The Green Berets (1968)

David Janssen: George Beckworth

Photos 

Quotes 

• George Beckworth : How do you know we should be fighting for this present government? They've had no free elections. They've had no constitution. Six months ago, a committee was appointed to form a constitution... still no constitution.

  Sergeant Muldoon : The school I went to, Mr. Beckworth, taught us that the thirteen colonies, with proper and educated leadership, all with the same goal in mind, AFTER the Revolutionary War, took from 1776 to 1787, eleven years of peaceful effort, before they came up with a paper that all thirteen colonies would sign... our present Constitution.

  [the audience applauds] 

  George Beckworth : That's very good, Sergeant. But there are still a lot of people who believe that this is simply a war between the Vietnamese people! It's their war, let's let them handle it.

  Sergeant Muldoon : Let them handle it, Mr. Beckworth?

  [Points to a collection of weapons] 

  Sergeant Muldoon : Captured weaponry.

  [as Muldoon takes the weapons from the board, he names them, then drops them on the table in front of Beckworth] 

  Sergeant Muldoon : From Red China: Chicom K-50, Chinese communist! SKS Soviet-made carbine, Russian communist! Ammunition, Czechoslovakian-made... Czech communist! No sir, Mr. Beckworth! It doesn't take a lead weight to fall on me or a hit from one of those weapons to recognize that what's involved here is communist domination of the world!

• Colonel Mike Kirby : What are you going to say in that newspaper of yours about us in Vietnam?

  George Beckworth : If I say what I feel, I may be out of a job.

• George Beckworth : Petersen, what was all that talk about ladders and coffins

  Sgt. Petersen : Oh, when Charlie knows he's got a nice box to be buried in, he's just as brave as hell.

  George Beckworth : What about the ladders?

  Sgt. Petersen : They throw the ladders across the wire to get at us. And later they use them for litters.

  George Beckworth : Later on... you mean after everybody's dead?

  Sgt. Petersen : Yes, everybody. Men... women... and children. Everybody.

• George Beckworth : Is this what you really do out here? Sponsor an Inquisition?

  Colonel Mike Kirby : Oh, is that what you're gonna say in that newspaper of yours?

  George Beckworth : I'm gonna tell my readers the facts of what I saw in there!

  Colonel Mike Kirby : What you saw in there was nothing.

  George Beckworth : I don't call brutality nothing! Torturing one of your own South Vietnamese men!

  Colonel Mike Kirby : That man in there was lining us up for a VC mortar crew!

  George Beckworth : Even if that's true, there is still such a thing as due process!

  Colonel Mike Kirby : Out here, due process is a bullet!