Political Quotes

“I suspect there are not many Americans who have either visited or know much about Laos. It is a poor country, geographically about the size of Utah, with less than 7 million people. It is wedged between Vietnam and Cambodia. I am sure that back in the 1960s and 1970s, even fewer Americans had heard of Laos, and virtually no one was aware that the United States was involved in a war in Laos. For nearly a decade, from 1964 to 1973, the United States military unleashed more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos during some 580,000 bombing missions. That amounts to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. Laos became, and still is, the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. It was part of a U.S. war in Laos that was never declared or publicized. It was kept secret. It was done to support the Royal Lao government against the Pathet Lao and to interdict the Viet Cong along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but the bombs destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civilians. As is so often the case with landmines, cluster bombs, and other types of munitions, wars end but the suffering continues. The Vietnam War ended in 1975. In April of 1975, the Senate Armed Services Committee, by a one-vote margin, voted to finally end the authorization for that war. I remember it very well because that was the first vote I cast as a member of the Armed Services Committee.…”