By Adam Taylor
On Thursday, (click here) 83-year-old Khieu Samphan and 88-year-old Nuon Chea were found guilty in a Phnom Penh court. A United Nations-backed tribunal had decided that these two men, elderly and frail as they are now, committed crimes against humanity more than 30 years ago. They were senior members of a regime that created the deaths of almost 2 million people....
It is a very poor analogy at best. Does anyone know WHEN the Khmer Rouge grew to prominence in Cambodia?
In 1963, President Johnson put the first fighting force on the ground to work with the South Vietnamese to FORM their own military that could stand the onslaught of North Vietnam. Sound familiar?
The Khmer Rouge was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam. It came to prominence as the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
When was the "Fall of Siagon?" April 29, 1975.
Why did the Khmer Rouge form? Was it in response to the ever imposing force and rate of death noted in Vietnam?
In 2003 a series of investigative reports by the Toledo Blade uncovered a large number of unreported American war crimes particularly from the Tiger Forceunit. Some of the most violent war criminals included men such as Sam Ybarra and Sergeant Roy E. "the Bummer" Bumgarner, a soldier who served with the 1st Cavalry Division and later the 173d Airborne Brigade.
In 1971 John Kerry testified along with 150 other soldiers to the US Senate in an investigation called "Winter Soldier Investigation." A smart thing to do considering the massacres of the Vietnamese people numbering in estimates of over 1.1 million civilian dead. That is only the dead and the civilians.
One might call the phenomena in the former Iraq, "The Post USA Occupation Syndrome."
We don't belong in Iraq.
We never did.
