Speech #920071584

I have said we appear to have been guilty of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian Laotian villages. My colleague charges this is neoMcCarthyism. and that I have drawn "a sweeping and unjustified conclusion from insufficient proof." He goes on to state: Mr. McCloskeys total evidence is what he was told by leftwing antiwar groups before he left the United States. the testimony of 16 ndividual refugees from 7 villages. and the USIS report on refugees. First of all. the gentleman errs. there is a great deal more evidence of indiscriminate bombing of Laotian villages than from the three sources he identifies. Let me list the evidence upon which I rely: First. the Christian Science Monitor can hardly be considered a leftwing publication. The first article I recall reading on Laotian bombing was written following a visit to four separate refugee camps by. Daniel Southerland. and appeared in the Monitor on March 14. 1970. A full copy of that article is appended as exhibit C to these remarks. but some significant quotes are set forth here: After questioning a large number of them (the refugees) it was possible to get a picture of the devastation unleashed by American fighterbombers in northeastern Laos over the past two years and it is not a pretty one . . . After the U.S. halted its bombing of North Viet Nam on Nov. 1. 1968. it stepped up as much as 10fold its bombing raids . . . against Pathet Laooccupied northeastern Lace . . . The number of bombing sorties by U.S. Air Force and Navy jets rose to as much as 300 per day. The refugees said about 9 out of 10 of the bombing strikes were carried out by American jets ... the bombings forced people to move out of their homes and into trenches. caves and bunkers where they lived for the most part of two years. The refugees said the bombs flattened many villages in and around the plain and heavily damaged others. They said no villages they knew of escaped the bombing . . . in many bombing raids there were no Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese troops near their villages. (Emphasis added). In 1969 they said they saw the bombers every day when the weather was clear. sometimes so often they could not count the number of raids.