Secret Bombing Of Cambodia (Khmer, Kampuchea)

In the fall of 2000, twenty-five years after the end of the war in Indochina, Bill Clinton became the first US president since Richard Nixon to visit Vietnam. While media coverage of the trip was dominated by talk of some two thousand US soldiers still classified as missing in action, a small act of great historical importance went almost unnoticed. As a humanitarian gesture, Clinton released extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. Recorded using a groundbreaking IBM-designed system, the database provided extensive information on sorties conducted over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Clinton's gift was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind during the carpet bombing of the region. Littering the countryside, often submerged under farmland, this ordnance remains a significant humanitarian concern.
It has maimed and killed farmers, and rendered valuable land all but unusable. Development and de-mining organizations have put the Air Force data to good use over the past six years, but have done so without noting its full implications, which turn out to be staggering.

The Bombing Database

The still-incomplete database (it has several "dark" periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons' worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. Even if the latter may arguably be oversights, the former suggest explicit knowledge of indiscretion. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed -- not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson. The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d'état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide. The data demonstrates that the way a country chooses to exit a conflict can have disastrous consequences. It therefore speaks to contemporary warfare as well, including US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite many differences, a critical similarity links the war in Iraq with the Cambodian conflict: an increasing reliance on air power to battle a heterogeneous, volatile insurgency.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• secret
• bombing
• Cambodia
• Khmer
• betrayal
• CIA
• Pol
• Pot
• Henry
• Kissinger

[cbora311]

The king helped North vietname and vietcong , he may have thought he would have gotten back in return Kampuchea krom ( the lower delta ) which France gave to vietname in 1945 . Politicly speaking the king should not help North vietname at all. He the one who had some parts with the khmer genocide . General Lon Nol who backed by US , he hated vietname . Sadly in 1970, some vietnameses families had forced to leave Cambodia , because Lon Nol dont trust them.He thought vietnames helped vietcong .

[gatorn]

You must be one of those expert in Cambodia history! An expert of self demise perhaps. Let's just say that everything you said are correct! Your inability to think beyond the parameter that is set up for you by the consensus make you a typical idiot. You need to think what war does to people and how it manifest into many factions. I suggest you study up on other countries! Be wise, my son.

[gatorn]

Okay, with that said, let's not forget that under Reagan administration, the CIA and British Intel MI5 were sent on a secret clandestine mission to train Khmer Rough on terrorizing ordinary Khmer people. They taught them how to infiltrate, used advance weaponries like rocket launcher, planting land mind...etc. This is the real genocide. It's this part that no one seems to understand. They either too busy with Viet or communism or the King. It's this part that destroy Cambodia.

[vastedda99]

I can't believe that people still think that souless idealogue, liar and murderer HENRY KISSINGER was a great diplomat! That this Murderer was given the Nobel Peace Prize for all the screwing up and genocide he commited is a disgrace.Kissinger was just as bad as POL POT, another megalomaniacal FANATIC more interested in power and idealogy than humanity.POL POT is already burning in HELL, may HENRY KISSINGER join him there A.S.A.P! Long live the Khmer people and their beautiful Kampuchea.

[ss90ss444]

To think that Kissinger and Nixon never spend a day in jail for their endless crimes against humanity.

[lalacakez01]

Fuck Nixon. They want to fight and they punish the innocent?! The fuckery. Seriously Americans sometimes- they create problems and they never clean it up. Th

[zookeaper1537]

KHMER PRIDE!!!

[zookeaper1537]

Stupid shit happens when theres a drunk president in charge. FUCK NIXON!!!

[Tamasha1]

@AnthonyLoung

SCUM AMERICA MAKING FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST PAKISTAN ON THE ISI.

TOTALLY FALSE THE LYING BASTERDS.

THEY LOSING WAR IN AFGHANISTAN & MAKING UP BULLS & BLAMING PAKISTAN.

THE UNGRATFUL BASTERDS !!! MULLEN & PANETTA LYING SCUM !!!

[AnthonyLoung]

fuck america man

[yun514]

@gatorn its tru what he said i read many book of the genocide s21 and much more the king his an asshole for sure

[bensommerMusic]

To Kissinger, the only good yellow person is a dead yellow person.

[llHyRaXll]

this is bullshit .. american govermnt is fucking criminal

[EkajTheSwordsman]

@BunchJohn Demographic evidence indicates that American bombing killed about 40,000 Khmer Rouge fighters and Cambodian civilians (Marek Sliwinski, Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique (L’Harmattan, 1995), pp41-8, 57). The entire civil war cost 200-300,000 lives; Noam Chomsky found one sentence in a CIA report noting that Sihanouk claimed 600,000 dead on all sides and then used it to propagate the extravagant lie that "the CIA estimated American bombing killed 600,000 civilians!"