NEW VIETNAM HORRORS

Do you remember the My Lai massacre, the 1968 slaughter of Vietnamese villagers for which Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was sentenced to life imprisonment for premeditated murder? And the 1971 killing of 21 women, children and old men in a raid by a Navy SEAL team led by Bob Kerrey, later a U.S. senator?

Well, atrocities many times worse than those have come to light. A report in October by The Toledo Blade was verified and elaborated recently by The New York Times. The Blade’s report was titled, “Rogue G.I.s Unleashed Wave of Terror in Central Highlands.” It said that in 1967 an elite unit, a reconnaissance platoon in the 101st Airborne Division, went on a rampage that was “the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War.” The newspaper said: “For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians – in some cases torturing and mutilating them – in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public.” It told of the killing of hundreds of unarmed civilians.

“Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers,” The Blade said. “Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed – their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs.” Some soldiers wore victims’ ears as necklaces.

The Times reached by telephone three of the former soldiers quoted by The Blade. They confirmed that the articles had accurately described their unit’s actions. But they disputed one point. They denied that the platoon was a “rogue” unit. They said the soldiers had done only what they were told to do, and their superiors knew what they were doing. They said that it was common tactics for American ground forces throughout Vietnam to burn huts, shoot civilians and throw grenades into protective shelters.

Reporters who covered the Vietnam War often told of the same tactics, based largely on a “search and destroy” strategy and “free fire zones,” in which anything moving was to be killed. Such actions grew out of the American commanders’ reliance on “body counts” in measuring military progress and determining promotions.

The Blade reported that the Army in 1971 began a criminal investigation that lasted four and a half years. It said investigators concluded that 18 men might face charges, but no courts-martial were bought. The Times quoted an army spokesman, Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, as saying that the Army had compared The Blade articles with the written record of the earlier investigation and, “absent any new or compelling evidence, there are no plans to reopen the case.”

There is no question that American soldiers, in Iraq as well as Vietnam, have endured constant danger in chaotic guerrilla warfare. One of the soldiers in the 1967 platoon, Ken Kerney, told The Times that Vietnam was “like Dodge City without a sheriff.” He went on: “It’s just nuts. You never had a safe zone. It’s shoot too quick or get shot. You’re scared all the time, you’re humping all the time. You’re scared. These things happen.”

The American public has never fully grasped the horrors of warfare, but people living in the war zones, people who saw the atrocities and knew the victims, will always remember. Needlessly harsh tactics can poison a nation’s reputation for generations.

This newly disclosed series of atrocities cries out for further investigation – not to punish the GI’s but to fix blame and punish the superior officers who sent those soldiers on such bloody missions and have covered up the atrocities and their own complicity ever since.