Vietnam // Current

American Martial Laws: War made easy (Narrated by Sean Penn) - part 1

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of... more

Jenime
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8 days ago
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Don't repeat Vietnam in Afghanistan Pt.3

Daniel Ellsberg: The counter-insurgency plan in Afganistan is similar to Viet Nam Pt3

therealnewsnetwork
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15 days ago
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Don't repeat Vietnam in Afghanistan Pt.2

Daniel Ellsberg: The counter-insurgency plan in Afganistan is similar to Viet Nam Pt2

therealnewsnetwork
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18 days ago
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Don't repeat Vietnam in Afghanistan Pt.1

Daniel Ellsberg: The counter-insurgency plan in Afganistan is similar to Viet Nam

therealnewsnetwork
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19 days ago
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Vietnam - Lungo la strada

Vietnam, ai bordi delle strade le donne si adoperano per asciugare il riso. © Edoardo... more

LuisB
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19 days ago
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Know Your Meme; Where The Hell is Matt

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/ I LIKE MATT-THE CULT OF DANCE dance, dance,... more

remanns
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22 days ago
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5 comments

Ellsberg: From Vietnam to Afghanistan

Ellsberg: As President Obama decides what to do in Afghanistan he must learn the... more

therealnewsnetwork
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29 days ago
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Why Liberals Kill

The left may be pressuring President Obama to exit Afghanistan. But their... more

atomiclegion
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1 month ago
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Facebook family find

WSVN reports on a man who found his son on Facebook after 36 years of searching.

MotherForTruth
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1 month ago
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US offers aid to Veterans exposed to Agent Orange but not to Vietnamese who suffer the most

On Oct. 13, the New York Times ran a news story headlined, “Door Opens to Health Claims Tied to Agent Orange,” which was sure to be good news to many American veterans of the Indochina War. It reported that 38 years after the Pentagon ceased spreading the deadly dioxin-laced herbicide/defoliant over much of South Vietnam, it was acknowledging what veterans have long claimed: in addition to 13 ailments already traced to exposure to the chemical, it was also responsible for three more dread diseases—Parkinson’s, ischemic hedart disease and hairy-cell leukemia.

Under a new policy adopted by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA will now start providing free care to any of the 2.1 million Vietnam-era veterans who can show that they might have been hurt by exposure to Agent Orange.

This is another belated step forward in the decades-long struggle by Vietnam War veterans to get the Defense Department and the VA to acknowledge the American government’s responsibility for poisoning them and causing permanent damage to them and often to their children and grandchildren. Dioxin, one of the most poisonous substances known to man, is known to cause many serious systemic diseases, autoimmune illnesses, cancers and birth defects. (It is also a warning about the general Pentagon and government approach to other hazards caused by its battlefield use of toxins—most significantly the increasingly common use of depleted uranium projectiles in bombs, shells and bullets—an approach which features lack of concern about health effects on troops and civilians, denial of information to troops, and denial of care to eventual victims.)

Missing from the Times article, written by military affairs reporter James Dao, which did include mention of the obstructionist role the government has played through this whole sorry saga, was a single mention of the far larger number of victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam—the people on whose heads and lands the toxic chemical was actually dropped, or of the adamant refusal by the US government to accept any responsibility for what it did to them.

According to the article, the VA estimates that there may be as many as 200,000 US veterans who are suffering from Agent Orange-related illnesses. But according to a court case brought on behalf of Vietnamese victims, which was dismissed by a US Federal District Judge who ruled that there was “no basis for the claims,” there are at least three million Vietnamese, and possibly as many as 4.8 million, who are suffering the same Agent Orange-related illnesses as American veterans and their children.

more at link...On Oct. 13, the New York Times ran a news story headlined, “Door Opens to Health... more

WakeUpPeople
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1 month ago
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Judge Blocks Public from Blackwater Hearings

"A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of pretrial hearings in the prosecution of five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a 2007 shooting.

The hearings, which are expected to last through Friday, will examine whether the government improperly used immunized statements by the Blackwater Worldwide security guards in its investigation. The guards gave the statements to the State Department shortly after the controversial shooting Sept. 16, 2007, in a busy Baghdad square.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that he was closing the hearings because he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from pretrial publicity. He also cited concerns about the disclosure of grand jury material. Urbina said he wanted to ensure the guards received a fair trial.

The five guards -- Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball -- are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the others.

Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

The proceedings underway in the District's federal court, known as Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds the government's case is tainted, he might be forced to throw out the indictment."

Fair trial? Throw out the indictment?

Contractors are mercenaries under a contract, hence the name, and part of the contract is that they cannot be prosecuted for crimes that the average American soldier would be under United States and International Law. Essentially, the have immunity.

So, when Blackwater, Xe, Executive Outcomes, Halliburton, KBR, BAE Systems have their mercenaries shoot up villages and revel in the plunder of heroin and prostitutes, American soldiers get hit with the retaliation, and in the case of Afghanistan, they're about to hit back real hard. Think Vietnam was bad? Wait til he Taliban start their "Tet Offensive."

These "peacekeepers" are now patrolling the streets of the US as part of an international police force. Google 'G20 police pittsburgh' and click on images. Remember, contractor=mercenary and they have no allegiance to the United States or the Constitution. They work under a different contract and they get private trials."A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of... more