I'm 65, and have lived in Portland, Oregon for the past 34 years.
I was an Army medic in Vietnam from September 1970 to September 1971.
I was in Vietnam toward the end of the war.
I was seeing the rapid decline of American involvement in Vietnam.
I was experiencing the homicides, suicides, rampant heroin addiction, shoot outs, and racial violence.
I often say that the worst thing I experienced in Vietnam was the lie.
I did not serve in Vietnam for the cause of freedom, I served Big Business in America for the cause of profit.
The Vietnam War was 100% a lie, from A to Z.
And, that truth is exactly the same with the U.
S.
wars in the Middle East.
For the most part, the United States committed atrocities in Southeast Asia on a daily basis.
At the end of the war, Vietnam was the most bombed country in the world.
We dropped three times as many bombs on Southeast Asia as we did in all of World War II.
I was in a military unit that had a lot of fire power.
We had three fire bases that had 155mm howitzers.
Those heavy artillery guns fired into Free Fire Zones, killing god only knows how many innocent civilians.
As an Army medic, I have had blood on my hands and brains in my lap.
I have a 100% disability for PTSD.
When I came back from Vietnam my entire belief system was dismantled.
I felt used and betrayed by my country and tossed away like a paper cup after a movie.
My story is no different than hundreds of Vietnam veterans I have met over the past forty years.
While Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are experiencing multiple tours, we Vietnam veterans are experiencing multiple wars.
Three of my close friends did not die in Vietnam, but as a result of being there.
The last one hung himself in a motel room three years ago.
I was attending the rally and demonstration at the convention center in Portland today.
I was there taking pictures, as I am a photojournalist.
There were a lot of people there to hear President Obama speak, and over a hundred who were there to demonstrate his presence in Portland.
I spent most of my time photographing the anti-war people, and the conservatives who were quite vocal about Obama's arrival in their city.
For the most part, I maintained a position of neutrality, which is the best profile to keep when you are photographing an event.
There was a fundamentalist Christian who was on a rant for over an hour as the pro-Obama people were filing into the convention to hear him speak.
His comments were quite caustic.
He was especially negative against homosexuals and people in general who were liberals.
For the most part, I ignored him for over an hour.
I took several pictures of him, simple because I was bored.
After all of the Obama supporters were inside of the convention center, he seemed to crank up his verbal abuse about people going to hell if they did not believe in Jesus Christ.
At some point, he got very judgmental toward my generation who were raised in the 60s.
He started saying that hippies, drug addicts and people like Jimi Hendrix were all going to hell.
He said something like all of those people were very sinful.
We were all basically followers of the devil, and that we needed to be saved.
With that, and a few other comments, I kind of lost my composure.
I walked up to him and said, "it is important for me to say to you that while the so called hippies were dropping drugs in the 60s, the United States government was dropping napalm on innocent Vietnamese villages throughout the Vietnam War.
I told him I was a medic in Vietnam, and that my military unit in Vietnam fired on civilian targets.
So, while you are passing judgment on all of these people, you are paying taxes to a government that murders innocent people.
That is something god would not do, and you my friend are a sinner.
I kept repeating to him that his government was committing war crimes in the Middle East just like we did in Vietnam.
He tried to defend himself that that was war, and it didn't have anything to do with him or god.
So, we went around and around, and chest to chest.
He finally backed down and turned away, because he knew he was dealing with the genuine item, and he was basically a coward.
I have dealt with these people before, and I always have to remind them that their government is the biggest sinner of all.
Lying is the most powerful weapon in war, and I have spent most of my life bearing witness to that truth.
Once you know what your government does behind closed doors, you speak for the dead.
There are 58,000 dead American soldiers inside of me, and over two million dead Vietnamese inside of me, and I will go over, around or through anyone who tries to stop me from telling the truth about the Vietnam War.
I can be absolutely fearless and relentless in telling the truth about my government committing mass murder.
Once again, history is repeating itself in the Middle East.
"There is no rest for the messenger, until the message has been delivered.
"