Assorted atrocities

The lieutenant proceeded to do the same thing as I had been doing, finally beating the prisoner, and this did not work. The lieutenant had an Army field telephone, which runs on batteries and generator. You crank it and it gives a nasty shock, a very nasty shock, quite painful. The interrogation commenced with the prisoner being tortured by field telephone. The telephones were first placed on his hands and then the field telephone wires were placed on his sexual organs. I left, I could not watch it.

— Testimony of Peter Martinsen, Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal.

Can anyone imagine any greater bitterness than that of the parents of little children choking away their last few moments of life after being poisoned by ‘humane nauseating’ gas spread by our military leaders?

The weakest, young and old, will be the ones unable to withstand the shock of this supposedly humane weapon. They will writhe in horrible cramps until their babies’ strength is unequal to the stress and they turn blue and black and die. This may be a more humane weapon than shells and napalm, but its legacy of bitterness will be even more lasting.

— Report on Chemical Warfare in Vietnam

Napalm burns are so deep that they are never first degree. Second- and third-degree burns represent fifteen per cent. Fourth-degree seventy-five per cent. Fifth-degree ten per cent. In other words, three quarters of all napalm victims are burned through the hypodermic tissues to the muscles.

Two thirds of the victims have burns covering twenty to twenty-five per cent of the whole body surface. All those burned up to 100 per cent of the surface of course die. What is the degree of fatal burns? The Vietnamese doctor gave the following reply. If burns cover fifty per cent of a victim‘s outer skin and twenty per cent of this is fourth or fifth degree, through the hypodermic tissues to the muscles, death is almost certain, or at least a year or more is needed for healing. If fourth- or fifth-degree burns extend over five per cent of the victim, he can be saved.

If he lives he will be covered with keloids. Keloid scars not only look hideous, but bring about motor disturbances, depending on cases, one of the frightful characteristics of the napalm bomb.

— The Napalm Bomb

After the battle was over there were several wounded North Vietnamese, you know, laying around on the ground, see, so everyone was angry because this was our first battle and we had lost a lot of our friends, see. So one Japanese-American, his name was Sergeant Takahatchi, I believe he was a staff sergeant, he took his machete and beheaded this wounded soldier. The soldier was wounded in the chest but he was still alive. So after he beheaded the man, he threw his head down the hill to serve as warning to other NVA elements, if they were still in the area, that we meant business. And I was standing near by when this occurred.

— Testimony of David Kenneth Tuck, Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal.

When I got there they had the man tied on the ground; he was spreadeagled. They were using a knife to sort of pry under his toenails and the soles of his feet. When this got no results they went on to other more sensitive parts of the body. Well, this still got no results, because evidently this man was, as we say in America, a tough nut to crack. So then after that they put the knife under his eyeball in another endeavour to make him talk, and he still would not talk. So then what they did, they put him in a barbed-wire cage in which he was on his hands and knees. And if he made any moves the barbs of the barbed wire would press into his flesh, so they kept him there for two days.

— Testimony of David Kenneth Tuck, Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal.

And remember, the right's beef with John Kerry: he had the balls to stand up and tell people this kind of thing was going on.

Man became a hero, the moment he did that. Flawed like every living being, but a hero. Came back, stood up, said 'this cannot stand'. And now the twits bringing us our modern Vietnam are playing politics with that act.

Enraged disgust does not adequately describe my reaction.