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wwIIvetsdaughter
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Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 513
Location: McAllen, Texas
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 Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 3:45 am Post subject: SMUGGLED TAPE SHOWS NORTH KOREA EXECUTING DISSIDENTS |
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| I just saw on Fox a segment of a smuggled tape that purports to show blindfolded North Korean dissidents being executing with a bullet to the back of the head. Anyone here think the Liberals will raise a fuss about this like the so called "torture" at Abu Grab? |
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LewWaters
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Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:41 am Post subject: |
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Can we ever forget the video of the South Vietnamese Officer executing the Viet Cong in Saigon's street with a single bullet to the head? Never mind that he had just led the slaughter of an entire family, something the whining looney left doesn't want to know about.
That is one they will forver use as "proof" of how unjust we were towards the kindly Viet Cong et. al, but I venture a guess those tapes will never see light in Leftstream media nor will they be condemned from the looney left. If they receive cursory mention, it's my guess it will be to say they are unclear or appear staged. 
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I B Squidly
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Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 879
Location: Cactus Patch
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:52 am Post subject: |
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Lew:
The great joke is that these people were anti-war. They were only against the US. They would have us believe that the NVA peacefully took Saigon, mercifully slaughtered millions and it was all the fault of JFK, err Nixon, err LBJ......whatever.
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"KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!"
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PhantomSgt
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Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 972
Location: GUAM, USA
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 5:13 am Post subject: |
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You can't expect MSM to cover a story like this, can you? After all it is sweeps time and they need to cover hard-hitting stories about poetry or dog shows to be competitive in their market share of brain dead morons.
If MSM had this footage of North Koreas' atrocities it would never be shown and buried in a vault somewhere as they worked to get an interview with Kim.
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Retired AF E-8
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Bob51
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Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 156
Location: Belfast
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2005 3:50 pm Post subject: A story the MSM missed? |
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Some interesting echoes of GenrXr's concern about gang leaders (see red highlight):
| Quote: | The 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting was awarded to Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr of The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, for their powerful series on atrocities by Tiger Force, an elite U.S. Army platoon, during the Vietnam War. This is the first part of a two-part series. Part two below.
"Tiger Force," so-called because of its unique tiger-striped fatigues, was a small, mobile fighting unit in Vietnam. Part of the 101st Airborne Division, the elite 45-member platoon was specially trained to "search and destroy." In doing so, it lost any semblance of civilized behavior. Between May and November, 1967, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the central highlands of Vietnam, savagely killing hundreds of unarmed civilians — in some cases torturing and mutilating them — in an orgy of brutality and murder never before revealed to the American public. Prisoners were tortured and executed — their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. Elderly farmers were shot as they worked in the fields. Women and children in underground bunkers were intentionally blown up with grenades. Young girls were raped and murdered. Even infants were slaughtered. Two soldiers tried to stop the killings, but their pleas were ignored by commanders.
The previous, most notorious Vietnam war-crime case, the My Lai massacre, was a single event. The Tiger Force case is different. The atrocities took place over a period of seven months, leaving an untold number of dead civilians.
A review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives records, and radio logs revealed a fighting unit that carried out the longest-known series of atrocities in the Vietnam War — and commanders who looked the other way. Based on more than 100 interviews of former Tiger Force soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, the platoon is estimated to have killed several hundred unarmed civilians in clear violations of U.S. military law and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. One medic said he counted 120 unarmed villagers killed in one month. The cover-up began before the killing ended.
For decades, the case remained buried in government archives — not even known to America’s most recognized historians of the war. But in October, following an eight-month investigation, The Toledo Blade published a four-part series of articles exposing this gruesome episode in the history of America’s longest and most unpopular war. Blade staff traveled to two provinces in Vietnam and to half-a-dozen states for the story. And The New York Times, in a December 28 followup article, added further testimony that Tiger Force acted under orders from superior officers and that it’s conduct was common in Vietnam.
Campaign in Quang Ngai province
To the U.S. military, the Quang Ngai province in central Vietnam was an area that had to be controlled to stop the communist infiltration of South Vietnam. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, created a special task force in 1967 to secure the province. In a conflict marked by fierce guerrilla warfare, the task force needed a special unit to move quickly through the jungles, find the enemy, and set up ambushes. That role fell to Tiger Force. To join the special platoon, soldiers had to volunteer, needed combat experience, and were subjected to a battery of questions — some about their willingness to kill.
By the time Tiger Force arrived in Quang Ngai province on May 3, 1967, the unit already had fought in fierce battles farther south. Less than a week after setting up camp in the province, Tiger Force members began to break the rules of war. It started with prisoners.
During a morning patrol on May 8, 1967, platoon members captured a suspected Viet Cong. Over the next two days, he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. At one point, his captors debated whether to blow him up with explosives, according to sworn witness statements. One former soldier, Spec. William Carpenter, said he tried to keep the prisoner alive, "but I knew his time was up." After the prisoner was told he was free and was ordered to run, he was shot by several unidentified soldiers.
The platoon’s treatment of the detainee — his beating and execution — became the unit’s standard operating procedure in the ensuing months. Time and again, Tiger Force soldiers talked about the executions of captured soldiers — so many that investigators were hard pressed to place a number on the toll.
In the first three weeks of May, platoon soldiers were under frequent sniper fire as they walked unfamiliar trails. Booby traps covered the rolling hills and beaches. On May 15, the unit was ambushed by a North Vietnamese battalion in what became known as the Mother's Day Massacre. From 11:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., the out-manned platoon became trapped in a valley under intense fire. By the time it ended, two Tiger Force soldiers were killed and 25 wounded.
Over the next few weeks, the platoon would change. One Tiger Force soldier, Sgt. Forrest Miller, told investigators the killing of prisoners became "an unwritten law."
In June 1967, Pvt. Sam Ybarra slit the throat of a prisoner with a hunting knife before scalping him and placing the scalp on the end of a rifle, soldiers said in sworn statements. Ybarra refused to talk to Army investigators about the case. Another prisoner was ordered to dig bunkers, then beaten with a shovel before he was shot to death, records state. The killing prompted a medic Barry Bowman to talk to a chaplain: "It upset me so much to watch him die."
But platoon members weren’t just executing prisoners. They also began to target unarmed civilians. An elderly man in black robes, believed to be a Buddhist monk, was shot to death in June after he complained to soldiers about the treatment of villagers. A grenade was placed on his body to disguise him as an enemy soldier, platoon members told investigators. That same month, Ybarra shot and killed a 15-year-old boy near the village of Duc Pho, reports state. He later told soldiers he shot the youth because he wanted the teenager’s tennis shoes. The shoes didn’t fit, but Ybarra ended up carrying out what became a ritual among platoon members: he cut off the teenager’s ears and placed them in a ration bag, Specialist Carpenter told investigators.
Then a new field commander, Lt. James Hawkins, joined the unit, along with two dozen replacements. The newcomers arrived as the platoon was about to move into the Song Ve Valley, which became the center of operations for Tiger Force over the next two months.
Unlike most of the province, the valley was not a center of rebellion, according to villagers and historians. But no one in the farming community was left alone. The Army’s plan was to force the villagers to move to refugee centers to keep them from growing rice that could feed the enemy. But many villagers refused to go to the centers, which were more like prisons and lacked food and shelter. So, the soldiers began burning villages to force the people to leave.
At times, villagers would simply flee to another hamlet. Other times, they would hide. For the soldiers, the valley became a frustrating place. During the day, they would round up people to send to relocation camps. At night, platoon members huddled in camps on the valley floor, dodging grenades hurled from enemy soldiers in the mountains. The lines between civilians refusing to leave and the enemy became increasingly blurred.
On the night of July 23, 1967, a 68-year-old carpenter who had lived in the valley his entire life, Mr. Dao Hue, was walking to his village along the banks of the river. The platoon had set up camp in an abandoned village, where they began drinking beer delivered by helicopter. By dusk, several soldiers were drunk, reports state. When Mr. Dao crossed the river, he ran into Sgt. Leo Heaney, who grabbed the elderly Vietnamese man. "He was terrified and folded his hands and started what appeared to me as praying for mercy in a loud high-pitched tone," Mr. Heaney told Army investigators. He said he realized the man posed no threat.
Sergeant Heaney said he escorted Mr. Dao to the platoon leaders, Lt. Hawkins and Sgt. Harold Trout. Trembling, the man continued to babble loudly, witnesses said. Immediately, Lt. Hawkins began shaking the old man and cursing at him, witnesses recalled. Without warning, Sgt. Trout clubbed Mr. Dao with the barrel of his M-16 rifle. He fell to the ground, covered with blood.
In a sworn statement to investigators, Spec. Carpenter said he told Lt. Hawkins the man "was just a farmer, and was unarmed." But as medic Barry Bowman tried to treat the villager’s head wound, Lt. Hawkins lifted the man up from where he was kneeling and shot him in the face. "The old man fell backwards on the ground, and Hawkins shot him again," Spec. Carpenter said in a sworn statement. "I just knew he was dead as half of his head was blown off."
Lieutenant Hawkins denied the allegations when interviewed by Army investigators in 1973. But in a recent interview with The Toledo Blade, he admitted killing the elderly man, claiming his voice was loud enough to draw enemy attention. But four soldiers told investigators there were other ways to silence him. In fact, the shots gave their position away and led to a firefight.
Four days after the shooting of Mr. Dao, four Tiger Force soldiers were wounded in guerrilla grenade attacks. The platoon struck back. Over the next ten days, the soldiers led a rampage through the valley. The area was declared a free-fire zone — a designation that meant troops didn’t have to seek approval from commanders before attacking enemy soldiers. But Tiger Force soldiers took the words "free-fire" literally. They began to fire on men, women, and children, former platoon members said.
Villagers recently interviewed said they dug dozens of mass graves after the soldiers moved through the valley. Nguyen Dam, 66, recalled the grim task of burying neighbors and friends whose bodies were left in the fields. "We wouldn’t even have meals because of the smell," the rice farmer said. "I couldn't breathe the air sometimes. There were so many villagers who died, we couldn’t bury them one by one. We had to bury them all in one grave."
Days after the attack on the farmers, U.S. planes flew over the valley, dumping thousands of gallons of defoliants to ensure no one would grow rice there during the war. For Tiger Force, the Song Ve campaign was over.
Campaign in Quang Nam province
On August 10, 1967, Tiger Force platoon soldiers rode a truck convoy to Quang Nam province, 30 miles north. The land-scape there was covered by jungles laced with enemy tunnels. The mission was to control the province, but not in the usual way of winning territory. The platoon became engaged in a battle that became a mantra of the Vietnam war: body count. The success of a battle would be measured by the number of people killed, according to the sworn statements of 11 former officers. Body count was also a reason officers were promoted.
In what became one of the bloodiest periods of 1967, the Army launched a campaign on September 11 known as Operation Wheeler. Tiger Force and three other units were led by battalion commander Lt. Col. Gerald Morse, who had taken over the previous month. The 38-year-old officer was described as an aggressive, hands-on commander who rode in helicopters and kept in frequent radio contact with his units in the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry.
Within days, Colonel Morse changed the names of the battalions’ three companies from A, B, and C to Assassins, Barbarians, and Cutthroats. Colonel Morse went by the name "Ghost Rider."
Tiger Force soldiers soon learned this area was different from the Song Ve Valley. It was home not only to the Viet Cong, but also to a far more trained and disciplined adversary — the 2nd Division of the North Vietnamese Army. By early September, the enemy soldiers were setting ambushes for troops, including Tiger Force.
"We soon found ourselves face to face with the enemy," recalled former specialist Carpenter, who now lives in eastern Ohio. "It seemed like every day we were getting hit."
Within 18 days of arriving in the new operations area, five Tiger Force soldiers died and 12 were wounded in fighting that left the remaining platoon members bitter and angry. The platoon began attacking villages with a vengeance, according to former soldiers.
"Everybody was blood thirsty at the time, saying ‘We’re going to even the score,’" former medic Rion Causey said in a recent interview. "I’ve never seen anything like it," said Mr. Causey, 55, now a nuclear engineer in California. "We just came in and cleared out the civilian population." If the people didn’t leave, he said, "they would be killed."
To cover up the shootings, platoon leaders began counting dead civilians as enemy soldiers, according to five former soldiers. A review of Army logs supports their accounts. For ten days beginning Nov. 11, entries show that platoon members were claiming to be killing Viet Cong — a total of 49. But no weapons were found in 46 deaths, records show.
Sgt. James Barnett told investigators he once raised concerns to Lt. Hawkins that Tiger Force soldiers were killing people who weren’t carrying weapons. "Hawkins told me not to worry about it," he said.
Toward the end of Operation Wheeler, there was even greater motivation for killing. An order was given via radio one day that would be remembered by seven soldiers years later. A voice came over the airwaves with a goal for the battalion: We want a body count of 327. The number was significant because it was the same as the battalion’s infantry designation: the 327th. Three former soldiers swore under oath the order came from a man who identified himself as "Ghost Rider" — the radio name used by Lt. Col. Morse.
In a recent interview, Morse, who retired in 1979, denied giving such an order. But during questioning by Army investigators, former private John Colligan said the order indeed was given. In fact, he said the soldier who reached that goal "was to receive some type of reward."
Army radio logs show the goal was achieved: Tiger Force reported the 327th kill on November 19. Three former soldiers said in recent interviews the goal was achieved in part through the killing of villagers. Former private Joseph Evans, who refused to be interrogated during the Army’s investigation, said in a recent interview that many people who were running from soldiers were not a threat to troops. "They were just running because they were afraid. They were in fear. We killed a lot of people who shouldn’t have been killed."
Specialist Carpenter insists he did not join in the shooting. "It was wrong," he said in a recent interview. "There was no way I was going to shoot. Those people weren’t bothering anybody." He told Army investigators he was afraid to express his opinion.
A culture had developed in the unit that promoted the shooting of civilians, with team leaders enforcing a code of silence. Four former soldiers told investigators they didn’t report atrocities because they were warned to keep quiet by team leaders. Former private Ken Kerney recalled in a recent interview the briefing he received before joining Tiger Force. "The commanders told me that ‘What goes on here, stays here. You never tell anyone about what goes on here. If we find out you did, you won’t like it.’ They didn’t tell me what they would do, but I knew. So you’re afraid to say anything."
By the end of November, the long and bloody campaign was over. In a story in the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, Tiger Force’s Sam Ybarra was praised for the 1,000th kill of Operation Wheeler. At a ceremony at the Phan Rang base on November 27, 1967, medals were pinned on the chests of Tiger Force soldiers, including Sgt. William Doyle, who ordered the execution of a farmer during the operation.
Tiger Force left the central highlands in the ensuing weeks, shortly before the lunar new year 1968, when North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive in the south. Communist North Vietnam suffered a heavy military defeat, but its attack on 100 villages and cities scored a huge political and psychological victory that dramatically contradicted U.S. claims of winning the war. The tragic toll in Vietnam continued for another seven years until the last American troops evacuated Saigon in 1975.
The Army investigation
The Army launched an investigation of Tiger Force in 1971 that lasted 4½ years — the longest-known war-crime investigation of the Vietnam conflict. The Army interviewed 137 witnesses and tracked down former platoon members in more than 60 cities around the world.
One Tiger Force soldier, Sgt. Forrest Miller, told investigators the killing of prisoners was "an unwritten law." Twenty-seven soldiers said the severing of ears from dead Vietnamese became an accepted practice. One reason was to scare the Vietnamese. Platoon members strung the ears on shoe laces to wear around their necks, reports state. Former platoon medic Larry Cottingham told investigators: "There was a period when just about everyone had a necklace of ears." Records show soldiers began another gruesome practice — kicking out the teeth of dead civilians for their gold fillings.
In sworn statements, soldiers said Pvt. Sam Ybarra slit the throat of a prisoner with a hunting knife in June 1967, before scalping him and placing the scalp on the end of a rifle. Ybarra refused to talk to Army investigators about the case. Another prisoner was ordered to dig bunkers, then beaten with a shovel before he was shot to death, records state. The killing prompted medic Barry Bowman to talk to a chaplain: "It upset me so much to watch him die."
During the Army’s investigation, former lieutenant Donald Wood said he protested to the executive officer of his battalion about civilian mistreatment by Lt. Hawkins. But he said the officer told him to return to the platoon. He also complained to Lt. Stephen Naughton, a former Tiger Force platoon leader who had been promoted. Lieutenant Naughton, who was interviewed by Army investigators in 1974, said he received the complaint and passed it on to a colonel in the inspector general’s office at Fort Bragg, N.C. "He told me to forget about it, that I would just be stirring things up, and hung up on me," the lieutenant told investigators.
Army investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. Former soldiers described 11 more crimes in recent interviews. But no one was ever charged. Six platoon soldiers suspected of war crimes — including an officer — were allowed to resign during the investigation, escaping military prosecution.
Top White House officials in the Nixon administration were repeatedly sent reports on the progress of the investigation. The findings were sent to the offices of the secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense, records show, but no action was taken. By the time the investigation was over, a justice system that promised to prosecute war criminals, instead protected them and allowed them to continue their military careers.
The only soldier disciplined in the case was Sgt. Gary Coy, the one who brought it to the Army’s attention. The reason: He told investigators he saw a Tiger Force soldier decapitate a baby in November 1967. He later admitted he didn’t actually see the atrocity, but only heard about it. Investigators later interviewed several witnesses who said Pvt. Ybarra bragged about severing the baby’s head to get a necklace. One former soldier, Harold Fischer, said in a recent interview that he witnessed Ybarra leaving a hut with a bloody necklace on his wrist and looked inside to find the decapitated baby.
To this day, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command refuses to release thousands of records that could explain what happened and why the case was dropped. What’s clear is that nearly four decades later, many Vietnamese villagers and former Tiger Force soldiers are deeply troubled by the brutal killings.
Ernest Moreland, a former platoon member, said, "The things you saw. The things you did. You think back and say, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ At the time, it seemed right. But now, you know what you did was wrong. The killing gets to you. The nightmares get to you. You just can’t escape it. You can’t escape the past."
"It was out of control," said Rion Causey. "I still wonder how some people can sleep 30 years later." He subsequently added, "The story that I’m not sure is getting out is that while they’re saying this was a ruthless band ravaging the countryside, we were under orders to do it."
Ken Kerney, now a firefighter in California, agreed that the responsibility went higher. "I’m talking about the guys with the eagles," he said, referring to the insignia of a full colonel. "It was always about the body count."
"Remember, out in the jungle there were no police officers. No judges. No law and order," Mr. Kerney said. "Whenever somebody felt like doing something, they did it. There was no one to stop them."
Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University who has been studying government archives, said they were filled with accounts of similar atrocities. "I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," he said by telephone. "I read through that case a year, year and a half ago, and it really didn’t stand out. There was nothing that made it stand out from anything else. That’s the scary thing. It was just one of hundreds."
"I’ve seen atrocities in Vietnam that make Tiger Force look like Sunday school," said William Doyle, who joined the Army at 17 when a judge gave him — a young street gang leader — a chance to escape punishment. The former Tiger Force sergeant, now living in Missouri, said he killed so many civilians he lost count.
"We were living day to day. We didn’t expect to live. Nobody out there with any brains expected to live," he said. "So you did any goddamn thing you felt like doing — especially to stay alive. The way to live is to kill because you don’t have to worry about anybody who’s dead. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t kill more," Doyle added. "If I had known that it was going to end as quick as it did, the way it did, I would have killed a lot more." |
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