12.17.2007

"america's forgotten soldiers"

This is a crazy, fascinating story about the thousands of Hmong fighters hired by the CIA to fight the Communists during the Vietnam, still currently hiding out in the jungle forty years later: Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding in Laos. The veterans of the CIA's "secret war" are now isolated, hungry, and periodically hunted by the Laotian Communist government. They're somehow still scratching out a primitive existence with their wives, children and grandchildren, somewhere out in the mountains of Laos. You know, it would be nice if Washington would help these guys out, seeing as how the United States is largely responsible for getting them in this situation in the first place. But then again, we've always been pretty good about getting into foreign messes and not cleaning up after ourselves...

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