US colonel wrote he sanctioned mass killing

spike

spike

New Member
SEOUL, South Korea) The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it "would be permitted" to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified "secret" and filed away.

Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbath largely hidden from history, unlike the communist invaders' executions of southern rightists, which were widely publicized and denounced at the time.

In the now-declassified record at the U.S. National Archives and other repositories, the Korean investigators will find an ambivalent U.S. attitude in 1950 — at times hands-off, at times disapproving.

"The most important thing is that they did not stop the executions," historian Jung Byung-joon, a member of the 2-year-old commission, said of the Americans. "They were at the crime scene, and took pictures and wrote reports."
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/144808

Several more pages to the story at the link.
 
Not the first time soldiers commited war crimes. In WWII the pacific theatre was playing the no prisoner game, Japan was not following the hague conventions, and the US troops decided that taking prisoners was more trouble than it was worth (after hearing rumors of what happened to their fellow captured americans).

sounds horrible, but all the heads that should roll are probably dead by now.
 
it's always interesting to look at the topics people choose to post about.

some people post about minorities. liberals. immigrants. welfare recipients.

some post about other things.

dots connect.
 
bullshit.jpg


Who was this anonymous colonel who gave thumbs up to his South Korean counterpart?

Why didn't you use the Newsweak headline that used the word "wavered" instead of "sanctioned" in it?


Why do you hate this country?
 
Cerise said:
Why didn't you use the Newsweak headline that used the word "wavered" instead of "sanctioned" in it?
Click to expand...


Headline is here:

"AP IMPACT: US wavered over S. Korean executions
AP IMPACT: US wavered over SKorean executions; US colonel wrote he sanctioned mass killing"

You see it says the US wavered, and the colonel wrote he sanctioned mass killings. Get it?


Why do you hate this country?
Click to expand...

Damn Cerise, if you approve of this sort of thing it would be obvious that you're the one that hates this country. That would be utterly anti-American of you.
 
spike said:
Headline is here:
Get it?
Click to expand...

Sure, I get it.

You're trying to avoid the question.

You had 2 choices.

The Headline says wavered---hesitant.

The Subheadline says sanctioned---supported.


----US wavered over S. Korean executions

----US colonel wrote he sanctioned mass killing


So how come your title wasn't "US wavered over S. Korean executions"?

Afterall, that was the main headline, the one that Newsweak itself decided to bold. :shrug:
 
Cerise said:
So how come your title wasn't "US wavered over S. Korean executions"?

Afterall, that was the main headline, the one that Newsweak itself decided to bold. :shrug:
Click to expand...

Maybe because countries "waver" over doing horrible things all the time.

a US officer sanctioning a war crime is not done all the time (thank god).
 
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