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ot, _ a RE: COUNPEROPTHPA.. CON WEEE we Aa SO ee ce pe nite ree te et € £. people of North Vietnam but also South Vietnam, and because of the ie ; fact that they Vietnamese have al-mrys operated on the principle a of collective leadership that HO's death would not be a hindrance gs to the continuing struggle. " Question: (Unintelligible) Answer: Talked about it. seme. First of all, the Vietnamese dv not consider ‘+e American prisoners to be prisoners of war and they did not consider them to be coming in the jurisdiction of any kind of international agreements, And that's because there has been no declaration of -ar on the part of the U.S. That's: one thing. And they see it es mainly an act of criminal aggression and that these guys are sinpty criminals. t's just like if eemebody came to your heun> and threw a fire bomb in it, or soemebedy walked ante your bLiack yard and started shooting up your kids. That's, you know, the way they Look at these pirates. They don't see them as prisoners of war. They see them mainly as crimes against humanity. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese say that they've, even the fact that they feel that they have every right to try these guards and even execute them, they have taken what they consider to be a humanitarian position in the way that the prisoners are treated and taken care of and expressed a great concern over the fact that some of the early prisoners that had been released have been either shut up by the U. S. military or in the case of one of them, he died. You know, that made ___ _. (unintelligible) a position that he had been killed by the military because he was a black guy and was going to speak out. against war. In terms of their attitude toward GI's in general, they have, in a way they're very sadden:d by the fact that they have to kill them. They understand that most of them are not over there as a matter of choice that. they have been forced into a Situatio.. They say thnt the morale of the U. S. troops is incredibly low, and they describ? some battlefield teams where the guys just sort of sneaked out and | (unintelligible) just sort of paddle together and run away. They said sometimes that a bullet would go throigh three of them. And they've also 125 _ =, pega = Cee oy PRG ert dee ~ a