Incredible, rarely seen images from the Vietnam War

The injured being rushed to the medical camp

Interrogating a Vietcong.
The helicopters are everywhere in Vietnam. It seems the helicopters has become synonymous with the Vietnam war

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR 

Myth: Common belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted.
Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.

Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Fact: Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans' group.

Myth: Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.
Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

Myth: Common belief is that the war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Fact: Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better.

Myth: The common belief is the average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.
Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.

Myth: The common belief is that the domino theory was proved false.
Fact: The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.

Myth: The common belief is that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
Fact: The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border).

Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 (shown a million times on American television) was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.
Fact: No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF," according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc's brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim's cousins not her brothers.

A flame thrower
Not a scene from a film. The guy is guiding the helicopter rescue medical team to land. These guys are from the elite 101st Airborne Division.




Civilians lie dead and a South Vietnamese soldier still sits in his jeep after being shot in the head by a team of hit-and-run Vietcong in 1968. Vietnamese children are running past and looking at the charred and dismembered bodies.
Helicopters land to take away the injured.

A Vietcong POW

An American soldier is alert. At his feet is a dead Vietcong.

The soldier has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is sympathetic and wants to help the woman. On the other hand he knows that she is Vietcong and could cause trouble. That is how an average American soldier felt about the war.

Memorial to the dead.

Passers-by stop to watch as flames envelope a young Buddhist monk, Saigon, October 5th, 1963.

The man sits impassively in the central market square, he has set himself on fire performing a ritual suicide in protest against governmental anti-Buddhist policies. Crowds gathered to protest in Hue after the South Vietnamese government prohibited Buddhists from carrying flags on Buddha's birthday. Government troops opened fire to disperse the dissidents, killing nine people, Diems government blamed the incident on the Vietcong and never admitted responsibility. The Buddhist leadership quickly organized demonstrations that eventually led to seven monks burning themselves to death.

The guy is lighting his cigarette. What indifference!

Luscious, mini-skirted screen-queen Raquel Welch gets help from four enthusiastic GIs as she performs on the Bob Hope Show at Da Nang military base December 18th, 1967। Beautiful Raquel was one of the performers accompanying the popular comedian on his annual overseas Christmas tour that year.

Read More

The Arab terror threat that Israel faces

David Stern complained in response to our article on the Six Day War,

Why do you show only Israeli aggression in 6 days? What about the Arab day by day aggression towards Israel since the day it was found until today?

Well to compensate the so-called bias we are carrying a picture story on the threat of Arab terrorism that Israel faces all the time.

Every Israeli, to the last little girl or women, are hardworking people.

They have a strong survival instinct. Instilled in their genes, perhaps by the genocide they underwent at the hands of Nazis.

The Arabs realised that it was not possible for them to defeat Israel though conventional warfare. They have taken to terror as their new tool for freedom.




This cartoon perhaps shows how every Israeli feels.



Israelis started building walls way back in 1935, to protect themselves from the Arabs.


The Hamas keeps throwing these Qassam rockets into Israel



The whole Arab-Israeli issue is very knotty. The Israelis say they have lived in Palestine since ancient times. The Arabs say they were thrown out by Israel from their homeland after the British Balfour Declaration of 1917. Both are right in a sense. That is what makes the issue so complicated.

Read More

Get to work Maria

Forcing yourself to do something productive becomes difficult when your “job” consists mostly of housewife chores 3 days a week. Oh, there’s workouts and occasional lesson planning for work, but there’s plenty of free time for me to waste, too.

This morning I chose to burn some of that time by going back to bed after breakfast. My muscles and body have felt a bit worn down in the past few days and needed the extra rest, I reasoned.

The morning called for a yogurt mess. Complete with plain yogurt, a banana, a tbsp of peanut butter, and a half cup of Kashi Go Lean Crunch. I really liked the way this combination tasted—very delicious—but I don’t think it held me over long enough.

I woke up from my nap ready to gnaw my arm off. Instead, I settled for a handful of raw almonds.

Very tasty. Their flavor reminds me of something I’ve ate before, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is!

After hanging out with Jillian, and doing Level 2 of The Shred, I felt like dying. I had conveniently forgotten how much I hate the second level. There’s a lot of exercises/moves with lunges or other knee-straining activities. Not my favorite level, for sure, but I did it.

Enjoyed my Green Monster afterwards as an early lunch (and in my favorite cup!). Today I added dried blueberries and cinnamon in with the usual frozen banana, water, milk, and spinach. If you’ve never kicked it up a notch with cinnamon, I’m telling you right now to go try it. It was such a good flavor.

Now it’s time to actually get to work and plan a lesson before heading out the door for Market Trip Tuesday.

If you participated in my weekly weigh-in dare, how did it go?

(Stay tuned… new dare coming soon!)

Read More

Amazing Vietnam war pictures

Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

QUOTES.....

Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.

Richard M. Nixon, speech, April 16, 1954.

If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

John F. Kennedy, speech, New York Times, October 13, 1960.

Should I become President...I will not risk American lives...by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unwise militarily, unnecessary to our security and unsupported by our allies.

John McCain rescued. 26 OCTOBER 1967 - HANOI, VIETNAM: John McCain is purportedly rescued from Truc Bach Lake by the Vietnamese after his plane was shot down 

John F. Kennedy, 1961

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Barry M. Goldwater, Why Not Victory?, 1962.

Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.

Lyndon B. Johnson, statement after Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 4, 1964.

We still seek no wider war.

Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964

We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

A US Special Forces soldier grimaces fiercely as he pulls a dead North Vietnamese soldier from a hole outside the Special Forces Outpost at Ben Het, June 21, 1969. The Americans broke out of the camp in an attempt to penetrate the surrounding enemy troops, killing eleven.

Ronald Reagan, 1964

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.

Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.

Ronald Reagan, 1965

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

George McGovern, speech to U.S. Senate, April 25, 1967.

We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it....I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.

Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967

I see light at the end of the tunnel.

Unidentified U.S. Army major, on decision to bomb Bentre, Vietnam, February 7, 1968.

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

Lyndon B. Johnson, address to nation, March 31, 1968.

Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved.

Stephen Vizinczey, 1968

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture - aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

April 4, 1967. An Army medic aids UPI Photographer Nguyen Thanh Tai after he was wounded by the explosion of a Viet Cong booby trap, 15 miles south of Saigon. Tai was one of six men injured by the blast, which was triggered by a trip-wire

Richard M. Nixon, 1969

Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969

I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

Sen. Frank Church, May 1970

This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.

Dalton Trumbo, Introduction, Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.

Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972

We believe that peace is at hand.

March 18, 1970. Ben Het, South Vietnam: A South Vietnamese member of the Special Forces Mercenary Unit stationed at Ben Het pauses for a touching moment with one of Ben het's children. Ben Het underwent a 50 some day siege.

Frances Fitzgerald, 1972

By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives.

Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973

You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975

If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!

Gerald Ford, April 1975

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.

A wounded marine shrieks in pain. November 12, 1966

Tay Ninh, South Vietnam: a G.I. from the 25th Infantry Division helps a captured Viet Cong through the barbed wire near Tay Ninh Air base. The prisoner was one of some 40 Viet Cong, who attempted to get into the air base to blow up helicopters early March 31st, 1970.

1969. US soldiers reportedly threw out a non cooperative war prisoner from a US Army copter in Vietnam. He supposedly refused to talk during the interrogation and then was simply thrown out.

May 25, 2009. Memorial Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. A man places his hand against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day in Washington

RELATED ARTICLE

The ugly side of America: During Vietnam war

Read More

The Uglier Side of America During Vietnam War: Rape By American Soldiers

RAPE IN VIETNAM

The act of raping women is largely understood to be an inevitable consequence of war. As General George S. Patton predicted during World War II, "there would unquestionably be some raping." Rape and the mutilation of women's bodies are evidently part of the usual military fare in war. During the Vietnam war, rape was in fact an all too common occurrence, often described by GIs as SOP--standard operating procedure. "That's an everyday affair... you can nail just about everybody on that--at least once," offered a squad leader in the 34d Platoon of Charlie Company when questioned by a reporter about the rape that occurred at My Lai. Another GI, Joe Galbally, when testifying for the Winter Soldier Investigation, concluded his report about a specific incident of gang rape by American soldiers by saying, "This wasn't just one incident; this was the first one I can remember. I know of 10 or 15 such incidents at least." Galbally was in Vietnam for one year, from 1967-1968.

In fact, very few American GIs were "nailed" for rape in Vietnam. Despite the fact that it is a crime according to international law, prohibited under the Geneva Convention and punishable by death or imprisonment under Article 120 of the American Uniform Code of Military Justice, acts of rape were rarely reported and seldom convicted during the Vietnam war. The number of rape cases tried did not nearly reflect the rampancy of rape in Vietnam. The conviction rates were low and the sentences extremely light. In Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller provides Army court-martial statistics for rape and related charges: only fifty-eight percent of those tried between 1965 and 1973 were convicted. Information on sentencing was difficult to come by, according to Brownmiller. She writes, "a sentence of two to eight years at hard labor might be typical for rape, even in cases in which the victim had been murdered; sodomy, attempted rape and attempted sodomy were preferred as charges because they carried lesser penalties; and sentences were routinely cut in half by a board of review."

Source

OTHER ATROCITIES

On October 19, 2003, the Ohio-based newspaper the Toledo Blade launched a four-day series of investigative reports exposing a string of atrocities by an elite, volunteer, 45-man "Tiger Force" unit of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division over the course of seven months in 1967. The Blade goes on to state that in 1971 the Army began a four and a half year investigation of the alleged torture of prisoners, rapes of civilian women, the mutilation of bodies and killing of anywhere from nine to well over one hundred unarmed civilians, among other acts. The articles further report that the Army's inquiry concluded that eighteen U.S. soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. However, not one of the soldiers, even of those still on active duty at the time of the investigation, was ever court martialed in connection with the heinous crimes. Moreover, six suspected war criminals were allowed to resign from military service during the criminal investigations specifically to avoid prosecution.

The Toledo Blade articles represent some of the best reporting on a Vietnam War crime by any newspaper, during or since the end of the conflict. Unfortunately, the articles tell a story that was all too common. As a historian writing his dissertation on U.S. war crimes and atrocities during the Vietnam War, I have been immersed in just the sort of archival materials the Toledo Blade used in its pieces, but not simply for one incident but hundreds if not thousands of analogous events. I can safely, and sadly, say that the "Tiger Force" atrocities are merely the tip of the iceberg in regard to U.S.-perpetrated war crimes in Vietnam. However, much of the mainstream historical literature dealing with Vietnam War atrocities (and accompanying cover-ups and/or sham investigations), has been marginalized to a great extent -- aside from obligatory remarks concerning the My Lai massacre, which is, itself, often treated as an isolated event. Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent reporting of the Toledo Blade draws upon and feeds off this exceptionalist argument to a certain extent. As such, the true scope of U.S.-perpetrated atrocities is never fully addressed in the articles. The men of the "Tiger Force" are labeled as "Rogue GIs" and the authors simply mention the that Army "conducted 242 war-crimes investigations in Vietnam, [that] a third were substantiated, leading to 21 convictions... according to a review of records at the National Archives" – facts of dubious value that obscure the scope and number of war crimes perpetrated in Vietnam and feed the exceptionalist argument.

Even an accompanying Blade piece on "Other Vietnam Atrocities," tends to decontextualize the "Tiger Force" incidents, treating them as fairly extraordinary events by listing only three other relatively well known atrocity incidents: former Senator, presidential candidate and Navy SEAL Bob Kerrey's raid on the hamlet of Thang Phong; the massacre at Son Thang -- sometimes referred to as the "Marine Corps' My Lai"; and the war crimes allegations of Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert -- most famously chronicled in his memoir Soldier. This short list, however, doesn't even hint at the scope and number of similar criminal acts.

For example, the Toledo Blade reports that its "review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives records, and radio logs reveals [the "Tiger Force"] ... carried out the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War [from May and November, 1967]...." Unfortunately, this seven month atrocity-spree is not nearly the longest on record. Nor is it even the longest string of atrocities by one unit within its service branch. According to formerly classified Army documents, an investigation disclosed that from at least March 1968 through October 1969, "Vietnamese [civilian] detainees were subjected to maltreatment" by no less than twenty-three separate interrogators of the 172d Military Intelligence (MI) Detachment. The inquiry found that, in addition to using "electrical shock by means of a field telephone," an all too commonly used method of torture by Americans during the war, MI personnel also struck detainees with their fists, sticks and boards and employed a form of water torture which impaired prisoners' ability to breath.

Similar to the "Tiger Force" atrocities chronicled by the Blade, documents indicate that no disciplinary actions were taken against any of the individuals implicated in the long-running series of atrocities, including 172d MI personnel Norman Bowers, Franciszek Pyclik and Eberhard Gasper who were all on active duty at the time that the allegations were investigated by Army officials. In fact, in 1972, Bowers's commanding general pronounced that "no disciplinary or administrative action" would be taken against the suspected war criminal and in a formerly classified memorandum to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, prepared by Colonel Murray Williams on behalf of Brigadier General R.G. Gard in January 1973, it was noted that the "...determination by commanders to take no action against three personnel on active duty who were suspected of committing an offense" had not been publicly acknowledged. Their crimes and identities kept a secret, Bowers, Pyclik and Gasper apparently escaped any prosecution, let alone punishment, for their alleged actions.

Similarly, the Toledo Blade pays particular attention to Sam Ybarra, a "notorious suspect," who was named in seven of the thirty "Tiger Force" war crimes allegations investigated by the Army -- including the rape and fatal stabbing of a 13-year-old girl and the brutal killing of a 15-year-old boy. Yet, Ybarra's notorious reputation may well pale in comparison to that of Sergeant Roy E. "the Bummer" Bumgarner, a soldier who served with the 1st Cavalry Division and later the 173d Airborne Brigade. According to a former commander, "the Bummer" was rumored to have "personally killed over 1,500 people" during a forty-two week stretch in Vietnam. Even if the number was exaggerated, clues on how Bumgarner may have obtained high "body counts" came to light in the course of an Army criminal investigation of an incident that took place on February 25, 1969. According to investigation documents, Bumgarner and a subordinate rounded up three civilians found working in a rice paddy, marched them to a secluded area and murdered them. "The Bummer" then arranged the bodies on the ground with their heads together and a grenade was exploded next to them in an attempt to cover-up their crime. Assorted weapons were then planted near the mutilated corpses to make them appear to have been enemy troops.

During an Army criminal investigation of the incident, men in Bumgarner's unit told investigators that they had heard rumors of the sergeant carrying out similar acts in the past. Said one soldier in a sworn statement to Army investigators:

"I've heard of Bumgarner doing it before -- planting weapons on bodies when there is doubt as to their military status. I've heard quite a few rumors about Bumgarner killing unarmed people. Only a couple weeks ago I heard that Bumgarner had killed a Vietnamese girl and two younger kids (boys), who didn't have any weapons."

Unlike Sam Ybarra, who had been discharged from the military by the time the allegations against him came to light and then refused to cooperate with investigators, "the Bummer" was charged with premeditated murder and tried by general court martial. He was convicted only of manslaughter and his punishment consisted merely of a demotion in rank and a fine of $97 a month for six months. Moreover, after six months, Bumgarner promptly re-enlisted in the Army. His first and only choice of assignments -- Vietnam. Records indicate he got his wish!

Military records demonstrate that the "Tiger Force" atrocities are only the tip of a vast submerged history of atrocities in Vietnam. In fact, while most atrocities were likely never chronicled or reported, the archival record is still rife with incidents analogous to those profiled in the Blade articles, including the following atrocities chronicled in formerly classified Army documents:

* A November 1966 incident in which an officer in the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, severed an ear from a Vietnamese corpse and affixed it to the radio antenna of a jeep as an ornament. The officer was given a non-judicial punishment and a letter of reprimand.

* An August 1967 atrocity in which a 13-year-old Vietnamese child was raped by American MI interrogator of the Army's 196th Infantry Brigade. The soldier was convicted only of indecent acts with a child and assault. He served seven months and sixteen days for his crime.

* A September 1967 incident in which an American sergeant killed two Vietnamese children -- executing one at point blank range with a bullet to the head. Tried by general court martial in 1970, the sergeant pleaded guilty to, and was found guilty of, unpremeditated murder. He was, however, sentenced to no punishment.

* An atrocity that took place on February 4, 1968, just over a month before the My Lai massacre, in the same province by a man from the same division (Americal). The soldier admitted to his commanding officer and other men of his unit that he gunned down three civilians as they worked in a field. A CID investigation substantiated his confession and charges of premeditated murder were preferred against him. The soldier requested a discharge, which was granted by the commanding general of the Americal Division, in lieu of court martial proceedings.

* A series of atrocities similar to, and occurring the same year as, the "Tiger Force" war crimes in which one unit allegedly engaged in an orgy of murder, rape and mutilation, over the course of several months.

While not yielding the high-end body count estimate of the "Tiger Force" series of atrocities, the above incidents begin to demonstrate the ubiquity of the commission of atrocities on the part of American forces during the Vietnam War. Certainly, war crimes, such as murder, rape and mutilation were not an everyday affair for American combat soldiers in Vietnam, however, such acts were also by no means as exceptional as often portrayed in recent historical literature or as tacitly alluded to in the Blade articles.

The excellent investigative reporting of the Toledo Blade is to be commended for shedding light on war crimes committed by American soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in 1967. However, it is equally important to understand that the "Tiger Force" atrocities were not the mere result of "Rogue GIs" but instead stem from what historian Christian Appy has termed the American "doctrine of atrocity" during the Vietnam War -- a strategy built upon official U.S. dictums relating to the body count, free-fire zones, search and destroy tactics and the strategy of attrition as well as unofficial tenets such as "kill anything that moves," intoned during the "Tiger Force" atrocities and in countless other atrocity tales, or the "mere gook rule" which held that "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC." Further, it must also be recognized that the "Tiger Force" atrocities, the My Lai massacre, the Herbert allegations and the few other better-known war crimes were not isolated or tangentially-related incidents, but instead are only the most spectacular or best publicized of what was an on-going string of atrocities, large and small, that spanned the entire duration of the war.

The headline of one Blade article proclaims, "Earlier Tiger Force probe could have averted My Lai carnage," referring to the fact that the 101st Airborne Division's "Tiger Force" troops operated in the same province (Quang Ngai), with the same mission (search and destroy) months before the Americal Division's men committed their war crimes. But atrocities were not a localized problem or one that only emerged in 1967. Instead, the pervasive disregard for the laws of war had begun prior to U.S. buildup in 1965 and had roots in earlier conflicts. Only by recognizing these facts can we hope to begin to understand the "Tiger Force" atrocities and the history of American war crimes in Vietnam, writ large.

Source

The Ugly American (Source:Wikipedia)

The Ugly American is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The novel became a bestseller, it was influential at the time, and it is still in print. The book is a quasi-roman à clef; that is, it presents, in a fictionalized guise, the experience of Americans in Southeast Asia (that is, Vietnam) and allegedly portrays several real people, most of whose names have been changed.



The novel, taking place in a fictional nation called Sarkhan (an imaginary country in Southeast Asia that somewhat resembles Burma or Thailand, but which is meant to allude to Vietnam) as its setting and includes several real people, most of whose names have been changed. The book describes the United States's losing struggle against Communism - what was later to be called the battle for hearts and minds in Southeast Asia, because of innate arrogance and the failure to understand the local culture. The title is actually a double entendre, referring both to the physically-unattractive hero, Homer Atkins, and to the ugly behavior of the American government employees.

In the novel, a Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the [American] people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." Ultimately, the phrase "ugly Americans" comes to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner, while the positive contributions of the Homer Atkins character are forgotten.

But despite the dual meaning, the "ugly American" of the book title fundamentally does refer to the plain-looking engineer Atkins, who lives with the local people, who comes to understand their needs, and who offers genuinely-useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to those of Atkins.

According to an article published in Newsweek magazine in May 1959, the "real" "Ugly American" was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.

1963 film

The story of this novel was made into a film in 1963 starring Marlon Brando as Harrison Carter MacWhite. Its screenplay was written by Stewart Stern, and the film was produced and directed by George Englund.

The late Kukrit Pramoj, a Thai politician and scholar, played the role of Sarkhan's Prime Minister "Kwen Sai". Later on, in 1975, he really did become the 13th Prime Minister of Thailand.

RELATED ARTICLES

Amazing Vietnam war pictures

Read More

THOMAS CASTAIGNEDE

Read More

Stunning pictures from history

1994. Rwanda. This man was tortured by government forces on suspicion of being a Tutsi sympathiser.

Uganda. 1980. A starving child and the missionary.

Humanity gone perverse. 1966. Vietnam. US soldiers drag the body of a dead Vietcong

1963. Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist priest in Southern Vietnam immolates himself to protest against the government policy of torture of priests.

January 12, 1960. A second before the Japanese Socialist Party leader Asanuma was murdered.

Racist America. 1957. Dorothy Counts at the Harry Harding High School in the United States. She was the first black student admitted to the school. She lasted just 4 days. She could not tolerate the racist taunts.

Read More