Bush Flew Fighter Jets During Vietnam

Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..

I'm sorry, Art, but that is not the truth. The designation of free
fire zones is not a violation of the Geneva Convention. It is an
acknowledgement of a division between friendly and enemy territory. It
is not, as insinuated, an area of authorized total destruction and
wanton killing.

What Ketty learned through his experience and what his fellow soldiers
had told him that in practive free fire zones were treated by many
(and I'm sure not by all) as areas of authorized total destruction and
wanton killing. The paperwork on file at the Pentagon might not have
said that.

Harrassment and interdiction fire is not, in any way,
contrary to the Geneva Convention. The whole purpose of military fire
is to harrass the enemy and interdict is supply.

In many specific areas of eh Geneva conventions, and as a general
rule there is a prohibition of tactics that endanger civilians
without military necessity or which endageer civiains disprotionately
to the military necessity (my paraphrasal). As an example I
specifically recall that it is prohibited to target dams if breaching
the damse
would cause excessive civilian casualties. The COnventions are v
ague on the issue of how much would be 'excessive' or
disproportionate.

Clearly that decision would be made by the party conducting the trial,
if any.

It is clear to me that Kerry was sayign that harrassment and
interdiction
fire was routinely used in Vietnam in a manner that subjected the
civilians to risk that was disporportionate to military necessity.
An example might be the (possible) reconnaisance by fire incident
in which Kerry wounded himself.



There is no prohibition by the Geneva Convention of the employment of
.50 cal automatic weapons. Nothing at all. There is nothing in
international law which prohibits the use of .50 cal against
personnel. Nothing.

Over in sci.mil a while ago a fellow who said he was a vegteran of
the Swedish army (don;t know if he was as they say, 'on the net
no one knows you're a dog and that doesn;t jsut apply to
alt.personals)
who said in his basic training he was taught to not fire their
heavy machine gun (equivalent to .50 cal) ar individual personell.
He was taught that to do so was a violation of the Geneva Conventions,
that the heavy machine gun was to be used against equipment only.
The only support anyone found for that argument was a general
prohibition
agains weapons that cause excessive suffering. It was pointed out
that
shooting a man with .50 caliber does not cause excessive suffering,
it reduces his suffering because he is more likely to be killed
outright
than if he is shot with a smaller caliber. I tend to agree but the
point is that in some countries, one presumes those without combat
experience in living memory, the use of a .5o caliber machine gun
against peiople is considered to be a war crime.


Search and destroy is a viable tactic. It means you search for the
enemy. You might have called it "patrol" in WW II. If you find the
enemy, you engage him and you destroy the enemy and any war material.
That's not prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

That also depends on what is being searched for and destroyed. If
memeory serves me correctly, there was a program of 'resettlement'
in VIetnam in which villiagers were rounded up and moved to
ostensibly safer parts of the country and their homes were destroyed
to deny the support of that civilian infrastructure to the enemy.
That program was a clear violation of the Geneva conventions, the
excuse being that it was supposedly condoned by the South Vietnamese
government and the GCs do not prohibit nations from abusing their
own people. One wonders if the the government of South Vietnam was
coercved into accepting that program.


And, certainly the authorization of "air raid strike areas" is not
prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Again, it depends on what is reasonably expected to be in the target
area in addition to the enemy. The cornerstone of Kerry's arguments,
if I understand them correctly, is that the war itself was inflicting
more suffering on the Vietnamese people that he would expect to be
inflicted on them if 'their side' lost the war. The idiology of
one's government means little to a subsistance former.


And, the comparison of all of us who fought in the war to Lt. Calley
is despicable.


I missed that comparison. I'll go back and look for it now.
Meanwhile, would you object to being compared to Hugh Thompson?

--

FF