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THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED
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stevemcgarrett



Joined: 24 Mar 2006

PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:21 pm    Post subject: THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED Reply with quote

This just out from the AP:

Quote:
Letter reveals U.S. intent at No Gun Ri
By CHARLES J. HANLEY and MARTHA MENDOZA (AP) Fri Apr 13

Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was "not deliberate," the Army has acknowledged it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.
The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed.
Exclusion of the embassy letter from the Army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups � undisclosed evidence uncovered by Associated Press archival research and Freedom of Information Act requests.
South Korean petitioners say hundreds more refugees died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees stranded on a beach, newly confirmed via U.S. archives.
No Gun Ri survivors, who call the Army's 2001 investigation a "whitewash," are demanding a reopened investigation, compensation and a U.S. apology.
Harvard historian Sahr Conway-Lanz first disclosed the existence of Ambassador John H. Muccio's 1950 letter in a scholarly article and a 2006 book, "Collateral Damage." He uncovered the declassified document at the U.S. National Archives.
When asked last year, the Pentagon didn't address the central question of whether U.S. investigators had seen the document before issuing their No Gun Ri report. Ex-Army Secretary Louis Caldera suggested to The Associated Press that Army researchers may have missed it.
After South Korea asked for more information, however, the Pentagon acknowledged to the Seoul government that it examined Muccio's letter in 2000 but dismissed it. It did so because the letter "outlined a proposed policy," not an approved one, Army spokesman Paul Boyce argues in a recent e-mail to the AP.
But Muccio's message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk states unambiguously that "decisions made" at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting in Taegu, South Korea, on July 25, 1950, included a policy to shoot approaching refugees. The reason: American commanders feared that disguised North Korean enemy troops were infiltrating their lines via refugee groups.
"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," the ambassador told Rusk, cautioning that these shootings might cause "repercussions in the United States." Deliberately attacking noncombatants is a war crime.
Told of the Pentagon's rationale for excluding the Muccio letter from its investigative report, No Gun Ri expert Yi Mahn-yol, retired head of Seoul's National Institute of Korean History, suggested the letter was suppressed because it was "disadvantageous" to the Pentagon's case.
"If they set it aside as nothing significant, we can say that it was an intentional exclusion," he said.
Conway-Lanz called the Pentagon's explanation "thoroughly unconvincing."
"The Muccio letter in plain English says, `Decisions were made,'" the historian noted.
No Gun Ri survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment near No Gun Ri, a village in central South Korea. Troops of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter in twin underpasses of a concrete railroad bridge.
The killings remained hidden from history until an AP report in 1999 cited a dozen ex-soldiers who corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts, prompting the Pentagon to open its inquiry after years of dismissing the allegations.
The Army veterans' estimates of dead ranged from under 100 to "hundreds." Korean survivors say they believe about 400 were killed. Korean authorities have certified the identities of at least 163 dead or missing.
No Gun Ri, where no evidence emerged of enemy infiltrators, was not the only such incident. As 1950 wore on, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, according to declassified documents obtained by the AP.
One incident, on Sept. 1, 1950, has been confirmed by the declassified official diary of the USS DeHaven, which says that the Navy destroyer, at Army insistence, fired on a seaside refugee encampment at Pohang, South Korea. Survivors say 100 to 200 people were killed. South Korean officials announced in February they would investigate.
More than a dozen documents � in which high-ranking U.S. officers tell troops that refugees are "fair game," for example, and order them to "shoot all refugees coming across river" � were found by the AP in the investigators' own archived files after the 2001 inquiry. None of those documents was disclosed in the Army's 300-page public report.
South Koreans have filed reports with their government of more than 60 such episodes during the 1950-53 war.
Despite this, the Army's e-mail to the AP maintains, as did the 2001 report, "No policy purporting to authorize soldiers to shoot refugees was ever promulgated to soldiers in the field."
The 2001 official report instead focused on a single document issued the day the No Gun Ri shootings began, a Korea-wide Army order saying refugees should be stopped from crossing U.S. lines. That order did not say how they should be stopped, but retired Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said the meaning was clear.
"What do you do when you're told nobody comes through?" Carroll said in an AP interview before his death in 2004. If they didn't stop, he said, "we had to shoot them to hold them back."
Other ex-soldier eyewitnesses, including headquarters radiomen, told the AP that orders came down to the 7th Cavalry's 2nd Battalion command post, and were relayed through front-line companies at No Gun Ri, to open fire on the mass of village families, baggage and farm animals.
Such communications would have been recorded in the 7th Cavalry Regiment's journal, but that log is missing without explanation from the National Archives. Without disclosing this crucial gap, the Army's 2001 report asserted there were no such orders. It suggested soldiers shot the refugees in a panic, questioned estimates of hundreds of dead, and absolved the U.S. military of liability.
The Army report didn't disclose that veterans told Army investigators of "kill" orders, of seeing stacks of dead at No Gun Ri, and of earlier documentation of the killings. Such interview transcripts have been obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. Examples:
_Ex-Air Force pilot Clyde Good, 87, of Melbourne, Fla., told investigators his four-plane mission, under orders, attacked 300-400 refugees in mid-1950 on suspicion the group harbored infiltrators. "I didn't like the idea," he said. "They had some young ones, too. ... kids on the road." A South Korean government report in 2001 said five ex-pilots told Pentagon interviewers of such orders. The U.S. report claimed "all pilots interviewed" knew nothing about such orders.
_The U.S. report said the No Gun Ri shootings weren't documented at the time. It didn't disclose that ex-Army clerk Mac W. Hilliard, 78, of Weed, Calif., testified he remembered typing into the now-missing regimental journal an officer's handwritten report that 300 refugees had been fired on. "If you see 'em, kill 'em" was the general attitude toward civilians, Hilliard told the AP in reaffirming his testimony.
_The Army report said ex-GIs estimating large numbers of dead were using "guesswork," that none got a close-up look. But in a transcript obtained by the AP, ex-soldier Homer Garza told a Pentagon interrogator he was sent on patrol through one underpass and saw heaps of bodies.
"There were probably 200 or 300 civilians there � babies, old papa-sans," Garza, 73, of Hurst, Texas, said in a subsequent AP interview. Most may have been dead, but it was hard to tell because "they were stacked on top of one another," said Garza, who retired as a command sergeant major, the Army's highest enlisted rank.
In addition, the 2001 report by the Army inspector-general didn't disclose the existence of July 1950 mission reports from the Air Force's 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron that said pilots attacked apparent refugee groups and struck at or near No Gun Ri on the dates of the killings.
In describing another critical document, a July 25, 1950, memo from the Air Force operations chief in Korea, the Army report dropped its key passage: a paragraph saying pilots, at the Army's request, were strafing refugee groups approaching U.S. lines. The Army report portrayed the strafing as a proposal, not a fact, as the Army now is doing with the Muccio letter.
The Pentagon has told the South Korean government the ambassador's letter, evidence that senior Washington officials knew of a policy to shoot South Korean refugees, does not warrant a reopening of the No Gun Ri investigation.
Seoul accepts that U.S. position, said a South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Informed of the Pentagon position, the No Gun Ri survivors issued a statement. "We cannot accept the U.S. Defense Department's false explanation and are indignant over the repeated lies by the U.S. Defense Department," it said.
___
AP Writer Jae-soon Chang in Seoul and AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.


As an ex-military from a family of military men this disturbs me greatly. It would appear to be a cover-up from the Pentagon, worse than anything associated with My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War since it involved official policy.

The blame must be shared by ROK officials who did more than acquiesce but gave their full consent to the policy. And all in an effort to thwart infiltration of North Korean elements. In his book on North Korea, historian Bruce Cumings pointed out that killings by the ROK military and police against civilians suspicious of ties to the North and to the Communist Party were frequent and brutal. But these accounts indicate that a policy of engagement was also in place involving American forces.

What should we make of this new development?

(And for you rabid opportunist leftists on this forum, try to resist the temptation to paint the U.S. military during the Korean War or since with your usual broad brush of condemnation)
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Junior



Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:24 am    Post subject: Re: THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED Reply with quote

stevemcgarrett wrote:

"There were probably 200 or 300 civilians there � babies, old papa-sans,"




Pablo Picasso, 1951.
"Massacre in korea'.

Pablo Picasso's 'Massacre in Korea' (1951; in the Mus�e Picasso, Paris), the painting shown on the cover of War & Genocide, is based on a massacre of Korean civilians by US forces at No Gun Ri from 26-29 July 1950, which has remained controversial to this day. Korean survivors claim that they were bombed by the US airforce on 26 July, and subsequently fired on by US soldiers in a tunnel into which large numbers had fled, leading to over 300 deaths.

Half a century later, after an indefatigable campaign by Korean survivors, in 1999 Associated Press reporters found US veterans who confirmed the massacre story. The US Army was finally forced to confront the allegations and established an official investigation into the episode, whose Report of the No Gun Ri Review was published in January 2001. Its findings concluded that while 'the Korean descriptions of the airstrike/strafing are compelling' (p. 178), 'any accidental airstrike/strafing ... was not a pre-planned attack on civilian refugees.' (p. 181) It argued that 'the deaths of civilians, wherever they occurred, were an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing'.
http://www.martinshaw.org/warandgenocide/massacre.htm
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stevemcgarrett



Joined: 24 Mar 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks a lot like his "Guernica" painting.
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W.T.Carl



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is the way it was: The Reds had invaded and were pushing south fast. Most ROKs who surrendered were shot on the spot as were most Americans. The Commies were sliping inflitrators behind ROK and US lines dressed as civilians. US troops, not wanting to have their throats slit were none to pleased to see people move through their line. So what's the big deal? If blame is to be pushed, push it on THE NORTH KOREANS.
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stevemcgarrett



Joined: 24 Mar 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 6:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Can't agree with you there, Carl. Nothing justifies the deliberate slaughter of innocents. We also carpet bombed North Korean cities and LeMay actually wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons on them too. Even Truman drew the line on that and at the Yalu River.

This said, it's an ethical dilemma whether the bombing of Japan and Germany was fully justified. Certainly we had to curtail their war effort and save the lives of our men in Operation Coronet.

But the recently departed Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and John Hersey's Hiroshima still gnaw at me.

I'm hardly one to wring my wrists but even many of the pilots who strafed those civilians felt it was wrong at the time.[/i]
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:59 am    Post subject: Re: THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED Reply with quote

stevemcgarrett wrote:
As an ex-military from a family of military men this disturbs me greatly. It would appear to be a cover-up from the Pentagon, worse than anything associated with My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War since it involved official policy.


REALLY? You're outraged?? As a military man? (Liar. The military men I've known are honorable. You are not.) Tell us, Steve, where is your outrage at the deaths of civilians (Policy, or are you going to claim ignorance of the Rules of Engagement in Iraq?) in Iraq? Where is your outrage at the torture sanctioned by the Cadre? Planned by the Cadre? Carried out in the name of the Cadre? Where is your outrage, Steve?

You have no standing, troll.
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thepeel



Joined: 08 Aug 2004

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am totally surprised at the name calling by efl. How he manages to sustain such anger without blowing his own, or someone else's head off is amazing.
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faster



Joined: 03 Sep 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, the biggest outrage in the Korean war was the demolition of the Yalu and other dams in the north, an act that flooded dozens of miles of valley farmland and hundreds of villages, killed people directly, and destroyed the rice harvest for the entire country - it's no exaggeration to estimate starvation and malnutrition deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

In WWII, on the other hand, the US restrained from destroying dams in Holland because it knew that act was a war crime and would be acknowledged as such.
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twg



Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:29 am    Post subject: Re: THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED Reply with quote

EFLtrainer wrote:
You have no standing, troll.

Dude, this is the first thread he's posted that hasn't been "Damn you liberals/ rap music for destroying society, and other unrelated to the topic ranting"

I say see how it plays out.
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jinju



Joined: 22 Jan 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevemcgarrett wrote:
Can't agree with you there, Carl. Nothing justifies the deliberate slaughter of innocents. We also carpet bombed North Korean cities and LeMay actually wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons on them too. Even Truman drew the line on that and at the Yalu River.

This said, it's an ethical dilemma whether the bombing of Japan and Germany was fully justified. Certainly we had to curtail their war effort and save the lives of our men in Operation Coronet.

But the recently departed Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and John Hersey's Hiroshima still gnaw at me.

I'm hardly one to wring my wrists but even many of the pilots who strafed those civilians felt it was wrong at the time.[/i]


I mist disagree with you on LeMay. Nukes should have been used. Infact nukes should have been used to destroy the Norks but also to destroy the Chinese.
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jinju



Joined: 22 Jan 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

faster wrote:
Actually, the biggest outrage in the Korean war was the demolition of the Yalu and other dams in the north, an act that flooded dozens of miles of valley farmland and hundreds of villages, killed people directly, and destroyed the rice harvest for the entire country - it's no exaggeration to estimate starvation and malnutrition deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

In WWII, on the other hand, the US restrained from destroying dams in Holland because it knew that act was a war crime and would be acknowledged as such.


The biggest outrage of the Korean war was that we allowed the Chinese and Norks to push back to the current DMZ. The biggest outrage was that such an evil regime was allowed to exist, and that China was allowed to exist. What the US should have done was to hit hard, spare nothing and wipe out the norks and chinese army. It should have hit hard at Chinese troops, cities and villages and put the PRC down for good.
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:07 pm    Post subject: Re: THE SORDID LITTLE MATTER OF NO GUN RI HAS RESURFACED Reply with quote

twg wrote:
EFLtrainer wrote:
You have no standing, troll.

Dude, this is the first thread he's posted that hasn't been "Damn you liberals/ rap music for destroying society, and other unrelated to the topic ranting"

I say see how it plays out.


True enough. But someone who accepts slaughter on one hand and decries it on another really has no standing. Put simply: I don't trust a damned thing he says.

If this turns out to be his one sane thread, well, I'll say so when it's become evident it's not just another of his trolling expeditions.
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faster



Joined: 03 Sep 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jinju wrote:
faster wrote:
Actually, the biggest outrage in the Korean war was the demolition of the Yalu and other dams in the north, an act that flooded dozens of miles of valley farmland and hundreds of villages, killed people directly, and destroyed the rice harvest for the entire country - it's no exaggeration to estimate starvation and malnutrition deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

In WWII, on the other hand, the US restrained from destroying dams in Holland because it knew that act was a war crime and would be acknowledged as such.


The biggest outrage of the Korean war was that we allowed the Chinese and Norks to push back to the current DMZ. The biggest outrage was that such an evil regime was allowed to exist, and that China was allowed to exist. What the US should have done was to hit hard, spare nothing and wipe out the norks and chinese army. It should have hit hard at Chinese troops, cities and villages and put the PRC down for good.


I am interested in your nuanced, well-reasoned ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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stevemcgarrett



Joined: 24 Mar 2006

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

faster wrote:

Quote:
Actually, the biggest outrage in the Korean war was the demolition of the Yalu and other dams in the north, an act that flooded dozens of miles of valley farmland and hundreds of villages, killed people directly, and destroyed the rice harvest for the entire country - it's no exaggeration to estimate starvation and malnutrition deaths in the hundreds of thousands.


By this I assume you are against the adoption of a scorched earth policy similar to what the Soviets used against the Nazis?

My understanding of that decision was that destroying the Su-hoi dams on the Yalu was intended to slow the advance of the resurgent Chinese Red Army but, more importantly, to knock out electrical output in North Korea and thereby push the North Koreans at the truce talks. Judging by DPRK intransigence as of late, I'd say the US concern was warranted. So, no, I wouldn't call it a war crime. The North Korean populace was already in a bad way and the invading Chinese divisions depleted much of the crop that managed to be harvest anyhow.

Quote:
I am interested in your nuanced, well-reasoned ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.


Wink
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jinju



Joined: 22 Jan 2006

PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Reasoning? Look at the map. Everything should have been done to prevent what happened. And yes, using nukes would have been a far better outcome than what we have now: a dangerous, criminal regime threatening the world. Tactical nukes to destroy the Chinese and NK armies would have been just such a solution.
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