Highly recommend: Kill Anything that Moves..by Nick Turse

[dixiegrrrrl]

from the Amazon review:

Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable. Kill Anything That Moves takes us from archives filled with Washington's long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led soldiers to commit what one participant called "a My Lai a month."

Not a happy book, but a vital one.

[Neoma]

1. Yep!

I've read that one. It's why I palm-face at some people's comments about Vietnam. Did I not mention it? Hrmmm.

[YOHABLO]

2. It really is a must read .. for every student of Vietnam History

Just read the book and actually read it faster than most .. simply because I was so astounded and alarmed, I could not put it down. This is the kind of stuff the Pentagon and the Military upper echelon does not want the public to know about. I am so sure there's much about Iraq that will eventually seep out ten years from now.