"So closely entwined were some populated localities with the tentacles of the VC base area, in some cases actually integrated into the defenses, and so sympatheic were some of the people to the VC that the only way to establish control short of constant combat operations among the people was to remove the people and destroy the village....

"That it was infinitely better in some cases to move people from areas long sympathetic to the Viet Cong was amply demonstrated later by events that occurred when the discipline of an American company broke down at a place called My Lai."

--General Westmoreland in his memoir A Soldier Reports, as quoted in The Tunnels of Cu Chi, Mangold and Penycate, 1985, p 168.

(The Berkeley Public Library has 3 copies of The Tunnels of Cu Chi, one of which is inscribed:
"Gift from Country Joe MacDonald".)

"On 8 January 1967 the village of Ben Suc -- former population about 3,500 -- was wiped off the face of the earth."
p 165.