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Civilian Killings Went Unpunished. Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 9 August 2006
6 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts Justice International USA History

By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times

The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.

They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened his bandoliers and lighted a cigarette.

Just then, the voice of a lieutenant crackled across the radio. He reported that he had rounded up 19 civilians, and wanted to know what to do with them. Henry later recalled the company commander’s response:

Kill anything that moves.

Henry stepped outside the hut and saw a small crowd of women and children. Then the shooting began.

Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.

Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter and held a news conference to air his allegations. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre.

Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth - about the Feb. 8 killings and a series of other atrocities by the men of B Company.

The files are part of a once-secret archive, assembled by a Pentagon task force in the early 1970s, that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known.

The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators - not including the most notorious U.S. atrocity, the 1968 My Lai massacre.

Though not a complete accounting of Vietnam war crimes, the archive is the largest such collection to surface to date. About 9,000 pages, it includes investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military brass.

The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese - families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity.

Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, says he once supported keeping the records secret but now believes they deserve wide attention in light of alleged attacks on civilians and abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

"We can’t change current practices unless we acknowledge the past," says Johns, 78.

Among the substantiated cases in the archive:

• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.

• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.

• One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

Investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners was strong enough to warrant formal charges. These "founded" cases were referred to the soldiers’ superiors for action.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...

Forum posts

  • Well here the truth is out now. We knew it for along time. The justice system of the United States is protecting criminals, that is the clear message send out here to the international comunity.

    • the only ones who can save our dignity is the people of the US.-

    • The only crime that took place in Vietnam was that of our government who sent us there illegally. And any warcrimes or illegal activities that happened are on the government’s head, not the troops that were forced to go there and kill poor people. Our government, if you can call them that without shaking your head in disgust, commits acts of treason against our own people everyday with illegal taxes, ACTS, laws, etc. slowly taking away our God given Rights, giving them to illegal aliens. And we want to shoot the messenger? Me thinks not! If you want to hold accountable, those who are wholly responsible for what happens in any illegal war or police action, you blame the bastards weilding the tool, not the tool itself. The poor bastards who had to go there and then come back here and somehow find a way to eek out a life, find happiness and live with themselves, have received all the punishment they deserve; by living with the memories of the faces of those poor people they were ordered to kill. They did their jobs. Please submit all complaints to the management.

      JR
      Veteran
      UpState NY

  • Soldiers need to be taught to refuse to obey unjust orders. Soldiers need to be taught respect for life. Abuses are wide spread. Countries with the highest rates need to train their soldiers differently. America with its high civilian abuse rates and friendly fire incidences needs to focus on changing her own training methods.

    • And suppose a soldier does refuse illegal orders, will he be supported? Lt. Ehren Watada refused and he is receiving very little public support. It takes a very brave man to say no. He deserves support.

    • Part of something I’m writing. Tells a bit of the story of those days. Notice the UCMJ regulation requiring us to only obey Lawful Constitutional Orders. Even from the prez. We always knew this. Some of US anyway. And.. that we are to protect and uphold the Constitution not only against ’foreign’ enemies.. but domestic enemies. We found then.. in that time.. that our Real Enemies were the domestic variety.. the same we suffer so terribly now. ’dead eye’ Dick Cheney and Rumdum were in nixon’s white house then...

      ’Our Armed Defense Forces these many decades, by their Deception™, have been Grievously employed by them in “pre-emptive wars”, Great Crimes™ against All and our Constitution, for their profit and prosecution of empire!! Our Fallen Betrayed.. Defiled!! In Spirit and Action. Our Armed Forces are by Constitution and Moral Rightfulness only Lawfully our Armed Defense Forces. We have been ’led’ to great wrong against All, we now in anguish again fallen to the Abyss. I served there thirty five long years ago: among them, with them, the finest and the worst, through thick and thin, heat and cold, Hope and Fear. For Justice and Our Honor I thought. Soon swept away, as I surveyed their field of perverse dreams, not altogether a field of Honor. To begin, I was brought to Swear an Oath: “I, do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..”. In the end…our Duty became Clear….the Uniform Code of Military Justice [“(UCMJ) 892ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.”] The waters though, were deeper, darker. [ART.94 “mutiny” Punishable by Death] If the forces controlling our Nation were truly Constitutional Authorities, and, Acting rightly within the constraints of our Constitution in making their orders to us, we would certainly be Guilty of Mutiny. It was clearly, chillingly evident to us of Diogenes Station, Turkey that this was not the case. So. Onto that fearful stage we went, our fellows side by side, our chosen instrument the SLF Sinop Liberation Front, our Loyalty our Shield, and secured and held in our small part and place, the Honor of our Nation, your Honor, in that day. All the while carrying out our missions, critical to the well being of our Nation’s People, as citizen soldiers, with élan. Sir! No Sir! Our Officers understood, silently, without comment, they stood for us. All across the world, unknownst to each other, the gross criminality seen clearly by all, many, in many stations, Rose Up in each their own ways and Held, in what, little recounted, is among our Armed Defense Force’s finest hours! Our Honor Proven and Secured. Much of our resistance in the deadlier zones was to our own horror by necessity brutal, our flesh and that of countless innocents caught in the gears of that monstrous killing machine, it was the only possible effective response by we as individuals to their staggering power and brutality: to Save Lives. “the finest and the worst” The deeply painful secret internal war that we had to embrace and fight. No apology tendered. None due. That time has arrived again and our most courageous and principled soldiers are now beginning to make these same personal sacrifices for you and I…and Justice. We The People need to be aware of this and actively move to offer these fine individuals all due support, unlike that which we suffered in our time ‘lashed to the mast’, through to this day. We All Understood then, each in our own way, that ahead a Greater Challenge awaited us. We have arrived. On the eve of our ‘triumph’, Commanding General, Charles J. Denholm, USASA, flew half way around the world, informally met with us, thanked us personally, extended the CC’s “thanks” for an “exceptional product” and proffered an offer from the Commander In Chief of a Presidential Unit Citation. Respecting CG Denholm his Fine Service, though of pride and warcraft of our ‘palace revolt’ not demonstrably so to him, we were humbled, nonetheless shocked. We declined. These many actions taken all across our military, have been kept by them, the same who beset us today, from your Knowledge these decades since, of our Just Repudiation of their Crimes, their Dishonor, to their Shame. Our Armed Defense Forces became much better organizations, changing significantly, in many ways for the higher good, as a direct result. We have long left that field, those of us still alive to live on, but they still are there in our ‘government’, controlling their keep, bitterly whispering and conspiring viciously against us all these years, behind our backs, their cowardly predator’s game....’ >