Memories as reported in NYT

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December 28, 2003
Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories
By JOHN KIFNER

uang Ngai and Quang Nam are provinces in central Vietnam, between the
mountains and the sea. Ken Kerney, William Doyle and Rion Causey tell
horrific stories about what they saw and did there as soldiers in 1967.

That spring and fall, American troops conducted operations there to engage
the enemy and drive peasants out of villages and into heavily guarded
"strategic hamlets." The goal was to deny the Viet Cong support, shelter and
food.

The fighting was intense and the results, the former soldiers say, were
especially brutal. Villages were bombed, burned and destroyed. As the ground
troops swept through, in many cases they gunned down men, women and
children, sometimes mutilating bodies - cutting off ears to wear on
necklaces.

They threw hand grenades into dugout shelters, often killing entire
families.

"Can you imagine Dodge City without a sheriff?" Mr. Kerney asked. "It's just
nuts. You never had a safe zone. It's shoot too quick or get shot. You're
scared all the time, you're humping all the time. You're scared. These
things happen."

Mr. Doyle said he lost count of the people he killed: "You had to have a
strong will to survive. I wanted to live at all costs. That was my primary
thing, and I developed it to an instinct."

The two are among a handful of soldiers at the heart of a series of
investigative articles by The Toledo Blade that has once again raised
questions about the conduct of American troops in Vietnam.

The report, published in October and titled "Rogue G.I.'s Unleashed Wave of
Terror in Central Highlands," said that in 1967, an elite unit, a
reconnaissance platoon in the 101st Airborne Division, went on a rampage
that the newspaper described as "the longest series of atrocities in the
Vietnam War."

"For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central Highlands,
killing scores of unarmed civilians - in some cases torturing and mutilating
them - in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public," the
newspaper said, at other points describing the killing of hundreds of
unarmed civilians.

"Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers," The
Blade said. "Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields.
Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for
souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their
gold fillings."

In 1971, the newspaper said, the Army began a criminal investigation that
lasted four and a half years. Ultimately, the investigators forwarded
conclusions that 18 men might face charges, but no courts-martial were
brought.

In recent telephone interviews with The New York Times, three of the former
soldiers quoted by The Blade confirmed that the articles had accurately
described their unit's actions.

But they wanted to make another point: that Tiger Force had not been a
"rogue" unit. Its members had done only what they were told, and their
superiors knew what they were doing.

"The story that I'm not sure is getting out," said Mr. Causey, then a medic
with the unit, "is that while they're saying this was a ruthless band
ravaging the countryside, we were under orders to do it."

Burning huts and villages, shooting civilians and throwing grenades into
protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces
throughout Vietnam, they said. That contention is backed up by accounts of
journalists, historians and disillusioned troops.

The tactics - particularly in "free-fire zones," where anyone was regarded
as fair game - arose from the frustrating nature of the guerrilla war and,
above all, from the military's reliance on the body count as a measure of
success and a reason officers were promoted, according to many accounts.

Nicholas Turse, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, has been
studying government archives and said they were filled with accounts of
similar atrocities.

"I stumbled across the incidents The Blade reported," Mr. Turse 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."

Yet there were few prosecutions.

Besides the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1968, only 36 cases
involving possible war crimes from Vietnam went to Army court-martial
proceedings, with 20 convictions, according to the Army judge advocate
general's office.

Guenter Lewy, who cited the Army figures in his 1978 book, "America in
Vietnam," wrote that if a soldier killed a civilian, the incident was
unlikely to be reported as a war crime: "It was far more likely that the
platoon leader, under pressure for body count and not anxious to demonstrate
the absence of good fire discipline in his unit, would report the incident
as `1 VC suspect shot while evading.' "

Mr. Causey, now a nuclear engineer in California, said: "It wasn't like it
was hidden. This was open and public behavior. A lot of guys in the 101st
were cutting ears. It was a unique time period."

Mr. 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 rank
insignia of a full colonel. "It was always about the body count. They were
saying, `You guys have the green light to do what's right.' "

While Mr. Causey and Mr. Kerney became deeply troubled after they returned
from Vietnam, Mr. Doyle, a sergeant who was a section leader in the unit,
seemed unrepentant in a long, profanity-laced telephone conversation.

"I've seen atrocities in Vietnam that make Tiger Force look like Sunday
school," said Mr. Doyle, who joined the Army at 17 when a judge gave him, a
young street gang leader, a chance to escape punishment.

"If you're walking down a jungle trail, those that hesitate die," said Mr.
Doyle, who lives in Missouri. "Everybody I killed, I killed to survive. They
make Tiger Force out to be an atrocity. Well, that's almost a compliment.
Because nobody will understand the evil I've seen."

The American public was shocked in November 1969 when the reporter Seymour
M. Hersh broke the news of the My Lai massacre. Years later, it was revealed
that a Navy Seal team led by Bob Kerrey, who would go on to become a United
States senator and is now president of New School University in New York,
had killed 21 women, children and old men during a raid on the village Thanh
Phong in 1969.

"My Lai was a shock to everyone except people in Vietnam," recalled Kevin
Buckley, who covered the war for Newsweek from 1968 to 1972 and reported on
an operation called Speedy Express, in which nearly 11,000 were killed but
only 748 weapons were recovered.

At his court-martial in the My Lai massacre, Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the
only person convicted in the case, said: "I felt then - and I still do -
that I acted as directed, I carried out my orders, and I did not feel wrong
in doing so." He was paroled in 1975 after serving three and a half years
under house arrest.

In spring 1971, embittered veterans demonstrated against the war in
Washington, many throwing away their medals.

One of their leaders, John Kerry, then a recently discharged Navy officer,
now a senator and presidential candidate, delivered an impassioned speech to
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

American troops in Vietnam, he said, had "raped, cut off heads, taped wires
from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off
limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in
fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned
food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in
addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular
ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Mr. Kerry's account came from his own experience, as well as from a
three-day conference of the fledgling Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At
the conference, he said, "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly
decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not
isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full
awareness of officers at all levels of command."

A transcript of that meeting makes for hair-raising reading. The returned
troops told of the slaughter of civilians; "reconnaissance by fire," or
soldiers shooting blindly; "harassment and interdiction fire," with
artillery being used to shell villages; captives thrown from helicopters;
severed ears drying in the sun or being swapped for beers; and "Zippo
inspections" of cigarette lighters in preparation for burning villages.

There is no shortage of literature on atrocities in Vietnam. Books include
Jonathan Schell's "The Military Half," which recounts the campaign in 1967
in which Tiger Force took part; Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War," a bitter
memoir of his experience as a young Marine officer that is now required
reading in a military history course at West Point; and Michael Herr's
"Dispatches," which captured the madness from a "grunt's" point of view.

David H. Hackworth, a retired colonel and much-decorated veteran of the
conflicts in Korea and Vietnam who later became a journalist and author,
said that he created the Tiger Force unit in 1965 to fight guerrillas using
guerrilla tactics. Mr. Hackworth was not in command of the unit during the
period covered by the Blade articles because he had rotated out of Vietnam.

"Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go," Mr. Hackworth said in a recent
telephone interview. "It was that kind of war, a frontless war of great
frustration. There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by
the numbers of bodies you counted."

Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, an Army spokesman, said the Army had compared the
Blade articles with the written record of the earlier investigation and did
not intend to reopen the case.

"Absent any new or compelling evidence, there are no plans to reopen the
case," Colonel Curry said. "The case is more than 30 years old. Criminal
Investigation Command has conducted a lengthy investigation when the
allegations surfaced four years after they reportedly occurred."



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Yeah and those of us who objected to the manner of warring were the bad
guys, then and now. Go figure.
marc

"Zednik" wrote in message
news:ZeKHb.44$hU2.1689@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----
>
> December 28, 2003
> Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories
> By JOHN KIFNER


Yadda Yadda Yadda ...

Lots of old news snipped. It IS interesting to note how all of this is
coming out now as the Presidential campaign is starting to heat up. Who
will cover my bet that very soon the Dems will start weaving this tapestry
into their campaign. All very intricate and well-planned I do believe.

As for atrocities, let the nay-sayers re-visit Hue in February 1968, after
the Tet Offensive and the NVA departed, and see what I saw.

Dave

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 10:09:04 +1000, "Zednik"
wrote:

>The fighting was intense and the results, the former soldiers say, were
>especially brutal.

Fighting unarmed women and children was intense?

>protective shelters were common tactics for American ground forces
>throughout Vietnam, they said. That contention is backed up by accounts of
>journalists, historians and disillusioned troops.
>

- LMAO

And we should strongly suspect the veracity of "disillusioned troops". I missed
all the "carnage" in 1967, but was an eyewitness to events in Quang Ngai and
Quang Nam province in 1968 as a groundpounder. I witnessed just the opposite.
The NVA/VC were murdering and killing innocent civilians. The NVA/VC leveled
entire villages and killed all in their path. US/ARVN and Allied Forces worked
very hard to stop these communist atrocities.

Greg [who still remembers patrolling with a heavily armed and heavily supported
infantry unit. Who's unit regularily engaged large NVA/VC units and we were
acutely aware who the enemy was. And why would we mess with the unarmed
civilians we were there to protect? The simple answer is, we didn't]

>Who
>will cover my bet that very soon the Dems will start weaving this tapestry
>into their campaign. All very intricate and well-planned I do believe.

Dave,

And foolish. This smallish attempt to revitalize the "awful" angst of Vietnam
is going nowhere. We are currently at war, casualties are being taken and
sacifices called for. Anyone pointing to the horrors of a past war (while in
the midst of a current war) will be deemed woefully out of touch, antiquated,
out of time and unsuitable to serve in time of war.

IOW, How does one politely call these people gawdamn stupid fucking idiots?

- LMAO

Best Regards

Greg

On 29 Dec 2003 1834 GMT, grglnsctt@cs.com (GrgLnsctt) wrote:
>>Who will cover my bet that very soon the Dems will start weaving this tapestry
>>into their campaign. All very intricate and well-planned I do believe.
>Dave,
*********************
GREG L:
>And foolish. This smallish attempt to revitalize the "awful" angst of Vietnam
>is going nowhere. We are currently at war, casualties are being taken and
>sacifices called for. Anyone pointing to the horrors of a past war (while in
>the midst of a current war) will be deemed woefully out of touch, antiquated,
>out of time and unsuitable to serve in time of war.
>IOW, How does one politely call these people gawdamn stupid fucking idiots?
>- LMAO
>Best Regards
>Greg
***************** ****************
Well, we're dealing with the NY-TIMES, here.
The paper which has such a sterling reputation regarding some of its
"reporters" and also the way in it which it slants its headlines and
stories.
---Mac

>Well, we're dealing with the NY-TIMES, here.
>The paper which has such a sterling reputation regarding some of its
>"reporters" and also the way in it which it slants its headlines and
>stories.

Mac,

I think the average citizen doesn't give a rip about what happened 35 years
ago. Currently available to them, in the present, are fresh/timely images and
ideas from SW Asia. Any politician adopting/recalling Vietnam war rhetoric will
be met with scorn and derision (in the case of JF Kerry, Vietnam reduced him to
doubt and indecision, not the qualities the people want from their leaders in
times of war). Any publisher trying to parallel Vietnam war activities with SW
Asia will be met with richedly deserved silence.

The scorned liberal left wishes passionately for another Vietnam. Unfortunately
for them, this war is being run by an able and strong leader, Cabinet, Pentagon
and I think the vast majority of the House/Senate are strongly behind the war
effort.

Best Regards

Greg

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 1834 +0000, GrgLnsctt wrote:

>>Who
>>will cover my bet that very soon the Dems will start weaving this tapestry
>>into their campaign. All very intricate and well-planned I do believe.
>
> Dave,
>
> And foolish. This smallish attempt to revitalize the "awful" angst of Vietnam
> is going nowhere. We are currently at war, casualties are being taken and
> sacifices called for. Anyone pointing to the horrors of a past war (while in
> the midst of a current war) will be deemed woefully out of touch, antiquated,
> out of time and unsuitable to serve in time of war.
>
> IOW, How does one politely call these people gawdamn stupid fucking idiots?
>
> - LMAO
>
> Best Regards
>
> Greg

Hey Gunny, I think you say "gawdamn stupid fucking idiots" Heh Heh, my
sentiments exactly.

Semper Fi

Rgardez

Dave

"GrgLnsctt" wrote in message
news:20031229133434.13822.00001730@mb-m10.news.cs.com...
> >Who
> >will cover my bet that very soon the Dems will start weaving this
tapestry
> >into their campaign. All very intricate and well-planned I do believe.
>
> Dave,
>
> And foolish. This smallish attempt to revitalize the "awful" angst of
Vietnam
> is going nowhere. We are currently at war, casualties are being taken and
> sacifices called for. Anyone pointing to the horrors of a past war (while
in
> the midst of a current war) will be deemed woefully out of touch,
antiquated,
> out of time and unsuitable to serve in time of war.
>
> IOW, How does one politely call these people gawdamn stupid fucking
idiots?

Not hard. Just look in a mirror and, sotto voce and with sympathy, describe
what you see.

ted