Speech #920072492

Mr. Speaker. I think that sums up the nature of the testimony given by hundreds of refugees. Nowhere in this debate has the gentleman from California. from Santa Clara County. challenged the fact that these refugees from seven different provinces accurately described the devastating bombing by U.S. Air Force jets of their villages climaxing in 1969. the same year when this country dropped over half a million tons of bombs in the country of Laos. doubling the bombing in the previous year of 1968. This circumstance I cannot say establishes with clarity or establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that we pursued a deliberate policy of destroying the villages. but it does show from the testimony of the witnesses who were there and saw it that the bombing was deliberate and was intended to destroy the structure of that society and confirms the testimony of the United Nations experts who said that the bombing was systematically attempting to destroy that society.