Torture and Coverup in Vietnam

Way back in the early 1970s a much-decorated Army light colonel named Anthony Herbert leveled charges, against officers and enlisted men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, of torture of captured Viet Cong and NVA troops.

Those charges were widely publicized, which resulted in an internal Army investigation. In early 1973, then Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams (formerly head of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, where he had replaced the discredited General William Westmoreland) received the news from the Army's chief of criminal investigations: The practice of torture and abuse went far beyond what Herbert had described.

However, there was also enough dirt on Herbert uncovered in the investigation to question his credibility, and so the Army went on the offensive against Herbert, instead of correcting the abuses. For his troubles, Herbert was savaged by, of all people, Mike Wallace on CBS's 60 Minutes -- an early example of the SCLM at work, doing the bidding of its corporate overlords who were in bed with the Nixon Administration -- and, also in typical fashion, that is what is remembered about Tony Herbert, and not the fact that he won a lawsuit against CBS.

So back to the torture: The investigators found that beatings, electric shocks and waterboarding (although it probably wasn't called that) were routine among the military interrogators in the 173rd, approved by their officers. At least one prisoner died at the hands of his interrogators.

Those abuses were never made public, and very few of the 29 suspected abusers were punished. In typical fashion, the only one who was really punished was Tony Herbert.

These facts were buried in a 9,000 page collection of documents that were once classified. However, in 1994 they were declassified and moved to the National Archives where they lay dormant until an enterprising group of reporters from the Los Angeles Times finally dug them out.

While I never witnessed prisoner abuse or torture while I was in Vietnam, there was no doubt that it took place with distressing regularity. Stories of throwing two bound prisoners out of helicopters in order to encourage the third one to talk were common, and the electric shock torture technique, usually conducted using a crank-phone electrical magneto, was widely and sardonically known as the "Bell Telephone Hour".

Anybody who tells you otherwise is either mistaken or just plain lying. We'd all like to think that we are an honorable nation who would never torture prisoners, blah blah blah, but the sad fact is that we are a warlike people whose blood lust can never truly be slaked. And it's not just the US, it's the whole human race. Among the oldest skeletons ever uncovered you can find the remains of primitive spear points that have struck bone.