:crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party:

  • halfpipe [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    We should never forget how he had the courage to censor and silence the whistleblowers in his unit after they sexually assaulted and murdered 500+ Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre.

      • halfpipe [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The division put him directly in charge of the cover up, it's probably how he first got noticed as a guy who will say whatever he's told to.

        • star_wraith [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I 100% believe you but do you happen to have a source? I think today is gonna be the day I finally get booted from a group chat because of this

          • halfpipe [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            rifled through some quick links in google, and it looks even the mainstream retrospectives mention it.

            https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-18/colin-powell-u-s-army-general-turned-top-diplomat-dies-at-84

            "In the first, he was assigned to investigate the 1968 U.S. massacre at My Lai and found no wrongdoing."

            https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33957894

            "He was assigned to investigate a letter from a serving soldier that reinforced allegations of a massacre at My Lai in March 1968, in which US soldiers killed hundreds of civilians, including children.

            Powell's conclusion, that "in direct refutation of this portrayal, relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent", flew in the face of growing evidence of brutal treatment of civilians by US forces.

            He was later accused of "whitewashing" the news of the massacre, details of which did not finally become public until 1970."

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      War Criminals, every fucking one of these assholes.

      Even (especially) Biden, who in the 2000s deliberately tried to bury the No Gun Ri massacre in Korea where the US opened fire on any and all refugees fleeing the combat zone with artillery and CAS.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          These guys are libs (albiet fairly pro China libs run by Kevin Rudd) but give some context if you can cope with the brainworms

          https://asiasociety.org/education/massacre-nogun-ri

          The wiki page goes into the whole thing fairly well, at least for Wikipedia.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre (cw: violence, war crimes, premeditated crimes against humanity described in detail)

          Some key quotes, sparing the nightmare fuel.

          Major General William B. Kean of the neighbouring 25th Infantry Division advised that any civilians found in areas supposed to be cleared by police should be considered enemies and "treated accordingly", an order relayed by his staff as "considered as unfriendly and shot"

          Researchers found that the U.S. review had not disclosed the existence of U.S. Air Force mission reports during this period documenting the strafing of apparent refugee groups and air strikes in the No Gun Ri vicinity.

          After the Army issued its report, it was learned that it also had not disclosed its researchers' discovery of at least 14 additional declassified documents showing high-ranking commanders ordering or authorizing the shooting of refugees in the Korean War's early months,  such as communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees north of the front line "fair game" and to "shoot all refugees coming across river"

          In 2005, American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of a declassified document at the National Archives in which the United States Ambassador to Korea in 1950, John J. Muccio, notified the State Department on the day the No Gun Ri killings began that the U.S. military, fearing infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugee groups that approached U.S. lines despite warning shots. Pressed by the South Korean government, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged it deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 report.

          By 2009, the commission's work of collating declassified U.S. military documents with survivors' accounts confirmed eight representative cases of what it found were wrongful U.S. killings of hundreds of South Korean civilians, including refugees crowded into a cave attacked with napalm bombs, and those at a shoreline refugee encampment deliberately shelled by a U.S. warship.

          The commission alleged that the U.S. military repeatedly conducted indiscriminate attacks, failing to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In its most significant finding, the commission also confirmed that South Korean authorities had summarily executed thousands of suspected leftists in South Korea – possibly 100,000 to 200,000 – in the Bodo League massacre at the outbreak of the war, sometimes with U.S. Army officers present and taking photographs.

          And finally

          The disclosure in 2006 that Pentagon investigators had omitted the Muccio letter from their final report, along with other incriminating documents and testimony, prompted more calls for action. Two leaders of the National Assembly appealed to U.S. Senator (and future president) Joseph R. Biden, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for a joint investigation, but no U.S. congressional body ever took up the No Gun Ri issue.