Posted on 10/19/2004 2:28:44 PM PDT by Fatalis
Vietnam veteran who teaches at the University of Delaware filed a lawsuit Monday in Philadelphia against the makers of an anti-John Kerry documentary about the Vietnam War, claiming the film suggests he and another veteran fabricated details of wartime atrocities.
In the lawsuit, Kenneth J. Campbell, a UD associate professor of political science and director of the International Relations program there, said the footage of his 33-year-old conversation with a fellow Vietnam veteran about the massacre of a Vietnamese village by American soldiers was purposely taken out of context.
"He got a clip from an old documentary I was in" and misrepresented what happened, Campbell said.
...
In the footage, Campbell is talking with fellow veteran Scott Camil about the massacre at Quang Tri, a village near the border of North Vietnam. The massacre occurred in October 1967.
Both Campbell and Camil were members of an artillery unit, Alpha Battery First Battalion 11th Marines, in Vietnam. Campbell served in Vietnam after Camil, from February 1968 through March 1969; Camil served from March 1966 through November 1967, and left only a month after the massacre.
Camil, reached at his home in Gainesville, Fla., said he participated in the massacre.
Of his conversation with Campbell, Camil said, "Campbell came up to me and asked me, 'Hey, we're looking for someone who knew about an incident, about what happened in Quang Tri. Did you know about it?' " Camil said he had forgotten about it, then remembered it as he was speaking with Campbell.
"That was our discussion," Camil said. "They're trying to use that to say to the effect that we colluded together to tell a lie."
Deceptive narration?
According to the lawsuit, the narration over the conversation between Campbell and Camil implies they were making up the incident: "Their lurid fantasies of butchery in Vietnam were seized upon by John Kerry to help him organize the so-called 'Winter-Soldiers Investigation' - the template he would use to brand all Vietnam veterans," the narrator says.
Campbell said the original scene "comes off quite credibly and moving, but the way Sherwood spliced it and narrated it, it appears as if I'm prodding Scott about a fabrication," he said.
Campbell said he attended the three-day conference in 1971 because he was disillusioned by the war. "We were supposed to be there for the South Vietnamese, but most of the population were peasants in villages," he said. "When you got out there, they were skeptical or mistrusted you, or they were flat-out aiding the enemy."
Camil said that his initial forgetting of the massacre may sound cruel, but the context of the massacre must be understood. "The hardest thing for people to understand is how I could forget about wiping out a village," he said.
He said his and his fellow Marines' job in Vietnam was "to walk around in the jungle and hunt for people to kill." His company measured success through body counts, the killing of everyone within "free-fire zones" on search-and-destroy missions where no one could be trusted, including women and children.
"We went into an area, in a free-fire zone, searched for the enemy and destroyed them, and that included the people, the crops, we poisoned the wells that were the source of their water. Those were things I did, and I did them because that was my job."
Quang Tri was the target of a mission his unit carried out in October 1967, Camil said. The area was part of a free-fire zone. "When we got there, we went on patrol and started scouting the area for people to kill," he said. "We burned the village down and killed everyone."
(pungy sticks, anyone?)
http://www.starbanner.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040424/ZNYT02/404240311/1009/BUSINESS
When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action.
It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years ago to re-examine their hazy memories while assuring them that Mr. Kerry was sure he had not been there.
Very interesting. Distancing himself from his own campaign volunteer.
Could make a good commercial.
John Kerry was in Kansas City when a plot to kill senators was hatched.
The architect of this nafarious plot is currently a volunteer member of his presidential campaign.
Last time I saw Hurley was when he conceeded it was possible Kerry's purple heart may have been self-inflicted on Fox.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1102880/posts
SCOTT CAMIL ARCHIVE --
The Nutty Professor is sueing becasue someone has the gaul to say he wasn't a war criminal. As a Vietnam vet I would love to see this come to trial and have court costs levied against Camil.
Wow! Great link. Thanks!
BTTT!!!!!!!
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