OMNI

US WAR CRIMES ANTHOLOGY #8

March 22, 2023

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

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CONTENTS US WAR CRIMES ANTHOLOGY #8, March 22, 2023

Wikipedia:“(Incomplete) List of U.S. war crimes in chronological order.”   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

Dick Bennett.  Mexican War, Arkansas Troops.
Ellen Taylor.  “From Nuremberg to Ukraine.”

Marjorie Cohn.  “From Japan to Vietnam.”

Brett Wilkins.   ““Fearing Future Probes of USAtrocities, Pentagon Blocks ICC.”
David Knox.  Mainstream Media “Found Hersh's Nord Strom Scoop Too Hot to Handle.”  

TEXTS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

Philippine–American War

General Jacob H. Smith's infamous order "Kill Everyone Over Ten" was the caption in the New York Journal cartoon [omitted] on May 5, 1902. The Old Glory draped an American shield on which a vulture replaced the bald eagle. The caption at the bottom proclaimed, "Criminals Because They Were Born Ten Years Before We Took the Philippines".

Following the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States as part of the peace settlement. This triggered a conflict between the United States Armed Forces and revolutionary First Philippine Republic under President Emilio Aguinaldo, and the Moro fighters.

A photograph [omitted] depicting the execution of Moro revolutionaries on a 1911 commemorative postcard.

War crimes committed by the United States Army in the Philippines include the March across Samar, which led to the court martial and forcible retirement of Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith.^[1] Smith instructed Major Littleton Waller, commanding officer of a battalion of 315 U.S. Marines assigned to bolster his forces in Samar, regarding the conduct of pacification, in which he stated the following:

I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.^[6][7][8]

SMajor Littleton Waller asked:

"I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir."

"Ten years", Smith responded.

"Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?"

"Yes." Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.^[6][7][8]

A sustained and widespread massacre of Filipino civilians followed as American columns marched across the island. All food and trade to Samar were cut off, and the widespread destruction of land, homes, and draft animals occurred, with the intention of starving the Fillipino revolutionaries and the civilian populace into submission. Smith used his troops in sweeps of the interior in search for guerrilla bands and in attempts to capture Philippine General Vicente Lukbán, but he did nothing to prevent contact between the guerrillas and the population. Littleton Waller, in a report, stated that over an eleven-day period his men burned 255 dwellings, shot 13 carabaos, and killed 39 people.^[9] An exhaustive research made by a British writer in the 1990s put the figure at about 2,500 dead; Filipino historians believe it to be around 50,000.^[10] As a consequence of his order in Samar, Smith became known as "Howling Wilderness Smith".^[11]

A report written by General J.M. Bell in 1901 states: "I am now assembling in the neighborhood of 2,500 men who will be used in columns of about fifty men each. I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns. All able bodied men will be killed or captured. ... These people need a thrashing to teach them some good common sense; and they should have it for the good of all concerned."^[12]

A picture [omitted] showing the aftermath of Moro crater battle or massacre.

The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Moro Crater Massacre, occurred on March 5–8, 1906, during the Moro Rebellion. During the engagement, 750 men and officers, under the command of Colonel J.W. Duncan, assaulted the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo (Tausūg: Būd Dahu), which was populated by 800 to 1,000 Tausug villagers. On March 2, Colonel J.W. Duncan was ordered to lead an expedition against Bud Dajo. The assault force consisted of 272 men of the 6th Infantry, 211 dismounted men of the 4th Cavalry, 68 men of the 28th Artillery Battery, 51 men of the Philippine Constabulary, 110 men of the 19th Infantry and 6 sailors from the gunboat Pampanga. The battle began on March 5, as mountain guns fired 40 rounds of shrapnel into the crater. During the night, the Americans hauled mountain guns to the crater's edge with block and tackle. At daybreak, the American guns, both the mountain guns and the guns of the Pampanga, opened fire on the Moros' fortifications in the crater. American forces then placed a "Machine Gun... in a position where it could sweep the crest of the mountain between us and the cotta," killing all Moros in the crater.^[13]

Only 6 Moros at Bud Dajo survived. 99% of Moros at Bud Dajo were killed, a higher percentage than in other incidents now considered massacres such as the Wounded Knee Massacre where 300 out of 350 Native Americans were killed, a death rate of 85%. The dead women and children. Moro men in the crater possessed melee weapons. While fighting was limited to ground action on Jolo, use of naval gunfire contributed significantly to the overwhelming firepower brought to bear against the Moros.^[14][15][16]

Major Hugh Scott, the District Governor of Sulu Province, where the incidents occurred, recounted that those who fled to the crater "declared they had no intention of fighting, ran up there only in fright, and had some crops planted and desired to cultivate them."^[17] The description of the engagement as a "battle" is disputed because of both the overwhelming firepower of the attackers and the lopsided casualties. The author Vic Hurley wrote, "By no stretch of the imagination could Bud Dajo be termed a 'battle'".^[18] Mark Twain strongly condemned the incident in several articles he published,^[19][20] and commented: "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle. We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people."^[21]

One account claims that the Moros, armed with knives and spears, refused to surrender and held their positions. Some of the defenders rushed the Americans and were cut down by artillery fire. The Americans charged the surviving Moros with fixed bayonets, and the Moros fought back with their kalis, barung, improvised grenades made with black powder and seashells. Despite the inconsistencies among various accounts of the battle, one in which all occupants of Bud Dajo were gunned down, another in which defenders resisted in fierce hand-to-hand combat, all accounts agree that few, if any, Moros survived.^[14]

In response to criticism, Wood's explanation of the high number of women and children killed stated that the women of Bud Dajo dressed as men and joined in the combat, and that the men used children as living shields.^[15][16] Hagedorn supports this explanation, by presenting an account of Lieutenant Gordon Johnston, who was allegedly severely wounded by a female warrior.^[22]

A second explanation was given by the Governor-General of the Philippines, Henry Clay Ide, who reported that the women and children were collateral damage, having been killed during the artillery barrages.^[15] These conflicting explanations of the high number of women and child casualties brought accusations of a cover-up, further adding fire to the criticism.^[15] Furthermore, Wood's and Ide's explanation are at odds with Colonel J.W. Duncan's post-action report authored on March 12, 1906, describing the placement of a machine-gun at the edge of the crater to fire upon the occupants. Following Duncan's reports, the high number of non-combatants killed can be explained as the result of indiscriminate machine-gun fire.^[13]

Banana Wars[edit]

First and Second Caco Wars[edit]

See also: United States occupation of Haiti § Human rights abuses

The body of caco leader Charlemagne Péralte on display after his assassination by US forces

An October 1921 article from the Merced Sun-Star discussing killings of Haitians by U.S. commanded Haitian gendarmerie

During the First (1915) and Second (1918-1920) Caco Wars which were both waged during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), human rights abuses were committed against the native Haitian population.^[23][24] Overall, American troops and the Haitian gendarmerie killed several thousands of Haitian civilians during the rebellions between 1915 and 1920, though the exact death toll is unknown.^[24] During Senate hearings in 1921, the commandant of the Marine Corps reported that, in the 20 months of active unrest, 2,250 Haitians had been killed. However, in a report to the Secretary of the Navy, he reported the death toll as being 3,250.^[25] Haitian historian Roger Gaillard, estimated that in total, including rebel combatants and civilians, at least 15,000 Haitians were killed during the occupation.^[24] According to Paul Farmer, the higher estimates are not accepted by most historians outside Haiti.^[26]

Mass killings of civilians were allegedly committed by United States Marines and their subordinates in the Haitian gendarmerie.^[24] According to Haitian historian Roger Gaillard, such killings involved rape, lynchings, summary executions, burning villages and deaths by burning. Internal documents of the United States Army justified the killing of women and children, describing them as "auxiliaries" of rebels. A private memorandum of the Secretary of the Navy criticized “indiscriminate killings against natives”. American officers who were responsible for acts of violence were given Creole names such as "Linx" for Commandant Freeman Lang and "Ouiliyanm" for Lieutenant Lee Williams. According to American journalist H.J. Seligman, Marines would practice "bumping off Gooks", describing the shooting of civilians in a manner which was similar to killing for sport.^[24]

During the Second Caco War of 1918–1919, many Caco prisoners were summarily executed by Marines and the gendarmerie on orders from their superiors.^[24] On June 4, 1916, Marines executed caco General Mizrael Codio and ten others after they were captured in Fonds-Verrettes.^[24] In Hinche in January 1919, Captain Ernest Lavoie of the gendarmerie, a former United States Marine, allegedly ordered the killing of nineteen caco rebels according to American officers, though no charges were ever filed against him due to the fact that no physical evidence of the killing was ever presented.^[24]

The torture of Haitian rebels and the torture of Haitians who were suspected of rebelling against the United States was a common practice among the occupying Marines. Some of the methods of torture included the use of water cure, hanging prisoners by their genitals and ceps, which involved pushing both sides of the tibia with the butts of two guns.^[24]

World War II[edit]

Main article: United States war crimes during World War II

Pacific theater[edit]

On January 26, 1943, the submarine USS Wahoo fired on survivors in lifeboats from the Japanese transport Buyo Maru. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood asserted that the survivors were Japanese soldiers who had turned machine-gun and rifle fire on the Wahoo after it surfaced, and that such resistance was common in submarine warfare.^[27] According to the submarine's executive officer, the fire was intended to force the Japanese soldiers to abandon their boats and none of them were deliberately targeted.^[28] Historian Clay Blair stated that the submarine's crew fired first and the shipwrecked survivors returned fire with handguns.^[29] The survivors were later determined to have included Allied POWs of the Indian 2nd Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment, who were guarded by Japanese Army Forces from the 26th Field Ordnance Depot.^[30] Of 1,126 men originally aboard Buyo Maru, 195 Indians and 87 Japanese died, some killed during the torpedoing of the ship and some killed by the shootings afterwards.^[31]

During and after the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 3–5, 1943), U.S. PT boats and Allied aircraft attacked Japanese rescue vessels as well as approximately 1,000 survivors from eight sunken Japanese troop transport ships.^[32] The stated justification was that the Japanese personnel were close to their military destination and would be promptly returned to service in the battle.^[32] Many of the Allied aircrew accepted the attacks as necessary, while others were sickened.^[33]

American servicemen in the Pacific War deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered, according to Richard Aldrich, a professor of history at the University of Nottingham. Aldrich published a study of diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, wherein it was stated that they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.^[34] According to John Dower, in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."^[35] According to Professor Aldrich, it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.^[36] His analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,^[37] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U.S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."^[37]: 150

Ferguson states that such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes^[37]: 150 among their personnel (because it hampered intelligence gathering), and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, "taking no prisoners" was still "standard practice" among U.S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.^[37]: 181 Ferguson also suggests that "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on."^[37]: 176

Ulrich Straus, a U.S. Japanologist, suggests that Allied troops on the front line intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, because they believed that Allied personnel who surrendered got "no mercy" from the Japanese.^[38]: 116 Allied troops were told that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender in order to make surprise attacks,^[38]: 116 a practice which was outlawed by the Hague Convention of 1907.^[39] Therefore, according to Straus, "Senior officers opposed the taking of prisoners on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks ..."^[38]: 116 When prisoners were taken at Guadalcanal, Army interrogator Captain Burden noted that many times POWs were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take [them] in".^[38]: 117

U.S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. prisoner of war compounds to two important factors, namely (1) a Japanese reluctance to surrender, and (2) a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to prisoners of war."^[40]: 55 The latter reason is supported by Ferguson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians—as Untermenschen (i.e., "subhuman")."^[37]: 182

Mutilation of Japanese war dead[edit]

Main article: American mutilation of Japanese war dead

[Photo omitted]American sailor with the skull of a Japanese soldier during World War II.

In the Pacific theater, American servicemen engaged in human trophy collecting. The phenomenon of "trophy-taking" was widespread enough that discussion of it featured prominently in magazines and newspapers. Franklin Roosevelt himself was reportedly given a gift of a letter-opener made of a Japanese soldier's arm by U.S. Representative Francis E. Walter in 1944, which Roosevelt later ordered to be returned, calling for its proper burial.^{[41]: 65 [42]: 825} The news was also widely reported to the Japanese public, where the Americans were portrayed as "deranged, primitive, racist and inhuman". This, compounded by a previous Life magazine picture of a young woman with a skull trophy, was reprinted in the Japanese media and presented as a symbol of American barbarism, causing national shock and outrage.^{[43][42]: 833}

War rape[edit]

Main article: Rape during the occupation of Japan

U.S. military personnel raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.^[44]

Based on several years of research, Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes:

Soon after the U.S. Marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children, and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the Marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started 'hunting for women' in broad daylight, and women who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.^[45]

According to interviews carried out by The New York Times and published by them in 2000, several elderly people from an Okinawan village confessed that after the United States had won the Battle of Okinawa, three armed Marines kept coming to the village every week to force the villagers to gather all the local women, who were then carried off into the hills and raped. The article goes deeper into the matter and claims that the villagers' tale—true or not—is part of a "dark, long-kept secret" the unraveling of which "refocused attention on what historians say is one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war": "the widespread rape of Okinawan women by American servicemen."^[46] Although Japanese reports of rape were largely ignored at the time, one academic estimated that as many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped. It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the year 2000 either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war.^[47]

Professor of East Asian Studies and expert on Okinawa, Steve Rabson, said: "I have read many accounts of such rapes in Okinawan newspapers and books, but few people know about them or are willing to talk about them."^[47] He notes that plenty of old local books, diaries, articles and other documents refer to rapes by American soldiers of various races and backgrounds. An explanation given for why the US military has no record of any rapes is that few Okinawan women reported abuse, mostly out of fear and embarrassment. According to an Okinawan police spokesman: "Victimized women feel too ashamed to make it public."^[47] Those who did report them are believed by historians to have been ignored by the U.S. military police. Many people wondered why it never came to light after the inevitable American-Japanese babies the many women must have given birth to. In interviews, historians and Okinawan elders said that some of those Okinawan women who were raped and did not commit suicide did give birth to biracial children, but that many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or fearful trauma. More often, however, rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of village midwives. A large scale effort to determine the possible extent of these crimes has never been conducted. Over five decades after the war had ended, in the late-1990s, the women who were believed to have been raped still overwhelmingly refused to give public statements, instead speaking through relatives and a number of historians and scholars.^[47]

There is substantial evidence that the U.S. had at least some knowledge of what was going on. Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have intentionally kept the rape a secret, largely out of shame: "It would be unfair for the public to get the impression that we were all a bunch of rapists after we worked so hard to serve our country."^[47] Military officials formally denied the mass rapes, and all surviving related veterans refused request for interviews from The New York Times. Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor, supports this: "There is a lot of historical amnesia out there, many people don't want to acknowledge what really happened."^[47] Author George Feifer noted in his book Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, that by 1946 there had been fewer than 10 reported cases of rape in Okinawa. He explained it was "partly because of shame and disgrace, partly because Americans were victors and occupiers. In all there were probably thousands of incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign."^[48]

Some other authors have noted that Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy."^[49][50] According to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark Selden, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned."^[51]

According to numerous academics, there were also 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa prefecture after the Japanese surrender, however, Brian Walsh states that this claim originated from a misreading of crime figures and that the Japanese Government had actually recorded 1,326 criminal incidents of all types involving American forces, of which an unspecified number were rapes.^[44][52]

European theater[edit]

In the Laconia incident, U.S. aircraft attacked Germans rescuing survivors from the sinking British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. Pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast its remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.

During the Allied invasion in Sicily, some massacres of civilians by US troops were reported, including the Vittoria one, where 12 Italians died (including a 17-year-old boy),^[53] and in Piano Stella, where a group of peasants was murdered.^[54]

The "Canicattì massacre" involved the killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel George Herbert McCaffrey; a confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with any offense relating to the massacre. He died in 1954. This fact remained virtually unknown in the U.S. until 2005, when Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, reported it.^[55]

In the "Biscari massacre", which consisted of two instances of mass murder, U.S. troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed 73 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.^[56][57]

According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been wilfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the "greatest generation" mythology surrounding World War II. However, this has recently started to change, with books such as The Day of Battle, by Rick Atkinson, in which he describes Allied war crimes in Italy, and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor.^[58] Beevor's latest work suggests that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was previously realized".^[59]

Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U.S. and Canadian units were ordered not to take enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct, it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.^[58]

Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, 30 Wehrmacht prisoners were massacred by U.S. paratroopers.^[59]

In the aftermath of the 1944 Malmedy massacre, in which 80 American POWs were murdered by their German captors, a written order from the headquarters of the 328th U.S. Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but [rather they] will be shot on sight."^[60] Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"^[61] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."^[62]

"Operation Teardrop" involved eight surviving captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine U-546 being tortured by U.S. military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential missile attacks on the continental U.S. by German submarines.^[63]

Among American WWII veterans who admitted to having committed war crimes was former Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran. In interviews with his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran recalled his war service with the Thunderbird Division as the time when he first developed a callousness to the taking of human life. By his own admission, Sheeran participated in numerous massacres and summary executions of German POWs, acts which violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. In his interviews with Brandt, Sheeran divided such massacres into four different categories.

1. Revenge killings in the heat of battle. Sheeran told Brandt that, when a German soldier had just killed his close friends and then tried to surrender, he would often "send him to hell, too." He described often witnessing similar behavior by fellow GIs.^[64]

2. Orders from unit commanders during a mission. When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did what you had to do."^[65]

3. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates.^[66]

4. Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade German POWs. While Sheeran's unit was climbing the Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested, then Sheeran and his fellow GIs "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our waste." Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves." Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, "I had no hesitation in doing what I had to do."^[67]

Rape[edit]

Main articles: Rape during the liberation of France and Rape during the occupation of Germany

Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.^[68] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.^[69][70] He estimates that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war. Historian William Hitchcock states that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.^[71]

Korean War[edit]

No Gun Ri[edit]

Main article: No Gun Ri massacre

The No Gun Ri massacre refers to an incident of mass killing of an undetermined number of South Korean refugees by U.S. soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment (and in a U.S. air attack) between 26–29 July 1950 at a railroad bridge near the village of Nogeun-ri, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. In 2005, the South Korean government certified the names of 163 dead or missing (mostly women, children, and old men) and 55 wounded. It said that many other victims' names were not reported.^[72] The South Korean government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated in 2011 that 250–300 were killed.^[73] Over the years survivors' estimates of the dead have ranged from 300 to 500. This episode early in the Korean War gained widespread attention when the Associated Press (AP) published a series of articles in 1999 that subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.^[74]

Bombing of North Korea[edit]

The US bombing of North Korea during the war has been condemned as a war crime by some authors. The bombing destroyed many cities and caused many civilians casualties. According to Bruce Cumings, "What hardly any Americans know or remember is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties." Author Blaine Harden has called the bombing campaign a "major war crime."^[75][76]

On 13 May 1953, the US Air Force attacked five North Korean dams, causing widespread flooding and destruction to farmlands. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the flooding threatened several million North Koreans with starvation and "only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine."^[77][78]

Vietnam War[edit]

See also: Vietnam War Crimes Working Group and Russell Tribunal

(Photo omitted)American soldiers surrounded by beheaded corpses of Vietcong fighters

RJ Rummel estimated that American forces killed around 5,500 people in democide between 1960 and 1972 in the Vietnam War, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000.^[79] Benjamin Valentino estimates 110,000–310,000 deaths as a "possible case" of "counter-guerrilla mass killings" by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces during the war.^[80] During the war, 95 U.S. Army personnel and 27 U.S. Marine Corps personnel were convicted by court-martial of the murder or manslaughter of Vietnamese.^[81]: 33

U.S. forces also established numerous free-fire zones as a tactic to prevent Viet Cong fighters from sheltering in South Vietnamese villages.^[82] Such practice, which involved the assumption that any individual appearing in the designated zones was an enemy combatant that could be freely targeted by weapons, is regarded by journalist Lewis M. Simons as "a severe violation of the laws of war".^[83] Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as Viet Cong and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. troops.^[84]: 251

My Lai Massacre[edit]

Main article: My Lai massacre

Some victims of the My Lai massacre

The My Lai massacre was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, almost entirely civilians, most of them women and children, conducted by U.S. soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (American) Infantry Division, on 16 March 1968. Some of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the bodies were found mutilated. The massacre took place in the hamlets of Mỹ Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ village during the Vietnam War.^[85][86] Of the 26 U.S. soldiers initially charged with criminal offenses or war crimes for actions at My Lai, only William Calley was convicted. Initially sentenced to life in prison, Calley had his sentence reduced to ten years, then was released after only three and a half years under house arrest. The incident prompted widespread outrage around the world, and reduced U.S. domestic support for the Vietnam War. Three American Servicemen (Hugh Thompson, Jr., Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn), who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded, were sharply criticized by U.S. Congressmen, and received hate mail, death threats, and mutilated animals on their doorsteps.^[87] Thirty years after the event their efforts were honored.^[88]

Following the massacre a Pentagon task force called the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) investigated alleged atrocities by U.S. troops against South Vietnamese civilians and created a formerly secret archive of some 9,000 pages (the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files housed by the National Archives and Records Administration) documenting 320 alleged incidents from 1967–1971 including 7 massacres (not including the My Lai Massacre) in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 additional attacks targeting noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 incidents of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war. 203 U.S. personnel were charged with crimes, 57 were court-martialed and 23 were convicted. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but could not verify them.^[89][90]

Operation Speedy Express[edit]

Main article: Operation Speedy Express

Operation Speedy Express was a controversial military operation aimed at pacifying large parts of the Mekong delta from December 1968 to May 1969. The U.S. Army claimed 10,899 PAVN/VC were killed in the operation, while the US Army Inspector General estimated that there were 5,000 to 7,000 civilian deaths from the operation.^[91][92] Robert Kaylor of United Press International alleged that according to American pacification advisers in the Mekong Delta during the operation the division had indulged in the "wanton killing" of civilians through the "indiscriminate use of mass firepower."^[93]

Phoenix Program[edit]

Main article: Phoenix Program

Two United States soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboard a captured North Vietnamese prisoner of war near Da Nang, 1968.

The Phoenix Program was coordinated by the CIA, involving South Vietnamese, US and other allied security forces, with the aim identifying and destroying the Viet Cong (VC) through infiltration, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination.^[94][95] The program was heavily criticized, with critics labeling it a "civilian assassination program" and criticizing the operation's use of torture.^{[96]: 341–343}

Tiger Force[edit]

Main article: Tiger Force

Tiger Force was the name of a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division, which fought in the from November 1965 to November 1967.^[97] The unit gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed extensive war crimes against civilians, which numbered into the hundreds. They were accused of routine torture, execution of prisoners and the intentional killing of civilians. US army investigators concluded that many of the alleged war crimes took place.^{[96]: 235–238}

Other perpetrated crimes[edit]

War on Terror[edit]

Main article: War on Terror

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, the U.S. Government adopted several new measures in the classification and treatment of prisoners captured in the War on Terror, including applying the status of unlawful combatant to some prisoners, conducting extraordinary renditions and using torture ("enhanced interrogation techniques"). Human Rights Watch and others described the measures as being illegal under the Geneva Conventions.^[102] The torture of detainees was extensively detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

Picture of a prisoner subjected to torture and abuse by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The photo has become internationally famous, eventually making it onto the cover of The Economist

Command responsibility[edit]

A presidential memorandum of February 7, 2002, authorized U.S. interrogators of prisoners captured during the War in Afghanistan to deny the prisoners basic protections required by the Geneva Conventions, and thus according to Jordan J. Paust, professor of law and formerly a member of the faculty of the Judge Advocate General's School, "necessarily authorized and ordered violations of the Geneva Conventions, which are war crimes."^[103]: 828 Based on the president's memorandum, U.S. personnel carried out cruel and inhumane treatment on captured enemy fighters,^[103]: 845 which necessarily means that the president's memorandum was a plan to violate the Geneva Convention, and such a plan constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, according to Professor Paust.^[103]: 861

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others have argued that detainees should be considered "unlawful combatants" and as such not be protected by the Geneva Conventions in multiple memoranda regarding these perceived legal gray areas.^[104]

Gonzales' statement that denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" suggests, to some authors, an awareness by those involved in crafting policies in this area that U.S. officials are involved in acts that could be seen to be war crimes.^[105] The U.S. Supreme Court challenged the premise on which this argument is based in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which it ruled that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions applies to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and that the military tribunals used to try these suspects were in violation of U.S. and international law.^[106]

Human Rights Watch claimed in 2005 that the principle of "command responsibility" could make high-ranking officials within the Bush administration guilty of the numerous war crimes committed during the War on Terror, either with their knowledge or by persons under their control.^[107] On April 14, 2006, Human Rights Watch said that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be criminally liable for his alleged involvement in the abuse of Mohammed al-Qahtani.^[108] On November 14, 2006, invoking universal jurisdiction, legal proceedings were started in Germany—for their alleged involvement of prisoner abuse—against Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, George Tenet and others.^{[109][110][111]}

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is seen by some as an amnesty law for crimes committed in the War on Terror by retroactively rewriting the War Crimes Act^[112] and by abolishing habeas corpus, effectively making it impossible for detainees to challenge crimes committed against them.^[113]

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Sunday Telegraph in 2007 that he was willing to start an inquiry by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and possibly a trial, for war crimes committed in Iraq involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American President George W. Bush.^[114] Though under the Rome Statute, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Bush, since the U.S. is not a State Party to the relevant treaty—unless Bush were accused of crimes inside a State Party, or the UN Security Council (where the U.S. has a veto) requested an investigation. However, Blair does fall under ICC jurisdiction as Britain is a State Party.^[115]

Shortly before the end of President Bush's second term in 2009, news media in countries other than the U.S. began publishing the views of those who believe that under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the U.S. is obligated to hold those responsible for prisoner abuse to account under criminal law.^{[116][117][118]} One proponent of this view was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Professor Manfred Nowak) who, on January 20, 2009, remarked on German television that former president George W. Bush had lost his head of state immunity and under international law the U.S. would now be mandated to start criminal proceedings against all those involved in these violations of the UN Convention Against Torture.^[119] Law professor Dietmar Herz explained Nowak's comments by opining that under U.S. and international law former President Bush is criminally responsible for adopting torture as an interrogation tool.^[119]

War in Afghanistan[edit]

Afghan boy murdered on 15 January 2010 by a group of US Army soldiers called the Kill Team

·       Bagram torture and prisoner abuse

·       Kandahar massacre

·       Kunduz hospital airstrike

·       Maywand District murders

·       Dasht-i-Leili massacre

·       Clint Lorance murders

Iraq War[edit]

·       Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

·       Mahmudiyah killings

·       John E. Hatley murders

·       Hamdania incident

·       The International Criminal Court and the 2003 invasion of Iraq

·       Eddie Gallagher

·       Nisour Square massacre

Haditha massacre[edit]

Picture taken at the scene of the Haditha killings

On November 19, 2005 in Haditha, Iraq, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich led Marines from the 3rd battalion into Haditha. In Al-Subhani, a neighborhood in Haditha, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas (20 years old) was killed by a roadside bomb.^[120] Later in the day, 24 Iraqi women and children were shot dead by Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and his marines. Wuterich acknowledged in military court that he gave his men the order to "shoot first, ask questions later"^[121] after the roadside bomb explosion. Wuterich told military judge Lt. Col. David Jones "I never fired my weapon at any women or children that day." On January 24, 2012, Frank Wuterich was given a sentence of 90 days in prison along with a reduction in rank and pay. Just a day before, Wuterich pled guilty to one count of negligent dereliction of duty.^[120] No other marine that was involved that day was sentenced to any jail time. For the massacre, The Marine Corps paid $38,000 total to the families of 15 of the dead civilians.^[122]

Dick.  WAR CRIMES BY US, INCLUDING ARKANSAS TROOPS, DURING MEXICAN WAR.

     The violence committed by Russian troops during the present invasion of Ukraine by Russia, reminded me of US troop violence during the US invasion of Mexico of 1846-48.  My source is Greg Grandin’s The End of Myth, which contains a chapter on that war with information about the atrocious behaviour of troops from Arkansas.  I was born and reside today in that state. But my interest arises not from a desire at this moment to point a finger at one side, but to add to our understanding of the causes of wars:  they inspire violence in most of us, and prepare for, train for, the next war.  The effects of one war become the cause of the next.

      The invasion arose from the ceaseless US racist terror in expanding US territory; for example Andrew Jackson’s destruction of the Creeks in 1814 and Indian removal in 1830.  Hatred of indigenous people unified the white settlers; hatred of Mexicans was soon incorporated into the killing.  The annexation of Texas as a slave state was only five years in the future.  Jacksonianism triumphant: land speculators, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, slavers, militia commanders, Indian killers, Mexican killers.  The horrendous Civil War was only a dozen years away.

       Annexation of Texas did not end with Texas.  The US invaded Mexico in April 1846, the Mexicans fought back, and President Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war.  The Senate voted 40 to 2 for war, and the House 174 to 14.  Public opposition soon turned into national patriotism and racial solidarity.

     “The nation’s elites ‘placed their most restless and desperate citizens upon the throat of Mexico’. . . looting, civilian murder, and terror.”  A soldier from Arkansas raped a Mexican woman, the Mexicans retaliated by killing a soldier, over 100 Arkansas volunteers raped and murdered a group of Mexican refugees in a cave, many scalped.  The volunteers in the war were under the command of General Zachary Taylor, soon to be president.   –Dick  4-17-22

War Crimes, From Nuremberg To Ukraine

By Ellen Taylor, Counter Punch.  Popular Resistance.org (6-5-22).   I was in Nuremberg during the war crimes trials which followed WWII. My father, Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, was Chief Prosecutor during the second, American phase. The French, Russian and British staffs had gone home to continue trials at home, but the US stayed longer, and scheduled about 400 additional defendants. They were divided into twelve categories: judges, doctors, industrialists, etc. There were 142 convictions and ten death sentences. I remember the high spirits of the occupying troops and tribunal staff, the joy of triumph and victory. -more-

Marjorie Cohn.  “From Japan to Vietnam, Radiation and Agent Orange Survivors Deserve Justice From the U.S.”  Truthdigand Peace in Our Times. Posted on Aug 19, 2015.  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/from_japan_to_vietnam_radiation_and_agent_orange_survivors_20150819/ 

Photo:  A helicopter of the U.S. Army 336th Aviation Company sprays Agent Orange on a dense jungle area in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. (Everett Historical / Shutterstock)

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Truthout.

We have just marked anniversaries of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the U.S. government against the people of Japan and Vietnam. Seventy years ago, on August 6, 1945, the U.S. military unleashed an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing at least 140,000 people. Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb, on Nagasaki, which killed 70,000. And 54 years ago, on August 10, 1961, the U.S. military began spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. It contained the deadly chemical dioxin, which has poisoned an estimated 3 million people throughout that country.  MORE      http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/from_japan_to_vietnam_radiation_and_agent_orange_survivors_20150819 /
[OMNI published this earlier, but its exceptional quality justifies repetition.]       copyright Truthout..

BRETT WILKINS.    “Fearing Future Probes of USAtrocities, Pentagon Blocks ICC From Russian War Crimes Evidence.”  Common Dreams.  Mar 09, 2023.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-states-and-the-icc

"The Ukrainian people deserve accountability. By blocking the sharing of evidence with the ICC, the administration, contrary to its stated position, is undermining it," said one expert.

The Pentagon is helping to shield Russia from International Criminal Court accountability for its atrocities in Ukraine, fearing such a reckoning could set a precedent allowing the tribunal to prosecute U.S. war crimes, a report published Wednesday revealed.

According toThe New York Times, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and other Pentagon brass are blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the objections of officials in those agencies, as well as in the State and Justice departments.

Neither Russia, the United States, nor Ukraine are party to the Rome Statute, the treaty governing the ICC. However, according to "current and former officials briefed on the matter" who were interviewed by the Times, Austin and others are wary of the Hague tribunal targeting the crimes of countries outside its jurisdiction. Ukraine last year accepted the ICC's jurisdiction so the court could open an investigation of Russia's conduct during the invasion.

"Basically, we want others punished, but not ourselves."

"The Pentagon is flouting the rest of the U.S. government to try to block sending evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court," tweeted human rights expert Kenneth Roth. "It fears a precedent: prosecuting non-parties on the territory of governments that accept the ICC."

Author and war correspondent Megan K. Stack wrote on Twitter that "basically, we want others punished, but not ourselves."

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—whose resolution urging accountability for Russian war criminals and encouraging ICC member states to investigate documented and alleged atrocities unanimously passed the Senate last year—told the Times' Charlie Savage that the Pentagon "opposed the legislative change—it passed overwhelmingly—and they are now trying to undermine the letter and spirit of the law."

"It seems to me that [Department of Defense] is the problem child here, and the sooner we can get the information into the hands of the ICC the better off the world will be."

Documented and alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces and contractors in Ukraine include—but are not limited to— massacres and other murders of civilians and soldiers; indiscriminate attacks on densely populated areas; attacking critical civilian infrastructure; bombing hospitals and shelters; torture; rape and sexual enslavement of women and children; and stealing children.

American troops and contractors have perpetrated each of those war crimes in U.S. attacks, invasions, occupations, and peacekeeping operations in the years since the ICC was established in 1998.

President Joe Biden has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal" and demanded he be tried for Russia's atrocities in Ukraine. The Biden administration and Congress even explored ways of helping the ICC prosecute Russian war crimes without the U.S. being subjected to the tribunal's authority.

As Savage noted:  Lawmakers enacted two laws aimed at increasing the chances that Russians would be held accountable for war crimes in Ukraine.

One was a stand-alone bill expanding the jurisdiction of American prosecutors to charge foreigners for war crimes committed abroad. The other, a provision about the International Criminal Court embedded in the large appropriations bill Congress passed in late December, received little attention at the time. 
But that provision was significant. While the U.S. government remains prohibited from providing funding and certain other aid to the court, Congress created an exception that allows it to assist with "investigations and prosecutions of foreign nationals related to the situation in Ukraine, including to support victims and witnesses."

"The Ukrainian people deserve accountability," Rosie Berman, a project manager at the advocacy group Center for Civilians in Conflict, asserted via Twitter. "By blocking the sharing of evidence with the ICC, the administration, contrary to its stated position, is undermining it."

Under a law signed by former President George W. Bush, not only is the U.S. Congress barred from funding the ICC or from providing other assistance to the court, but the U.S. may use "all means necessary and appropriate"—including invading NATO ally the Netherlands—to secure the release of any U.S. or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the tribunal.

In March 2020 the ICC, then led by Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, determined that an investigation into documented and alleged war crimes committed by all sides in the war in Afghanistan, and at secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, could proceed.  In retaliation, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Bensouda and other ICC lawyers and investigators, as well as on journalists who provide evidence of U.S. war crimes. A federal judge later blocked former President Donald Trump's executive order authorizing sanctions.

In September 2021, human rights defenders were outraged when the ICC, under new Prosecutor Karim Khan, said the investigation would focus only on potential war crimes perpetrated by the Taliban and Islamic State in Afghanistan, while excluding U.S. and allied atrocities.

Last April, progressive U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced a resolution calling on the United States to join the ICC, as well as bills that would have repealed the so-called Hague Invasion Act and codified the Office of Global Criminal Justice Act so that the State Department can more effectively respond to crimes against humanity.

"If we oppose investigations into countries, like our own, that haven't joined the ICC, how can we support an investigation into Russia, another country that hasn't joined the court?" Omar asked at the time. 

BRETT WILKINS    is a staff writer for Common Dreams.   Full Bio >                                  Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

David Knox.  “Major US Outlets Found Hersh's Nord Strom Scoop Too Hot to Handle.”  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting(FAIR) (March 3, 2023). Scores of hits from publications across the globe pop up from an internet search for veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s claim that the US destroyed Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline.  

  But what is most striking about the page after page of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh's story isn’t what is there, but what is not to be found. 

 The Times of London (2/8/23) reported Hersh’s story hours after he posted it on his Substack account, but nothing in the New York Times.  

·Britain’s Reuters News Agency moved at least ten stories (2/8/23, 2/9/23, 2/12/2, 2/15/23, among others), the Associated Press not one.  

·Not a word broadcast by the major US broadcast networks—NBC, ABC, CBS—or the publicly funded broadcasters PBS and NPR.  

·No news stories on the nation’s major cable outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.  

Is there justification for such self-censorship? True, Hersh’s story is based on a single anonymous source. But anonymous sources are a staple of mainstream reporting on the US government, used by all major outlets. Further, countless stories of lesser national and international import have been published with the caveat that the facts reported have not been independently verified.  

Doubts about Hersh’s story aside, by every journalistic standard, the extensive international coverage given the story, as well as the adamant White House and Pentagon denials, should have made it big news in the United States.  

More important, if Hersh got it wrong, his story needs to be knocked down. Silence is not acceptable journalism.  

News blackout  

The online magazine Newsweek (2/8/23) was one of the few notable US outlets to cover Hersh's report as a news story.  

What’s not in doubt is the remarkable breadth of the news blackout surrounding Hersh’s story. The only major US newspaper to cover it as breaking news was the New York Post (2/8/23).  

It did appear on the opinion pages—but not the news columns—of two major dailies. The Los Angeles Times (2/11/23) mentioned Hersh’s story in the 11th paragraph of a weekly round-up by the letters editor. On the New York Times  opinion page (2/15/23), Ross Douthat included Hersh in a column headlined “UFOs and Other Unsolved Mysteries of Our Time.”  

Fox News firebrands Tucker Carlson (2/8/23) and Laura Ingraham (2/14/23) collectively gave Hersh’s story a few minutes on their cable TV shows, but their network didn’t post a news story. On Fox News Sunday (2/19/23), National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked about Hersh’s claims. But, again, Fox News didn’t do a separate news report.  

Newsweek (2/8/23) has covered the story , but focusing mainly on White House denials and Russia’s reaction. Bloomberg News (2/9/23) ran a four-paragraph follow-up that also stressed the Russian response, but provided no details of Hersh’s account of the bombing.  

The Washington Post’s first mention of the story (2/22/23) came two weeks after it was posted. Again, Russian reaction was the hook, as seen in the headline: “Russia, Blaming US Sabotage, Calls for UN Probe of Nord Stream.”  

[The article continues with appraisal of criticism of Hersh by Business Insider and Snopes.]  more https://fair.org/home/major-us-outlets-found-hershs-nord-strom-scoop-too-hot-to-handle/  

US WAR CRIMES ANTHOLOGIES 1 THROUGH 7.

War Crimes Anthology  #1, Oct. 8, 2011

War Crimes Anthology  #2, Nov. 25, 2011

War Crimes Anthology  #3, March 7, 2012

War Crimes Anthology  #4, Oct. 4, 2012

War Crimes Anthology  #5, June 8, 2013    

War Crimes Anthology  #6,May 5, 2016 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2016/05/war-crimes-newsletter-6.html

War Crimes Anthology #7, August, 2016 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2016/08/us-war-crimes-anthology-7.html

See related OMNI anthologies::  ICC,  civilian victims, Francis Boyle, War on/OF Terror, torture, air war, US militarism v, Blood on Our Hands, US lawlessness, Iraq Wars, Manning, Wikileaks/Assange, Espionage Act, and more.