time the commanding general from Fort Jackson was there also, as this was a seminar on ethics and correct procedures on the battlefield. They asked him what the Army was doing to prevent future My Lais. His answer was they have increased basic training by a week and they teach nothing but classes on ethics and how to handle yourself. My question to him afterwards, because I didn't want to embarrass him, was, "General, at any time during your classes on doing the morally right thing and ethics, are the two words My Lai mentioned?" And his answer was no. They say they've admitted it, they say it shouldn't have happened. It's just not true. There was a ceremony in Vietnam at My Lai for the 30th anniversary. No American representation was there, besides me and [former crewmate and door-gunner] Larry Colburn and Mike Wallace and his news crew. And a call was even placed to the ambassador asking if he was coming and his answer was no. Mr. Wallace asked him why. And his answer was that he wasn't invited. Which was not a true statement.
Chat Participant: Has the Vietnamese government recognized your actions at My Lai and have you received any awards from them?
Hugh Thompson: When we were at My Lai on March 16, 1998, we were well recognized by the Vietnamese government -- given letters and gifts and thanked by all the survivors and all the people in that area for what we did. But the most amazing thing: A comment came from a lady we were speaking with and [she] said, 'Why didn't any of the ones who participated come?' And I was feeling very low then and didn't know what to expect her next statement to be. Her next statement was very shocking. Because it was, "so we could forgive them." That blew me away. Would you forgive them? I can't. We met three that day that we had rescued. That was very good for me personally.
Chat Participant: You must be proud of what you did.
Hugh Thompson: I think what we did that day was correct, the correct thing to do. I had a real hard time for 30 years, not really 30 years, because interest waned, but during all the trials and investigations, I had a real hard time understanding why in the world everybody was trying to make me the bad guy. It's hard to live with that.
Chat Participant: Mr. Thompson, what do you think were the factors that allowed My Lai to happen? Do you think it was an isolated incident or just the one that got people's attention?
Hugh Thompson: I think My Lai was a very isolated incident. Don't misunderstand me. I know civilians get killed in war. And I know that civilians get murdered in war. I've had other people tell me this happens all the time. They weren't there. They don't realize how large My Lai was. The Americans, I think, state 112 got killed. The Vietnamese figures 504, and I think they missed a lot. There was over 500 people murdered that day. I would have a hard time living with myself if I thought I was part of an action such as this. More than likely, larger numbers of people had been killed that day by artillery or air power, but not marched down into a ditch and murdered.
Chat Participant: What was your view of the war immediately prior to this incident? And what was it afterward?
Hugh Thompson: I was a military person, I was sent there to fight a war. My country deemed this war appropriate. So one incident by a very small group of people is not going to change my opinion of the war.
Chat Participant: Hugh, do you think that anything positive came out of our involvement in the Asian conflict?
Hugh Thompson: That one's never been put to me before. If our government has learned anything from mistakes, yes, something positive came out of it.
Chat Participant: Do you think our government has learned?
Hugh Thompson: I don't know. I think we need to select our leaders with a lot of serious thought. We need some negotiators first and fighters second. Nobody wins in war. I just got back from Norway, and it was brought out to me there that 2,700 people per day on average get killed as a direct result of conflict. War conflict. Out of that, nine out of 10 are civilians. And out of that, 50 percent are children. This is going on today, as we speak.
Chat Participant: Do you think it would have been more difficult to intervene had you been on the ground ... just another grunt?
Hugh Thompson: No, our job that day was to hang ourselves out like a carrot on the end of a stick in front of the donkey. My crew was willing to give our lives to save the people, the American soldiers on the ground. That was my job. I wouldn't take part [in] it in the air, and I wouldn't take part in it if I was on the ground. It's very important to point out that not everybody on the ground took part in it. Some people say we had a lot of courage doing what we did. But there was a man on the ground that had a lot more courage than we did. He blew his foot off to get the hell out of the area after being threatened. A soldier in Charlie company did that. That takes courage to me.
Chat Participant: You were there, in Chu Lai, during the Peers investigation [into My Lai]. Did you get mistreatment by any of the people who knew what was going on?
Hugh Thompson: No, I did not get mistreated, because I was told by Gen. [W.R.] Peers to travel in civilian clothes, to fly civilian aircraft, and don't talk with anybody. Very few people knew who I was while I was in Vietnam. I was not around anybody without General Peers there as well.
Chat Participant: Do you feel it took courage to refuse to fight the war in the first place?
Hugh Thompson: Yes, in retrospect, I think it took a lot of courage. According to history today, we shouldn't have been there. So going against the norm, I guess, would demand a whole lot of courage.
Chat Participant: Does your experience at My Lai ever come up in your work with other veterans? If so, how?
Hugh Thompson: Everybody has been very supportive. Overwhelmingly supportive since March 1998. I will assure you, it was not that way before.
Chat Participant: What happened to you while the Army was investigating the massacre?
Hugh Thompson: My first involvement with them was orders to report to the department of the Army [Inspector General] in Washington. I had no idea why I was going there. So naturally, I was very scared. The first question out of his mouth was, where was I on March 16, 1968? And I had no idea what he was talking about. The incident was totally blacked out of my mind. So naturally, it turned from questioning to more of an interrogation, at which time I realized what he was talking about. It didn't get any better. There was a lot of concern for me supposedly, for having threatened to kill a lieutenant, instead of the murdering of innocent civilians. And it didn't get any better. You have very senior congressmen coming after you, you best better get afraid. There's a book coming out and it ain't going to be pretty.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the soldiers involved in the massacre were/are bad people or just caught in a bad situation?
Hugh Thompson: They did bad things. I'm not saying that makes them bad people. I can live with myself at night. I hope they can live with themselves.
Chat Participant: Does it bother you that field officers above Calley were not held more responsible?
Hugh Thompson: I do not think that justice was served. But I'm not the one to question our judicial system. Most of the time it works. I don't think it worked that time. General Peers recommended court martial for 30 something people. And only four or five were actually court martialed. Our Congress was doing something to hinder any court martials that ever came about. They succeeded in one of them.
Chat Participant: What do you think is the most lasting legacy of the war?
Hugh Thompson: All you hear talk about is My Lai. I would think that could be classified as a legacy. Nobody won in Vietnam. It's a real hard question.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the Army was more at fault than Calley for the massacre
Hugh Thompson: Yes, like I said before, what I think are the big causes of that were leadership. And there was no good leadership on the ground that day. The Army is responsible for its leaders.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by kirkworld:
And.............your point?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
its this kind of sheer ignorance that make me fear what happens to this great country
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Favorite:
WHEN WE WERE MURDERERS pick up a history book goddammit stop depending on hollywood grimms fairytale propoganda for an education just 1 reason why EDUCATED people hated this goddam war and dan rather squirmed like a puss because he covered this war and knows first hand the fucking farce it really was BUT he had the nads to give this old soldier his respect something i migh say flag waivers today would never give to conscious objecters to war so stifle you rah rah rhetoric and study history but thats too much to ask of kids who werent even born when this shit went down and want to use the flag as a hickory stick to bludgeon people who savvy enough to not be manipulated bullied into blind patriotism by people who have no fucking clue
</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
I gotta respect this dude's perspective. And, there are many. Often Hollywood shows us what we want to see. Pick one movie on a historical event that didn't have the typical Hollywood spin?
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Bobby42:
Often Hollywood shows us what we want to see. Pick one movie on a historical event that didn't have the typical Hollywood spin?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
ZERO bobby and people need to recognize that and stop swallowing the bullshit that flows outta hollywood
I read the first person accounts of the battle for LZ X-Ray and the scondary, but more horrifiying account of the battle of LZ Albany. I reccomend it to anyone who wants to read a historical account of these events. I HAVE NOT seen the movie. This discussion had nothing to do with the incident at My Lai. Your OPINIONS, although valid, were irrelivent to the inital discussion. When I asked what your point was, it was in reference to the fact that it had NOTHING to do with the original topic.
What exactly is your point? Did you want to have a discussion on the My LAi incident? Apparently, you just wanted to spout some crap about how nobody understands and how the media is biased and if you were'nt there then you would'nt understand.
Look, I was born in 1965. It's not my fault that I had to grow up watching it on TV. It's not my fault that I had to learn everything about our involvement in Viet-Nam second hand. I am doing the best I can to learn from the people who are left and the documents that were written by the people who were there.
Hollywood is Hollywood. Those who take what is presented as fact are missing the real story. The real story is what was written in the book, "We Were Soldiers Once......And Young." Do you doubt this? Are you saying that the accounts given by the probably 75 plus people who were interviewed for this book are fiction? Then you are no better than the liberal media you bash with such ease. There are many first hand accounts of many different aspects of that war. Do I have an opinion as to weather our involvement was right or wrong? You bet. Would you like to hear it? I'm sure you would'nt care in the least what I have to say, because, "You were'nt there, you don't know the whole story." Save it. We in this country have always used our flag to bludgeon people. As have all of the other great countrys throughout history. England,the Spanish,The Romans......the list is long.
Just because I was not at Kent State does'nt mean you have the right to accuse me of "rah rah rhetoric" or "Blind patriotism". I don't agree with our country being the police force for the whole damn planet. I belive that countries come and go, civilizations rise and fall. It should not be our job, in my opinion, to save every single person from despair, poverty, Communisum, Muslim extreemists or extinction. But I do believe in my country, with it's rights and wrongs. And I do stand with the decisions made here. How dare you accuse me of having "No fucking clue", how dare you accuse me of being uneducated or ignorant. How dare you accuse me of being blind.
The title of the book is not "WE WERE MURDERERS". That does a gave injustice to the men who were there. You show them no respect. What happened at My Lai has nothing to do with them. It is not the same group of men and not the same circumstances.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by kirkworld:
How dare you accuse me of having "No fucking clue", how dare you accuse me of being uneducated or ignorant. How dare you accuse me of being blind.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'd give you credit for having a clue.
Thank you Bobby. You also have a clue.
Respect!
Just got back from seeing it. Regardless of the reasons we were there blah-blah, excellent movie. That naplam's some fun stuff huh? UnWar calling in strikes on your own position.
I would like someone to tell me weather they cover the second battle at LZ Albany. This will determine my patronage at the theatre. Thank you.
fucking sheep wake the fuck up go back and read thompson and macnamara and kerry then get ackto me no you hate rather because he went after tricky dick and his rightwing henchmen he should get a fucking medal for his part in bringing those lying crooks down live with it
Hugh Thompson: I don't know. I think we need to select our leaders with a lot of serious thought. We need some negotiators first and fighters second. Nobody wins in war. I just got back from Norway, and it was brought out to me there that 2,700 people per day on average get killed as a direct result of conflict. War conflict. Out of that, nine out of 10 are civilians. And out of that, 50 percent are children. This is going on today, as we speak.
But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.
-- H.R. Haldeman to President Nixon, Monday, 14 June 1971, 3:09 p.m. meeting.
<font color="#330033" size="1">[ March 11, 2002 07:10 AM: Message edited by: Favorite ]</font>
Yeah dickfuck...wars are fucked up. Assholes like you would be the first screaming to send kids to die though if it was your freedoms which were being threatened...your loved ones dying from a terrorist's bomb. Vietnam was a political clusterfuck, but the soldiers were there to do what they were trained to do. It's your ilk, with their illusions of superiority and intelligence who couldn't and can't distinguish the two.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Buccaneer:
Yeah dickfuck...wars are fucked up. Assholes like you would be the first screaming to send kids to die though if it was your freedoms which were being threatened...your loved ones dying from a terrorist's bomb. Vietnam was a political clusterfuck, but the soldiers were there to do what they were trained to do. It's your ilk, with their illusions of superiority and intelligence who couldn't and can't distinguish the two.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
which of my fucking freedoms were threatened by the north vietnamese it was a fucking civil war it had nothing to do with us so damn paranoid about communists coming to get us they sent people over there to die for no good fuckig reason and im supposed to go along with that hell no i dont have illusion of superiority and i dont fall in line behind some painted over bullshit movie wrapped in the flag either but i tell you what i can distinguish between chicken shit and chicken salad
Did you even see the movie? Do you have any idea what it was about? It wasn't about the politics of Vietnam, I'll tell you that much. The title explains what it was...a bunch of guys that were sent over to fight and die, and if it glorified anything it was them...not the politicians they fought for. You and those like you have never been able to distinguish the war from the soldiers that fought in it and that is the key of that movie and that book. Few people defend the Vietnam war. It was an obvious fuck up...but the soldiers were just doing what they were trained to do.
By the way, when you use words like "sheep" you instantly sound like an arrogant, Nietzsche spoonfed pisshead.
I saw the movie today and thought well of it. I'll never understand the venom that people like Favorite have for our military. The war was ultimately a clusterfuck, but that was the politicians. The soldiers were (in the severe majority) just doing what they had to do and what they were sent to do. I'd be interested to know what war-time Favorite has logged?Oh, and Dan Rather is a pussy fuck that would kill his own mother to get the jump on a story. WAR "Reagan is dead". http://www.hostboard.com/forums/
Kirk, if you mean the new LZ that they made by blowing up trees, yes, it's in the movie.