"The only lesson that the U.S. government seems to have learned from Vietnam is the need for absolute control of the press."

— David McGowan
author of Derailing Democracy

American Genocide of the Laotian People

The United States Air Force dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years on the people of Laos, from 1965 to 1973 — over 2,000,000 tons. This was some of the heaviest aerial bombing in world history.

Estimated civilian deaths: 500,000 people

The United States dropped an estimated 285 million cluster bomblets all over Southeast Asia during the course of the Vietnam War — seven bomblets for every man, woman and child. By 1973 it was estimated that there were at least nine million unexploded bomblets still lying on Laotian territory.

As much as half a million tons of unexploded ordnance (primarily cluster-bombs) remains littered all over the Laotian countryside — 35 years later.

Every year, throughout all these past 35 years, hundreds of innocent Laotian children and civilian people are murdered or maimed by American cluster-bombs. Bombs dropped by United States Air Force crews.

With the passage of time cluster bombs become more unstable, making deadly accidental explosions increasingly likely.

The deprivation of the fertile lowlands because of the presence of unexploded bombs has created hunger and despair among the people.

Predictably, the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government refuses to assist in any clean up efforts.

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

The Laotian left, led by the Pathet Lao, tried to effect social change peacefully, making significant electoral gains and taking part in coalition governments.

But the United States would have none of that.

The CIA and the State Department, through force, bribery and other pressures, engineered coups in 1958, 1959 and 1960. Eventually, the only option left for the Pathet Lao was armed force.

The CIA created its infamous "Arme Clandestine" — totaling 30,000, from every corner of Asia — to do battle, while the US Air Force, between 1965 and 1973, rained down more than two million tons of bombs upon the people of Laos, many of whom were forced to live in caves for years in a desperate attempt to escape the monsters falling from the sky.

After hundreds of thousands had been killed, many more maimed, and countless bombed villages with hardly stone standing upon stone, the Pathet Lao took control of the country, following on the heels of events in Vietnam.

Related pages

American Terrorism and Genocide of the Vietnamese People

The My Lai Massacre, 1968

Book review:
The Phoenix Program

The Phoenix Program, My Lai and the "Tiger Cages"

American Terrorism and Genocide of the Cambodian People

Maps:

Southeast Asia during the Vietnam Genocide

South Vietnam during the American Occupation and Genocide

Related sites

Laos War Legacy
http://www.mcc.org/clusterbomb/laos_legacy/index.html

The Mennonite Central Committee report on the genocidal use of cluster bombs by the United States Air Force against the people of Laos during the Vietnam War.

Legacy of the Secret War
http://www.mcc.org/clusterbomb/secret_war/index.html

"The Continuing Problem of Unexploded Ordnance in Xieng Khouang Province, Laos, and the Response of the Mennonite Central Committee and the American Friends Service Committee, 1972-1994."

Cluster Munitions: The Bombs That Keep On Killing
http://www.icbl.org/lm/2000/report/LMWeb-60.php3

Cluster Munitions: America's DUMB Bombs
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/index.html

Part of the valuable Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website, this section gives comprehensive descriptions of individual cluster bomb models. The individual listings contain photos and diagrams of the bombs as well as photos of the aircraft that deliver them. Has photos of cluster bombs exploding over tanks and other battlefield targets.

No photos of decapitated children in Laotian villages, though. The Pentagon doesn't want you to know about that particular use for cluster bombs. No, you just be sure you obediently pay your taxes so the Pentagon can buy these weapons, and keep your own head stuck firmly in the sand.

One photo series shows a fuel-air bomb exploding over a two-story, house-like structure on a desert test range.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/fae.htm
(Such a target trains U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots to get used to the idea of murdering civilians in residential houses. The U.S. military turns men and women into inhuman murderers, butchering people on command. Then it tells these fools they're "heros," when in fact they're nothing but trained rats.)

Now picture you and your loved ones underneath that fireball. Then you'll have a clue as to what the people of Yugoslavia experienced for 79 days and nights in 1999. And what the people of Southeast Asia suffered for 14 YEARS, courtesy of good ol' Uncle Sham.

Writings by Peace Activist S. Brian Willson
http://www.brianwillson.com/

Brian Willson is a courageous Vietnam vet who was wounded in combat — but not during the Vietnam Genocide. He was fighting a war of conscience. In 1987 a military train at a U.S. Navy munitions base intentionally ran over him and severed his legs as he and two other veterans sat on the tracks to block it. The train was carrying weapons to be used in America's ongoing holocaust of innocent civilian people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

His autobiography is heartfelt, utterly unself-pitying and very instructive, particularly his experiences from Vietnam onward. Brian Willson's writing is extremely valuable, being from a deeply intelligent and genuinely moral man who has witnessed firsthand the horrors of American state terrorism around the world.

From the site:

"THIS SITE CONTAINS essays describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment."

*everything is at the center of the cosmos at every moment

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist — VVAW-AI
http://www.oz.net/~vvawai/

"Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist is part of a network of anti-imperialist veterans who are proud of our resistance to U.S. aggression around the world. In the 1970s, to be a Vietnam veteran was to be against the war. That proud legacy must be carried forward through the 1990s and into the next millennium. As veterans, we have been to the edge and seen the viciousness of Amerikkka unmasked. We have no doubt that the bastards who sent us to war will use their nuclear arsenal, along with unspeakably cruel conventional weapons, to maintain their empire — and after the Gulf War, do you?"

Bibliography

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

"One of the best books ever written on the secret history of the Vietnam war. Valentine presents an unsparing account of the Phoenix Program, the CIA/US Army 'pacification' program in Vietnam that practiced plunder, torture and widespread assassination."

Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum

Rogue State:
A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
by William Blum

The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee

Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti

Against Empire
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.

The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.

Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don't Want You to See
by David McGowan

A People's History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn

The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky

Deadly Deceits:
My 25 years in the CIA
by Ralph W. McGehee

War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick

Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.

War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors

On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
by Dave Grossman
published by: Little, Brown

Examines the consequences of the U.S. military's conditioning of American soldiers to overcome the instinctive loathing of murdering fellow human beings. Shows how it has increased post-combat stress disorder and how contemporary society — especially the American media — replicates the U.S. Army's conditioning techniques, resulting in increased violence in American society.

Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War
by William M. Hammond
published by: UPKs

Uses classified documents as well as extensive interviews to examine the bitter animosity that developed between the U.S. government and the news media during the genocidal Vietnam war. Tells how they first shared a common vision, but as the war dragged on, the truth fell victim to the U.S. government's "management" of the press.

Nowadays, of course, the mainstream press wouldn't dream of reporting the latest American military atrocities. The U.S. Corporate Mafia Government has gotten much better over the years at "managing" the press and all the mass-media.

The two books immediately above are available from:
Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller
Falls Village, CT  06031-5000

A great number of the world's landmines are unexploded cluster bombs, dropped by the United States Air Force all over Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq and Yugoslavia.