winter soldier investigation- fucking watch the movie--
The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a media event intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, while showing their direct relationship to American administration and war policies. This 3-day gathering of American Vietnam War veterans, civilians and media took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31-February 2, 1971, and was organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. 109 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years of 1963-1970. Journalists and film crews recorded the event, and a transcript was later read into the Congressional Record.
Organizers described the event as "anti-war", not in the sense of opposing all wars (compare pacifisim) or as a statement that North and South Vietnam should not have been fighting each other, but as strictly in the sense of opposing America's involvement in the Vietnam War.
A documentary film of the event, called simply "Winter Soldier," was first released in 1972. Due to the controversial nature of the subject matter about an ongoing war, it got little distribution and support at that time and had been archived by its creators, collectively called the Winterfilm Collective. In September, 2005, it was re-released across the U.S. in small art house theatres. Many media reviews have regarded the film highly, as a "powerful" and "emotional" record of the era.
MODERATOR. You have some testimony here on the burning of villages, cutting off of ears, cutting off of heads, calling in artillery on villages for games, women raped, napalm on villages, all sorts of testimony of crimes against the civilians. Could you go into just a few of these to let the people know how you treat the Vietnamese civilian?
CAMILE. All right. The calling in of artillery for games, the way it was worked would be the mortar forward observers would pick out certain houses in villages, friendly villages, and the mortar forward observers would call in mortars until they destroyed that house and then the artillery forward observer would call in artillery until he destroyed another house and whoever used the least amount of artillery, they won. And when we got back someone would have to buy someone else beers. The cutting off of heads--on Operation Stone--there was a Lt. Colonel there and two people had their heads cut off and put on stakes and stuck in the middle of the field. And we were notified that there was press covering the operation and that we couldn't do that anymore. Before we went out on the operation we were told not to waste our heat tablets on food but to save them for the villages because we were going to destroy all the villages and we didn't give the people any time to get out of the villages. We just went in and burned them and if people were in the villages yelling and screaming, we didn't help them. We just burned the houses as we went.
MODERATOR. Why did you use the heat tabs? Did you just light off the villages with matches or just throw the heat tabs in so it would keep burning?
CAMILE. We'd throw the heat tabs in because it was quicker and they'd keep burning. They couldn't put the heat tabs out. We'd throw them on top of the houses. People cut off ears and when they'd come back in off of an operation you'd make deals before you'd go out and like for every ear you cut off someone would buy you two beers, so people cut off ears. The torturing of prisoners was done with beatings and I saw one case where there were two prisoners. One prisoner was staked out on the ground and he was cut open while he was alive and part of his insides were cut out and they told the other prisoner if he didn't tell them what they wanted to know they would kill him. And I don't know what he said because he spoke in Vietnamese but then they killed him after that anyway.
MODERATOR. Were these primarily civilians or do you believe that they were, or do you know that they were actual NVA?
CAMILE. The way that we distinguished between civilians and VC, VC had weapons and civilians didn't and anybody that was dead was considered a VC. If you killed someone they said, "How do you know he's a VC?" and the general reply would be, "He's dead," and that was sufficient. When we went through the villages and searched people the women would have all their clothes taken off and the men would use their penises to probe them to make sure they didn't have anything hidden anywhere and this was raping but it was done as searching.
MODERATOR. As searching. Were there officers present there?
CAMILE. Yes, there were.
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if you see this movie and cant see whats happenign in iraq or whats happening in all these secret military prisions the therse a fucking problem