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David Cline, Vietnam War veteran who became a leader in peace movement

Click to view/ print Obituary from the Buffalo News / Thursday, September 20, 2007

February 1, 2019 • Draft Resistance, Presente! • Views: 48

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William Blum, Renowned U.S. Foreign Policy Critic, Dead at 85

This post originally appeared at covertactionmagazine.com by Chris Agee and Louis Wolf William Blum died in Virginia early this morning on December 9, 2018. He was surrounded by friends and family after falling in his

December 11, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 227

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In Memoriam: David McReynolds, the Gay Socialist Pacifist Who Twice Ran for President, Dies at 88

This post originally appeared at democracynow.org Longtime pacifist and socialist David McReynolds died Friday at the age of 88. Known to historian Howard Zinn and many others as a “hero of the antiwar movement,” McReynolds

August 22, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, Presente! • Views: 371

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Ron Dellums, 82, Dies; Unrelenting in Congress, He Upheld Left’s Ideals

Photo: Rep. Ronald V. Dellums of California campaigned in 1972 for a fellow Democrat, Allard K. Lowenstein, in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. “If being an advocate of peace, justice and humanity toward all human beings is

July 31, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 1257

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Dr. Jon Bjornson, 85, psychiatrist and Vietnam War veteran who helped other vets

Photo: COURTESY OF THE FAMILY / Jon Bjornson This post originally appeared at philly.com by Bonnie L. Cook, Staff Writer @cookb | bcook@phillynews.com Dr. Jon Bjornson, 85, of Philadelphia, a Vietnam War veteran and

July 29, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 370

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Ron Dellums (1935-2018): Organizing for Peace Forces Us to Challenge All Forms of Injustice

This post originally appeared at DemocracyNow.org Ron Dellums, the legendary politician and anti-war activist who fought against U.S. intervention around the globe, apartheid in South Africa and the Vietnam War, has died at the

July 29, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 368

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Remembering Đinh Tôn: 50 years later

This reflection first appeared at Viet Nam News on June 16, 2018. By Thomas Eugene Wilber It began in Thọ Xuân District, Thanh Hóa Province, Việt Nam At about 4pm local time on Sunday, the sixteenth day of June 1968, air

June 18, 2018 • Blast From The Past, Presente!, Vietnamese Voices • Views: 691

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Ernest Medina, Army Captain at My Lai

Photo caption: Capt. Ernest L. Medina on a visit to his hometown, Montrose, Colo., in 1970 after he had been charged in the massacre of Vietnamese in 1968. Photo Credit: Gary Settle/The New York Times This obituary originally

May 16, 2018 • My Lai, Presente! • Views: 630

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Joel Kovel, Presente!

Reported on Democracy Now! headline news, on May 1, 2018: In New York City, antiwar activist, author and professor Joel Kovel has died at the age of 81. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kovel was a well-known psychiatrist who left the

May 5, 2018 • Presente! • Views: 472

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Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher and War Protester, Dies at 74

This obituary of Sam Hamill, “former Marine-turned-pacifist,” was published at nytimes.com on April 26, 2018. PHOTO: heraldnet.com By Daniel E. Slotnik Sam Hamill, who gave up a wayward life to become an accomplished

May 2, 2018 • Poet's Corner, Presente! • Views: 464

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Nicholas von Hoffman, Provocative Journalist and Author, Dies at 88

Image: Nicholas von Hoffman in 1972. “I sincerely believe in what I write, and I get a kick out of getting those Washington mossbacks angry,” he said. Credit George Tames/The New York Times. This post originally appeared at

January 28, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 724

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Hiep Thi Le, ‘Heaven & Earth’ Actress, Dies at 46

This article originally appeared at variety.com. By Kirsten Chuba. Hiep Thi Le, an actress whose career included roles in “Heaven & Earth,” “Cruel Intentions” and “Green Dragon,” died due to complications from

January 27, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 652

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Remembering Hugh Masekela, Anti-apartheid activist & opponent of Vietnam war

This article originally appeared at Portside.org. Hugh Masekela – trumpeter and singer-songwriter was a pioneer of jazz in South Africa and a campaigner against apartheid in exile. The “Father of South African

January 26, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 645

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Julius Lester

Julius Lester performs at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1964, Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs, USM This obituary originally appeared at snccdigital.org. January 27, 1939 – January 18, 2018

January 20, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 747

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Obituary: Julius Lester

This obituary originally appeared at publishersweekly.com. By Shannon Maughan Award-winning author, educator, activist, and musician Julius Lester, known for a body of work focused on African-American culture, history, and

January 20, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 891

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Paul Booth, Antiwar Organizer and Union Stalwart, Dies at 74

Paul Booth speaking on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016.Credit Paul Sancya/Associated Press This obituary originally appeared at thenewyorktimes.com Paul Booth, a leading architect of

January 20, 2018 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 638

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Author, Activist and Policy Advocate Marcus Raskin Dies at 83

This post originally appeared at democracynow.org. And in Washington, D.C., author, activist and policy advocate Marcus Raskin has died at the age of 83. Raskin was the co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, one of

December 28, 2017 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 1103

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THE DEATH OF SGT. VAN DALE TODD

This article originally appeared at http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/ By Daniel Borgstrom. Back in 1972, near the end of the Vietnam War, I was living in San Francisco, and my friend ex-Sgt. Van Dale Todd, a combat veteran

October 7, 2017 • Connections to Today, Featured, Presente! • Views: 1086

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“His Laughter was a Battle Cry”: Thousands Celebrate Comedian & Human Rights Legend Dick Gregory

This article originally appeared at DemocracyNow.org. Thousands gathered Saturday to celebrate the life of legendary comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who passed away last month at the age of 84. We

September 23, 2017 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 775

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Douglas Dowd, 97, Antiwar Activist and Critic of Capitalism Is Dead

This post originally appeared at the newyorktimes.com. By Sam Roberts. Douglas Dowd, a radical economics professor and author who was in the vanguard of early teach-ins and other demonstrations against the Vietnam War, died on

September 17, 2017 • Featured, Presente! • Views: 786

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Mission statement

The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans For Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam — which is now approaching a series of 50th anniversary events. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon’s current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.

Upcoming Events

This Month in History: 1969

March US forces in Vietnam peak at more than 540,000.

Polls indicate that 19% of Americans want the war to end as soon as possible, 26% want South Vietnam to take over responsibility for the war from the U.S., 19% favor the current policy, and 33% want total military victory.

National Draft and Military Law Panel of the National lawyers Guild files suit to protect the rights of GIs marching in Easter antiwar demonstrations.

March 2 GI civilian conference held at Wright State University in Ohio.

March 4 President Nixon threatens to resume bombing the DRV (North Vietnam) in retaliation for NLF attacks in the South.

March 15 U.S. troops go on the offensive inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) for the first time since 1968.

March 17 President Nixon authorizes Operation Menu, the secret bombing of Cambodia by B-52s, targeting enemy supply sanctuaries located along the border of Vietnam. See March 18, 1969-May 26, 1970 entry below for further details.

March 18 Reps Jeffrey Cohelan and Robert Leggett, both California Democrats, accuse the Pentagon of handing out “unconscionable, excessive, and unfair” sentences to soldiers convicted in a sit-down protest at the Presidio Stockade. See entries for October 14, 1968 and February 14, 1969.

Fort Lewis – Pvt. Isaac Barr, who had refused orders to Vietnam, is dragged on to a plane and shipped to Vietnam.

Fort Jackson – Founder of GIs United, Pvt. Tommie Woodfin, is” acquitted of charges of circulating GIs United petition asking for a post meeting to discuss the war.”

March 18-May 26, 1970 Operation Menu – the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos — the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia and Laos — is launched. Operation Menu was succeeded by Operation Freedom Deal, which lasted until August 1973. Operation Menu marked an illegal invasion of neutral countries which had not attacked the US and with which the US was not at war, setting a dangerous precedent for future preemptive military actions. Eventually more bombs were dropped on Laos and Cambodia than combined on Germany and Japan in World War II. Laos became the most bombed country in history. Agent Orange was also widely sprayed. The targets of these attacks were presumed sanctuaries and base areas of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and forces of the NLF, which Nixon and Kissinger thought, utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The US also built up General Vang Pao’s Hmong forces in the northern and southern regions of Laos.

The impact of the bombing campaign on the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the PAVN, and Cambodian civilians in the bombed areas is disputed by historians, though undoubtedly it led to the collapse of a neutralist Cambodia.

An official United States Air Force record of U.S. bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965; the bombings were an escalation of what had previously been tactical air attacks. Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon authorized for the first time use of long-range B-52 heavy bombers to carpet bomb Cambodia.

This bombing campaign was carried on in extreme secrecy was closely supervised by Kissinger with the help of Air Force Colonel Claude Sitton. A duel reporting system (to circumvent the Strategic Air command’s normal command and control system) wars set up to pretend that South Vietnam was the target of the Cambodia and Laos bombings. The real documentation was destroyed (in a special furnace) while false documentation was created to justify expenditures.

The simultaneous rise of the Khmer Rouge and the increase in area and intensity of U.S. bombing between 1969 and 1973 incited speculation as to the relationship between the two events. Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, argues:

“Apart from the large human toll, perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused…The CIA‘s Directorate of Operations, after investigations south of Phnom Penh, reported in May 1973 that the communists there were successfully ‘using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda’… .The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia was partly responsible for the rise of what had been a small-scale Khmer Rouge insurgency, which now grew capable of overthrowing the Lon Nol government”

March 20 Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale., collectively known as the Chicago 8 are indicted for alleged actions at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — charged under the anti-riot provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The Chicago 8 indictment alleged crimes of three kinds: that all eight defendants conspired (together with another sixteen unindicted co-conspirators) to cross state lines to incite a riot, to teach the making of an incendiary device, and to commit acts to impede law enforcement officers in their lawful duties; that David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale individually crossed state lines to incite a riot; that John Froines and Lee Weiner instructed other persons in the construction and use of an incendiary device.

Black Panther, Bobby Seale, the eighth man charged, had his trial severed during the proceedings, lowering the number from eight to seven. The evidence against Seale was slim as he was a last-minute replacement for Eldridge Cleaver and had been in Chicago for only two days of the convention. On November 5, 1969, Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced him to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, each count accounting for three months of his imprisonment, because of his loud protests, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, hence the “Chicago Seven“. During the trial, one of Seale’s many protests led the judge to have him bound and gagged,

The 16 unindicted co-conspirators are: Wolfe B. Lowenthal, Stewart E. Albert, Sidney M. Peck, Kathy Boudin, Corina F. Fales, Benjamin Radford, Thomas W. Neumann, Craig Shimabukuro, Bo Taylor, David A. Baker, Richard Bosciano, Terry Gross, Donna Gripe, Benjamin Ortiz, Joseph Toornabene, and Richard Palmer.

March 21 Fort Jackson – Fort Jackson 9 (later 8), are arrested for “holding an illegal demonstration, … breach of the peace, … and disobeying an order.” See entry for May 20.

March 22 In this wide ranging discussion of Vietnam strategy, probably drafted by NSC staffer Morton Halperin, the central role of the Soviet Union in White House thinking about a diplomatic solution to the war is evident; so are ideas closely related to linkage and the Madman Theory-that Nixon is out of control and is capable of even seemingly irrational actions. According to Kissinger/Halperin, “There is no question that the Soviets could play a major role in bringing the war to an end if they decide to put pressure on Hanoi.” To accomplish that, it was necessary to “change the current Soviet calculation of gains and risks” associated with pressuring their Vietnamese allies. One way to do that would be for the Soviets to see risks in not helping Washington: “Within Vietnam we must worry the Soviets about the possibility that we are losing our patience and may get out of control.” Escalatory measures might be “considered in this light.”

9 antiwar protestors arrested for ransacking the Dow Chemical company in Washington DC. Dow produced Agent Orange and napalm for use in the war.

March 28 Fort Dix – SP/4 Allen Myers is arrested for posting sticker advertising April 5th GI-civilian demonstration in New York.

Tacoma – Founders of The Shelter Half coffeehouse are tried for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” See entry for October 1968.

March 29 Letters from Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour results in a U.S. Army investigation into the My Lai (Mỹ Lai) massacre.

Vietnam Full Disclosure

Presente!
Category

David Cline, Vietnam War veteran who became a leader in peace movement

William Blum, Renowned U.S. Foreign Policy Critic, Dead at 85

In Memoriam: David McReynolds, the Gay Socialist Pacifist Who Twice Ran for President, Dies at 88

Ron Dellums, 82, Dies; Unrelenting in Congress, He Upheld Left’s Ideals

Dr. Jon Bjornson, 85, psychiatrist and Vietnam War veteran who helped other vets

Ron Dellums (1935-2018): Organizing for Peace Forces Us to Challenge All Forms of Injustice

Remembering Đinh Tôn: 50 years later

Ernest Medina, Army Captain at My Lai

Joel Kovel, Presente!

Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher and War Protester, Dies at 74

Nicholas von Hoffman, Provocative Journalist and Author, Dies at 88

Hiep Thi Le, ‘Heaven & Earth’ Actress, Dies at 46

Remembering Hugh Masekela, Anti-apartheid activist & opponent of Vietnam war

Julius Lester

Obituary: Julius Lester

Paul Booth, Antiwar Organizer and Union Stalwart, Dies at 74

Author, Activist and Policy Advocate Marcus Raskin Dies at 83

THE DEATH OF SGT. VAN DALE TODD

“His Laughter was a Battle Cry”: Thousands Celebrate Comedian & Human Rights Legend Dick Gregory

Douglas Dowd, 97, Antiwar Activist and Critic of Capitalism Is Dead

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50 Years of Resistance In & Out Of Uniform

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My Lai Memorial Exhibit March 22nd-24th

NYC Fundraising Party w/ music by Peter Yarrow & Fine Cut preview

Commemorating Violent Conflicts and Building Sustainable Peace

On Burns/Novick PBS Documentary

Philip Jones Griffiths’ Viet Nam

This Month in History: 1969

2016 National Book Award Finalist, Viet Thanh Nguyen:

Agent Orange Awareness

Presente! Category

Mission statement

Sign Up for Updates

50 Years of Resistance In & Out Of Uniform

Like Us on Facebook

Upcoming Events

On Burns/Novick PBS Documentary

Philip Jones Griffiths’ Viet Nam

This Month in History: 1969

2016 National Book Award Finalist, Viet Thanh Nguyen:

Agent Orange Awareness

Presente!
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