Wanderthread

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 5:29am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 6:49am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 6:53am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 6:55am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 6:56am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 8:02am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 8:14am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 8:21am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 9:42am

Thread.

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 10:09am

The 1968 My Lai massacre became public in 1969, but officials at the time said My Lai was an “isolated incident”–the same thing we hear about atrocities today in Iraq and elsewhere. After that, GIs described dozens of other My Lai-style atrocities in which they said they had taken part. Those GIs were called liars and traitors, and no one was ever punished for any of the events they described.

Now the Los Angeles Times has published a page one story, “Vietnam Horrors: Darkest Yet,” based on official government documents detailing 320 incidents of Vietnam war atrocities that were confirmed by army investigators. The documentation, according to the Times , comes from “a once-secret archive assembled by a Pentagon task force in the early 1970s.” This “Vietnam War Crimes Working Group” archive, 9,000 pages long, was discovered by Nick Turse, who was doing research for a Ph.D. dissertation as a student at Columbia University. Turse shares the byline on the Times report with staff writer Deborah Nelson.

The stories are terrible. “Kill anything that moves” – that’s what one company of American soldiers was told when they set out on a sweep of the rice paddies on Vietnam’s central coast in February 1968, according to Jamie Henry, at the time a 20-year old medic. So they shot and killed 19 unarmed civilians, women and children. When Henry got home to California, he held a news conference describing the slaughter, but there was no official response. Now we learn that the army did investigate his report — and concluded it was accurate – but did nothing to punish the guilty.

The official line that abuses were “confined to a few rogue units” is demolished by the material Turse discovered. Atrocities were committed, according to the Times , by “every army division that operated in Vietnam.” They found a pattern of “recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese–families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing,” who were “murdered, raped and tortured with impunity” by American soldiers.

Crashproof · February 26, 2019, 11:21am

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 11:23am

mindysan33 · February 26, 2019, 6:41pm

Seems like their is conflicting reports on this, with the Indian government saying they destroyed a terrorist camp inside Pakistan borders, killing some people there, and the Pakistani government saying that they basically just unloaded in an empty field and then headed back over the border.

nimelennar · February 26, 2019, 6:49pm

Hey, if they’re going to bomb a non-military target, an empty field seems like the best possible option.

mindysan33 · February 26, 2019, 6:51pm

Seems like it’s all election cycle spectacle (if true) and an attempt to keep the recent attack up front in people’s attention (and to detract from things like the “cow vigilantes” that are attacking Muslims in the northern part of India… In fact an actually attack or just bombing in an empty field could be that… Wag the dog, either way.

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 10:25pm

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 11:35pm

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 11:36pm

Wanderfound · February 26, 2019, 11:39pm

Thread.

MarjaE · February 26, 2019, 11:42pm

Well, she’s had a lot of stuff handed to her.