Swiftboat This

More than MyLai

It shouldn't be a suprise that US military servicemen committed abuses against civilians in Vietnam. The sad part is that the history, the documented history by military investigators, took until now to come out. The LA Times story, "Civilian Killings Went Unpunished" (not entirely accurate; the story documents some courts martial and other discipline), has the details. If the story and the burial of fact weren't bad enough, I can't help but wonder where these dishonorable military men who knew of these killings were when political hacks denigrated decorated veteran John Kerry in the last presidential campaign because he had raised these same allegations as a young man. So much for duty.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, says he once supported keeping the records secret but now believes they deserve wide attention in light of alleged attacks on civilians and abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

"We can't change current practices unless we acknowledge the past," says Johns, 78.

Among the substantiated cases in the archive:

• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.

• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.

• One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

As if to compound the horror, the government took steps to further hide the historical record:

The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by law, and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — about a third of the total — before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Let's hope it doesn't take over 30 years to learn what the US is doing in Iraq.

photo: Umberto Gillio