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Last October The Blade, a newspaper of Toledo, Oregon, USA, made a
surprise around the world by reporting the newly disclosed stories of the
massacre committed by the American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The series
carries the title "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths."
The
accounts could be found on The Toledo Blade web site www.toledoblade.com.
They consisted of information gathered from recently declassified documents of
the U.S. Army and interviews with a number of officers, NCOs and Enlisted men
of the 101st Airborne Division.
According
to articles on The Blade, the soldiers were members of the platoon-size task
force known as the Tiger Force. They are believed to have committed illegal execution
of many dozen – even more than a hundred - innocent civilians who showed no
sign of being disguised enemies or acted against the soldiers. Most victims
were old people, women and children. The atrocities included cutting ears and
scalping for souvenirs.
The
massacres, according to the articles, took place in the “highlands of Quang
Ngai and Quang Nam,” mostly in Song Ve valley, Duc Pho district, and Quang Ngai
province during 7 months the Tiger were operating in the area, from April to
November 1967. The Blade’s articles disclosed that the Army launched an
investigation from May to November 1967 that identified 18 suspects among Tiger
Force members, but none of them was arraigned or punished. Recently, the
Department of Defense said that the case might be reopened for more
investigation although the official investigation has closed for almost 36
years.
Every
Vietnamese is shocked by the stories. As many other Asians, they are very
sensitive at any bloodshed committed by foreign soldiers against their
compatriots. Whether the killers are Vietnamese or foreigners, they must be
punished. However, to those who have profound knowledge about Hanoi communist
regime and the way Western reporters seeing the Vietnam War, the Blade’s
accounts lead to many questions.
There
were undeniable war crimes in the said areas. However, the number of victims
has not been approximately determined. Witnesses and suspects each gave far
different numbers.
The
communist regime has always grasped events of the kind – American and South
Vietnamese military soldiers’ wrongdoing – to launch propaganda campaigns. A
killing of five or ten victims could have been made into a massacre five
hundred or one thousand by Communist propaganda.
Why
this time Hanoi has been silent at such atrocities for so long, not until the
Toledo Blade broke the news did Communist authorities voice their comments? Was
the number of victims really high? Did Hanoi leaders know the massacre? Or they
knew it but purposely kept silent?
Many
analysts who are familiar with Vietnam Communist affairs are saying that Hanoi
leaders were certainly well informed of the event. But they decided it was a
killing of a small number, not sensational enough to make a great noise. During
the war, anything of some importance for propaganda was quickly exploited,
carefully recorded, maintained with full details, usually exaggerated, for
psyops purposes. It is hardly possible that Hanoi leaders could have neglected
the case if the reported stories are true.
The
localities where the massacres reportedly took place were under tight control
of the Hanoi government. Communist intelligence and counter-intelligence cells
would let no event of the lowest importance escape their attention. In the last
28 years, Communist leaders at all levels must have full records of the Tiger
Force massacre and a full list of the victims, true and imaginary victims if
the crimes did happen.
The
Blade reporters took the My Lai massacre as an example. The killing done by Lt.
Calley’s platoon of the Americal Division took the lives of 300 to 500
peasants, unarmed and having no acts against the soldiers. It’s nothing wrong
to recall the gristly events at My Lai to show readers a clear sight into
hidden corners of the war.
But
why did the Blade writers fail to mention the much more gristly massacres
conducted by Vietnam Communist soldiers in the Tet 1968 Offensive around Hue
City? The cleansing campaign took the lives of many local citizens, unarmed
soldiers on vacation visiting their relatives and unarmed civil servants and
notables, priests, monks and even German professors.
A
number of victims were buried alive on the Communists’ route of retreat. In
months of searching, only corpses of about 5,000 captives among the 10.000
listed as missing were discovered in mass graves around Hue City.
If
the slaughters by American and South Vietnamese were taken into discussion, an
honest writer or speaker or journalist must not forget to bring about the
assassinations and mass murders committed by the Communist death squads during
the wars. Their victims amounted to more than 50,000 in less than 20 years, in
the war 1959-1975. Many of them were members of unarmed village and hamlet
elected officials, not including more than 250,000 RVN soldiers killed in
action.
In
a wider view, there were killing of a hundred or more Vietnamese peasants by
the South Korean troops fighting in South Vietnam. That incident must have been
included in any paper about war crimes in the Vietnam War.
Deliberate
failure to take into consideration of such crimes of the Communist side might
be called one-sidedness and selfishness. Many correspondents might be afraid of
facing troubles by Hanoi communist authorities if they publish anything that
may anger the party leaders, whose immediate reaction could be visa
cancellation.
Moreover,
how did the investigators from the Toledo Blade select people to be
interviewed? The selection and the interview were done with or without control
or presence of local Public Security officers?
How they could be sure that the interviewees were saying the truth and
not what Communist cadres in charge of local Public Security agency had ordered
them to say?
According
to the reports, a Communist colonel from the Quang Nam province government told
reporters that he would conduct an investigation to learn more details about
the killing. In his own words he admitted, "We want to
know more about this platoon, and what they did. Why did they operate this way?
We have never heard of this before." Loud and clear.
A
Communist colonel who has never heard of such important event in his own
province! That is worth re-consideration of the allegation. In this rural area,
every villager knows the others and any pet dog of the neighbors. They must
have known the true stories if such killing actually occurred.
In
a color picture printed in one of the reports, readers can see something not
usual. The caption says it’s a marker of the place where civilians were
murdered.
As
it appears in the picture, the marker has the size of about 3.2x2 feet (110x60
cm), with thickness about 2 inc. (5 cm).
Looking closely in the picture, people could see the uneven, softly
undulated surface of the board without the sharpness of hard wood or stone at
the edges. The marker must be a wooden board covered by white paper or white
cloth on which were inscriptions in bright red characters.
The
whole thing proves itself a cheap propaganda trick. The marker looks like a
small signboard that was probably made in haste to serve a five-minute purpose:
Taking a picture to print beside an article.
In
an article of the series, The Blade reports, "a
Vietnamese official said yesterday the country wants to put the conflict behind
it even though it caused much suffering.
But in another article, the Communist colonel was quoted as saying, "This is not something we should forget."
Actually,
the Communist regime has never acted accordingly. Despite while it is urging
people to put the past behind and forget old hatred, the Party continues
stuffing young kids' heads with animosity and exercising the policy of
discrimination against the former members of the defeated nationalist
government and their descendants.
The true war crimes
should be told and recorded for history. with impartial and accurate evidence,
without providing Hanoi munitions for slanderous propaganda.
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