Vietnam 'Atrocity Vets' Group Backs Kerr y

“Vietnam 'Atrocity Vets' Group Backs Kerry
(2004-05-03) -- Just hours before a group of Vietnam vets are scheduled to publicly declare Sen. John Forbes Kerry unfit to be Commander in Chief, another group of veterans has come out strongly in support of Mr. Kerry's presidential candidacy.

Vets Who Committed Atrocities in Vietnam (VWCAIV) today endorsed Mr. Kerry, calling him "the only candidate who's fit to fight terrorism because he thinks like a terrorist."

"Like us, Mr. Kerry has acknowledged committing atrocities in Vietnam," said the unnamed spokesman for VWCAIV. "That's the kind of toughness we need in the next Commander in Chief."

The anonymous VWCAIV spokesman actually released his statement through an unnamed aide to the Kerry campaign. The group's membership list remains as top-secret today as it was in 1971 when a young John Forbes Kerry first revealed the atrocities in testimony before the U.S. Senate.

ScrappleFace”

“Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.


There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”

The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact


Try reading some more of the report. This is George W. Bush's legacy.”

“SLAM DUNK.”

“(CBS) President Bush was "shocked, and appalled" by what American soldiers did to Iraqi POWs.

Now, meet an American hero who says he felt the same way more than 30 years ago in a different American war: Vietnam.

Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot in 1968, on a day American soldiers gunned down more than 500 unarmed civilians in a village called My Lai.

The dead were women, old men and children. And even more of them would have died if Thompson had not confronted his fellow soldiers, stopped their murderous rampage and airlifted a number of civilians to safety.
For years, the U.S. military tried to cover up the My Lai massacre. And Hugh Thompson was treated not as a hero, but as a traitor.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/60minutes/main615997.shtml



Approximately 170 people were marched down in there, including women, old men, babies. And GIs stood up on the side with their weapons on full automatic and machine gun fire.

“There were no weapons captured. There were no draft-age males killed. They were civilians,” says Colburn, referring to the ditch filled with bodies. “It was full … some of the people were still, they were dying, they weren't all dead.””

“I've read an account of the atrocity.

At some point a two year old boy crawled out of the ditch unhurt and ran off.

A "soldier" grabbed the child by the arm and threw him back into the ditch and shot him dead.”

“I heard a few minutes excerpted from "Winter Soldier" on the radio. It will be rereleased in limited theaters this month and will be available on DVD after that. The little bit I heard was pretty startling.

http://www.wintersoldierfilm.com/”

“I'm looking forward to this one Violin, thanks for the heads up.”