American Killer Heroes

Here we are at the Cu Chi tunnels, just outside Saigon, where the Viet Cong built tunnels to hide in and shoot the American enemy. It is another memorial to mark the war and is a fascinating place to visit, starting off with a black and white film being shown about the heroic efforts of the Vietnamese against the Americans and their allies. A lot was said about American Killer Heroes, these being Vietnamese who killed many American enemies.

You are allowed to go down and crawl along the tunnels which are very narrow for westerners and they were burrowed at depths of 3 and 4 and 5 and 8 meters. From the tunnels they used to be able to shoot the enemy and also lay tyraps for them, usualy involving a hidden hole and some very sharp spikes.

You can also shoot machine guns and Ak-47's for one dollar a bullet (ironic now that they are pricing the attraction in the currency of the old enemy). We declined.

Again,as with yesterday we were shown images of the result of the Americans spraying the countryside with DDT (Agent Orange) to clear away the vegetation and make it difficult for the Viet Cong to hide. The deformities shown were utterly gruesome and, again, one comes back to the theme of clean, fair wars as opposed to weapons of mass destruction and chemical warfare, both of which are used by the West to further its interests. Shameful, utterly shameful. I noticed that the cyclo drivers advertise the museum which we visited yesterday, the War Remnants Museum, officially, as the American War Crimes Museum.