Guest MantaRay Posted January 27, 2001 Share Posted January 27, 2001 Tankgirl, No offense intended by this post, but I think you need to better understand what the Vietcong did not only to the US Soldiers, but also to the South Vietnamese citizens who were totally innocent. First off, comparing an internment camp with a death camp is pretty bold. I am not sure about the exact numbers, but I would have to conclude that in Vietnam, most of the horror stories you hear are infact true. Very few POW's ever got out of Vietnamese camps alive, and I am sure 99% of the internees were eventually released, and I have never heard of any Japanese Americans being tortured sadisticly. And yes I do mean very few, and there may not be any still alive there to this day, but there are still thousands of MIA's who have not been brought back home, nor have had any decent burial respects paid to them. There were many forms of torture performed by the NVA and Vietcong, of which the most horrifying had to be one that my brother told me he saw on many occasions. This may get kind of graphic, so if you are uneasy, read no further................................................................................... A very common way of torture was to tie a man up in a cross like fashion, usually against a tree or similar shape of a cross. Then what they would do is get a long glass rod or glass sliver and make one of the "local" girls get the man errect. Then one of the tortures would insert the glass rod into the hole of the mans penis. Now that doesn't really seem all that bad, but then they would take the butts of their rifles or what ever they had and hit it repeatedly so the rod or shard of glass would break inside the penis into hundreds of splinters. This would not only result in massive amounts of pain, but also steady blood loss that didnt kill quickly, but sadly, resulted in a very horrible way to die. He also told me that sometimes his patrols would also find these same dead men without his testicles, or their anus ripped open, and so forth and so on. These people who did that dont even deserve to go to hell IMO. So to compare in retrospect the holding of people for no reason and the violation of civil rights to something that was common to happen to not only soldiers, but also school teachers, religous people, politicians, and normal everyday people living in Vietnam. And sure the US soldiers performed many horrendous acts against others in the war, but the US didn't have hundreds of camps set up for that express purpose. And John McCain is a hero. I cant imagine being tortured day in and day out for all those years. What an incredible feat of courage and perserverance. Not many, no matter how tough you think you are, could stand that strain and the feeling of utter hopelessness. Shame on anyone who thinks he isnt a hero. And this anti-American crap about us being such a moraless military, well that is just BS. We do it much more humanely than any one else, and we do it under intense media coverage, so when we do have bad apples, it is magnified 1000X. Sorry Matt for re-opening this, but I had to say this. Ray ------------------ When asked, "How many moves do you see ahead?", CAPABLANCA replied: "One move - the best one." Click now for shelter from the Peng thread The Red Army of the Rugged Defense Group Ladder Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted January 27, 2001 Share Posted January 27, 2001 Mantaray, That is alright. I agree that comments made in the thread earlier seemed to show a decided lack of reality comparing events in Vietnam prisoner of war camps and those of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. But let us not forget that for the people held in each circumstance the lose of freedom was the same. The real crime here is that after a century of bitter conflict events like this are still occuring all throughout the world. Names and places like Hanoi Hilton and Tule Lake have been replaced with Kosovo and Chechnya and far too many other places. Now I am not some sort of Maitre'D seating people in the non-conflict section of human nature and all these events are far too complex to just haphazardly throw terms at them and think it comes close to defining the backgrounds, people, and causes. For this reason, and the volatile nature of such discussions I am locking this and future threads like this one, up. Everyone is fit to have an opinion, but it doesn't hurt for it to be informed once and a while... Madmatt [This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 01-27-2001).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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