"Hanoi" Jane Fonda: U.S. Troops Are 'Killing Machines'

Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005 11:45 p.m. EST

"Hanoi Jane" Fonda is claiming that ever since Vietnam, U.S. troops have been trained to commit atrocities against innocent civilians as a matter of military policy.
"Starting with the Vietnam War we began training soldiers differently," the anti-American actress says in an email to the Washington Post.

Fonda claims she learned of the policy switch in "secret meetings" she had with military psychologists "who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel."

One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."


"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."
"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.

Still, the anti-war gadfly cautions, it's important not to blame the soldiers themselves for carrying out war crimes.

Recalling the "Winter Soldier" hearings that she and John Kerry staged in 1971, Fonda lamented: "When you put young people into an atrocity-producing situation where enemy and civilian are commingled, where the 'other side' is dehumanized, we cannot be surprised."

Anti-war vets now returning from Iraq, Fonda cautioned, should be listened to instead of being dismissed as "unpatriotic."

"We have not learned the lessons of Vietnam," she declared.

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