Daniel Ellsberg

[phkrause]

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers, dies at 92

https://apnews.com/article/daniel-ellsberg-vietnam-war-pentagon-papers-12f57b417c372c1b8760a21d447cb502?

[Hanseng]

I was knocking around Laos one year. Met a gentleman who had been around Laos for a while. He started telling me about the U.S. "secret war" in Laos. The town we were in had the ruins of a temple which was claimed to have been destroyed by an American bomb. Another very lovely lady I met there still had to make occasional visit to a hospital. American shrapnel, deeply imbedded in her backside when she was a child, was still moving around and required treatment. The common narrative in that part of northern Laos was that the U.S. had conducted "terror" bombings there to destroy the rice crops, thereby starving the people.  The U.S. government believed that the Viet Cong were taking shelter in and obtaining food from Laos. So it went like this for the Laotians. If they didn't help the VC, they would kill them. If they did help them, the U.S. would kill them. While this may sound horrible on paper, it's much worse when you meet the people who were affected by this situation. 

This news comes to you, in part, courtesy of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers.