Rumsfeld, Cheney linked to '70s coverup of Vietnam Atrocities

[kpete]

Rumsfeld, Cheney linked to '70s coverup
Case against 'Tiger Force' platoon for 'Nam atrocities was 'made to disappear.'

Tiger Force is a documented account of 120 U.S. soldiers who, between May and November of 1967, rotated through an Army special operations platoon. This platoon, Tiger Force, wreaked its vengeance in the vicinity of Duc Pho and Chu Lai in South Vietnam.

.......................

That part of Tiger Force is grim enough. What the Army then did with the evidence is shocking, and what was covered up in 1974-75 may have sowed the headlines we are reaping in 2006. One of the most thorough Criminal Investigation Division (CID, the Army's internal FBI) investigations ever conducted, meticulously gathered the facts surrounding the war crimes committed by Tiger Force. The evidence was voluminous, certain and had been obtained at the risk of a few investigators' lives.

In 1974-75, Richard Cheney was a special assistant to President Ford. Ford's chief of staff was Donald Rumsfeld. The secretary of defense from 1973-75 was James Schlesinger. The case was made to disappear by these men who served presidents Nixon and Ford - probably out of considerations of politics. There were never any charges filed against the soldiers or the officers who ordered and participated in the routine killing of civilians.

The only reason the case file ever became public was that the CID officer who directed the investigation, and who later commanded the Criminal Investigation Division, kept a copy of the investigation file, and prior to his death in 2002 made provision for the file to be
delivered to a reporter with the Toledo Blade.

Thirty years later, Mr. Rumsfeld refuses to discuss the Tiger Force case. Mr. Cheney declines to discuss much of anything. Mr. Schlesinger conducted one of the see-no-evil investigations at Abu Ghraib. The senior leadership of the Army and the nation prefers to characterize war crimes as the work of a few "bad apples." My Lai was pinned to Lt. William Calley, who suited the bad apple role.

more at:
http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sltrib.com%2Fopinion%2Fci_4028285

[Ghost in the Machine]

1. and the Culture of Corruption marches on...

[leftchick]

2. MORE about Tiger Force....

<snip>

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Tiger_force_120803.htm

Tiger Force (Vietnam) Uncovered and Exposed

Talk of the Town - COMMENT: UNCOVERED
Witness to Vietnam atrocities never knew about investigation

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 10, 2003
Talk of the Town, p.41

COMMENT: UNCOVERED

Last month, the Blade, a mid-sized family-owned newspaper published in Toledo, Ohio, devoted fifteen pages over four days to an exhaustive expose of an elite Army unit, known as the Tiger Force, that spun out of control during the Vietnam War: The platoon, a forty-five member, all-volunteer reconnaissance unit attached to the 101st Airborne Division, was ordered in early 1967 to take the fight to the enemy by setting up ambushes deep inside areas controlled by North Vietnamese and Vietnamese nationalist forces. Instead, it took the fight to the unarmed civilian population.

From May through November of 1967, the Blade reported, the Tiger Force, while operating in and around Quang Ngai province, in South Vietnam's fiercely contested Central Highlands, murdered hundreds of noncombatant men, women, and children. Some victims were tortured and mutilated. Some were shot while begging for their lives. Some, hiding in bunkers, were killed by hand grenades flung inside. Soldiers collected ears as souvenirs, along with a few scalps and gold teeth.

In early 1971, the Blade wrote, these events became known to Army investigators, who, over a four-and-a-half-year period, conducted an inquiry that eventually concluded that eighteen Tiger Force members had participated in as many as twenty war crimes. It was the longest war-crimes investigation of the Vietnam War. But no one was charged, and in 1975 the investigation was quietly shut down. By then, six suspects had been allowed to resign from the Army, which removed them from military jurisdiction. The only soldier to be officially punished was a sergeant who had triggered the investigation by reporting that a member of the Tiger Force had decapitated an infant. (He was reprimanded for stating that he had witnessed the incident when in fact he had learned of it from others.) Two former Tiger Force members told the Blade that they had been encouraged by Army investigators not to say anything about what had occurred; in addition, investigators failed to pursue leads and made no effort to interview eyewitnesses in South Vietnam.

<snip>

At the height of the rampage, the Tiger Force platoon was operating a few dozen miles from a Quang Ngai hamlet that the Army called My Lai 4, and where, in March, 1968, more than five hundred Vietnamese civilians were massacred by a task force whose platoon leaders included William L. Calley, Jr. The Blade quoted a law professor as stating that My Lai might have been avoided if the senior officer corps had acted on complaints of military brutality in Quang Ngai that had been filed by at least two soldiers. The Blade further reported that in the early nineteen-seventies, after Calley's conviction for the murder of twenty-two Vietnamese civilians, in March, 1971, and while the Army was publicly insisting that My Lai was an isolated incident, senior officials in the White House and the Pentagon were provided with periodic reports on the Tiger Force inquiry.

[NYC]

4. The one who reported was the only one punished.

...The only soldier to be officially punished was a sergeant who had triggered the investigation by reporting that a member of the Tiger Force had decapitated an infant. (He was reprimanded for stating that he had witnessed the incident when in fact he had learned of it from others.)

[Bozita]

9. The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer for its Tiger Force reporting

[XForce]

23. Unreal ..... how today's demon seeds were carried forth

The military cover-ups are not shocking to me, but the fact that Cheney and Rumsfeld were a part of this back then does blow me away. They are TOTAL scumbags!

[Terran1212]

3. I can't be surprised by this stuff anymore, but I remain

outraged at the people who support Rumsfeld and Cheney ignoring horrible stories like this, pretending these folks are angels of democracy.

[Monkeyman]

5. Iheard about the cages but now

Thanks Tiger Troops where animals

[Tellurian]

6. All Four Countries are signed on..

The Four Nations responsible for setting down the guidelines called "The Moscow Declarations", outline the
course of action to be taken for the military's cold blooded killing, torture and abuse during times of War!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Declaration#Statment_on_Atrocities

[leveymg]

7. Not a new story. But, unusual that it's being carried at the Salt Lake

City Tribune and then linked by RawStory.

This is indeed a story of failure of the system to impose accountability for war crimes and how those who get away with it inevitably do it again at a higher level in the next war, and the one after that. This needs to be taught at all levels of the uniformed services, not just the Staff Colleges.

America needs to take this opportunity to arrest those at the highest levels, and prosecute them for every criminal act going back to the beginning of their long and sordid careers. If we don't do that now, there will be no Constitution to swear an oath to protect.

[TomInTib]

8. After Tiger Force was shut down, we trained S Vietnamese "Tigers"

across S Vietnam.

Those guys were really vicious bastards and totally untrustworthy.

The 2nd Marine tried to attach some of them to us in Quang Tri and we told them that we were going to shoot them all the first chance we got.

They all ran away the very first night.

[Monkeyman]

10. 69 right or 70

[TomInTib]

11. '69 and into early '70. How did you know?

They wore these loony striped cammys and absolutely terrorized the populace.

I was Navy, attached to 2nd Marine. Longrange recon and extraction team.

We 'neutralized' (this is DU and we can't use harsh words, can we?) every one of those sorry bastards we ran across.

[Monkeyman]

12. 3rd 506th Recon

They showed up around the camp around then.We had a 50 on them never trusted the SOb's

[BlueJac]

13. Figures........

What do you expect?

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. And they continued their political lives to wreck havok thirty years later

because the media kept their secrets.

[Reckon]

15. Did this bunch miss the good ol'

days of war profiteering or what?

[Mr_Spock]

16. Frontline "The Dark Side" exposed many of these connections

It shouldn't surprise us that they were as evil then as they are now.

[bdamomma]

20. Cheney and Rumsfeld are just plain OLD criminals

[Mr_Spock]

22. They really do have DARK motives...

It sucks knowing we have such bitter people in positions of power :(

[GreenTea]

17. People just can't believe these republicans are evil killers and

have absolutely kill people through the years and 9-11 for profit, imperialism and their pure evil sickness.

[Roland99]

18. K&R

[UTUSN]

19. Forwarding to Keith n/t

[progressoid]

21. "What the Army then did with the evidence is shocking" Not Really.

What the Army then did with the evidence is typical, not shocking.

[vickitulsa]

24. Yep, and for another member of that cadre of criminals, Colin Powell,

the complicity began when he wrote the very first after-action report on My Lai. It was a coverup from the word go, and he proved himself "a team player" -- and his career thrived. Seems somehow fitting that he was the one, then, who in 2003 presented the persuasive case (full of lies) for going to war on Saddam to the country and the world.

Powell always one of the most respected among that ratpack of thugs, someone most Democrats and Americans of all ilks trusted and liked. He used that image to benefit his cronies in power instead of publicizing the secrets he knew to bring them down before they did more harm in the world and to this nation.

Hitler so charmed the German people that women would weep and faint upon seeing him in public and wish he would marry them. It's incredible just how successfully deceptive such psychopathic crooks can be.

The reporting of war crimes being committed by our own troops (that everyone has been urged to support, support, support) may be the beginning of the end of the illusion this administration has tried to maintain. The war -- and the occupation -- in Iraq has become unpopular already. How might we expect public opinion to shift now that everyone has to face the fact that our own beloved troops are committing atrocities?

I hope it doesn't end up with ALL of our people serving in the military and particularly in Iraq (and Afghanistan) becoming objects of hate and derision as happened to Vietnam veterans. That was wrong. But so is what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We just need to get the real guilty parties involved, the ones behind it all, and understand that troops do what troops are told, and sometimes allowed, to do.

Turning a blind eye is just not going to work anymore, not for anyone.

[genieroze]

25. Doesn't surprise me.

[spanone]

26. Practice makes perfect.

[BrewAz]

27. This should surprise noone...

After all these Repubs have been around a L-O-N-G time. Getting a bit long in the tooth I would say.

Another piece we do not hear enough about is Rummy and "On Shot" Cheney's role in the 1990's development of the right-wing goal of controlling middle east oil by invading say....IRAQ.

Where are the investigative jounalists...or did I miss something?

BrewAz

[fooj]

28. Treasonous, filthy rat bastards.

:grr: