"A My Lai a Month" - new Turse articles
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 2:33 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Colleagues,
The current issue of The Nation carries a detailed (and depressing) article by Nick Turse on US military atrocities among civilians in the Mekong Delta, focussing on Operation Speedy Express by the Ninth Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Julian Ewell in 1968/69. It also describes internal investigation cover-ups and how media accounts were suppressed or defanged:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse
A second article in the same issue elaborates on the specific issue of US media engineering in that case:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse_web
C. Giebel
UW-Seattle
----------
From: Nick Turse <nat9@columbia.edu>
Date: Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:14 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Christoph,
I just wanted to thank you for sending this out to the list. I appreciate it.
All best,
Nick
----------
From: Vietnam Indochina Tours <info@indochinatours.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:11 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks to C. Giebel for posting Nick Turse's article "A My Lai a Month."
While I am certainly not an apologist nor defender of General Julian Ewell or Col. Ira Hunt (I find them to be charlatans at the extreme best) I believe we must be careful when making allegations such as those that Mr. Turse makes in his article.
Mr. Turse makes the case that 9th Infantry Division's Operation Speedy Express from December 1968 through May 1969 in the Mekong Delta produced a Mai Lai a month (a ". . . new snapshot of the abject slaughter that typified US actions during the Vietnam War."), and that this was the result of three factors:
1. Indiscriminate use of infantry firepower on civilians;
2. Indiscriminate use of artillery on civilians; and
3. Indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilians.
While I do not contest Mr. Turse's contention that indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilians did produce civilian casualties which may have been significant, I find his evidence in support of indiscriminate infantry and artillery attacks on civilians lacking, especially his contention of infantry attacks on civilians. In support of his contention of indiscriminate infantry attacks on civilians, Mr. Turse provides us with the direct testimony from but two infantry sources: that of (1) a "Concerned Sergeant" via an undated series of letters, and that of (2) a medic from C, 2/39th Battalion, two persons who actually served in line positions during Operation Speedy Express. From a division which totaled over 25,000 men and possessed 36-different line infantry companies, two first-hand accounts is both scant and wholly inadequate evidence to support his thesis that the indiscriminate use of infantry firepower was a significant causal factor in the "My Lai a Month." As well, I think Mr. Turse's evidence regarding the indiscriminate use of artillery is lacking.
Mr. Turse notes that his evidence rests upon four major collections of archival and personal papers, among them one from Kevin Buckley of Newsweek Magazine who wrote an article which appeared in Newsweek in the 19 June 1972 issue. In that article Mr. Buckley noted "I traveled throughout Kien Hoa [Province]- on foot, by jeep, in boats and by raft - to talk to people . . ." which leads one to believe that Mr. Buckley exhaustively traveled throughout the province. I find that incredulous on its face for we traveled throughout the province with 85-to-90 heavily armed infantrymen over five-months and suffered over 200 [sic.] casualties killed and wounded. Had Mr. Buckley done as he claimed he most certainly would have met the same fate of which Alex Shimkin met: death. Aside from a very few main roads, the provincial capital and the district towns, the province was the exclusive reserve of the NLF. Given this unbelievable detail I find Mr. Buckley's account dubious.
Mr. Turse gives the impression that 9th Division infantrymen were relentlessly hunting and shooting anything and everything which moved in order to produce the body count which the division commander and his chief-of-staff demanded; that is at fantastic variance from the facts: we were first and last concerned with our own survival, and not at all interested in killing civilians for the sake of the division's demented senior brass; and speaking of senior brass, nowhere does Mr. Turse even take note of General Hollis, Gen. Ewell's replacement, who commanded the division for a full half of Operation Speedy Express and was at least as responsible as General Ewell for any unnecessary civilian casualties.
Though I believe the 9th Division's Operation Speedy Express certainly does merit critical assessment for possible war crimes, I do not believe that conjecture, innuendo, hearsay, speculation, a lack of definitive detail, and the lack of a far more broad sampling of the participants, will serve as proof in support of the contentions which Mr. Turse makes.
Courtney Frobenius
Platoon leader and company commander
B, 3/60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division
28 December 1968-10 June 1969
----------
From: Nick Turse <nat9@columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 3:28 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>, Vietnam Indochina Tours <info@indochinatours.com>
I'm generally not in the habit of defending my work on listserves, so I'll leave it to others to judge whether they're convinced by the evidence I marshal -- keeping in mind, I hope, that magazines have space considerations and that I was telling the story of not only civilian killings during Speedy Express (from many U.S. and Vietnamese sources), but that of a whistle-blower witness's allegations and the Army's covert efforts to keep him from going public as well as a major news magazine's efforts to marginalize the larger story for the sake of the Nixon Administration. Those eager for more evidence will, I hope, take a look at my forthcoming book, when it's published.
I do, however, take issue with Mr. Frobenius calling Kevin Buckley's (and the late Alex Shimkin's) reporting into question without a discernible shred of evidence that there was anything "dubious" about it. Both men reported from extremely hazardous areas on many occasions. One need only leaf through old issues of _Newsweek_ or crack open The Library of America's _Reporting Vietnam_ to read Buckley's "front line" coverage. And the circumstances of Shimkin's death in Quang Tri are evidence enough of his efforts as a combat correspondent. Both were highly regarded, well-respected and never, to my knowledge, have their been any doubts as to the veracity of their work.
For "Pacification's Deadly Price," both Buckley and Shimkin traveled to areas of the Mekong Delta that had been battered prior to 1971, but had, by that time, been "pacified." This allowed them to more easily interview witnesses and survivors -- some of whom are quoted or cited in my recent articles and would have been quoted in even greater length in 1972 had Newsweek run their full article. (I should also mention that Shimkin reported on his own from the Delta gathering corroborating evidence and interviewing other witnesses.)
Not only were their interviews with Vietnamese witnesses consistent with contemporaneous reports from U.S. and Vietnamese sources referenced in my article, but they were also corroborated by hospital records and in numerous interviews with U.S. and RVN officials that Buckley and Shimkin carried out in 1971. Their findings were also consistent with the allegations of the 9th Infantry Division whistle-blower (in letters were not "undated" as Mr. Frobenius contends) whom the Army sought to stifle. His allegations were further corroborated by field grade officers, enlisted men and pacification officials cited in my articles.
Given the amount of available evidence, not to mention the Army's actions in this case -- lies, a cover-up, a failure to investigate, etc. -- I would kindly suggest that the onus ought not be on Buckley and Shimkin. As such, I suggest that Mr. Frobenius present his evidence regarding Buckley and Shimkin's reporting.
I must admit that Mr. Frobenius' response has been atypical of the Vietnam veterans who have privately written me concerning these latest articles of mine. As such, I would also be interested to know if Mr. Frobenius ever encountered any evidence of Vietnamese civilians killed by U.S. forces during his tour -- be it hearsay (as with, say, Ron Ridenhour's evidence regarding the massacre at My Lai) or eyewitness (as with those Buckley and Shimkin interviewed).
With that, I'll end my part in this thread.
Sincerely,
Nick
Nick Turse, PhD, MPH
----------
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:05 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Reading Nick Turse's spirited defense of Kevin Buckley and Alex Shimkin bearing journalistic witness to war crimes in Viet Nam and browsing through the Toledo Blade's web site on the Tiger Force atrocities --note to self: why am I doing this to myself on a perfectly overcast November day in Seattle?-- I found the following pieces of related interest:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/SRTIGERFORCE/111300139
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/SRTIGERFORCE/405120331
The moral dilemmas and physical dangers military reporter Dennis Stout faced as he witnessed civilian massacres by the 101st Airborne in Quang Ngai must have been immense, but he had the courage to come forward and speak out --repeatedly-- only to be stymied and silenced at every turn. And now all these files are "lost."
Coincidentally, today's news indicate that the new Obama administration in the US will most likely not pursue charges against Bush et al. on the Iraq aggression, torture, extraordinary rendition, etc. The lack of political will among the US establishment to bring war criminals to justice after the war in Viet Nam only enabled subsequent foreign policy and war-making outrages, culminating in the Iraq attack. Turse's work (like Lady Borton's and others' before), uncomfortable as it may be, is so important in this regard. If, once again, the Iraq war perpetrators will walk away free on the same dubious grounds of US exceptionalism and domestic political expediency, the next million-plus "over there" will already be condemned to their future deaths.
C. Giebel
UW-Seattle
----------
From: Tobias RETTIG <tobiasrettig@smu.edu.sg>
Date: Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 5:46 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear All,
The Toledo blades articles on the Tiger Force became a book entitled
"Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War by Michael Sallah and Mitch
Weiss (Paperback - Jun 13, 2007)" - just google or amazon it.
Best,
Tobias
Tobias Rettig
School of Social Sciences
Singapore Management University
------------------------
From: Vietnam Indochina Tours <info@indochinatours.com>
Date: 2008/11/19
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
“A My Lai A Month,” Nick Turse’s 18 November post.
I apologize for giving you the impression that my experience in the Mekong Delta and Kien Hoa (now Ben Tre) Province was restricted to the 28 December 1969 through 10 June 1969 time-frame; I additionally served as senior advisor to the RVN’s 43rd Vietnamese Ranger Battalion in Vinh Long, an adjacent province to Ben Tre, from September 1970 through March 1971; as an element of the corps reserve the battalion operated in nearly every province in IV Corps, or Military Region IV, including Kien Hoa Province, during that period of time. Further, I lived in Vietnam from June 1995 through June 1998 and on numerous occasions had the opportunity to visit Ben Tre Province and meet with Major General Nguyen Huu Vi who was the NLF wartime commander for Ben Tre Province during Operation Speedy Express and thereafter, as well as with numerous officers and men from his NLF provincial units. During this period of time in the 1990’s General Vi was the President of the Ben Tre Veteran’s Club. My vantage point relative Ben Tre Province and Operation Speedy Express was both during Operation Speedy Express and in the aftermath of Operation Speedy Express, as well as after the war’s conclusion and through over 15-years of study and research.
“Pacification’s Deadly Price”
The response I made to Mr. Buckley’s reporting is specifically on his reporting of Ben Tre Province and specifically with respect to his article, Pacification’s Deadly Price, in the 19 June 1972 issue of Newsweek. I have no specific knowledge of Mr. Buckley’s other reporting in Vietnam and thus am unqualified to comment upon it . . . I am judging his reporting in Ben Tre solely on its own merits. You appear make a syllogistic argument regarding Mr. Buckley’s reporting: 1) Mr. Buckley has written for Newsweek; 2) Mr. Buckley’s work is published in an anthology; and 3) therefore Mr. Buckley’s work should be accepted as fact . . . I cannot accept that argument on the basis of the following:
Buckley’s Sources
Out of 18 sources noted by Mr. Buckley only four have direct attribution, and of those only two by surname, one of which was Mr. Buckley himself (numbers below indicate paragraphs in Mr. Buckley’s article):
1. “. . . some U.S. officials admit privately . . .” (3)
2. “. . . but in my [Mr. Buckley’s] opinion . . .” (3)
3. “. . . according to one U.S. official . . .” (4)
4. “But Vietnamese repeatedly told me . . .” (5)
5. “One old man . . .” /7
6. “. . . a division senior officer explained . . .” (8)
7. “One Ninth Division officer . . .” (9)
8. “A spokesman for the U.S. command . . .” (9)
9. “Records at a civilian Hospital in Ben Tre . . .” (10)
10. “One U.S. official . . .” (10)
11. “Virtually every person I [Buckley] spoke to . . .” (11)
12. “One village elder . . .” (11)
13. “Other officials including a police chief . . .” (12)
14. “One American official . . .” (13)
15. “. . . the U.S. advisor for the local pacification program . . .” (14)
16. “As one of them [American officials] told me. . .” (15)
17. “. . . Abrams’s spokesmen . . .” (16)
18. “And John Paul Vann, an ardent proponent of pacification who arrived at the end of Speedy Express . . .” (17)
14 of the 18 sources are almost completely unidentified anonymous sources. As Mr. Buckley is making the charge that “thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed deliberately by U.S. forces” I think we are entitled to something far more than mere anonymous sources, for example: specificity as to the date, the time, the location (hamlet, village, district, province or unit), rank, experience, time-in-country/province/position, et al.
The four remaining sources are:
1. Mr. Buckley himself who states his opinion “But in my opinion thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed deliberately by U.S. forces.”
2. A inadequate analysis of the records at the Ben Tre Hospital (covered below).
3. General Abrams’s spokesman who said he was unable to answer Mr. Buckley’s questions; and
4. John Paul Vann who stated that the “Ninth Division had alienated people in the delta.”
Aside from Mr. Buckley noting that the 9th Division’s propaganda magazine, “The Octofoil,” announced killing 3,000 enemy soldiers in March 1969, that’s the extent of Mr. Buckley’s “evidence” which supports his claim of the deliberate murder of thousands of Vietnamese civilians by the 9th Infantry Division.
The Ben Tre Hospital
1. Mr. Buckley states that the Ben Tre Hospital treated 1,882 civilians with war connected wounds during operation Speedy Express (a number which I find rational and indeed modest). He states that 451 (24%) of that number were wounded by Viet Cong fire. Mr. Buckley contends that the balance of 1,431 (76%) were wounded by U.S. firepower, but here is a problem with Mr. Buckley’s calculations: nowhere does he account for any war connected wounds derived from the RVN forces which vastly outnumbered U.S. forces in Kien Hoa province: the 10th Regiment of the 7th ARVN Division with four infantry battalions, the 72nd Artillery Battalion (with 20, 105 mm howitzers), the 6th Armored Cavalry Squadron (with 12 APC’s), as well as 43 Regional Force companies, 253 Popular Force platoons, 50 RD teams, and seven National Police Field Force Platoons . . . are we to assume that these GVN forces did not account for any of the “war connected wounds” during Operation Speedy Express despite the fact that they far outnumbered the 9th Division infantryman operating in Kien Hoa? Mr. Buckley leaves us with a deafening silence with regard to this subject: What proportion of the balance of 1,431 persons were wounded by the RVN forces rather than U.S. forces? He attributes that entire number to U.S. forces without attributing any to RVN forces. That is more than a serious flaw and it makes his analysis not credible.
2. Mr. Buckley further states that the Ben Tre Hospital “served only one small area and received a fraction of the wounded.” There are several problems with this: the first being that the Ben Tre Hospital was the only civilian hospital in Kien Hoa Province and served the entire province; and second, nearly half of the population of Kien Hoa Province lived in and around Ben Tre City where the hospital was located, specifically the area from the Rach Mieu Ferry on the Song My Tho River to Ben Tre City and it’s immediate environs. The Ben Tre Hospital did not, as Mr. Buckley claims serve “only one small area”; it directly served at least half the population of the province and more.
3. The protocol within our unit, and within every 9th Infantry Division unit with which I am familiar with, was to medivac all civilian (as well as enemy) casualties: not one casualty in my entire time with my unit was left on the battlefield. Civilian casualties were medivac-ed directly to the Ben Tre Hospital and enemy combatants were medivac-ed to the 9th Division’s 3rd Surgical Hospital in Dong Tam, the division’s base camp. As well, RVN forces had helicopters which saw use as medivacs, transporting casualties from the district towns to the Ben Tre Hospital; this means that the hospital received and treated casualties from the entire province, not just from “one small area” as Mr. Buckley contends.
I believe Mr. Buckley’s claim with regard to the service area of the Ben Tre Hospital is vastly understated and his analysis of the casualties processed by the Ben Tre Hospital during Operation Speedy Express are seriously flawed: he simply missed including the vast number of RVN forces in the province as a source of civilian casualties and in lieu simply credited them all to US forces.
His article has other flaws.
U.S. Infantrymen in Kien Hoa Province
Mr. Buckley’s claims that “Eight thousand [U.S.] infantrymen scoured the heavily populated countryside . . .” Rifle companies in the 9th Division during the entire period of Operation Speedy Express averaged a strength of 85-to-90 persons; with 36-rifle companies for the entire division an average total of 3,240 infantrymen were in the field . . . in three provinces: Kien Hoa, Dinh Tuong and Long An; in Kien Hoa, where the 2nd Brigade was stationed, there were only 1,080 infantrymen scouring the countryside, not 8,000 as Mr. Buckley seems to indicate.
Pacified Population
Mr. Turse’s 18 November posting he noted that for “Pacification’s Deadly Price,” “both Buckley and Shimkin traveled to areas of the Mekong Delta that had been battered prior to 1971, but had, by that time, been pacified. This allowed them to more easily interview witnesses and survivors. . .”
I was in the Kien Hoa Province in early 1971 and that was not my experience: they shot at me on my way out in June 1969 and they shot at me returning in early 1971. Personal observations aside, I point to “Vietnam Special Studies Group: Kien Hoa Province: The Situation in the Countryside, 1967-1969” (36-pages) dated 18 March 1970, CIA Collection, Texas Tech Virtual Archives, Item # 04115203011, which draws a radically different picture of pacification in Kien Hoa Province than you present in your posting of 18 November. Based on my experience and knowledge I have found it to be the most accurate assessment of pacification in Ben Tre Province during that time-frame. It notes:
1. “After the 2nd Brigade of the US 9th Infantry Division gradually left Kien Hoa after mid-1969, Viet Cong mobile forces began to operate in company-size and large units again . . .” (page 17);
2. “There has been a significant increase in local force [VC] strength in Kien Hoa since mid-1969. . .” (page 21)
3. “HES statistics put nearly 50 percent of the population in Kien Hoa under GVN control. The basic control situation in Kien Hoa is undoubtedly somewhat overstated by HES statistics . . .” (page 26)
4. “Since the second brigade was withdrawn in mid-1969 the GVN’s situation has deteriorated. . .” page 26)
This document, and my experience, indicates that Kien Hoa was anything but a “pacified” province in 1971 where Newsweek reporters and stringers were free to roam “throughout Kien Hoa – on foot, by jeep, in boats and by raft – to talk with the people” as Mr. Buckley contends or as your posting of 18 November contends; this does not discount that the GVN did enhance their control of the population from approximately 25% of the population to approximately 50% during this time-frame, but it does emphasize that unfettered travel throughout Kien Hoa Province was anything but safe as you contended. I continue to find that Mr. Buckley’s travel “throughout Kien Hoa province” to be extremely implausible and therefore dubious, your assumptions about the pacification status of Kien Hoa inclusive.
“A My Lai a Month”
In your article “A My Lai a Month” you adopted Mr. Buckley’s article as one of the cornerstones of your case and provided additional detail which derives from Mr. Buckley’s and Mr. Shimkin’s unpublished notes and interviews. You cover this in your article under the sub-headline of “Burying the Story.” The sources you noted are listed below by paragraph in “Burying the Story”:
1. “ ‘The horror was worse than My Lai,’ one official familiar with the Ninth Infantry Division’s operations in the Delta. . .” (3) Anonymous source. Was this person in Saigon? With MACV? In the 9th Division? What was his capacity? Was he military or Civilian?
2. “Another quantified the matter, stating that as many as 5,000 of those killed of those killed during the operation were civilians.” (3) Anonymous source.
3. “Accounts from Vietnamese survivors in Kien Hoa and Dinh Troung echoed . . .” (4) At least we know that these individuals were among the one-million inhabitants of Kien Hoa and Dinh Tuong Provinces.
4. “Another man, Mr. Hien, recalled . . .” (4) no surname; “Mr. Hien” is equivalent in English to saying “Mr. Mike.” Province, district, village, and when the statement was made are all absent.
5. “Another older man from Kien Hoa, Mr. Ba, recalled . . .” (5) “Mr. Ba” translates “Mr. Three” and refers to the second son of a family in the Mekong Delta, and most families in the Mekong Delta had a second son.
6. “The account was confirmed by interviews with a local Viet Cong medic who later joined US-allied South Vietnamese forces . . .” (5) Lacks first or last name, which province, when, which unit.
7. “Buckley and Shimkin found records showing that during Speedy Express, 76 percent of the 1,882 war-injured civilians treated in the Ben Tre Hospital in Kien Hoa . . . were wounded by US firepower. . .” (6) Previously covered . . . how many casualties of those 76 percent were produced by RVN forces? Not covered by Mr. Buckley.
8. “ ‘Many people who were wounded died on their way to hospitals,’ said one US official.” (6) Anonymous source; no date, place, capacity, unit or organization.
9. “Buckley wrote, ‘Research in the area by Newsweek indicates that a considerable proportion of those killed were non-combatant civilians.’ ” (7) Do we assume Mr. Buckley is quoting his own research?
10. “On 2 December MACV confirmed the ratio and many of Buckley’s details: ‘A high percentage of casualties were inflicted at night’ . . .” (7) Be nice to know who in MACV, his capacity and a date.
11. “But according to Neil Sheehan’s interview with Colonel Farnham . . .” (8) This is the only attributed first hand account you present with a surname, a specific place, and a time-frame with regard to Mr. Buckley contentions.
You are making the case that the indiscriminate use of firepower by infantry, artillery and air power by the 9th Infantry Division caused a “My Lai a Month” and claiming that it “. . . provides a harsh new snapshot of the abject slaughter that typified US actions during the Vietnam War.” I do not find your evidence sufficient to support your claim, especially with regard to Mr. Buckley’s and Mr. Shimkin’s material. The preponderance of the other material you present appears to me to reflect the use of indiscriminate aerial firepower associated mainly with helicopter units, not artillery or infantry units. What few first hand sources you do provide appear very scant in number compared with the thousands and thousands of people who participated in the operation.
Something to Consider
Kien Hoa Province had a population of 550,000 people. If we are to believe Mr. Buckley’s accounts that “thousands of Vietnamese civilians were killed deliberately by U.S. forces” and we are to accept his high figure of “5,000 according to one official,” then I think we must certainly conclude that U.S. forces were very ineffective in their alleged “deliberate killing” of Vietnamese civilians. Mr. Buckley details 3,381 tactical air strikes (not sorties) by fighter bombers by the 9th Division with most of them in Kien Hoa: either the Air Force didn’t do well at targeting or there was a great amount of care taken to insure that civilians were not harmed.
Combine this with Mr. Buckley’s figure of 8,000 infantrymen scouring the province (which in reality was less than 1,200 infantrymen) killing civilians along with indiscriminate US artillery fires from 50 pieces of artillery, and 50 helicopter gunships scouring the province hunting down unarmed fleeing civilians, and I would say that we either we had a army which couldn’t shoot straight or an army which took great care to avoid civilian casualties rather than an army which was looking for civilians to deliberately kill.
In closing I suggest that you do as Jerry Race did with his documents regarding Long An: donate them to a library so other researchers may have access to them.
Regards,
Courtney Frobenius
Olympia, WA
----------
From: Nick Turse <nat9@columbia.edu>
Date: 2008/11/20
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
While I had hoped to end my part in this thread with my last post, I feel I should offer a further comment. For all its obvious length, it seems to me that when one analyzes his caveats, Mr. Frobenius’ response actually offers little of deep significance beyond demands of unrealistic reporting standards or Bob Komer-esque arguments based on a belief that hospitals should have been able to discern whether people were injured by U.S. artillery or U.S.-manufactured artillery shells, fired from U.S.-supplied artillery pieces, by U.S.-backed and U.S.-advised ARVN, thus leaving the reputations of Kevin Buckley and Alex Shimkin in no danger.
I do want to applaud Mr. Frobenius for, however obliquely, referencing civilian casualties in his response. Given his preference for “first hand,” on-the-record sources, I again, call upon him to go on record himself. During his long service in the Mekong Delta, or in his many post-war visits to Ben Tre Province, did he ever encounter any evidence (of any type -- be it hearsay or as an eye-witness) of Vietnamese civilians or other noncombatants having been killed or wounded by U.S. forces? And, if so, I would hope that he would also go on record as to whether any of these casualties occurred during Operation Speedy Express.
Sincerely,
Nick
Nick Turse, PhD, MPH
----------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:31 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I don't consider Douglas Pike to have been a war criminal, some might say I am biased since I worked for him for several years. But I think alot of the "war criminal" rhetoric is overinflated in any case. Atrocities were committed by both sides during the war. Mr. Pike was among those who witnessed and wrote about atrocities committed by the communist side, such as the massacre of civilians during the 1968 occupation of Hue. I know many former political and re-education camp prisoners from Vietnam, perhaps they might be said to be victims of war crimes too, or if not that, at least victims of a great injustice.
I also know U.S. veterans of the war who resent what they consider to be exaggerations and outright fabrications of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers during the war, which for many years damaged the image of all veterans and made it to difficult to regain acceptance in our society.
Steve Denney
library assistant, U.C. Berkeley