[Peace-discuss] What we per/commit

[Karen Medina]

> If a military spokesman said an investigation was under way, the story was 
usually dropped.

So true. 
I think the media has no long-term memory. 
The public suffers too.

> “If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we’re doing 
with Abu Ghraib we’ll never correct the problem."

> The harshest sentence [for atrocities during Vietnam] was 20 years’
>hard labor for the rape of a 13-year-old girl by an interrogator in a
>prisoner-of-war compound. The rapist served 7 months and 16 days.

-karen medina
سجن أبو غريب

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:48:20 -0600
>From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>  
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] What we per/commit  
>To: peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>
>[A rather perfunctory review in this morning's NYTBR reminds us of what we 
are
>allowing Bush and Obama to do. --CGE]
>
>	December 14, 2008
>	Many My Lais
>	By TARA MCKELVEY
>
>    THE WAR BEHIND ME
>    Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes
>    By Deborah Nelson
>    296 pp. Basic Books. $26.95
>
>Villagers, acting as human minesweepers, walked ahead of troops in 
dangerous
>areas to keep Americans from being blown up. Prisoners were subjected to a
>variation on waterboarding and jolted with electricity. Teenage boys fishing on
>a lake, as well as children tending flocks of ducks, were killed. “There are
>hundreds of such reports in the war-crime archive, each one dutifully 
recorded,
>sometimes with no more than a passing sentence or two, as if the killing were 
as
>routine as the activity it interrupted,” Deborah Nelson writes in “The War
>Behind Me.”
>
>The archive, housed at the University of Michigan, holds documents from Col.
>Henry Tufts, former chief of the Army’s investigative unit, that reveal
>widespread killing and abuse by American troops in Vietnam. Most of these
>actions are not known to the public, even though the military investigated 
them.
>The crimes are similar to those committed at My Lai in 1968. Yet, as Nelson
>contends, most Ameri cans still think the violence was the work of “a few 
rogue
>units,” when in fact “every major division that served in Vietnam was
>represented.” Precisely how many soldiers were involved, and to what extent, 
is
>not known, but she shows that the abuse was far more common than is 
generally
>believed. Her book helps explain how this misunderstanding came about.
>
>After the My Lai story broke, officials acted quickly. They looked into other
>crimes — for example, studying anonymous letters sent to superiors by 
“Concerned
>Sgt.,” which described the deaths of hundreds of civilians, or “a My Lai each
>month for over a year.” Serious offenses were indeed investigated, and 23 
men
>were found guilty, though most got off easy. The harshest sentence was 20 
years’
>hard labor, for the rape of a 13-year-old girl by an interrogator in a
>prisoner-of-war compound. The rapist served seven months and 16 days.
>
>“Get the Army off the front page,” President Richard Nixon reportedly said.
>Investigations were a good way to do that. A cover-up attracts attention; a
>crime that is being looked into does not. The military investigations, Nelson
>argues, were designed not to hold rapists and murderers accountable, but to
>deflect publicity. When reporters heard about a war crime, they’d call the 
Army
>to see if it would provide information. If they suspected a cover-up, they’d
>pursue the story. If a military spokesman said an investigation was under way,
>the story was usually dropped.
>
>Nelson, who wrote a series on war crimes with a military historian when she 
was
>at The Los Angeles Times, is a diligent, passionate reporter. Her zeal, though,
>sometimes leads to awkward moments. In Vietnam, villagers tell her about
>killings that took place in a ravine, giving her “hope” that she has discovered
>a hamlet where a massacre occurred in 1968. It is a different massacre, as it
>turns out; she seems vaguely disappointed.
>
>Still, this is an important book. Nelson demonstrates that cover-ups happen in
>plain sight and that looking for an exclusive can blind reporters to the real
>story. She also points out that these crimes are endemic to counterinsurgency
>operations. When troops fight among a civilian population, in conflicts that
>extend for years, atrocities are almost bound to happen. “If we rationalize it
>as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we’re doing with Abu Ghraib,” a
>retired brigadier general tells her, “we’ll never correct the problem.
>Counterinsurgency operations involving foreign military forces will inevitably
>result in such acts, and we will pay the costs in terms of moral legitimacy.”
>Whether it’s Vietnam or Iraq, the truth is disturbing. “After such knowledge,”
>T. S. Eliot wrote, “what forgiveness?”
>
>Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect, is a frequent
>contributor to the Book Review and the author of “Monstering: Inside 
America’s
>Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.”
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books/review/McKelvey-t.html
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