Topic: In 1965 the CIA was in charge of a torture program that killed 40,000+ people. (Read 1100 times)

Stories about Vietnam fail to shock me anymore.

thanks for the lecture, but I lived through Vietnam and don't need you pushing your slant on the entire mess on me.

But go ahead and polemic all you want, pretty obvious though the slant and the intent.

The initial argument didn't unravel. As I said, we should criticize all these things and the methods used no matter who did them. The others should also be criticized but you're not going to get anywhere if you criticize them and forget your own crimes. : /

The 80000 captured, interrogated, tortured, raped, and maybe half killed were not all known to be combatants and many were probably civilians.
"DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as "counter terror" which held that terrorism was a legitimate tool to use in unconventional warfare, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the Viet Cong. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began terrorizing suspected VC members in 1964"
And this is only a bit of what was done. And it wasn't a war between neighbors as much as a colonial war, and a war for control and influence in which the north had the most political power with the population. If America wanted to help it could have not sabotaged the peace process, installed a puppet government with a coup, provoked the north to attack by bombing them, sabotage, terror attacks, used chemical warfare against them, even intentionally on crops poisoning the food chain, forced population relocations, lied its way to open war, etc. This wasn't a war to help a friend or because of treaties.

Wait, so as the initial argument unravels, you just go to the broad brush argument?  "Oh, well even if it really didn't happen exactly that way in that place, man it sure did all these other places!!!"

I kind of don't buy that logic.  You understand, right that the 40,000 killed that this operation is said to have killed are North Vietnamese invaders in the context of a war?

Sorry, I'm not getting your logic "both are wrong and should never have happened."  Unless from the point of view that an ally has a war with a neighbor, and regardless of treaties we simply don't go help.  

To find the huge, massive atrocities in the 20th century, you just go to the list of socialist and communist nations and start punching right down the list.  Not hard at all.

It wasn't exactly for no reason, America was defending the South from the North communist government who were the invaders. People forget the US never actually went into North Vietnam except for maybe a few covert missions and bombing raids, it was in large part a completely defensive war, the US never tried to defeat the Northern government, just keep the Vietcong out of the South.

Those should also be criticized but so should this. Both are wrong and should never have happened.
But if you want to look at scale don't forget that America did this in many places all over the world, and in many others supported those who did. And that continues today. : /

From the article.

 If a suspected NLF member was found guilty, he or she could be held in prison for two years, with renewable two-year sentences totaling up to six years.[11] According to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) Directive 381-41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the NLF with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI."

Sure beats what happened in Cambodia...but you don't want to criticize that, I guess....or the atrocities of the North Vietnamese....or of Stalin in the Ukraine....or Mao...

^ at least the phoenix program doesn't look like a conspiracy theory and other programs like this are known.
But the destruction of a lot of the country of Vietnam for no reason is much worse I think. : /

Things about Vietnam fail to amaze me any longer.

Was posted elsewhere, just adding to the list:
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/ww2-hawaii-martial-law/

this is a core question of the Empire. That I solved simply as such. There is the MIIC, aka the Military Industrial and Intelligence Complex, which the CIA isn't part   . Why? because the MIIC is always MARKED by the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FLAG, WHERE EVER, WHEN EVER, WHO EVER, fuck them. What does this fuck them means, it's mean to hash them, into dust. no more. no game, no info, no tell, no sign, just nothing. simply. peacefully, silently. I know it's more efficient, corruption prone, and peace and love ready... why? which, who has seen the hell of war, wants war for it's children? who? tell me? Contrary to civilian pikers of the cia, that believe sometimes to further the interests of the empire or what ever guise they may use when only annihilation works, managing enemy is stupid, and furthermore it's easier to see a rogue air craft carrier. or they are friends, ie sharing common values, in resolving problems with the best solutions anyone could see fit, or lying bastards deserving nothing else but death. I want to bbq in peace. And if you think about it realistically a cow already died... understand who can.

And yet, loads of people choose to believe that nowadays all the CIA do is just going through emails and looking for 'terrorist threats'.

Wikipedia has a nice list of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Good old American intervention

So before spying people (thanks for Snowden) they slaughter 
But They slaughter for good and Spying for bad...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

Just imagine what else is going on that we don't know about. The CIA basically seem to be the American SS/Gestapo.