Bizarre AP Comparison of the Day
Charles Johnson
Sun Jun 17, 2007 at 10:13 am PDT • Views: 152
I’m trying to figure out what the Associated Press was going for, in this bizarre little article comparing the abduction and murder of US soldiers in Iraq with the execution of Viet Cong prisoners by the South Vietnamese government: Viet Cong were executed, too.
It’s almost as if the AP is trying to give some helpful advice to the Iraqi Al Qaeda terrorists. “See, guys? This is what the Viet Cong did…”
Four decades ago in Vietnam, anti-U.S. fighters were also put on trial and put to death, as in Iraq today. But U.S. forces didn’t help for long.
In the mid-1960s — the early days of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam’s civil war — the U.S.-allied South Vietnamese government prosecuted and executed Viet Cong guerrillas, including some captured and handed over by U.S. troops.
In 1965, however, Radio Hanoi announced that a captured U.S. Army sergeant had been executed in reprisal for the Viet Cong deaths. The U.S. command soon stopped handing over Viet Cong prisoners to the South Vietnamese government.
“The Viet Cong informed us that they would begin executing U.S. prisoners if we continued to facilitate the South Vietnamese executions, and we had reason to believe them,” said Gary D. Solis, a Georgetown University law professor who served as a U.S. Marine lawyer in Vietnam.
In Iraq, too, insurgents have captured and killed U.S. soldiers, but thus far have not linked their fate to that of captured Iraqi insurgents facing a possible death penalty.
Frank says: