Strategic Hamlet Program The Strategic Hamlet Program was a pacification effort established in 1962 to separate and protect

the rural population of South Vietnam from the Viet Cong. Having swept an area clear of insurgents, villagers were moved into a hamlet protected by a local militia and fortified by a ditch, bamboo spikes and barbed wire. Once security had been established, social and economic initiatives were supposed to be implemented to compensate the resettled villagers and win popular support for the Government of Vietnam. However, in practice these vital socio-economic aspects of the program were often lacking. The death of President Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963 effectively ended the program as a national strategy. Operation rolling thunder During the Vietnam War (1954-75), as part of the strategic bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder, U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968. This massive bombardment was intended to put military pressure on North Vietnam's Communist leaders and reduce their capacity to wage war against the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder marked the first sustained American assault on North Vietnamese territory and thus represented a major expansion of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Historians differ in their assessments of the strategic value of Operation Rolling Thunder. Some claim that the bombing campaign came close to crippling North Vietnam's capacity to wage war, while others contend the campaign's effectiveness was limited. Search and destroy patrols went out looking for "Charlie", as they called the Vietcong. But the patrols were very visible, and easy to ambush. This led to atrocities such as "zippo raids" to burn villages, and the unprovoked massacre of peaceful villagers at My Lai in 1968. The My Lai Massacre (Vietnamese: thm st M Lai [t m t m lj], [mlj] ( listen); /mi la/, /mile/, or /mala/)[1] was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Most of the victims were women, children, infants, and elderly people. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies were later found to be mutilated[2] and many women were allegedly raped prior to the killings.[3] While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at M Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest. The massacre took place in the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe of Son My village.[4][5] In modern Vietnam, the event is called the Son My Massacre (thm st Sn M).[6] The U.S. military codeword for the "Viet Cong [sic] stronghold" was "Pinkville".[7] The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in 1969. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were initially denounced by several U.S. Congressmen as traitors. They received hate mail and death threats and found mutilated animals on their doorsteps. The three were later widely praised and decorated by the Army for their heroic actions.[8] Napalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon. "Napalm" is a combination of the names of two of the constituents of the gel: naphthenic acid and palmitic acid.

"Napalm B" is the more modern version of napalm and, although distinctly different in its chemical composition, it is often referred to simply as "napalm".[1] Colloquially, napalm has been used as the generic name of several flammable liquids used in warfare, often forms of jellied gasoline, such as to be expelled by flamethrowers in infantry and armored warfare.[1] Agent Orange is the combination of the code names for Herbicide Orange (HO) and Agent LNX, one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its chemical warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use.[1] The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange.[2] A 50:50 mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, it was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic dioxin compound. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped 55 US gallon (208 l) barrels in which it was shipped, and was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides".[3] During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 US gallons (76,000,000 l) of material containing chemical herbicides and defoliants mixed with jet fuel in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia, as part of Operation Ranch Hand.[4][5] The program's goal was to defoliate forested and rural land, depriving guerrillas of cover; another goal was to induce forced draft urbanization, destroying the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, and forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, thus depriving the guerrillas of their rural support and food supply.[5][6] The US began to target food crops in October 1962, primarily using Agent Blue. In 1965, 42 percent of all herbicide spraying was dedicated to food crops.[6] Rural-to-urban migration rates dramatically increased in South Vietnam, as peasants escaped the war and famine in the countryside by fleeing to the U.S.-dominated cities. The urban population in South Vietnam nearly tripled: from 2.8 million people in 1958, to 8 million by 1971. The rapid flow of people led to a fast-paced and uncontrolled urbanization; an estimated 1.5 million people were living in Saigon slums.[7] United States Air Force records show that at least 6,542 spraying missions took place over the course of Operation Ranch Hand.[8] By 1971, 12 percent of the total area of South Vietnam had been sprayed with defoliating chemicals, at an average concentration of 13 times the recommended USDA application rate for domestic use.[9] In South Vietnam alone, an estimated 10 million hectares (25 million acres, 39,000 square miles) of agricultural land was ultimately destroyed.[10] In some areas TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered "safe" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[11][12] Overall, more than 20% of South Vietnam's forests were sprayed at least once over a nine-year period.[6]