Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
PM Thursday, April 26, 2001
On Bob Kerrey and Vietnam
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey's public statements during the last day -- prompted
by revelations about to be reported by the New York Times and "60 Minutes
II" about a raid he led that killed unarmed civilians during the Vietnam
War -- have raised important issues. This afternoon, the following
statement comes from Brian Willson, a former U.S. Air Force captain who
served in Vietnam.
BRIAN WILLSON, bw@brianwillson.com, http://www.brianwillson.com
After participating in the Vietnam War as a member of the U.S. Air Force,
Willson became a peace activist. In 1987, in a civil disobedience action
with other activists at a military base, Willson lost his legs when a train
carrying munitions bound for Central America accelerated instead of
stopping. At the request of the Institute for Public Accuracy, he provided
a statement today and will be available for interviews:
"My Air Force Combat Security unit was dispatched to Binh Thuy on March 7,
1969, to fortify a Vietnamese-controlled air base a few miles northwest of
Can Tho City in Phong Dinh Province, about 100 miles southwest of Saigon. I
was the first lieutenant in charge of this unit.... As a security officer I
quickly had to acquaint myself with intelligence reports on 'enemy'
activity, and locations and types of friendly resources. I had not been in
Vietnam more than a month or so when it was becoming obvious to me that
virtually everybody, other than a select few identified Vietnamese
business, political, and military leaders, was at least secretly hostile to
the U.S. presence and sympathetic with the Vietnamese struggle for
independence from any outside political force. After Tet 1968, the U.S./CIA
Phoenix program had become especially intense in eliminating political and
military leadership in the Vietcong, and U.S. air and ground forces had
become much more indiscriminate in killing Vietnamese and calling them all VC.
"Bob Kerrey and I, along with nearly 4 million other U.S. men and women,
were thrust into a fundamentally immoral, lawless intervention against the
authentic desires of the Vietnamese to build an independent, sovereign
nation. My job was, in essence, to protect airplanes in between their
missions bombing villages, the latter all having been identified as being
in a 'free fire zone,' which made it easy to rationalize destroying
everything. On occasion I witnessed through ground observations the
aftermath of villages bombed with only bodies of young women, many
children, and a few elderly strewn on the ground. I never saw any weapons
in these virtually defenseless villages.
"Our lawless, violent intervention in Vietnam was, unfortunately, not an
aberration. This is a tough conclusion, one that is extremely painful, to
acknowledge about the nation of our upbringing and citizenship. But we
veterans have a choice to take courageous responsibility for our actions,
even if our government will not. Bob Kerrey and his men killed for this
lie, and this terrible assault on the Vietnamese people. The only
difference between Kerrey and myself is that I was never in a position to
personally kill while in Vietnam. But I was part of a killing machine, even
being complicit in the bombing campaigns, and I saw dozens and dozens of
the bodies of women and children.
"It is time to acknowledge our responsibility and to take leadership in a
national healing process. Our souls, and the soul of our country, are at
stake. Furthermore, the future of peace in the world may rest on a profound
reckoning on the part of people in the U.S. that our imperial policies have
been wrong, and that we now want to truly make amends for our crimes. I
urge Bob Kerrey to be truly courageous about revealing his role while in
Vietnam, and ask other veterans to do the same. The future of the human
condition, not just our souls, may actually be at stake."
Also available for interviews:
BARRY ROMO, vvaw@prairienet.org, www.prairienet.org/vvaw
Romo is a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Apr 26 2001 - 19:08:51 EDT