Medic in U.S. Tiger Force Unit Tells of Killings

[Khephra]

Medic in U.S. Tiger Force Unit Tells of Killings
Wed October 22, 2003 02:53 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army's Tiger Force unit killed an average of three Vietnamese a day during one 37-day operation, a former medical technician assigned to the unit during the Vietnam War told Reuters Television on Tuesday.

"My Lai was a one-day incident," former medic Rion Causey told Reuters in Livermore, California, citing the My Lai massacre, in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed.

"People were angry. They had had their friends, their comrades, shot. They made a conscious effort on one day to do this type of atrocity," Causey said.

"In Tiger Force, it went on every day," he continued. "That first operation that I was involved in went on for 37 days; 37 days we averaged right at three people a day. That's a conscious effort every single day that you are going to kill people."

MORE................

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3662522

[tlb]

1. Vietnam has responded saying in effect this is all water under the bridge.

They probably have the right idea. The war has been over nearly two generations now. Little productive can come from picking at the scabs.

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Unless those scabs

still happen to be in positions of power, like Colin Powell.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Oh, yeah. Why not simply let it fester away in the darkness?

Can't see any need to cleanse their grief-ridden consciences, I presume.

Any "enemy" can't help but be impressed at our power and likeliness to savage anyone in our road, so any revelations won't weaken our fearsome image, to be sure.

It just may be natural for people who are normally benign to wish to rejoin the human community at some point, when they start to suspect all the blood letting wasn't necessary. It may be that confession, and venting are as critical to them, spiritually, as air itself; a matter of survival on the personal level.

"Those who can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

What people do during battle is NOT sacred, for Christ's sakes.