My e-mail to David Hackworth

[RummyTheDummy]

Last night, in a moment of rage at Joe Scarborough's apparent lack of understanding of Vietnam I e-mailed Col. David Hackworth with a simple question. Did atrocities, incidents like the cutting of of ears, heads and limbs, actually happen in the jungles of Vietnam?

Here is his response. Pretty cut and dry.

"What Kerry told Congress in 71 was the dead truth...

There were 1000s of war crimes committed by US forces in 'VN. Best, Hack"

www.hackworth.com

[hlthe2b]

1. I wish we could get Hackworth much more tv time....

He is in constant communication with VETS, including those on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their voices, via HIS voice need to get out there.

[Justice]

2. On CNN two nights ago

Bill Schneider said what Kerry said has been documented.

On Edit, the most important part of what Kerry said was -- the government in a sense made them do it by putting them in that situation.

[calimary]

3. Indeed. Anybody hear of a neat little episode called My Lai?

I swear - in 20 years, the sons and daughters of these assholes will be insisting that Abu Ghraib never happened. Mark my words.

[IrateCitizen]

5. Of course it was -- Kerry was relating what others had seen directly

His statement wasn't about "accusing" soldiers of committing war crimes -- it was TELLING the Senate Committee what OTHER soldiers returned from Vietnam had told him about either seeing, or doing themselves, in VN, at a Veterans gathering shortly before his testimony.

Apparently nobody remembers anything about Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil. Either we don't remember it, or we want to ignore it....

[denverbill]

4. That's war.

Americans aren't any better than most other soldiers.

I read a book about WWII recently. It was about the North African campaign. In the book, a soldier recounted a story about how GI's had used Arabs for target practice. They weren't enemy soldiers sniping at the Americans, just ordinary Arabs trying to go about their business.

I have absolutely no doubt Americans could be like Germans during WWII. All it would take would be 'orders'.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mainer]

7. Vets on his message board are mad about the bandaids

I drop in to read his SFTT website. Lots of Republicans and conservative ex-military on the board. But they all seem pretty much disgusted with the Purple Heart band-aids. I hope Hack writes a column about it.

[G_j]

8. recently read this article:

http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR082404.htm


August 24, 2004
Did the U.S. Commit War Crimes in Vietnam?



DAVID MacMICHAEL, [e-mail]
A disabled veteran of ten years active Marine Corps service in Korea, MacMichael was a Defense Department consultant from 1965 to 1969 in Southeast Asia. During most of that period he was attached to the office of the Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In that capacity he reviewed classified reports from the U.S. mission in Vietnam. MacMichael said today: "Some Vietnam veterans are outraged that presidential candidate Kerry in his 1971 Senate testimony spoke of atrocities reportedly committed by U.S. military forces in Vietnam. There is more than a little substance to the charge. The Toledo Blade won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize by revealing that in 1967 the 101st Airborne Division created a 'Tiger Force' ordered to kill all Vietnamese males in Quang Ngi Province. According to official U.S. Army records unearthed by the Blade reporters, Tiger Force killed many hundreds of Vietnamese and, yes, soldiers of that force did proudly ware necklaces of the ears they cut from their victims. The Army did investigate and identified the perpetrators of the crimes but chose not to prosecute them." www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTI... >

MacMichael added: "In 1968, Colonel George S. Patton III -- son of the World War II general -- then commanding a brigade in Vietnam, sent out Christmas cards showing dead Vietnamese stacked up Abu Ghraib-fashion with the message 'Peace on Earth' and signed by him and his wife.... And then, of course, there was My Lai. There, C Company of the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division in 1967 entered that village and methodically executed between 347 and 504 of its unarmed inhabitants, men, women and children. At least 100 of them were lined up in an irrigation ditch by Lt. William Calley and shot to death by his GIs. The slaughter only ended when the shocked crew of an Army helicopter gunship landed and forced C Company at gunpoint to cease and desist. My Lai was far from an exceptional case. In fact, it might never have come to light had not a troubled Americal Division mortarman, Tom Glen, who had not been present, heard about it and, after rotating out of Vietnam to the U.S., wrote to the U.S. commander in Vietnam, General Westmoreland. His letter only mentioned My Lai as 'part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the Americal Division.'"


DAVID CLINE, [e-mail], www.veteransforpeace.org, www.vvaw.org, www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html
Currently national president of Veterans for Peace and a longtime coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Cline is a disabled combat veteran. He said today: "After 30 years, some people are trying to whitewash what happened in Vietnam."


S. BRIAN WILLSON, [e-mail], www.brianwillson.com
Willson is a former Air Force captain who served in Vietnam. He said today: "As head of a 40-man USAF combat security unit in Vietnam, I was separately tasked to assess 'success' of targeted bombings. I discovered egregious war crimes -- daylight terror bombings of undefended fishing and rice farming villages resulting in mass murders and maimings of hundreds of residents. Subsequently, in conversations with members of the 9th Infantry Division, I heard bravado about slaughter of 11,000 'enemy' from ground operations, though the vast majority proved to be unarmed civilians."
....more....

[skygazer]

9. Of course they did

Atrocities are going to occur in any war BUT they tend to show up more and in a more organized fashion when the war aims are unclear and the soldiers on the ground are getting conflicting information. Vietnam was a clusterfuck and so is Iraq in that those at the top keep changing the reasoning and the rhetoric. When you have that kind of confusion at the top, it stands to reason that there is even more of it at the bottom.

Japanese actions in China and elsewhere are somewhat of a different story since part of it was cultural and part of it was deliberate terror tactics sanctioned from the top. (which is not to say that Rummy & company's torture memos were not instrumental in the general atmosphere - I'm sure they were)