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Today's
Stories
March 5 / 6,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Arnold
vs. the Nurses
March 4, 2005
Frederick Hudson
Caught
in a Cage
March 3, 2005
Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"
Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions
Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?
Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again
Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?
Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness
Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists
John Ross
Mexico's
Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
March 2, 2005
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
The
"Noble Liars" Attack Syria
Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental
Dissent
M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah
Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"
Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
February 28,
2005
Gary Leupp
Year
4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?
Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers
Mickey Z.
The
Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter
Thompson and the "Right to Die"
Paul de Rooij
Why
Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel
David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media
Mario Lamo
Jimenez
Maria
Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars
Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge
of Academia
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
March 5 / 6, 2005
30 Years Later
The
Fall of Saigan
By
JOHN PILGER
BSaigon, April 1975. At dawn I was awake,
lying under my mattress on the floor tiles, peering at my bed
propped against the French windows. The bed was meant to shield
me from flying glass; but if the hotel was attacked with rockets,
the bed would surely fall on me. Killed by a falling bed: that
somehow made sense in this, the last act of the longest-running
black farce: a war that was always unnecessary and often atrocious
and had ended the lives of three million people, leaving their
once beautiful land petrified.
The long-awaited drive, by
the legatees of Ho Chi Minh, to reunify Vietnam had begun at
last, more than 20 years since the "temporary" division
imposed at Geneva. On New Year's Day, 1975, the People's Army
of Vietnam (PAVN) surrounded the provincial capital of Phuoc
Binh, 75 miles from Saigon; one week later the town was theirs.
Quang Tri, south of the Demilitarised Zone, and Phan Rang followed,
then Bat Me Thout, Hue, Danang and Qui Nhnon in quick succession
and with little bloodshed. Danang, once the world's greatest
military base, was taken by a dozen cadres of the Front for the
Liberation of Vietnam (the NLF, known as the Vietcong by the
Americans) waving white handkerchiefs from the back of a truck.
A United Press wire picture of an American punching a South Vietnamese
"ally" squarely in the face as the Vietnamese tried
to climb on board the last American flight from Nha Trang to
Saigon held a certain symbolism. By mid-April, the end was in
sight as the battle for Xuan Loc unfolded 30 miles to the north-west
of Saigon, which itself was already encircled by as many as 15
PAVN divisions armed with artillery and heatseeking missiles.
On 20 April, Xuan Loc was captured
by the PAVN. Only Saigon was now left. Among the ribbons of refugees
heading away from the fighting were embittered troops of the
ARVN - the army of the US-backed Saigon regime - whose president
and commander-in-chief, General Thieu, had acknowledged their
defeat by fleeing to Taiwan with a fortune in gold. On 27 April,
General Duong Van ("Big") Minh was elected president
by the National Assembly with instructions to find a way to peace.
It was "Big" Minh who in 1963 had helped to overthrow
the dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and had sought, with his fellow officers,
to negotiate a peace settlement with the NLF. When the Americans
learned about this they bundled Minh out of office, and the war
proceeded.
It was now eight o'clock; I
walked across Lam Som Square to get some coffee. Saigon had been
under rocket attack for two nights. f One rocket had cut a swathe
through half an acre of tiny, tightly packed houses in Cholom,
the Chinese quarter, and the fire storm that followed had razed
the lot. There were people standing motionless, as if in a tableau,
looking at the corrugated iron which was all that remained of
their homes. There were few reporters; yesterday's rockets were
news, the first to fall on Saigon in a decade; today's rockets
were not. A French photographer blundered across the smouldering
iron, sobbing; he pulled at my arm and led me to a pyre that
had been a kitchen. Beside it was a little girl, about five,
who was still living. The skin on her chest was open like a page;
her arms were gutted and her hands were petrified in front of
her, one turned out, one turned in. Her face was still recognisable:
she had plump cheeks and brown eyes, though her mouth was burnt
and her lips had gone completely. A policeman was holding her
mother away from her. A boy scout, with a Red Cross armband,
clattered across the iron, gasped and covered his face. The French
photographer and I knelt beside her and tried to lift her head,
but her hair was stuck to the iron by mortar turned to wax by
the heat. We waited half an hour, locked in this one dream, mesmerised
by a little face, trying to give it water, until a stretcher
arrived.
Following the attacks the American
Ambassador, Graham Martin, appeared on Saigon television and
pledged that the United States would not leave Vietnam. He said,
"I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in
the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see
for yourselves that I have not packed my bags ... I give you
my word." America's last proconsul on the continent of Asia,
Martin was a private, strong-willed and irascible man. He was
also very sick; his skin was sunken and skeined grey from long
months of pneumonia; his speech was ponderous and frequently
blurred from the drugs he was taking. He chain-smoked, and conversations
with him would be interrupted by extended bouts of coughing.
To describe Graham Martin as
a hawk would be to attribute to that bird qualities of ferocity
it does not have. For weeks he had told Washington that South
Vietnam could survive with an "iron ring" around Saigon
supplied by B-52s flying in relays back. But Martin could not
ignore completely what he saw; he knew it was his job, and his
job alone, to preside over the foreclosure on an empire which
had once claimed two-thirds of Indo-China, for which his own
son had died, nine years before.
In the American embassy, a
tree, one of many mighty tamarinds planted by the French a century
before, dominated the lawns and garden outside the main foyer.
The only other open space big enough for a helicopter to land
had the swimming pool in the middle of it, and the helipad on
the embassy roof was designed only for the small Huey helicopters.
If "Option Four" (a helicopter evacuation) was called,
only the marines' Chinook and Jolly Green Giant helicopters would
be able to fly large numbers of people to the Seventh Fleet,
30 miles offshore, within the course of one day. The tree was
Graham Martin's last stand. He had told his staff that once the
tree fell, America's prestige would fall with it, and he would
have none of it.
Tom Polgar was the CIA station
chief. Unlike many of his predecessors, he was unusually well
informed and he despaired openly of the Ambassador's stubbornness.
When Thieu locked himself in the bunker beneath the presidential
palace for three and a half days, refusing to resign or even
to take any phone calls, it was Polgar, together with the French
Ambassador, Jean-Marie Merrillon, who finally persuaded Graham
Martin that he should intervene. To Martin, the felling of President
Thieu became like the felling of the embassy tree: a matter of
pride and "face", for himself and for America. The
United States government had solemnly committed itself to Thieu
and the southern state it had invented; he often said that his
own son had died so that Thieu's "South Vietnam" could
remain "free".
On 28 April the NLF raised
their flag on Newport bridge, three miles from the city centre.
The monsoon had arrived early and Saigon now lay beneath leaden
cloud; beyond the airport were long, arched bolts of lightning
and the thunder came in small salvos as President Minh prepared
to address what was left of his "republic". He stood
at the end of the great hall in the presidential palace, which
was heavy with chandeliers and gold brocade, and he spoke haltingly,
as if delivering a hopeless prayer. He talked of "our soldiers
fighting hard" and only, it seemed, as an afterthought did
he call for a ceasefire and for negotiation. As he finished speaking,
a succession of thunderclaps drowned his last words; the war
was ending with a fine sense of theatre.
I walked quickly along Tu Do,
the city's main street, as the lightning marched into the centre
of the city. Half a dozen shops had closed since the day before,
their owners having evacuated themselves to the bowling alley
and gymnasium at Dodge City, the code name for the old American
command cocoon at Tan Son Nhut airport, where they paid handsomely
for a place in the queue. The Indian tailor at No 24 Tu Do, "Austin's
Fine Clothes", was morosely counting his dollars and cursing
his radio for not picking up the BBC World Service news. I had
known the tailor at Austin's for a long time, and our relationship
had always been one of whispers and comic furtiveness, involving
the handing over of one green note, which would be fingered,
snapped, peered at and put up against the light, and the receiving
of a carrier bag filled with best British Vietnamese piastres.
(Britain's greatest export to South Vietnam was banknotes.)
Thunder pulverised the city
as the tailor counted his money; he had at least $5,000 in that
drawer, today's and yesterday's takings, and his Indian passport
protruded from his shirt pocket. "Communists respect passports,"
he said, patting his without knowing what they respected. He
said Saigon would not fall for at least a month, which caused
the Vietnamese assistant, whirring at his sewing machine behind
the curtain, to laugh.
The thunder had a new sound,
dry and metallic. It was gunfire. The city seemed to be exploding
with weapons of every kind: small arms, mortars, anti-aircraft
batteries. "I think we are being bombed," said the
tailor, who flinched from his counting only to turn up the volume
on his radio, which was tuned to the Voice of America's Oldies
and Goldies hour.
For the next half-hour the
shop itself seemed to be a target and I ensured that two walls
stood between me and the street. The tailor, however, remained
at his post and counted his dollars while the Voice of America
played "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White", which
was barely audible above the gunfire. It is a profoundly witless
song, but I sang along with the tailor, and I shall probably
never forget the words. In a far corner, like a wounded bird,
an old Vietnamese woman clawed at the wall, weeping and praying.
A joss stick and a box of matches lay on the floor in front of
her; she could not strike the matches because her whole body
was shaking with fear. After several attempts I was able to light
it for her, only then realising the depth of my own fear.
The loud noises, including
the thunder, stopped, and there was now only a crackle of small
arms fire. "Thanks to the gentlemen who have bombed us,"
said the tailor, "the rate has just risen a thousand piastres
..." He opened the steel shutters, looked out and said,
"OK ... run!"
It seemed that all of Saigon
was running, in spasms of controlled, silent panic. My own legs
were melting, but they went as they never had before, and were
given new life by an eruption of shooting outside the Bo Da cafÈ.
A military policeman, down on both knees, was raking the other
side of the street, causing people to flatten or fall; nobody
screamed. A bargirl from the Miramar Hotel, wearing platform
shoes, collided with the gutter, badly skinning her legs and
her cheek. She lay still, holding her purse over the back of
her head. On the far corner, opposite the Caravelle Hotel and
outside a gallery which specialised in instant, hideous girlie
paintings, a policeman sprayed the sky with his M-16 rifle. There
was a man lying next to him, with his bicycle buckled around
him.
Saigon was now "falling"
before our eyes: the Saigon created and fattened and fed intravenously
by the United States, then declared a terminal case; capital
of the world's only consumer society that produced nothing; headquarters
of the world's fourth greatest army, the ARVN, whose soldiers
were now deserting at the rate of a thousand a day; and centre
of an empire which, unlike the previous empire of the French
who came to loot, expected nothing from its subjects, not rubber
nor rice nor treasure, only acceptance of its "strategic
interests" and gratitude for its Asian manifestations: Coca-Cola
and napalm.
At one o'clock in the morning,
Graham Martin called a meeting of his top embassy officials to
announce that he had spoken to Henry Kissinger, who had told
him that the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin,
had promised to pass his (Kissinger's) message to Hanoi requesting
a negotiated settlement with President Minh's government. Martin
said Kissinger was hopeful that the Russians could arrange this.
He said he wanted the evacuation by fixed-wing aircraft to continue
for as long as possible, perhaps for 24 hours.
It was shortly after four o'clock
in the morning when scores of rockets fell on Tan Son Nhut airport,
followed by a barrage of heavy artillery. The waiting was over;
the battle for Saigon had begun. The sun rose as a ragged red
backdrop to the tracer bullets. A helicopter gunship exploded
and fell slowly, its lights still blinking. To the east, in the
suburbs, there was mortar fire, which meant that the NLF were
in Saigon itself, moving in roughly a straight line towards the
embassy.
A 6am meeting between Martin
and his top officials was a disaster. All of them, except Martin,
agreed that they should start the evacuation immediately. Martin
said no, he would not "run away", and announced to
their horror that he would drive to Tan Son Nhut to assess the
situation for himself. There was no more than a suspicion among
the embassy staff that the last proconsul of the empire might,
just might, have plans to burn with Rome. When the meeting ended
in confusion, Polgar ordered that the great tamarind tree be
chopped down.
The tree-cutters assembled,
like Marlboro men run to fat. These were the men who would fell
the great tamarind; a remarkable group of CIA officers, former
Special Forces men (the Green Berets) and an assortment of former
GIs supplied by two California-based companies to protect the
embassy. They carried weapons which would delight the collector,
including obsolete and adorned machine guns and pistols, and
a variety of knives. However, they shared one characteristic;
they walked with a swagger that was pure cowboy: legs slightly
bowed, right hand hanging loose, fingers turned in and now and
then patting the holster. They were issued with axes and a power
saw, and secretaries from the embassy brought them beer and sandwiches.
They were cutting down the Ambassador's tree without the Ambassador's
approval.
At the same time, a fleet of
cars and trucks pulled into the market outside the Botanical
Gardens and Zoo, and quickly discharged their cargo: frozen steaks,
pork chops, orange juice, great jars of pickles and maraschino
cherries, cartons of canned butter beans and Chunkie peanut butter,
Sara Lee cakes, Budweiser beer, 7-Up, Wrigley's chewing gum,
Have-A-Tampa plastic-tipped cigars and more, all of it looted
from the Saigon commissary, which had been abandoned shortly
after an NLF sapper unit strolled in Indian file past its rear
doors. To the Saigonese, stealing from their mentors and patrons
had become something of a cultural obligation, and there was
a carnival air and much giggling as fast-melting T-bones were
sold for a few cents. A pick-up truck discharged a dishwashing
machine and a water-cooler was quickly sold and driven away in
a tri-shaw; the dishwasher was of the Blue Swan brand and on
its box was the Blue Swan motto: "Only the best is right
for our customers." The dishwasher was taken from its box
and left on the road. Two hours later it was still there, unsold
and stripped of vital parts, a forlorn monument to consumer enterprise
in Vietnam.
Saigon was now under a 24-hour
curfew, but there were people in the streets, and some of them
were soldiers from the 18th ARVN Division which had fought well
at Xuan Loc, on Highway One. We had been expecting them and awaiting
the first signs of their anger as they watched the Americans
preparing to leave them to their fate. That morning, when they
first appeared in the centre of the city, they merely eyed foreigners,
or robbed them, or fired into the air to relieve their frustration.
I walked back to the Caravelle
Hotel where I was to meet Sandy Gall of ITN; he and I were the
"evacuation wardens" for the TCN Press, which meant
Third Country Nationals, which meant everyone who was not American
or Vietnamese. For some days Sandy and I had concerned ourselves
with the supremely eccentric task of trying to organise those
representatives of the British, Canadian, Italian, German, Spanish,
Argentinian, Brazilian, Dutch and Japanese press who wanted to
be evacuated. The American embassy had distributed a 15-page
booklet called SAFE - short for "Standard Instruction and
Advice to Civilians in an Emergency". The booklet included
a map of Saigon pinpointing "assembly areas where a helicopter
will pick you up". There was an insert page which read:
Note evacuational signal. Do not disclose to other personnel.
When the evacuation is ordered, the code will be read out on
American Forces Radio. The code is: THE TEMPERATURE IN SAIGON
IS 112 DEGREES AND RISING. THIS WILL BE FOLLOWED BY THE PLAYING
OF 'I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS'. The Japanese journalists
were concerned that they would not recognise the tune and wondered
if somebody could sing it to them.
At the Caravelle, Gall and
I had nominated floor wardens who, at the first hint of yuletide
snow in Saigon, were to ensure that reporters who were infirm,
deaf, asleep, confined to a lavatory or to a liaison, would not
be left behind. There was more than a modicum of self-interest
in this arrangement; I had, and have, an affliction which has
delivered me late for virtually every serious event in my life.
Two C-130 Hercules aircraft
from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines were over Tan Son
Nhut. They were ordered not to land. Scouts sent to the perimeter
of the airport reported that two platoons of PAVN infantry had
reinforced the sappers in the cemetery a mile away; a South Vietnamese
pilot had landed his F-5 fighter on the runway and abandoned
it with its engine running; and a Jeep-load of ARVN were now
ramming one of their own C-130s as it tried to take off. "There
are some 3,000 panicking civilians on the runway," said
General Homer Smith on the VHF. "The situation appears to
be out of control."
Graham Martin, alone in his
office, watched the tree fall and heard his CIA Station Chief
cry, "Timberrrr!" When Kissinger phoned shortly afterwards,
in compliance with President Ford's wish that the American Ambassador
should take the final decision on the evacuation, he listened
patiently to an exhausted and ailing Graham Martin. At 10.43am
the order was given to "go with Option Four" (the other
options had involved evacuation by sea and by air). But Martin
remained steadfast in the belief that there was "still time"
to negotiate an "honourable settlement".
The Caravelle emptied without
the knowledge of the Unofficial Joint TCN Warden. Nobody told
me. Bing Crosby did not croon on my radio. When I emerged, the
rooms looked like the Marie Celeste, with clothes, papers, toothbrushes
left. I ran to my room, gathered my typewriter, radio and notes
and jammed them into one small bag; the rest I left. Two room
attendants arrived and viewed my frantic packing, bemused and
slightly in awe. One asked, "Are you checking out, Sir?"
I said that I was, in a manner of speaking. "But your laundry
won't be back till this evening, Sir." I tried not to look
at him. "Please ... you keep it ... and anything else you
see." I pushed a bundle of piastres into their hands, knowing
that I was buying their deference in the face of my graceless
exit. After nine years, what a way to leave. But that I wanted
to leave was beyond question; I had had my fill of the war.
Outside, Lam Som Square was
empty, except for a few ARVN soldiers slouched in doorways and
in the gutter. One of them walked briskly up Tu Do, shouting
at me; he was drunk. He unholstered his revolver, rested it on
an unsteady arm, took aim and fired. The bullet went over my
head as I ran. A crowd was pressing at the gate of the American
embassy; some were merely the curious who had come to watch the
Americans' aerial Dunkirk, but there were many who gripped the
bars and pleaded with the marine guard to let them in and waved
wax-sealed documents and letters from American officials. An
old man had a letter from a sergeant who, a long time ago, had
run the bar at the Air Force officers' club in Pleiku. The old
man used to wash dishes there, and his note from the sergeant,
dated 5 June 1967, read, "Mr Nha, the bearer of this letter
faithfully served the cause of freedom in the Republic of Vietnam."
Mr Nha also produced a toy Texas Ranger's star which one of the
pilots at Pleiku had given to him. He waved the letter and the
toy Texas Ranger's star at the marine guard who was shouting
at the crowd, "Now please don't panic ... please!"
For as long as they could remember, these people, who worked
for the Americans, had been told to fear the Communists; now
they were being told, with the Communists in their backyards,
that they should not panic.
The old man attempted to slide
through the opening in the gate and was pushed to the ground
by the marine who was telling them not to panic. He got up, tried
again and was tackled by a second marine who propelled him outside
with the butt of his rifle and hurled the Texas Ranger's badge
over the heads of the crowd. As I struggled through the crowd,
pushing and using my strength in order to get my free ride away
from the war, I felt only shame.
Inside the embassy compound
the marines and the cowboys were standing around the stump of
the great tamarind tree. "OK, you tell me what we're gonna
do about this immovable bastard?" said one of the cowboys
into his walkie-talkie. "Take it easy, Jed," came an
audible reply, "just you and the boys level it down by at
least another foot, so there's plenty of room for the rotors.
And Jed, get all those shavings swept up, or sure as hell they're
gonna be sucked into the engines." So the marines and the
cowboys went on swinging their axes at the stump, but with such
mounting frustration and incompetence that their chopping became
an entertainment for those both inside and outside the gate,
and for the grinning French guards on the high wall of the French
embassy next door.
There is in the Vietnamese
language, which is given much to poetry and irony, a saying that
"only when the house burns, do you see the faces of the
rats". Here was Dr Phan Quang Dan, former deputy prime minister
and minister responsible for social welfare and refugee resettlement,
a man seen by Washington and by Ambassador Martin as the embodiment
of the true nationalist spirit of South Vietnam. An obsessive
anti-Communist who was constantly making speeches exhorting his
countrymen to stand and fight, Dr Phan Quang Dan was accompanied
by his plump wife sweltering under a fur coat and by a platoon
of bagmen whose bags never left their grip.
The "beautiful people"
of Saigon were also there, including those young men of military
age whose wealthy parents had paid large bribes to keep them
out of the army. Although they were listed as soldiers on some
unit's roster, they never reported for duty and their commanding
officers more than likely pocketed their wages. They were called
"ghost soldiers" and they continued to lead the good
life in Saigon: in the cafÈs, on their Hondas, beside
the pool at the Cercle Sportif, while the sons of the poor fought
and died at Quang Tri, An Loc, and all the other places.
"Look, it is me ... let
me in, please ... thank you very much ... hello, it is me!"
The shrill voice at the back of the crowd outside the gate belonged
to Lieutenant-General Dang Van Quang, regarded by his countrymen
and by many Americans as one of the biggest and richest profiteers
in South Vietnam. The marine guard had a list of people he could
let in, and General Quang was on it. With great care, the guard
helped General Quang, who was very fat, over the 15ft bars and
then retrieved his three Samsonite bags. The General was so relieved
to be inside that he walked away, leaving his 20-year-old son
to struggle hopelessly in the crowd. There were two packets of
dollars sagging from the General's jacket breast packet. When
they were pointed out to him, he stuffed them back in, and laughed.
To the Americans, General Quang was known as "Giggles"
and "General Fats".
Among the Americans in the
embassy compound there was a festive spirit. They squatted on
the lawn around the swimming pool with champagne in ice buckets
looted from the embassy restaurant, and they whooped it up; one
man in a Western hat sprayed bubbly on another and there was
joyous singing by two aircraft mechanics, Frank and Elmer. Over
and over they sang, to the tune of "The Camp Town Races":
We're goin' home in freedom
birds,
Doo dah, doo dah;
We ain't goin' home in plastic
bags,
Oh doo dah day.
"This is where I've come
after 10 years," said Warren Parker almost in tears. "See
that man over there? He's a National Police official ... nothing
better than a torturer." Warren Parker had been, until that
morning, United States Consul in My Tho, in the Delta, where
I had met him a week earlier. He was a quiet, almost bashful
man who had spent 10 years in Vietnam trying to "advise"
the Vietnamese and puzzling why so many of them did not seem
to want his advice. He and I pushed our way into the restaurant
beside the swimming pool, past a man saying, "No Veetnamese
in here, no Veetnamese," where we looted a chilled bottle
of Taylor New York wine, pink and sweet. The glasses had already
gone, so we drank from the bottle. "I'll tell you something,"
he said in his soft Georgian accent, "if there ever was
a moment of truth for me it's today. All these years I've been
down there, doing a job of work for my country and for this country,
and today all I can see is that we've succeeded in separating
all the good people from the scum ... and we got the scum."
At 3.15PM Graham Martin strode
out of the embassy lift, through the foyer and into the compound.
The big helicopters, the Jolly Green Giants, had yet to arrive
and the stump of the tamarind was not noticeably shorter, in
spite of the marines' and cowboys' furious chopping and sawing.
Martin's Cadillac was waiting for him and, with embassy staff
looking on in shock, the Cadillac drove towards the gate, which
was now under siege. The marine at the gate could not believe
his eyes. The Cadillac stopped, the marine threw his arms into
the air and the Cadillac reversed. The Ambassador got out and
stormed past the stump and the cowboys. "I am going to walk
once more to my residence," he exclaimed. "I shall
walk freely in this city. I shall leave Vietnam when the President
tells me to leave." He left the embassy by a side entrance,
forced his own way through the crowd and walked the four blocks
to his house. An hour and a half later he returned with his poodle,
Nitnoy, and his Vietnamese manservant.
As the first Chinook helicopter
made its precarious landing, its rotors slashed into a tree,
and the snapping branches sounded like gunfire. "Down! Down!"
screamed a corporal, high on methedrine, to the line of people
crouched against the wall, waiting their turn to be evacuated,
until an officer came and calmed him.
The helicopter's capacity was
50, but it lifted off with 70. The pilot's skill was breathtaking
as he climbed vertically to 200 feet, with bullets pinging against
the rotors and shredded embassy documents playing in the downdraft.
However, not all the embassy's documents were shredded and some
were left in the compound in open plastic bags. One of these
I have. It is dated May 25, 1969 and reads, "Top Secret
... memo from John Paul Vann, counter insurgency ... 900 houses
in Chau Doe province were destroyed by American air strikes without
evidence of a single enemy being killed ... the destruction of
this hamlet by friendly American firepower is an event that will
always be remembered and never forgiven by the surviving population
..."
From the billowing incinerator
on the embassy roof rained money: 20, 50 and 100 dollar bills.
Most were charred; some were not. The Vietnamese waiting around
the pool could not believe their eyes; former ministers and generals
and torturers scrambled for their severance pay from the sky.
An embassy official said that more than five million dollars
were being burned. "Every safe in the embassy has been emptied
and locked again," said an official, "so as to fool
the gooks when we've gone."
At least a thousand people
were still inside the embassy, waiting to be evacuated, although
most of the celebrities, like "Giggles" Quang, had
seen themselves on to the first helicopters; the rest waited
passively, as if stunned. Inside the embassy itself there was
champagne foaming on to polished desks, as several of the embassy
staff tried systematically to wreck their own offices: smashing
water coolers, pouring bottles of Scotch into the carpets, sweeping
pictures from the wall. In a third-floor office a picture of
the late President Johnson was delivered into a wastepaper basket,
while a framed quotation from Lawrence of Arabia was left on
the wall. The quotation read: "Better to let them do it
imperfectly, than to do it perfectly yourself, for it is their
country, their war, and your time is short."
It was approaching midnight.
The embassy compound was lit by the headlights of embassy cars,
and the Jolly Green Giants were now taking up to 90 people each.
Martin Garrett, the head of security, gathered all the remaining
Americans together. The waiting Vietnamese sensed what was happening
and a marine colonel appeared to reassure them that Ambassador
Martin had given his word he would be the last to leave. It was
a lie, of course.
It was 2.30am on 30 April when
Kissinger phoned Martin and told him to end the evacuation at
3.45am. After half an hour, Martin emerged with an attachÈ
case, a suit bag and the Stars and Stripes folded in a carrier
bag. He went in silence to the sixth floor where a helicopter
was waiting.
"Lady Ace 09 is in the
air with Code Two." "Code Two" was an American
Ambassador. The clipped announcement over the tied circuit meant
that the American invasion of Indo-China had ended. As his helicopter
banked over Highway One, the Ambassador could see the headlights
of trucks of the People's Army of Vietnam, waiting.
The last marines reached the
roof and fired teargas canisters into the stairwell. They could
hear the smashing of glass and desperate attempts by their former
allies to break open the empty safes. The marines were exhausted
and beginning to panic; the last helicopter had yet to arrive
and it was well past dawn. Three hours later, as the sun beat
down on an expectant city, tanks flying NLF colours entered the
centre of Saigon. Their jubilant crews showed no menace, nor
did they fire a single shot. One of them jumped down, spread
a map on his tank and asked amazed bystanders, "Please direct
us to the presidential palace. We don't know Saigon, we haven't
been here for some time." The tanks clattered into Lam Som
Square, along Tu Do, up past the cathedral and smashed through
the ornate gates of the presidential palace where "Big"
Minh and his cabinet were waiting to surrender. In the streets
outside, boots and uniforms lay in neat piles where ARVN soldiers
had stepped out of them and merged with the crowds. There was
no "bloodbath". With the invader expelled, Vietnam
was again one country. The longest war of the 20th century was
over.
John Pilger's full account of the fall of Saigon
is published in 'Heroes',
Vintage Books.
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