Warning: Graphic: It's been 50 years since AP photographer Nick Ut captured image of 9-year-old girl running naked from a napalm attack during Vietnam

[Hector12]

No it does not boy

You always repeat rumor and myth proving you are uneducated and merely spouting talking points which have no relation to the truth

That is proven as i have systematically destroyed your claims with FACTS

You know this is true

I habvbe owned you BOY

You do not prove that by asserting it.

 

[Soupnazi630]

It is impossible to reason with you because you believe anything you want to believe, rejecting my fact based arguments.

you are not making fact based arguments.

I am

 

[Deadstick]

No it does not boy

You always repeat rumor and myth proving you are uneducated and merely spouting talking points which have no relation to the truth

That is proven as i have systematically destroyed your claims with FACTS

You know this is true

I habvbe owned you BOY

Yes it does BOY, you have had a lifetime of bullshit fed to you by the Government, it's sad but that's where we are.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Yes it does BOY, you have had a lifetime of bullshit fed to you by the Government, it's sad but that's where we are.

Wrong boy

This is not fromt he government it is from unbiased history

You really have no idea how the world works much less the vietnam war

 

[Mac-7]

We still out gunned and out spent the Communists. They out fought us and had the support of the vast majority of the Vietnamese. Don't argue with me about that. Argue with President Eisenhower. I have posted this before. Read it this time.

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This page from President Eisenhower's Memoires, Mandate for Change, page 372, shows that he believed Ho Chi Minh would have won any free election in Vietnam in 1954. This is certainly why the U.S. did not permit such an election, though the Geneva Convention of 1954 required it.

Selection from Eisenhower's Memoires

msuweb.montclair.edu

We defeated the communists on the battlefield even with one hand tied behind our back by the assholes in washington

The democrats gave the victory away by abandoning the South Vietnamese

 

[Anomalism]

The photgraph was real and not fixed but the outcry was.

As it turns out the photo was used as anti US propaganda. The implication was the the US is doing this to kids and here is the proof. The problem is that no Americans were anywhere near the village where those kids were injured except for the photographer.

The aircraft which dropped the Napalm was a South Vietnamese air Froce plane flown by a South Vietnamese pilot. The battle near the village was a fight between the communists and the south Vietnamese Army.

Americans were in no way involved in this tragedy.

As the OP is suggesting yes war is always gruesome and this is an example of why it is gruesome. But the picture was used against the US in a dishonest manner. If your claim about Nixon is true ( which is highly dubious ) it was a legitimate question.

I'm sure we burned plenty of kids and just didn't get the pictures. Your post has an air of trying to absolve American of being involved in war tragedy. That would be ridiculous.

 

[Soupnazi630]

I'm sure we burned plenty of kids and just didn't get the pictures. Your post has an air of trying to absolve American of being involved in war tragedy. That would be ridiculous.

It has no such air,

The reverse is true.

You are willing to focus exclusively on the certianty that war tragedies happen in every war. Therefore this picture is proof of it.

The picture as I pointed out is proof of no such thing. It is proof of war tragedy in general not SPECIFICALLY US tragedy

 

[AZrailwhale]

Bullshit!! some of those POW camps for NVA and Viet Cong were like concentration camps, some men were kept in cages sunk into the ground where prisoners couldn't stand up or lie down, as for Hue those people executed were Collaborator officials, 20,000 Vietnamese POWs died on Con Son Island and its estimated there are 200,000 North Vietnamese POWs and Viet Cong unaccounted for to this day.

You’re confusing the NVA prison camps where Americans were tortured with South Vietnamese prisons.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Yes it does BOY, you have had a lifetime of bullshit fed to you by the Government, it's sad but that's where we are.

If the US had been behaving like the NVA and VC did the troops on the ground would have reported it over the years. I served during that time and knew and know many combat vets, none of them ever witnessed atrocities except John Kerry who rode his false claims into politics.

 

[AZrailwhale]

I'm sure we burned plenty of kids and just didn't get the pictures. Your post has an air of trying to absolve American of being involved in war tragedy. That would be ridiculous.

Journalist were all over Vietnam documenting every negative thing they could find and often inventing things when they couldn’t find anything, none of them managed to find any war crimes. Such reporting would have guaranteed the reported a Pulitzer Prize.

 

[Anomalism]

Journalist were all over Vietnam documenting every negative thing they could find and often inventing things when they couldn’t find anything, none of them managed to find any war crimes. Such reporting would have guaranteed the reported a Pulitzer Prize.

Tragedy isn't always categorized as crime. A lot of times the innocent are collateral damage.

 

[Hector12]

We defeated the communists on the battlefield even with one hand tied behind our back by the assholes in washington

The democrats gave the victory away by abandoning the South Vietnamese

Most of the Vietnamese did not want us.

 

[Hector12]

Journalist were all over Vietnam documenting every negative thing they could find and often inventing things when they couldn’t find anything, none of them managed to find any war crimes. Such reporting would have guaranteed the reported a Pulitzer Prize.

Amazon,

Standard Operating Procedure: Notes of a Draft-age American​

by James Simon Kunen (Author)

This book presents Vietnam veterans’ 1970 testimony about their personal participation in what they describe as everyday atrocities in the war.

Excerpts:
“It is our hope that the American people will come to realize that war crimes in Vietnam are not isolated, aberrant acts but the inevitable result of a policy which in its direction of waging war against the civilians, Vietnamese civilians, is in itself immoral and criminal.” – Robert Master

“Gooks were gooks and you killed them. That’s what they were for. So we did it. It didn’t really bother me at the time. It didn’t bother me until I started thinking what really happened.” – Phil Wigenbach

Amazon product ASIN B007C7FCWU
I read this book when it came out, although I no longer have a copy. American servicemen routinely tortured Communist prisoners of war under interrogation. They committed atrocities against Vietnamese civilians, burning down villages with cigarette lighters.

 

[Hector12]

American Rape of Vietnamese Women was Considered “Standard Operating Procedure”​

BY ROBERT J. BARSOCCHINI

Comparing testimony from Vietnamese women and American soldiers, Gina Marie Weaver, in her book Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in The Vietnam War, finds that rape of Vietnamese women by American troops during the US invasion of Vietnam was a “widespread”, “everyday occurrence” that was essentially “condoned”, even encouraged, by the military, and had its foundation in military training and US culture. She explores why US rape in Vietnam was so common, and why this aspect of US behavior has been virtually “erased” from “narratives of the war”. She stresses the issue is also important as rape in the US military continues at a high level today, having been mostly transferred away from foreign populations and onto female American soldiers.

American Rape of Vietnamese Women was Considered "Standard Operating Procedure”

Comparing testimony from Vietnamese women and American soldiers, Gina Marie Weaver, in her book Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in The Vietnam War, finds

www.counterpunch.org

 

[Hector12]

American Vietnam War veterans and GIs offer personal witness to war crimes​

The National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam's first press conference was in Toronto, Canada, March 4, 1970. Ensign and Rifkin convened three more press conferences in the following two months: Springfield, Massachusetts (April 6, 1970); New York City, New York and Los Angeles, California (April 14); and Boston, Massachusetts (May 7, 1970). Uhl then traveled to Sweden and Australia to brief reporters that American Vietnam war veterans had first-hand evidence of atrocities they had either witnessed or committed themselves. National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam continued to mount press conferences in other cities, culminating in a three-day National Veterans Inquiry, held in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 2 and 3.[5]

• July 19, 1970: Six recently returned Army veterans tell of using electricity to torture prisoners. The veterans offering testimony are: Robert Stemme, Sgt, 172nd Military Intelligence Dept., attached to 173rd Airborne Brigade; Michael Uhl, 1st Lt., military intelligence, Americal Division; Peter Martinsen, Sp/5, 542nd MI Detachment, 101st Airborne Division; John Patton, 2nd Lt., 11th Regiment, Americal Division; Edward Murphy, Sgt., 4th MI Detachment, 4th Infantry Division; Fred Brown, 172nd Military Intelligence Dept., attached to 173rd Airborne Brigade.[10]
• October 28, 1970: Mike McCusker, Sgt., 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, 5th Marine Infantry Division, reveals that on September 6, 1966, his unit destroyed everything that moved in two villages near Chu Lai. Michael Shepherd, Special Forces medic, 101st Airborne Division, reported witnessing the shooting of wounded prisoners. Nick Kinler, chemical warfare specialist, told of witnessing the massacre by American troops of villagers who were chased from bunkers by tear gas.[11]

The testimony offered by veterans at these events provided documentation that American atrocities in Vietnam were not uncommon. This evidence was a counterpoint to the U.S. Army command's assertion that the My Lai massacre was an exception. National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam leaders asserted that atrocities committed by American soldiers were a result of military field policies like "search-and-destroy", "free-fire zones" and "forced urbanization", the saturation bombing of villages believed to be controlled by enemy forces.[6][7]

Citizens Commission of Inquiry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[whitehall]

By Vietnam, the once honest A.P. (associated press) was sliding down the road to political propaganda. The A.P. allowed or encouraged Americans to believe that the napalm attack was committed by American planes. It was the South Vietnamese that committed the act.

 

[Deadstick]

You’re confusing the NVA prison camps where Americans were tortured with South Vietnamese prisons.

hose shot down American pilots were lucky they were not shot out of hand.

 

[Hector12]

By Vietnam, the once honest A.P. (associated press) was sliding down the road to political propaganda. The A.P. allowed or encouraged Americans to believe that the napalm attack was committed by American planes. It was the South Vietnamese that committed the act.

Where did you learn that bizarre lie? Or did you make it up yourself? It will not do to reject facts that interfere with what you want to believe.

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Napalm and The Dow Chemical Company​

FROM THE COLLECTION: VIETNAM WAR
Share:

The U.S. military's use of napalm in Vietnam triggered widespread student protests, some aimed at the manufacturer, The Dow Chemical Company.

Napalm had been used before, most notably in the incendiary bombs that devastated large swaths of Japanese cities during World War II, including some 60 percent of Tokyo. What distinguished Napalm B, the variant employed in Vietnam, was how easily it could be made. Simple "bathtub chemistry" was used to mix together a concoction of gasoline, benzene, and polystyrene. In 1965 the Pentagon requested bids from the 17 U.S. companies that made polystyrene; one of the winning bids was from a small company based in Midland, Michigan, called Dow Chemical. Dow was only ranked 75th on a 1967 list of military contractors; before getting into the napalm business, it was best known as the maker of Saran Wrap. But Dow soon became the military's sole supplier of napalm, which meant that when its use in the Vietnam War became controversial...

In Vietnam, the first televised war, viewers began to see images of the civilian casualties caused by napalm bombs, and a January 1967 article in Ramparts magazine presented color photographs of mutilated Vietnamese children. The pictures helped Martin Luther King Jr. decide to go public with his opposition to the war.

Napalm and The Dow Chemical Company | American Experience | PBS

It was never a big part of their business, but napalm would rapidly become the Dow Chemical Company's best-known product.

www.pbs.org

 

[AZrailwhale]

Most of the Vietnamese did not want us.

Most of the South Vietnamese didn't give a damn. Thye just wanted the fighting to stop so they could live in peace. The North Vietnamese people didn't have a choice, it was support the invasion of the South or die. Public opinion doesn't matter in a tyranny.

 

[Hector12]

Most of the South Vietnamese didn't give a damn. Thye just wanted the fighting to stop so they could live in peace. The North Vietnamese people didn't have a choice, it was support the invasion of the South or die. Public opinion doesn't matter in a tyranny.

There was tyranny on both sides. Neither the North Vietnamese government nor the South Vietnamese government was worth fighting for.