Redstate

By Repair Man Jack Posted in War — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Beginning on January 31, 1971, an anti-war group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), spent three days in Detroit, Mi compiling what they called testimony of US military atrocities in Vietnam. They then went to Washington, DC to hold a series of protests, the most famous of which was “Dewey Canyon III”. This launched the lamentable career of John Kerry, but more importantly, it slandered hundreds of innocent soldiers who served in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam, by falsely accusing them of war atrocities.

In one session of the Winter Soldier Investigation entitled “The 1st Marine Division”, the following accusations were made against soldiers in The US Marine Corps.

Read on . . .

He was about 70 years old. I believe he was some sort of religious, like a monk or something like that, from his dress. He had an ID card and he was in pretty bad shape so they didn't want to call in a MEDIVAC chopper so they told us to kill him.

The calling in of artillery for games, the way it was worked would be the mortar forward observers would pick out certain houses in villages, friendly villages, and the mortar forward observers would call in mortars until they destroyed that house and then the artillery forward observer would call in artillery until he destroyed another house and whoever used the least amount of artillery, they won.

The torturing of prisoners was done with beatings and I saw one case where there were two prisoners. One prisoner was staked out on the ground and he was cut open while he was alive and part of his insides were cut out...

Many of these claims became utterly risible under close scrutiny.

Among the persons assisting the VVAW in organizing and preparing this hearing was Mark Lane, author of a book attacking the Warren Commission probe of the Kennedy Assassination and more recently of "Conversations with Americans", a book of interviews with Vietnam veterans about war crimes. On 22 December 1970 Lane's book had received a highly critical review in the "New York Times Book Review" by Neil Sheehan, who was able to show that some of the alleged "witnesses" of Lane's war crimes had never even served in Vietnam while others had not been in the combat situations they described in horrid detail.

Other atrocities described in The Winter Soldier Investigation and the Congressional Hearings that followed, were staged propaganda stunts.

One of the stories told and retold was that of prisoners pushed out of helicopters in order to scare others into talking…..

An investigation by the CID identified the soldier who had taken the photograph; it also identified a second soldier who acquired the picture, made up the story of the interrogation and mailed it and the photograph to his girlfriend. She in turn gave them to her brother, who informed the Chicago Sun-Times. On 29-30 November 1969 the picture and the story appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Post and generated wide media interest.

Today’s anti-war movement has had some success at turning the public against the US military as well. Stories from Haditha andAbu-Ghurayb. have had a discernible effect on the public’s perception of both the military and its mission in Iraq. To date, however, they haven’t successfully made the American public look down on the American military as successfully as they did in Vietnam.

This mission has seemingly fallen to New Republic Magazine blogger, “Scott Thomas.” Thomas posts under a pseudonym and supposedly soldiers in the vicinity of Operating Base Falcon, in Baghdad. He posts a blog about his war experience in Iraq entitled “Shock Troops”.

Thomas consistently posts about how cruel and barbaric American soldiers have been in Iraq. His posts have featured, a woman disfigured from an IED blast being ridiculed in an Army chow hall, a soldier vandalizing corpses in a mass grave as part of a practical joke and a BFV driver who gets off on running over dogs that he finds loose in the street. The Thomas blog posts are a grim flashback to John Kerry’s preposterous fables from The Winter Soldier Investigations of 1971.

The accusations are even being debunked with the same overwhelmingly clarity. The prose and stylings of “Scott Thomas” are reminding a lot of people of some blog posts by a former US Army soldier, Clifton Hicks.

Numerous soldiers who have driven BFVs have weighed in on the improbability of the BFV driver running over large numbers of dogs for sport. I’ve personally driven an M-577 and an M-81. Both are tracked vehicles which are far lighter and easily maneuvered than the BFV. Neither of these vehicles could successfully surprise a sleeping mutt.

Believing this particular story is a sure sign of someone who totally lacks familiarity with US Army tracked vehicles. This lack of understanding is not surprising, given that most modern Americans have never worn the uniform. The part of this equation that I find disturbing consists of the fact that large numbers of people want to believe “Scott Thomas”. A demand exists for false war stories that paint the US military in the worst light possible.

At present, “Scott Thomas” lacks the credibility, notoriety and support to seriously damage our mission or our force. However, he should still be weeded out. The time to purge a sarcoma is before it spreads and becomes terminal. “Scott Thomas” needs to be outted and all of his stories investigated in the forum of a formal military court martial.