Major Media has apparently been caught with yet another
FAKE military 'massacre' on their sleazy hands!
The Majors must think that simply reporting "the facts"
is much too boring for their audiences. Or, just maybe,
the facts just don't quite fit into the message they are
attempting to convey.
They have long since abandoned their traditional job of
REPORTING the news... they are CREATING SpinNews
to further their hidden agendas.
Believe it!
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NewsMax.com
newsmax.com
Korean War 'Massacre' Story Not True
NewsMax,com
Friday, May 12, 2000 7:56 p.m. EDT
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press story
about a massacre of civilian refugees in the earliest
day of the Korean War - which was picked up and
spread by countless other media, provoking outrage
here and in Korea - is not true, according to two
hard-hitting investigative reports out today.
Both U.S. News & World Reportand the magazine
Stars and Stripes launched investigations of the
alleged massacre at the village of No Gun Ri and
discovered that the story was so riddled with gaping
holes - and that several key "witnesses" cited by
AP were not even there - that its credibility is
practically nil.
Published on Sept. 30, 1999, the AP story charged
that in June 1950, when U.S. and South Korean
forces were facing an onslaught by swiftly advancing North Korean troops,
American soldiers acting on orders from their superior officers allegedly
machine-gunned hundreds of helpless South Korean civilians huddled under a
railroad bridge near No Gun Ri.
The shocking story reverberated around the world, sparked an official Army
investigation of the alleged massacre and was reported in other publications
and on television, many of which added new details from sources cited in the
original report. NBC even had Tom Brokaw do a special segment on the story.
As with CNN's sensational Tailwind story that suggested American soldiers
gassed Vietcong during the Vietnam War, most of the media swallowed the No
Gun Ri massacre story without questioning it or even verifying accounts.
A Stars and Stripes investigation, however, uncovered startling new
information - also uncovered by a wide-ranging investigative effort of U.S.
News - that casts serious doubts about the massacre allegations and
convincingly impeaches the credibility of several individuals identified by the
Associated Press as key eyewitnesses. The U.S. News report is hitting
newsstands this weekend.
According to Stars and Stripes, the AP report "quoted several former U.S.
soldiers and South Korean survivors who said that members of the 2nd
Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, had fired on and killed
several hundred South Korean civilians over a three-day period as they
cowered inside a railroad-bridge culvert near No Gun Ri, about 30 miles
east-southeast of the city of Taejon in southern South Korea."
But according to declassified Army war diaries and other documents obtained
by Stars and Stripes from the National Archives and the National Personnel
Records Center, the two eyewitnesses identified by the Associated Press
were not with the battalion at the time the alleged shootings took place.
Moreover, the unit that allegedly committed the massacre over a three-day
period was in the area for only a few hours, after which it fled in disarray.
Here is how the Stars and Stripes described the AP story: "The Associated
Press report centered on three charges:
ú "That the American soldiers were ordered by their officers to open fire on all
refugees attempting to cross the lines between the advancing North Korean
army and the U.S. defenses.
ú "That the American soldiers ?directed the refugees into the bridge
underpasses - and after dark opened fire on them from nearby machine-gun
positions,? as the AP reported. The soldiers ?kept the refugees pinned under
the bridge - and killed almost all of them.?
ú "The killings took place over the three-day period of July 26-28, 1950."
But the magazine?s investigation discovered that:
ú "The specific U.S. Army unit accused of carrying out the massacre of the
civilians at No Gun Ri over the three-day period of July 26-28, 1950, was H
Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. A declassified war diary
of the unit and the rest of the 2nd Battalion arrived by convoy near No Gun Ri
the day after the 7th Cavalry Regiment's other two battalions had been
attacked by the North Korean army units moving east from Taejon.
ú "The regimental war diaries and official U.S. Army history of the Korean War
make no mention of the unit being dug in at No Gun Ri for three days, reporting
only the evening march to the front lines at 6:50 p.m. and the panicked flight of
the soldiers back down the valley about seven hours later. Later entries for July
27 and 28 indicate the entire regiment was in sporadic contact with the
advancing North Korean army and directed both artillery and air strikes against
the enemy while receiving direct tank fire and mortar fire and shifting its
positions as the situation required.
ú "Daily and Flint - the former GIs the AP report identified as key
eyewitnesses to the No Gun Ri incident - were not even in the area at the time
of the alleged shootings, according to the Army documents. Information
obtained by the Stars and Stripes undermines the credibility of these two key
witnesses," the magazine reported. "A review of the Army war diaries and
interviews with former 2nd Battalion members indicates that civilians were
undoubtedly killed in the vicinity of No Gun Ri, but the cause was probably a
combination of an earlier U.S. air raid in which civilians were accidentally
strafed, heavy U.S. artillery fire in the valley and an ongoing practice by the
North Korean invaders of driving mobs of civilian refugees ahead of their
advancing units to confuse the American and South Korean defenders."
A review by U.S. News however, raises substantial doubts about the accuracy
of the AP accounts of the so-called massacre.
"A dozen veterans were cited by the AP in its account, nine of whom were
quoted," U.S. News said. "But military records and sources provide new
evidence that three of the men quoted may not have been at No Gun Ri at the
time of the alleged massacre. Five others, re-interviewed by U.S. News, do not
support the thesis of the AP story. Of those, three said the statements they
gave the wire service were misconstrued or taken out of context. A fourth
veteran said there was some brief firing, possibly by a machine gun, and that
there was not a large number of people in the culvert. The fifth vet said he fired
his machine gun into the tunnel full of refugees but that no one ordered him to
do so."
"These guys were inconsistent when we talked to them at the time," admitted
Charles Hanley, one of the reporters on the AP team that conducted the
investigation of No Gun Ri.
"They were all over the map ... but we have approaching 50 sources who
confirm that a large number of civilians were killed by American forces at No
Gun Ri."
In an AP statement released last week after a Web site for veterans named
Stripes.com posted a story questioning the AP's reporting on No Gun Ri, the
wire service issued a statement saying that "we continue to report
developments in this story as vigorously as the original accounts."
But anyone reading the two reports cited here can reach no other conclusion
that the original story is based on accounts by alleged eyewitness that are
simply not credible.
The principal source for many of these stories was Edward Daily. In the AP
story, he was quoted as saying: "On summer nights when the breeze is
blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming."
He added: "The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the
easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group. Today," Daily concluded, "we
all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with everyone."
But Army records show that Daily was not even there at No Gun Ri, nor was he
a member of the 7th Cavalry.
"In a biographical note he prepared in conjunction with a history he published of
the 7th Cavalry, Daily said he was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in
H Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, when his platoon was overrun by
North Korean troops on Aug. 12, 1950, and he was taken prisoner. ?With the
grace of God,? Daily wrote, ?[I] managed to escape from the enemy on Sept.
12, 1950, and was held captive only 32 days.?"
But documents from the Army's Personnel Records Center say that during the
period cited by Daily, he was working as a mechanic with the Army's 27th
Ordnance Maintenance Company. There is no record of Edward Daily's ever
having been a prisoner of war. In addition, records show he was discharged
from the Army as a sergeant, not as a captain as he had claimed.
"There are other apparent discrepancies in Daily's war record. He claims to
hold the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for
valor; the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. Army records again tell a different
story. Daily was awarded the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations
Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal,
the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation Badge, and the Meritorious
Unit Emblem. Daily received no medals for valor or combat action, the records
show. Hanley, the AP reporter, says, ?There are some suspect things about the
medals.?"
Yet Daily was celebrated by the media, none of whom showed any doubts
about him or his accounts of the so-called massacre.
"NBC's Dateline flew Daily to Korea to visit the No Gun Ri site," U.S.News
recalled. "Daily told Tom Brokaw about receiving the order to fire on the
refugees under the railroad trestle. "Just shoot them all," Daily quoted the
order.
Brokaw: "You heard that order?"
Daily: "Yes, sir."
Brokaw: "Kill them all?"
Daily: "Yes, sir."
In February, the Washington Post Magazine put Daily's picture on the cover
and said he "was in charge of the lone machine-gun post" on one side of the
railroad culvert. The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News all
published stories citing Daily's account of No Gun Ri.
Moreover, when the AP broke the No Gun Ri story it generated enormous
attention.
Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered the Army to investigate to
"determine the full scope of the facts surrounding press reports of civilian
deaths" at No Gun Ri.
The Army's inspector general launched an exhaustive investigation, which is
still under way. And last month, the team of Associated Press reporters who
broke the No Gun Ri story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative
reporting, journalism's highest honor.
The story was a natural for today?s yuppified anti-military media, which showed
no concern for the reputations of the heroic men who fought in those early days
of the Korean conflict when vastly outnumbered American soldiers valiantly
held on to a tiny perimeter around the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, until
reinforcements could arrive and prevent the North Koreans from wiping out all
resistance and conquering all of Korea.
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