Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Savage Intimidation

Gary Sudborough | 03.11.2003 05:57 | Anti-militarism | World

The My Lai massacre in Vietnam was not an isolated incident. As this article illustrates, it is part of a strategy of counterinsurgency warfare, which intends to eliminate popular support for guerrillas by shock and awe. This savage intimidation is still being managed and financed by the US all over the world. The starkest example is in Colombia, where paramilitaries are using chainsaws to torture, dismember and kill peasant farmers who support the guerrillas.

Vietnam killing spree revelations shock US

Useful link: Toledo Blade website

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday October 26, 2003
The Observer



At the height of the Vietnam War, civilians were butchered by an army unit and the carnage was covered up. But this was not My Lai. This bloody massacre has only come to light in the past week - and not one of America's elite corps of reporters can claim the credit. It was a huge scoop. Yet the newspaper that uncovered the atrocity was not the venerable New York Times or the Washington Post, still resting on its Watergate laurels. Nor was it the New Yorker, famed for its in-depth journalism. It was The Blade, a daily newspaper with a circulation of just 150,000 that serves the Ohio city of Toledo, by Lake Erie. For four days last week, The Blade ran its tale of the massacre of innocent Vietnamese civilians by a US Army unit called Tiger Force. The story was immediately hailed as the discovery of a 'new My Lai', the infamous massacre of Vietnamese villagers that lifted the veil on wartime US brutality. America's larger dailies and TV networks were left scrabbling to make up the ground - no easy task. Two Blade reporters had spent eight months working solely on the scoop. Another had joined part-way through. Together, they interviewed more than 100 people, tracking down former soldiers in Tiger Force and finally traveling to Vietnam to interview survivors and witnesses. 'The reaction has been overwhelming. The attitude of the government for the past 36 years has been to keep this quiet,' said Ron Royhab, a Blade executive editor. The story began with a tip-off to the Blade's Washington bureau about some classified documents. The information was passed back to Ohio, where a reporter, Mike Sallah, began to dig. That process began to turn up references to a secret investigation into Tiger Force. Requests for army documents were repeatedly turned down, meaning The Blade's team would have to track down witnesses and victims themselves. The details of the scoop are harrowing, both for the Vietnamese survivors and many of the still-living US Army soldiers. Tiger Force operated out of control in the Vietnamese highlands for seven months in 1967. Moving across the region, the platoon of 45 paratroops slaughtered unarmed farmers and their wives and children. They tortured and mutilated victims. A litany of horror has emerged - a baby decapitated for the necklace he wore, a teenage boy for his tennis shoes. A former Tiger Force sergeant, William Doyle, told reporters of a scalp he took off a young nurse to decorate his rifle. The Blade investigation concluded that hundreds probably died. 'We weren't keeping count,' Ken Kerney, a former soldier who is now a California firefighter, told the paper. 'I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice.' Another, Rion Causey, then a 19-year-old medic and now a nuclear physicist, talked of how villagers were routinely shot: 'If they ran we shot them, and if they didn't run we shot them anyway.' The killing spree was either ignored or encouraged by army top brass, but when an inquiry did take place it lasted for four years. No one was charged. Details were not released to the public, and are still classified. Bill Carpenter, a former special infantryman with Tiger Force, believes the self-styled death squad's former commander, Lt James Hawkins, should be held accountable. He 'thoroughly enjoyed killing' and, now retired to Florida, still defiantly defends his platoon's wartime activities. 'I don't regret nothing,' Hawkins has said. But memories of the blood lust run deep in Vietnam. One farmer, Nguyen Dam, now 66, vividly remembered being attacked. 'Our people didn't deserve to die that way. We were farmers. We were not soldiers. We didn't hurt anyone,' he said. The Blade also found amazing stories from within Tiger Force itself. One soldier, Gerald Bruner, turned on his own men and ordered them to stop shooting civilians or he would open fire. For this, he was berated by a commanding officer and told to see a psychiatrist. Bruner was almost alone in resisting the killings. Yet the brutality left its mental legacy. Barry Bowman, a Tiger Force medic, told The Blade he is haunted by nightmares after witnessing the execution of one elderly Vietnamese man. Others described flashbacks and many have sought therapy to cope with their crimes. Others expressed no remorse. Moreover, criminal charges are unlikely to be brought. However, the series of stories about Tiger Force seems certain to put The Blade in contention for a Pulitzer Prize this year. In fact, the paper is no stranger to awards. The Blade is rare in modern America in being owned by a wealthy local family, the Robinson Blocks, who have a strong commitment to investigative journalism. That means money and time is available for The Blade's reporters to bring in a major scoop. 'We have the resources to do this. There are no shareholders to worry about,' said Royhab. Another Blade investigation - into the effects of a deadly industrial hazard - was shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 2000. 'The Toledo Blade is not just another American newspaper. We are much greater than that,' said John Robinson Block, the family's main representative on the paper. The Robinson Blocks have owned the paper since 1926 and are keenly aware that until the 1920s The Blade was a big player in the US newspaper industry, with a national circulation. 'I suppose we have the ghosts of that history still hanging around with us,' John Robinson Block said. That history was revisited spectacularly last week. And, as John added: 'As long as I am around, we will continue to try to do things like this.'


















Gary Sudborough
- e-mail: IconoclastGS@aol.com
- Homepage: http://www.theblackflag.org

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech