You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Clinton Pays Landmark Visit to Laos

HeadlineJul 12, 2012

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has visited Laos, becoming the first U.S. official in her position to do so in nearly 60 years. During her brief stay, Clinton met with a young victim who lost his forearms and eyesight after an unexploded bomb dropped by the United States during the Vietnam War went off beneath him. The victim urged Clinton to do more to clean up the millions of unexploded bomblets that remain in Laos and that have killed some 20,000 people and injured many more over the past 40 years. The United States has never apologized to Laos for its nine-year bombing campaign, which dropped more than two million tons of bombs between 1964 and 1973. The bombing of Laos was one of the most intense of any country in history, surpassing the combined bombing of Japan and Germany during the Second World War.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top