Talk:No Gun Ri massacre/Archive 3
 | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 10 |
Deletion of photo op
A "survivors committee" apparently used some event to get a picture of themselves in the media. This is fine work on their part. It has nothing to do with the article. They have no "standing" per se, not even in South Korea. We don't know really who they are without running through a bunch of "birth certificates" and other material. They also look a bit young to have been at No Gun Ri, but who knows?
It detracts from the outstanding visual media that is already in the article. This is just an unrecognizable "bunch of people" supposed claiming victimhood. I say "supposedly" because the average reader cannot identify them and wouldn't be interested if s/he could. It needs to be removed. Student7 (talk) 15:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
- Your statements make absolutely no sense. This is the only picture in the article of the most important people involved with this subject, the survivors of No Gun Ri. They certainly do have "standing" (a term you've raised before to try to denigrate the Koreans). The South Korean government has dealt with this group continuously for years as the representatives of the living and dead of No Gun Ri. The U.S. and South Korean governments relied on their interviews as eyewitnesses during the investigations. Top Pentagon officials met with them in 1999-2000. The South Korean and U.S. news media have interviewed them and run photos such as this (during their U.S. visits), recognizing their centrality to the story. And the South Korean government certified their identities as survivors in its 2006 report. To suggest, absurdly, that the photo should go because you yourself haven't "run through their birth certificates" does nothing more than once again expose your ignorance of the subject and, sad to say, your chauvinistic biases. Obviously the photo belongs in the article.Charles J. Hanley 16:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Cjhanley
No Gun Ri Massacre according to Hanley and the AP
This article reads like one extended AP/Hanley piece. Not to say the AP's reporting on the subject is entirely bad, but numerous issues with it have been documented. Large volumes of conflicting material seems to have not made the cut as well, most notable Lt. Col Bateman. I am going to place a tag on the article until I get some time to rework it. WeldNeck (talk) 13:22, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
- This article for years was an incomprehensible mess, in the hands of uninformed denialists interested only in obscuring the basic officially and journalistically established facts of No Gun Ri, when they even knew them, and too often incapable of putting together coherent sentences. For the past two years, it has been a simple, clear and straightforward presentation of what is known and not known about the U.S. military's killing of refugees at No Gun Ri. The only legitimate "issue" is already addressed in the article, the fact that one ex-soldier witness turned out to have secondhand, not firsthand information. If anyone has any further "documented" issues to raise (to use WeldNeck's term) -- that is, specific, sensible questions, not the wild fantasies and fabrications of Robert Bateman, a former officer of the very regiment responsible for the killings -- it is appropriate first to do so here on the Talk page, to start a reasoned discussion and take advantage of what knowledgable people know, and not to take us back to the days of nonsensical inserts and overwrites that served no one except those who would like No Gun Ri to simply go away. Even before that, one should review the previous Talk discussions of body count and other matters. Meanwhile, I am undoing the inappropriate "POV" tag. If basic journalistic reporting is "POV," then half of Wikipedia falls apart. Thank you. Charles J. Hanley 16:07, 8 August 2013 (UTC) . Cjhanley
- Not sure who these "uninformed denialists" you speak of were, but judging by the article's history the late Lt Col Bateman was among a number of individuals who edited this article.
- Since Bateman did write a rather comprehensive account of No Gun Ri, I find it rather odd that it is only cited once. More So considering how completely he devastate your (I am assuming you are Hanley of the AP) and your team's reports on the incident.
- Very little is given in the way of documented infiltration among refugees in general which is what drove the caution that refugee groups were met with. I will fix this shortly.
- The article's lead describes the "7th Cavalry veterans" interviewed by the AP and corroborating the AP's story. Minus Daily (who the AP team knew was lying well before it became public knowledge), there is only one individual present who confirms the AP's report: Tinkler. According to the US Army's investigation and the work of the late Lt Col Bateman, all other 2/7 Cav interviewed stated that the AP team misquoted them. For example, Herman Patterson was quoted in an AP article describing No Gun Ri as “wholesale slaughter”. He testified to the US Army that he was actually referring an engagement at the Naktong River and not No Gun Ri. Another, (then) Lt Robert Carroll who was in command of the platoon, specifically stated no massacre occurred and that he never gave or received an order to fire on refugees unless they were under attack. According to bothe Bateman and the Army's investigation, there are many more examples of this.
- None of the eyewitness accounts from the US Army's report are included in the article.
- Why are allegations that the aerial footage is a fake even in the article? I realize fakery charges are needed because it is by far the most convincing piece of physical evidence (which explains why most of the section dedicated to it consists of attempts to show it a s a fake), but doesn't it seem a bit much? Why no photo on the article's page of the aerial stills?
- This bit of atrociousness :After the Army issued its report, it was learned it also had not disclosed its researchers' discovery of at least 14 additional declassified documents showing high-ranking commanders ordering or authorizing the killing of refugees in the Korean War's early months. They included communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees "fair game". A log entry is not an order. No way to spin that.
- Why a lengthy excerpt from the ROK's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and not a similar treatment of the US Army's investigation? Why favor one over the other?
- I don't know who WeldNeck is. But I want people to know that I'm one of the team of professional journalists who have dealt with No Gun Ri for more than 15 years. It is too late in the day to address the above, an unfortunate, time-wasting regurgitation of tired stuff dealt with long ago, knocked down long ago, but I'll address it as necessary, since I did ask that he present his "issues" on Talk. Meantime, if he has again put a "tag" on this article, it will be taken off. And I am doing my best to undo whatever damage he has done to the article itself, with his apparently half-cocked "knowledge" about No Gun Ri. I would ask simply, WeldNeck, that we discuss your "issues" before you screw up the article any further. As I said, I'll address the "points" above anon. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 20:30, 8 August 2013 (UTC). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- I think you need to review WP:OWN and WP:COI before continuing. I would appreciate you explaining why the issues I brought up are "tired stuff dealt with long ago" and I would appreciate it even more if you were to do so in a less confrontational tone. Thanks. WeldNeck (talk) 20:47, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
- Apologies for any confrontational nature to the tone, but I would ask you to understand that you are dealing with people (myself and fellow journalists) steeped in the facts of No Gun Ri who for years have had to deal with people who are not steeped in those facts, who have not spent years studying the documents, interviewing the principals, visiting the sites, people who almost invariabbly have a bias or POV about the U.S. military, about Korean or Asian or non-American people, about war crimes or whatever. Now, and I cannot deal with these problems at any length until later, to give you an example of the problems of poorly informed people inserting material into an article, I find that WeldNeck has inserted this: "One 7th Cav commander was killed and seven US soldiers were wounded in in another incident where Chinese and North Koreans infiltrators disguised as refugees attacked them with grenades." But the Chinese did not intervene in the Korean War until months after No Gun Ri. What on earth is this doing in an article about a refugee killing months earlier? Please, whoever you are, WeldNeck, cease and desist with this uninformed material. If you want, raise it in Talk. Don't create this mess in the article that then has to be undone. There may be Wikipedia articles that are playthings, but things like No Gun Ri should be taken more seriously. Charles J. Hanley 21:07, 8 August 2013 (UTC). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- I am not really concerned what your credentials are, it adds nothing to this debate and due to your WP:COI only makes matters worse. The material I added is not "uniformed", its cited to a reliable source. You might have a point about the Chinese infiltrators material (it was added to provide additional contextual material on refugee infiltration tactics) but what was you reason for removing the attack on the 3-8th which took place days before? WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
- Let's try to take this point by point. But first, your reference to "the late" Bateman baffles me. Do you know something we don't know? Now, to your points:
- A page-by-page analysis of the Bateman book found more than 100 appalling omissions, fabrications, distortions, self-contradictions, misreadings of military documents, and other serious errors and untruths. Remember, this is a former 7th Cavalry officer seeking to deflect negative attention from a major event in the background of what he calls “my regiment.” It’s a polemic, not history. Bateman did not go to Korea, did not interview the most reliable witnesses, the Korean survivors, interviewed scarcely any ex-soldier witnesses, and covered up key information, including the orders flying around the warfront at the time to shoot civilians, and the fact that the 7th Cav log of July 1950, which would have held communications relating to No Gun Ri, is missing from the National Archives. Perhaps most egregiously among a mountain of egregious deceits, he claims in his book that a particular regimental logistics document “proves” the presence of guerrillas among the NGR refugees, when that document shows no relationship whatever to No Gun Ri and does nothing of the sort – which is why he did not share this hijacked “evidence” with his readers. Bateman is simply a grossly unreliable source for anything. For further, view the C-SPAN video “What Really Happened at No Gun Ri?” among the references in this article, or send me an email at cjhanley@att.net for the full analysis of Bateman’s shameful book.
- There was no “documented infiltration” among the refugees to be found in the records of front-line units in the time leading up to No Gun Ri. The infiltration scenario is dealt with more than adequately in the article, where it’s noted U.S. units were being attacked from the rear, General Gay said he believed half the people on the roads were infiltrators, but a 24-hour-long search turned up no infiltrators.. For more, see the infiltration discussion under “The Naktong River Bridges” in Talk. As for your inserted infiltration event, it has been explained that this occurred months after No Gun Ri and is extraneous to the discussion.
- As for the interviews with 7th Cavalry veterans, please be aware that the AP team, by 2001, had interviewed 26 ex-GI witnesses (men who were there; your suggestion that only a couple of men were there is off base, to say the least), and three dozen Korean witnesses. The Pentagon’s investigators found at least nine additional GI witnesses. Nobody was misquoted by AP at any time. Patterson is on videotape discussing the mass killing of refugees. (He seems to have been induced later by others to claim falsely that he had been misquoted.) Carroll is quoted precisely in the original journalism as saying he left the scene early on and did not witness a massacre, not that “no massacre occurred,” as you suggest.
- You suggest that “none of the eyewitness accounts from the US Army's report are included in the article.” On the contrary, testimony to the Army is included. There are at least five passages in the article that are drawn from Army interrogations, including one veteran’s statement, similar to statements by others, that at the time "The word I heard was 'Kill everybody from 6 to 60.'" Such statements were not found in the Army’s report, but via lengthy Freedom of Information Act work that obtained the transcripts. Their absence from the Army report is another powerful indication of how the Army worked to quash testimony and documents.
- As for the section on the alleged “fakery” of the aerial photos: Please reread it. The No Gun Ri frames were spliced into the film roll, the South Korean aerial reconnaissance specialists themselves said they believed the photos had been doctored, and the anonymous U.S. photo analyst ended his frustrating work on the project by insisting on a certification process in the future to guarantee the integrity of any photos his agency would analyze. Obviously, suspicions about the photos belong in the article.
- There’s no “spinning” involved with the 14 orders or authorizations. A division commander’s call to a subordinate unit to consider refugees “fair game” is certainly an authorization to indiscriminately kill civilians. The Army’s historical researchers themselves would dismiss any effort to minimize the importance of these documents, since it was they who found them in the archives and marked the salient passages with asterisks, arrows, underlines and other indicators of significance. It was the Army lawyers who then deep-sixed the documents when issuing the final sanitized report. Please review all of these documents at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:No_Gun_Ri_Massacre. And, again, I recommend your reviewing the Talk discussions of many of these points.
- On your final point: The article cites the Army report 12 times, including in the intro, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission three times.
- Finally, regarding your later post and its question, “What was you reason for removing the attack on the 3-8th which took place days before?”: I’m not familiar with what was ever removed about attacks on the 8th Cavalry. What I do know is the 8th Cav was under attack at Yongdong by the NKPA’s 3rd Division. Those particulars (beyond the fact the 1st Cav Division was pulling back) are not relevant to No Gun Ri. I also know that Bateman writes that an 8th Cav unit was attacked by “guerillas” (sic). But this is one of many examples of Bateman making stuff up, out of whole cloth. There’s nothing whatsoever in the documents referring to anything but regular NKPA units. But Bateman wanted to establish the presence of guerrillas in the area, so he first – with no basis – says it was “likely” guerrillas attacked these Americans; then refers later to the “apparent” guerrillas; and finally refers to them as “the’’ guerrillas, i.e., as an established “fact.” This is how Bateman did his shameful work. I urge you to email me (cjhanley@att.net) to obtain the Bateman analysis.
- Not having time at the moment, I’ll have to look later at correcting errors and problems recently inserted in the article. Somewhere, for instance, didn’t WeldNeck object that Tom Hacha, a 1st Battalion eyewitness who was dug in across from the NGR tunnels, shouldn’t be quoted because he “was not a participant”? The illogic of this totally befuddles me. A non-shooter eyewitness is among the most credible American witnesses.
- WeldNeck says he's not interested in my credentials. I think the vast majority of the Wikipedia community would find that astounding, since the goal of WP is to establish an authoritative encyclopedia of record, relying on the most knowledgable contributors. My retirement from news reporting enabled me to devote time to helping restore truthfulness and authority to this article. I'll continue to do so. Charles J. Hanley 12:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley
- Let's try to take this point by point. But first, your reference to "the late" Bateman baffles me. Do you know something we don't know? Now, to your points:
My responses.
- I don't know why I implied that Bateman had passed, chalk it up to a brain fart.
- Your assessment of Bateman's book is subjective and biased (considering he spent an entire chapter shredding the AP's story) and cannot be referenced to any reliable source. As has been explained to me, those are the rules here and we have to live by them.
- There are many anecdotal and documented reports of infiltration both before and after this event. Days before the incident at No Gun Ri, a company from the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment was attacked by North Korean irregulars who infiltrated a crowd of refugees west of Yongdong ... this took place before No Gun Ri and I found it in one of the sources you cited.
- You statement that "Nobody was misquoted by AP at any time" is repudiated by the fact that several of the individuals you quoted are on record stating that you misquoted them. Herman Patterson is on record saying you misquoted him. Harold Steward is on record saying you misquoted him. George Preece is on record stating you misquoted him. It is what it is.
- Eyewitnesses from the US army report that do not support your more sensationalized version of events are not included in this article.
- There is a lengthy framed clip from the Korean report but not one from the US report. This unbalances the article.
- Suspicions about the photos do belong in the article, but in proportion to their weight. I suspect the Koreans reacted the way they did to the recon photos because it undermined much of the civilian recollections.
- There's more behind Gay's order than you are admitting. Discretion was advised, but given the infiltration issue attacks from refugees were a real problem.
- the attacks on the 3/8th are relevant because a reliable source has cited them as being relevant and they are a documented example of Nork infiltration units using civilian cover BEFORE the events at No Gun Ri. The source was Kuehl not Bateman on this.
- You really are coming across as unreasonable. You dont own this article and if you continue to behave like this I will get an administrator involved. WeldNeck (talk) 14:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'll address specifics above in due course. I am not in a good position to ping-pong on this throughout the day. But I will make one observation: The Korean survivors would point out that it's extremely difficult to "sensationalize" the coldblooded killing of large numbers of innocent women, children and old men. If anything, many people have pointed out, the media reporting and this Wikipedia article have been understated on No Gun Ri. Charles J. Hanley 14:33, 9 August 2013 (UTC). Cjhanley
Warfront?
I quote from the second paragraph in the article "The AP also uncovered warfront orders to fire on refugees..." But I do not know what a "warfront" is. Not a word, as far as I can tell. I find it odd enough that I cannot tell for sure what exactly it is supposed to mean, or I'd clean it up to be more sensible and readable. Shoobe01 (talk) 02:30, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
Cleaning up
- More than a dozen changes to this article made Aug. 8-9 by a single editor introduced numerous errors, pieces of misinformation and disinformation, deletions of important elements and other problems. One of his edits was potentially helpful, or at least harmless:
- That potentially helpful edit, under "Background," nonetheless introduced a nonsentence, which will be easily fixed. Also, his sourcing is indirect and would be improved with a cite to the direct source, a New York Times article about a reported incident of infiltration in July 1950 (once I can review the Times article). This incident, by the way, is not reported as such in the Army unit's own documents. WeldNeck's change also entailed the unjustified removal of a brief paragraph citing an important point: The day Gen. Gay said he believed half the refugees were infiltrators was the day his division began killing the refugees at No Gun Ri.
- Under "Events of 25-29 July 1950," two important quotations from ex-soldier eyewitnesses were deleted, inexplicably. In one, the ex-GI offered a rationale for the shootings ("It was believed there was enemy among these people"), and in the other an onlooker from an adjacent Army unit described the scene. WeldNeck protested that the second man was not involved and therefore shouldn't be quoted. That makes no sense. A nonshooter eyewitness is more credible than one who was "involved."
- They were removed because at least one of them later said you quoted him out of context. Cant remember why I removed the other one, but will look into it. WeldNeck (talk) 13:53, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
- Under "Casualties," the contemporary North Korean newspaper report of the massacre was removed. "Are we really quoting a North Korean journalist?" WeldNeck asks. This betrays a narrow grasp of the realities of No Gun Ri: Events have proven that this 1950 North Korean report was essentially truthful, a very early firsthand account (while the U.S. Army was ignoring and rejecting the No Gun Ri allegations for decades, and finally begrudgingly dealing with it in a report that suppressed critical documents and testimony).
- Nork sources are all highly suspect and should not be used. WeldNeck (talk) 13:53, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
- Under "Associated Press story," WeldNeck introduced an outright falsehood regarding the timing of AP's knowledge of Daily's (misspelled by WeldNeck) deception. He cites a demonstrably biased, untruthful source. He also added wasted wordage (Silver Star etc.) that is immaterial to the No Gun Ri Massacre, the article's subject. In fact, Daily, the man who turned out to have only secondhand information, has been irrelevant to No Gun Ri for 13 years. Back then he was an insignificant sideshow seized on by No Gun Ri deniers as a flimsy smokescreen; today he's even less, and by rights doesn't even belong in the article. His brief mention serves only to educate misled readers to that fact.
- When did Bateman make you aware of the issues with Daily? Bateman reproduced the emails he sent to your team. WeldNeck (talk) 13:53, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
- WeldNeck so altered the "Aerial imagery, victims' remains" section that it will require more time to analyze what's right and wrong. Off the bat, one can see errors introduced: It was the U.S. analyst, not the South Koreans, who questioned the Army's handling of the aerial imagery and called for such imagery in the future to undergo a process to certify its authenticity. That U.S. analyst did not say, as WeldNeck would have it, that the 2-7's fighting holes were intact; rather, he said "the majority" were intact, indicating some had been filled in (as graves, said survivors). The analyst also did not say, as WeldNeck would have it, that there were no indications of mass graves at No Gun Ri; that "conclusion" appears only in the Army's rendering of what the analyst found, and in that case the analyst felt compelled to add his own disclaimer in a footnote, explaining the difficulties of spotting a mass grave in such a situation. His own internal report contains no such conclusion.
- All will be dealt with in due course. 13:33, 17 August 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)
Reverting
Umm, I've no idea why I reverted all those changes last night :( I was on my phone and reading through what had been changed, but it was late so I left it till today. I guess I must have mashed a button!! --Errant (chat!) 07:44, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Bateman's 'technique'
- Since a contributor resurrected the argument that Robert Bateman is a “reliable” source on the subject of No Gun Ri, a simple example of the way Bateman worked should make clear once and for all that none of it can be trusted. (BW5530, above, provides a more comprehensive demolition of that work.) What follows is an important example, but only one of dozens from Bateman’s book, of the distortions, misrepresentations, misreadings of military documents and (as in this case) outright fictions that he fashioned on the way to propounding baseless “theories” about the massacre. Here, from page 120 of his book, is how he purported to show there were enemy infiltrators among the refugees slain at No Gun Ri:
- ``There were guns, and these guns were collected, turned in to the company supply sergeant, and then passed through him to the battalion supply sergeant, finally working their way up to regiment. Soldiers from one of the nearby platoons collected a Japanese rifle and the Russian submachine gun during a subsequent sweep through the refugees and sent the weapons up through the supply channels, thereby giving some of the only documentary evidence that South Korean communist guerillas were among the South Korean refugees."
- The footnote for the above paragraph cites ``S-4 (supply) Journal, 7th Cavalry Regiment, entry for July 28, 1950." But Bateman didn’t replicate the document for readers, or even quote from it, and he twice refused to share the “source document” when asked for it by the AP journalists who first confirmed the killings. The AP team subsequently obtained that S-4 log on their own. It’s [| here]. (Click a second and third time to zoom.) Anyone reviewing it with an honest, logical mind will instantly see the flimflam.
- The 28 July 1950 entry – in the last sentence of the second paragraph – reads, with no surrounding context: ``Captured enemy equipment -- 1 Jap rifle; 1 Russian sub-machine 7.62mm." There's nothing saying who found these weapons, where, when or how. There's nothing at all to link them to the refugees or to guerrillas or to July 26 or to the No Gun Ri area or to the 2nd Battalion.
- What ``nearby platoon"? What ``company"? What ``subsequent sweep"? This is all fiction. An irrelevant document was hijacked, and random weapons were arbitrarily attributed to imagined “guerrillas" at No Gun Ri, in apparent desperation to produce a central “finding” for a worthless book. There are many, many possible explanations for two weapons turning up in the Korean war zone in the last week of July 1950. One of them: The 7th Cavalry war diary shows ``two prisoners" captured 3 miles southeast of No Gun Ri, in another valley, on July 27. (In a final affront to the truth, Bateman’s use of ``some" implies there is other documentary ``evidence," but he offers none, because there is none.)
- Does anyone want to defend this kind of claptrap as “reliable”? This example is blatant and easily comprehended. Many others are just as outrageous. Charles J. Hanley 22:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- And what of the example above, a stunningly flagrant deceit at the core of his book? We’ve tried to engage you on a rational basis with such specifics, there for you to study and comment on. Instead you fall back on “so’s your mother” retorts, sorely testing WP’s assumption of good faith. Charles J. Hanley 18:56, 6 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- WeldNeck, I find it outrageous that, in the face of a litany of evidence cutting it down, you continue to defend the value of Robert Bateman’s opinions. (I don’t call it “scholarship” because it isn’t.) No less a military mind than George Washington once said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.” I wholeheartedly concur. Reader0234 (talk) 20:17, 6 September 2013 (UTC) Reader0234 (talk • contribs)
Aerial imagery; errors
Weldneck has now restored his earlier error-filled paragraphs on aerial imagery, completely ignoring the errors as pointed out above, under "Cleaning up." His "explanation" is that "the images are what they are." What they are, of course, are 1) at best inconclusive, according to the analyst himself, and 2) most likely fraudulent. The section as it stood already noted that the U.S. Army contended the images did not show mass graves (although the analyst himself said he could not judge), that witnesses said bodies were stacked out of sight under the bridge, and that South Korean investigators questioned the authenticity of the photos and the Pentagon analyst questioned the integrity of the chain-of-custody process involving the film. That's all that's needed. Now we have bloated sentences (Bosnia?) filled with errors.
This is getting tiresome and ridiculous. Weldneck: You seem uninterested in rational discussion and contributing in good faith, and interested only in finding some way to sugarcoat what happened at No Gun Ri. The section will be purged, again, of its errors. Charles J. Hanley 18:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- You accuse me of being uninterested in having a rational discussion? Are you really going off the rails and claiming that the Aerial footage was faked? I know it blows a major hole in the narrative that hundreds of civilians were killed, but get a grip man! There is no way 100's of dead bodies could be stacked under a railway bridge that small, no way. And have you ever dug a DFP by hand like the kind used by the 2/7 at No Gun Ri? Trust me, they arent roomy, there's barely enough room in them for one man. The idea that hundreds of civilians were buried
A couple of relevant clips from the report:
An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the No Gun Ri area taken on August 6, 1950, shows no indication of human remains or mass graves in the vicinity of the No Gun Ri double railroad overpass.
10. - No corpse or other objects on the railroad -- NIMA IA found no indications of human remains on the imagery. Of particular interest was the area of the railroad bridge; the obliquity of frames 32, 33, and 35 allowed the IA to look approximately 3 meters into the openings of the bridge arches on the upstream side and the area was found to be clear of debris or human remains (Figure 8).
Thats why the aerial footage is so devastating to your hyperbolic claims and you need to do everything in your power to minimize them. Every uninvolved editor, and granted that has been few, has been clear that Bateman's work is a reliable source for the purpose of this discussion. WeldNeck (talk) 20:45, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
Additional issues with the AP’s story
According to the AP[1]:
But old soldiers in their late 60s or 70s identified the No Gun Ri bridge from photographs, remembered the approximate dates, and corroborated the core of the Koreans' account: that American troops kept the refugees pinned under the bridge in late July 1950, and killed almost all of them. "It was just wholesale slaughter," Patterson told the AP in an interview at his Greer, S.C., home.
But then according to the US Army’s report:
Other veterans also present in the vicinity of No Gun Ri say they were misquoted in the original AP account. Mr. Herman Patterson was quoted in the AP report as saying that: "It was just a wholesale slaughter." In his statement to the U.S. Team, he said the AP misquoted him and that this quotation referred to his unit at the Naktong when they were overrun.35 He said he told the AP (September 29, 1999) that: "It was a damn near massacre of us." Mr. James Kerns is quoted as saying that "he, Preece and another GI found at least seven dead North Korean soldiers in the underpasses, wearing uniforms under peasant white." In his statement to the U.S. Team, Mr. Kerns said he never said such a thing.36 He told the U.S. Review Team that he saw between four and nine bodies laying down in the culverts but was not sure if they were dead.37 Mr. Kerns said he only told the AP that he saw some grenades and a burp gun in the tunnel. The AP article stated "[that] others recalled only heavy barrages of American firepower, not hostile fire." This comment was followed by a quotation from Mr. Louis Allen, who said, "I don't remember shooting coming out." The implication here is that veterans remembered Americans firing into the (No Gun Ri) tunnel but not refugees firing from the tunnel. However, when the U.S. Review Team interviewed Mr. Allen, he stated that he was on re-enlistment leave when the 7th Cavalry Regiment deployed to Korea and that he did not link up with his unit, F Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, until August 1950 in the vicinity of Taegu.38
If the AP’s representative now commenting on this article is going to continue making such a fuss over the inclusion of LtCol Robert Bateman’s scholarship on this subject, is the AP fair game as well? WeldNeck (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
- No time to deal with this now. It will be dealt with later. Meantime, Weldneck, you are again urged to read in on past Talk entries. For example, the "No deaths?" section in Archive 2, which details at length the overwhelming evidence of a large number of dead at No Gun Ri. Put that up against the highly questionable -- and highly questioned -- half-century-old aerial photo and ponder how all those people and documents from all sides could be wrong. High casualties are not someone's theory or speculation; it's well established. The South Korean government has certified 163 dead and missing and 55 wounded, some of whom died of their wounds, and said "many" more names were not reported. The aerial imagery was given its due in the article. Your error-filled paragraphs will have to be fixed. Charles J. Hanley 22:55, 7 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
WeldNeck, I remain frustrated by your continuing capricious editing of the No Gun Ri Massacre article. As you should know, one of the rules for WP contributors is to “assume good faith.” So, why is it that when erroneous information which you have posted is pointed out and excised, you simply ignore the issue and stick it back in the article? Also, something may have been lost on you during this unending back-and-forth: The article is about the No Gun Ri Massacre, not about the Associated Press and irrelevant decade-old arguments. The article makes clear the AP first confirmed the killings, but they were later reconfirmed by other news organizations and by two government investigations. Your obsessions have no place in a good WP article. Reader0234 (talk) 17:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC) Reader0234 (talk • contribs)
- The information I put in is all from reliable second hand sources. Take it up with the brass if you dont like it. WeldNeck (talk) 18:02, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Battle of Taejon
If you read the second paragraph of the Muccio letter to Rusk, Muccio specifically mentions the fate of the 24th ID at Taejon as a reason for the proposed refugee policy. Given the amount of information currently in the article not specifically about the incident, this inclusion doesn't seem out of the ordinary and provides much needed context (sorely missing) for the background section. Taejon took place only a few days before No Gun Ri.
I also added two sentences for the "controversial" adjective in the second paragraph. WeldNeck (talk) 13:52, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Weldneck, you are simply wildly throwing untruths into this article because they suit your ideological -- to give it a kind word -- point of view, and your effort to minimize what happened at No Gun Ri. One hardly knows where to begin (loads of errors on aerial imagery, a totally wrong statement on the shoot-civilians orders, Internet nonsense defaming AP journalists, removing a leading Korea scholar because he doesn't suit your chauvinism, God knows what else. Now I see this crazy baseless stuff about $400 million demanded in compensation. Where did you get that lie from, Bateman?) One can't even keep up with your two dozen attacks on the article this week. Weldneck, simply because someone as irresponsible as Bateman says something, it doesn't belong in a WP article. Out of simple decency and respect for the No Gun Ri victims, and for the WP process, I appeal to you to stop and deal with fellow contributors rationally. Are you willing? I see that admin ErrantX is trying manfully to keep up with this regrettable stuff, but you will have to cooperate. You could start by removing the $400 million b.s., unless you can point to such a legal claim. Then we could try to work something out on aerial imagery. Charles J. Hanley 18:52, 10 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
Please respond to the specifics:
1. In the the Muccio letter to Rusk, did he or did he not mention enemy infiltrators at the Battle of Taejon as a large contributing factor to the outcome of the battle?
2. Does this warrant a single sentence on the use of infiltrators disguised as refugees in the background section?
3. No touching on the validity of the criticism, was there, or wasn't there criticism from several different sources on you and your team's No Gun Ri series?
4. I have several sources for the $400 million claim. Would you like me to name them?
In general, the POV you are trying have dsip;ayed in the article to the exclusion of others: on July 26th there was a theater wide policy in place to kill all refugees encountered regardless of the particular circumstances of the encounters between Korean refugees and US/ROK forces. You want the article structured to eliminate the rationale for use of force procedures against Korean refugees, discounting the well established suspicion that the Norks were disguising their forces as refugees and intermingling them in refugee columns as seen in Taejon and Yongdon. Your presentation of events at the bridge is designed to leave the reader with the impression that trigger happy troops with the 2/7 open fire repeatedly for long durations of time on huddling masses of nonthreating civilians out of sheer murderous intent. You imply that these individuals were given orders to do so by their direct or acting CO’s. You then go to great lengths to eliminate or question any evidence that might tend to blunt your POV, like the lack of bodies and graves in the aerial imagery. To top it all off, you repeatedly slam those who criticize the AP’s reports even when those criticism are more than warranted like with the misrepresentation of your interviewees statements.
Even with all these issues though, your POV deserves its space and recognition here. No one is denying that. What I am asking for is that other significant POV’s be represented along with their conclusions and own narratives. The US Army’s report, for one, is used as a source repeatedly in this article but only in circumstances that tend to support your main POV. In the rare instance where the US Army’s report is used and its not to support your POV, it is immediately flowed with a contradictory statement. Batemans work has been positively received and is a reliable source. I’m sorry of you feel otherwise, but that’s how things work around here.
Now, if we need a mediator or God forbid an arbitrator involved, I am more than willing to go down that road, but I will not sit by idly while you and the individuals you have apparently been in contact with off line continue to enforce a vary narrow and controversial POV onto this article. WeldNeck (talk) 21:51, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
- Once more, there is so much wrong in what you write that one doesn’t know where to begin. And I haven’t the time now to begin anyway, except to say that you persist in ignoring an overarching point: The article is not about the AP and its uninformed critics (sure, there were death threats and heaps of lies from militarists and wing nuts and Sergeant Rock wannabes, and that qualifies as “criticism,” wouldn’t you say?); it’s about the No Gun Ri Massacre and the facts established and unknowns underlined by myriad news organizations and several government investigations. Unlike some who are unfortunately allowed to diminish Wikipedia with their POVs, the AP has none. Your latest in Talk will be addressed in due course, perhaps tomorrow. Meanwhile, yes, of course, you were asked to cite a legal claim for $400 million in compensation; not fantasies from some 7th Cav apologist, but the actual claim. Charles J. Hanley 22:44, 10 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- So,, no one criticized the AP's articles for lack of due diligence with respect to vetting your sources or for misattributing your sources statements, not US News and World Report, not Salon, not Bateman, not Stars & Stripes, not the 7th Cav association ... just militarists ans wingnuts? On the $400 million ... Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. WeldNeck (talk) 23:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
WeldNeck; can I make two requests. Firstly this article, no matter if you disagree with its content, is well written. So please do take the time to make sure what you add/change makes grammatical sense. Secondly; can you break down your changes into more edits and provide greater description of your changes. There was one very large edit in particular the other day which is taking me some time to go through and the edit summary doesn't properly highlight the problems you are trying to address. --Errant (chat!) 09:05, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
- Weldneck, to deal with your 1,2,3,4 specifics above:
- 1-2 Yes, of course, anyone reading Muccio's letter can see that he mentions the infiltration threat. That threat was already extensively cited in the article, beginning with paragraph 2, as well as in the existing description of the Muccio letter, and with the reported example (NY Times) that you inserted and I updated, among other places. Is there yet another sentence needed on this? This is where simple editing sense must enter in. The article can be bloated endlessly with contributors' particular hobby horses, and in other ways (see below), or it can be coherent and readable.
- Regarding the insert about supposed phony refugees at Taejon, there are problems: First, you misquote the source; check Sloan page 72 again; he does not speak of hundreds of disguised men. Secondly, what is Sloan's source? The official U.S. Army history (Appleman) speaks not once, in the 58 pages devoted to the Kum River-Taejon action, of infiltrators disguised as refugees. The official history, drawn from battlefield documents and extensive historian interviews, does speak repeatedly of "infiltration," but in the technical military sense, of movement of uniformed NK troops as an "enemy flanking force," in a "double envelopment of the flanks," through miles-wide gaps in the U.S. line, and on and on, as in page 135's, "But the North Koreans now had a covered route around the east end of the 1st Battalion position. They exploited it in the next few hours by extensive infiltration to the rear," and page 147's "This North Korean maneuver (flanking and infiltration) had been standard in every major action."
- I'm traveling, away from my home library, and cannot check Sloan other than finding page 72 at Google Books. Appleman's utter lack of reference to any refugee infiltration at Taejon makes me suspect that Sloan, a half-century later, was simply parroting the general 1950 warfront scuttlebutt about armed refugees. Unless you tell me he's got a specific documentary cite for this.
- Finally, let's remember that the two most important things about the Muccio letter were that it reported on the policy to shoot refugees, and that it was suppressed by the Army's No Gun Ri investigators. You wouldn't be reading it but for assiduous research work by others.
- 3 - The "criticism" of the AP reporting came from 7th Cav'er Bateman via the magazine article by 7th Cav booster Galloway, an honorary member of the unit vets' association. The Air Force officer writing at Salon was simply duped by Bateman's writing, assuming it was done in good faith by someone who knew what he was talking about. These attacks were at best baseless and often reckless, as in the Bateman/Galloway attack on two vets wounded at No Gun Ri, accusing them of lying, something their medical records readily disproved. The various bits of nonsense from Bateman were refuted point by point, in print, by AP. The only flaw in the AP report (not a "series," by the way, but a single story) was the Daily sideshow, which was pinned down by AP, not by Bateman: Daily knew No Gun Ri had happened, and told reporters so, but his information was secondhand, not firsthand as he purported. At that point Daily lost all relevance to the No Gun Ri story, particularly to a WP article in 2013 after years of further investigations, both journalistic and official.
- Again, one could fatten the article endlessly with such hobby horses, raising points, knocking them down. But please recognize that the article, too long as it is, should stick to the facts and unknowns of the No Gun Ri Massacre. It's not about the AP and its long-ago ambush by the grossly irresponsible Bateman.
- 4 - At least twice, a source was requested for the "$400 million" demand for compensation. One hasn't materialized. Instead I find in the article you cite a source that says nothing about $400 million in compensation (an AP article no less).
- What you have said seems to imply you believe that the principle of "verifiability" in WP means you can insert anything you want in an article as long as you find it somewhere you consider "reliable," even if it's patently untrue. For anyone interested in the quality of WP, rather than his own agenda, that's a pretty low bar. Of course, in this case you haven't cited any source at all, even a wildly unreliable one like Bateman (other than the source, AP, that doesn't mention $400 million).
- In any event, let me explain the origin of $400 million: Early on, one of the NGR survivors, not a group leader, but a woman who'd been isolated from the others, suggested to an AP reporter that $1 million might be fair compensation for a loved one killed at No Gun Ri. From that Bateman extrapolated a survivors' "claim" for $400 million, since they estimated 400 dead. How ludicrous, not just because there wasn't any $400 million claim, but because Bateman, in so doing, was accepting that there were 400 dead, while he at the same time was spouting off his own nonsensical numbers -- "several civilians killed," "eight to 35 killed," "somewhere between eighteen and seventy civilians" killed." Take your pick. They're all just made up.
- I hope you don't think we should be explaining all that in the Wikipedia article as well. The biggest example of this "bloat" problem, by the way, is the U.S. Army investigative report, which you think is underreported. The problem is that with virtually any important statement made in that report, one would have to demonstrate its falsity. Hence, the article cites unavoidable statements, like its conclusion of "not deliberate" and its avoidance of a casualty estimate. The article also cites its key contention about aerial imagery, but then must cite the serious questions about the imagery and the much more sensible explanation from those who saw the bodies with their own eyes, including ex-soldiers. But to go beyond that, and drag in more of the Army report, would turn the article into a point-by-point deconstruction of that report, rather than one about what's established re No Gun Ri.
- Since I'm traveling, I cannot attend to all the problems introduced in recent days. The misquoting, lack of source etc. noted above only scratch the surface of the problems reintroduced recently. I'll deal with them in the coming days, probably starting with the aerial imagery section, where problems were earlier eliminated, only to be reintroduced. Meantime, I would ask you to stand down, while we try to work this out. Charles J. Hanley 13:57, 12 October 2013 (UTC) ((User:Cjhanley|Cjhanley)) (((User talk:Cjhanley|talk)) • ((Special:Contributions/Cjhanley|contribs))) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
South Korean Report
Is there a copy of this anywhere on the interwebs? WeldNeck (talk) 19:53, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
- Unsure which you mean, but neither the 2001 ROK Defense Ministry investigative report (Korean-language only) nor the later government commission report (in Korean and a 2009 English translation) is available online. Speaking of which, the Pentagon removed the 2001 U.S. Army report from its websites after the appearance of a 2010 article detailing page by page the gross irregularities. Last I looked, the ROK commission report was available at Amazon, I belive, and major university libraries. Charles J. Hanley 14:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
Aerial imagery, errors
Errors were recently reintroduced in the "Aerial imagery" section, despite having been pointed out and eliminated earlier. The section also took on an illogical flow of thoughts and unnecessary wordiness.
The major errors:
- The Army report did not say all foxholes remained open. It said the majority were open. (Survivors said some were used as graves.)
- I never wrote that "all foxholes remained open". From the US Army investigation:
The area around the No Gun-Ri, ROK railroad bridge and the nearby fighting positions was carefully examined for indications of human remains. There were NO indications of human remains found on the imagery examined for this project.
Stereoscopic examination of the fighting positions revealed that the majority were still open (meaning not filled in or covered over) (Figure 22). Most of the positions were showing the effects of weathering, having begun to collapse over time.
- It was the U.S. analyst, not the South Korean specialists, who called for a new process to guarantee the integrity of imagery to be analyzed in the future.
- Nowhere does the US analyst call into question the integrity of the aerial imagery. There is a lengthy discussion in the back of the report discussing this. Your text, as written, leads the reader to believe that the US analyst is in agreement with his Korean counterpart(s).
The previously discussed cuts and splices notwithstanding, a comparison of the DUPNEG with the ON, particularly frames 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35, indicates that the DUPNEG that DIA was using to make copies was accurate and complete. All frames matched up -- in order and in content -- between the ON and the DUPNEG.
Because the imagery was of sufficient quality and resolution to discern individual railroad ties along the railbed, it should also be sufficient to detect human remains had they been present at imaging. There were no indications of human remains along the roads, railroad, bridges or streambeds in the No Gun-Ri area on the 06 August 1950 imagery.
- The reader infers that the U.S. imagery analyst concluded there were no mass graves. Actually, the Army report writers listed that as a conclusion, but the four conclusions listed in the analyst's own internal report made no mention of mass graves. In fact, the analyst felt compelled to add a disclaimer in a footnote to the report writers' statement, saying, "Typically mass graves have been located on imagery after the grave has been filled and covered and when some other indicators have pointed the analyst in the right direction to look." This analyst, who stated he was kept uninformed about the circumstances of No Gun Ri, had no such indicators.
In any event, the salient points about the aerial imagery are 1) the No Gun Ri frames may have been inauthentic, from another time period, since they were spliced into an August 6, 1950, roll of film, and their features, such as a low-running stream and the recon plane's flight line, differ from those features on the rest of the roll, according to the South Korean specialists, and 2) even if the photos were authentic, No Gun Ri villagers, uninvolved in the killings, consistently said the bulk of bodies were stacked beneath the bridge, out of sight of aerial recon, and were buried in mass graves later.
These problems will be addressed in an upcoming edit that will stick to the essentials, without larding in word-wasting detail about the divergence between the report writers and the analyst, or the Pentagon's experience in Bosnia or wherever. Charles J. Hanley 20:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC) ((User:Cjhanley|Cjhanley)) (((User talk:Cjhanley|talk)) • ((Special:Contributions/Cjhanley|contribs))) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- Response: Only the south Koreans even raise the allegation that the images are inauthentic. The image splicing is explained in great detail within the report. It seems implausible that the bulk of 400+ bodies were stacked under the bridge. The aerial footage was sufficient for the analyst to see 3 meters into the bridge opening and he still saw nothing. WeldNeck (talk) 15:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Alleged
Per policies like WP:ALLEGED; such things need a source, otherwise we should use neutral language. --Errant (chat!) 18:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Source needed
But three days later Maj. Gen. Hobart R. Gay, 1st Cavalry Division commander, told rear-echelon reporters he suspected half the white-clad people streaming down the roads were infiltrators.[8]
I was looking for the source of this statement, but cannot find it. Does anyone have anything more specific than "The Associated Press, July 26, 1950"? WeldNeck (talk) 16:41, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Sourcing/References
Currently the articles quotes various books and reports without providing page numbers, that is not an acceptable form of sourcing, in fact almost as bad as giving no source. You can expect people reading a book or report of several hundred pages just to verify a single line. While it might be ok to skip page numbers for smaller sources like news paper or journal articles consisting only of a few page, larger sources nevertheless usually need exact page numbers. Similarly when quoting from longer documentaries (audio or video), there should be a time parameter telling at which position they need to check the audio or video source.
Keeping the above in mind the following sources need to be fixed in some or all their occurrences in references section:
- Office of the Inspector General, Department of the Army. No Gun Ri Review
- Appleman, Roy E. (1961). South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June–November 1950).
- Bill Sloan. "The Darkest Summer: Pusan and Inchon 1950: The Battles That Saved South Korea--and the Marines--from Extinction". Simon and Schuster, Nov 10, 2009
- Hanley, Charles J.; Choe, Sang-Hun; Mendoza, Martha (2001). The Bridge at No Gun Ri. New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company.
- ARD Television, Germany. "The Massacre of No Gun Ri," March 19, 2007. Retrieved January 28, 2012. (occurs once without time positions)
- Robert Bateman (2002). No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident. Stackpole Books.
- Committee for the Review and Restoration of Honor for the No Gun Ri Victims (2009). No Gun Ri Incident Victim Review Report. Seoul: Government of the Republic of Korea.
- Phillips, Jayne Anne (2009). Lark & Termite. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Tirman, John (2011). The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars. New York: Oxford University Press
- "Comprehensive Report, Volume 1, Part I". Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea. December 2010.
--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Weldneck, what on Earth do you think you're doing?
You're engaging in an outrageous edit war, despite good-faith efforts to incorporate the very few useful, truthful items from your interventions. You're treating this article as though it's your plaything, to be reshaped with U.S. chauvinist wishful thinking about a war crime.
Over and over and over, your errors, your POV insertions and deletions, your ungrammatical constructions, your unreliable or nonexistent sourcing have been pointed out to you and corrected, and you simply reinsert the same false, baseless and sometimes incoherent material. On aerial imagery: Don't you understand that some foxholes were filled in (and we don't need foxholes in the section anyway)? Don't you understand that the U.S. analyst (not the South Koreans, as you keep writing) called for a process to ensure the integrity of aerial film for analysis, signaling his concern about the authenticity of the NGR images? Don't you see that Bosnia etc. just adds needless words to a long article? Don't you see your writing doesn't even flow logically? Don't you understand that the aerial imagery section can be kept simple: Despite eyewitness testimony (and, later, a commission's findings on casualties), the U.S. Army cited half-century-old aerial imagery to question whether there were many bodies at NGR, and the South Koreans rebutted that bodies were stacked out of sight and some were removed, and that the aerial imagery may be unreliable. That's all that's needed -- done factually and coherently. My last edit incorporated from yours more of the Army report's supposed evidence (no scavenger activity etc.). That's enough. Now you've restored all the errors and nonsense verbatim.
The same applies to your reverting the "Associated Press story" section to its previous mess of untruths. Bateman is a serial fabricator, and his gross unreliability has been explained in clear detail in Talk, but you simply refuse to engage, to even bother defending the substance of his worthless and mendacious material, or acknowledge the obvious regarding him, but instead simply ignore the discussion and the facts.
Worst of all, worse than your blatant edit war, is your deliberate falsification of at least three military documents, adding exculpatory clauses to "shoot refugees" orders that weren't there. In that regard, on top of everything, are we dealing with a reading comprehension problem? The document shows that the ARMY said all groups of eight or more should be strafed, and in the next passage (referred to by you) it's the NAVY pilots who decide otherwise in the instant case. The article is talking about ARMY instructions to kill civilians. That's what matters with No Gun Ri.
For one last time, please cease and desist. And engage. Otherwise, you'll force a turn to alternative approaches. I see you've already been warned about edit wars elsewhere, and have been looked into as a possible sock puppet of "Kauffner," a No Gun Ri denialist who got himself banned from WP. It would seem wise to calm down and let us work things out. 173.14.82.77 (talk) 22:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- If you can substantiate your allegation that analyst who reviewed the aerial footage thought there were authenticity issues with it instead of (my belief) his explanation of the splicing and a proposed methodology to prevent it in the future (to deflect the South Korean criticism) I'd be interested in hearing it. Otherwise its your speculation and not really all that noteworthy. One sentence explaining who/what AFIP and NIMA are/do doesnt detract form the article. I am sure the casual reader would really like to know who did the investigative work on the footage and why they were qualified to do so. If you still want believe that one could hide several hundred bodies in a dozen DFP's (I've dug lots of them, that aint gonna happen), that too is your choice but the photographic evidence, the only truly objective material not tainted by 50 year old memories and journalistic teams contaminating sources, is pretty convincing: there just werent that many bodies and what is seen doesnt match the eyewitness recollections.
- You have complained about Bateman for a while now. Once again, whatever beliefs you have about him are not supported by any other reliable source.
- The document you are referring (the Navy action summary) to is VERY DIFFICULT TO READ. Too bad for your POV that the linchpin, that key piece of testimony about the 2/7 being ordered to open fire on the refugees at No Gun Ri, turned out to have not been there when he said he overheard the CO telling them "The hell with all those people. Let's get rid of them". Guess the AP team should have done a bit more due diligence on that one.
- I would encourage you to seek "alternative approaches". Maybe they could convince you that your conflict of interest and your personal grudge against Bateman shouldnt be pursued here on Wikipedia.
- You dont own this article and your version of events is not the only one that should be included here. WeldNeck (talk) 01:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thought I'd throw this in the mix too. It illustrates how even when confronted with documented evidence, some people just cannot let go of long held opinions and erroneous beliefs:
Ms. MENDOZA: One soldier who was at No Gun Ri, who was there, said that he - an officer told him, the hell with all those people, let's get rid of them all. And he said they had been in Korea for only a couple of days. He said he and his fellow soldiers didn't know them from a load of coal.
HANSEN: What happened to the soldiers? What was the outcome?
Ms. MENDOZA: Well, in No Gun Ri - this didn't come to light for 50 years and that was when we reported on it - they were interviewed by the Pentagon and the Pentagon did in fact confirm that this incident had occurred. They were not punished in any way. But these men who told us these stories, in my mind, are men of great conscience who were going to come forward and tell these stories.
- Perhaps Ms Mendoza can explain to the readers how Hesselman (the source of the quote) is a man "of great conscience" when it was documented that he was medically evacuated before the events took place and could not have overheard the CO's directive? This inteview was in 2006, six years after it was confirmed that Hesselman was at the 15th Medical Clearing Battalion on the morning he said he was witness to a massacre. WeldNeck (talk) 01:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
- Weldneck (whoever you are), you are so wrong on every point that one scarcely knows where to begin, as usual with you. Above all, you are 13 years out of date on the NGR story, and even then you are relying on a dishonest, discredited source. You want to ignore the fact that many news organizations -- from the Washington Post and the BBC to Korean TV -- replicated, reconfirmed and expanded on the original AP reporting, and that two sovereign governments then established and accepted that the U.S. military killed the refugees at No Gun Ri, and that one government, that of the crime scene, certified 218 casualties and said "many" more went unreported.
- I have never denied that noncoms were killed but now that we have a great deal more information other than a sensationalist piece of yellow journalism, we can properly describe the preceding events and context that contributed to it, like the good LtCol Bateman did. You know, somthing with a little more depth than 'wicked US imperialists mowed down children for the hell of it'. WeldNeck (talk) 03:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- On your wrongheaded points:
- At Appendix C, Tab 2, page 13 of the Army's 2001 investigative report, the aerial reconnaissance analyst concludes his internal report by recommending that "a certification process/procedure should be developed that can be used to certify that the resulting copies are exact duplicates of the ON" (original negative). This after objections by the Korean experts that the aerial film appeared to have been doctored.
- Never once did the US analyst question the authenticity of the aerial photographs as you continue to suggest, in fact, he called the copies were "exact duplicates" of the originals. I know it might come as a shock to you, but archival film may become damaged after 50 years. WeldNeck (talk) 03:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- No, discussing the background of the aerial recon experts ("Bosnia" etc.) is a waste of words. The reader assumes that in a high-level government investigation, expertise is involved in all fields (archival researchers, interrogators, legal experts etc. in this case). Then, why don't we discuss the background qualifications of the South Koreans who worked on the same film?
- Mr Hanley, you raise an interesting point here. Its my understanding that the South Korean analysts were well briefed on all the details of the incident whereas the US team was given no background on the event. Dont you think the potential existed to bias the results of the Korean analysts, kind of like poisoning a jury? WeldNeck (talk) 14:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Your reference to "hiding several hundred bodies in a dozen DFP's" totally befuddles me. Have you suddenly forgotten that uninvolved No Gun Ri villagers said the bodies were stacked under the bridge and were eventually put in mass graves? Who knows how many bodies went into foxholes. And, as I said, who needs foxholes in the article anyway? Then your pretense of knowing the size of 7th Cav foxholes, and heavy weapons trenches etc., in 1950 Korea, and how many bodies can fit under that bridge, when you haven't been within a million miles or a half-century of that place and time is the kind of thing you expect to hear from know-it-all blowhards in Internet comments columns, not in a serious discussion. As it happens, the ROK army, as part of the ROK investigation, sent troops into one tunnel to lie down and found that 700 bodies could fit, even without the stacking that occurred.
- The condition of the foxholes was mentioned by the report, no reason not to include it. I know the size of the DFP's the 2/7 dug that day because I have dug many of my own. Its ridiculous to suggest 700 bodies could fit under that bridge and not be seen in the aerial photography. And for the record, I have probably spent more time in South Korea than you have. WeldNeck (talk) 03:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Now we learn that you couldn't read the Navy document and so you just described it the way you wanted it to read (i.e., to minimize U.S. culpability). As I wrote above, "Weldneck, what on Earth do you think you're doing?"
- Bateman's reckless nonsense about 7th Cav witness Hesselman was debunked 13 years ago. There was no "document" showing a medical evacuation. Bateman made all this up. He later told a third party he had "heard" from someone at the 7th Cav Association that Hesselman had shot himself in the foot. Hesselman had a Purple Heart dated July 26, 1950, and told the AP early on it was a graze wound from some incoming shrapnel and he refused evacuaton. But Bateman was so eager to blow smoke that he got Galloway to write that Hesselman was evacuated that day, before the No Gun Ri killings (and their cockamamie explanation of that was one of the most ludicrous things ever seen in print). A highly pissed-off Hesselman released his medical records to AP. They backed him up completely. There was no evacuation.
- Provide a reliable source for that or its worthless. But speaking of sources we have this:
Further complicating things are Hesselman's medical records. Though he said he was wounded in the hand, officials who have reviewed Hesselman's medical file said he received a "friendly fire" wound to the foot--in other words, either he shot himself or was wounded by a fellow soldier inadvertently. Hesselman has declined to respond to repeated messages seeking clarification of his service and medical records and the accounts he provided to the AP about No Gun Ri and the incident on the Naktong River. Army investigators, ordered to examine the No Gun Ri affair after the AP account was published, are trying to determine whether veterans besides Daily may have fabricated their accounts, or whether their memories of events from half a century ago may have been influenced by Daily.
"I know that Daily was there," insisted Eugene Hesselman, another key witness in the original Associated Press account. "I know that. I know that."Millard Gray, 75, of Fort Cobb, Okla., said he believed for years that Mr. Daily rescued him on the battlefield -- until a buddy pointed out that he would not have been able to recall anything immediately after being pummeled by a concussion grenade. Mr. Gray, who was not quoted in the Associated Press account, said he now realizes that his memory of Mr. Daily pulling him out of a foxhole to safety came from Mr. Daily. "I didn't know the difference," Mr. Gray said.
- Let's make this clear one last time: The Associated Press, a bedrock news organization of the global media, was neither perpetrator nor victim at No Gun Ri. The journalists who confirmed No Gun Ri, along with those who followed with further reporting, had and have no conflict of interest. They're journalists. The conflict of interest, as has been clearly established, is Bateman's, as a member of the organization (the U.S. Army) that was responsible for NGR, and even, years later, of the specific unit responsible.
- Sorry but the logical fallacy you are attempting to use wont work. Neither does the guilt by association. WeldNeck (talk) 03:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- I agree, the Bateman attack on the AP (which you call an AP grudge or feud) has no place in this WP article. So let's get rid of it. Let it go. The article is not about that, but about the NGR Massacre.
- The Bateman correction to the AP story is quote notable having been reported by too many sources to name and belongs here. Your repeated attempts to remove it is a conflict of interest
- Meantime, are you going to be making fixes to what you've done, or not? You can begin by undoing the egregious stunt of making the wording of "kill" documents conform to what you want them to say. Charles J. Hanley 22:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC) ((User:Cjhanley|Cjhanley)) (((User talk:Cjhanley|talk)) • ((Special:Contributions/Cjhanley|contribs))) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
The AP story, errors
As I find time to study what Weldneck has done to this article, I find in several places he has taken it upon himself -- in a way thoroughly disrespectful to Wikipedia and to other contributors to this article -- to add qualifiers and his own wishful thinking to orders and other military documents that are black-and-white in their meaning and that had no such qualifiers. For example, in this "AP story" section, where it noted that Navy pilots reported the Army told them to attack any groups of more than eight people in South Korea, he added the clause, "unless a determination could be made" that they were not hostile. There's no such sugarcoated wording in the document. Frankly, this is outrageous fabrication, and was done in at least two other places, along with his deletion of important elements, without explanation, apparently because he doesn't like the implication of the facts.
Weldneck, this kind of thing violates some of the most basic rules and protocols of Wikipedia. Cut it out.
Beyond that, I'll fix the hash made of the paragraph about the U.S. News challenge of the AP story, to note, among other things, that U.S. News' accusations were refuted in detail and in print by the AP, and that Pentagon officials were quoted at the time as saying their investigators had confirmed the central element of the AP story, and that "hundreds" of refugees had been killed.
We will take on other sections one by one to purge them of these unfortunate insertions and deletions. Charles J. Hanley 23:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)
- There are no fabrications here. You consistently take the most damning clips from documents and present them without any context. The sentence immediately after the one cited in the article states quite clearly (not really considering the quality of the image you uploaded) that all groups of civilians were investigated with a low altitude flyby and they were only fired on by the pilots if they showed signs of aggression towards them. This seems pretty important, and there isnt a good reason you excluded it from your original reporting or from here.
- So because the AP wrote a response to US news and world reports it must be all good, nothing to see here, right?
- I found an interesting H-Net thread on what some historians saw as major flaws in your reporting that I would like to reproduce here.
Jeffrey Grey, professor of history UNSW
On 13 May 2007, Janet Valentine wrote: "Among the myriad points of dissonance in the discussion of No Gun Ri are the different standards by which journalists and historians work."
It's perhaps worth just reminding ourselves as well of a point that Bob Bateman makes in the introduction to his account of No Gun Ri:
'It now appeared that the AP won the Pulitzer Prize for a story in which fully one quarter of its mentioned sources on this side of the Pacific had not been at No Gun Ri or were not members of the 7th Cavalry at the time, but who were nonetheless feeding the AP and other reporters what they wanted to hear. Even more damning . . . was the fact that several of the veterans they represented as having witnessed or taken part in what the journalists all but called a massacre said they were misquoted or that their words were taken out of context.' (p. xii)
My question is a simple one: given this, why should we be expected to have any more confidence in Mr Hanley's interpretation of events when he throws a few documents and bits of documents at us, than we can have from the sort of 'evidence' on which he and his colleagues placed so much weight originally, and which has been exposed as false?
(Dr) Jeffrey Grey Professor
H&SS/ADFA
I am not an expert on No Gun Ri, but this comment bring a larger historiography question to the point.
Whatever happened at No Gun Ri, it is no longer the province of journalists, but of _historians_. Journalism allows a margin of error that history cannot tolerate, the justification for that is that Journalism is immediate, there may not be time to gather all the facts on unfolding events. Moreover, Journalism is driven by sensationalism and scandal. The journalist looks for the 'scoop' and jealously hoards his sources against his fellow journalists. Journalism, constrained by time, tends to accept sources at face value, especially witnesses. And Journalists. Constrained by time and writing for an impatient audience, spend little time or effort on understanding the context of their story. They do not place it within the framework of larger events.
Historians, in contrast, are _not_ driven by immediate concerns. They can, and should take as long as needed to ferret the truth of an event. They are not deadline driven. Historians should not be driven by sensation or scandal, but by historical importance and relevance. Many 'sensational' stories are interesting, but they are not historically relevant. Historians do not hunt for the 'scoop', nor do they hoard sources (or should not). On the contrary, the more historians who examine a given issue, the better. Historians spend a great deal of time carefully examining their sources, _especially_ witnesses, and especially witness speaking long after the fact. And every historian must answer the question of context fully.
Anyone who has worked with veterans and oral history understands the ways in which war stories shift and then solidify into myth. Last year I interviewed some Medal of Honor recipients, these were all men who had been formally interviewed about these specific events many times. It was clear that they were reciting the 'Story', something honed, unintentionally, over the years through subconscious readings of what the listener found interesting or shocking. Our job would be easier if everyone possessed total, objective recall, but we do not. That is why history is difficult, and why journalism cuts that corner to save time.
Finally, as I mentioned I am no expert on No Gun Ri, but I attended graduate school with Bob Bateman. He is an extremely ethical, skilled historian and he would never attempt to white wash any crimes or scandals he discovered in the Army, or his regiment. Bob is not an 'apologist' for this event but he is a historian who demands, as we all should, careful attention to the sources.
Paul Westermeyer Historian, History Division
Marine Corps University
It wold seem that, based on these statements, Bateman's book might be a better source than yours for the article. WeldNeck (talk) 15:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Since this seems to be an appropriate place to weigh the reliability of the AP, I though I would add this as well.
The AP relied heavily on two alleged participants: Edward Daily and Eugene Hesselman. Daily, who claimed to have been a machine-gunner at No Gun Ri, provided the most evocative quotes, including this: "On summer nights, when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming." In a follow-up piece on NBC's Dateline, Daily added that he had received a direct order to kill the refugees.
Hesselman told the AP that Captain Melbourne Chandler, after speaking with his superiors by radio, ordered his men to fire. "Chandler said, `The hell with all those people. Let's get rid of them,' " Hesselman told the AP.
The AP's use of Daily and Hesselman may turn out to have been ill-advised. In similar pieces, U.S. News and the Web site of the Stars and Stripes (www.stripes.com) offered considerable documentary evidence suggesting that neither Daily nor Hesselman was anywhere near No Gun Ri. Daily is portrayed as boastful and disturbed, a man long eyed with suspicion by fellow veterans. "I take three strong pills for mental illness," Daily told U.S. News. Hesselman, U.S. News says, was almost certainly evacuated with an injury before the incident took place. Other veterans interviewed by U.S. News complained that the AP distorted their quotes and took them out of context. And another veteran, Norman Tinkler, told U.S. News that he did shoot civilians, killing a number of innocent people in one short burst of machine-gun fire. But in a comment that speaks to the horror and confusion of war, Tinkler insisted that no one ordered him to fire: "Refugees came through our positions the day before and pulled pins and threw three hand grenades at our guys. I wasn't going to let them get near me. . . . And yes, I fired at them. Nobody gave me orders. Nobody was there to give me orders."
WeldNeck (talk) 19:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
- Regarding the 2 quoted historians above. Yes, (peer/positively reviewed) scholarly sources by historians are certainly to be preferred over journalists and AP reporting. However do we have them? Bateman doesn't seem to qualify as such and certainly no army reports. If we do have them the article should primarily rely on them by all means, but if we do not have them (or not in sufficient amout/detail) the article needs to rely on good journalistic sources for the time being.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:43, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Bateman has been very well received by scholarly historical sources.
When Bateman began his inquiry, he was a serving officer. As the mass experience of military service fades into the background of American life, fewer and fewer of those who write on military matters will do so on the basis of first-hand experience. That experience by itself, of course, is no guarantee of accuracy, let alone impartiality, but in this case it does give the author insights into military procedures and records that might well escape the civilian writer. Bateman's forensic explanation of what can be gleaned from various records, and his almost obsessive interrogation of those records—and, by implication, of those who failed to understand what the records could tell—is one of the most interesting parts of his book.
Despite these few minor problems, Bateman has written a book that should be a valuable resource for scholars, the media, and the general public. He reveals the pitfalls of drawing conclusions from incomplete investigations and shows how true historical research should be conducted.
Bateman skillfully uses photos, forensics, and numbers to make his case.
- We do have them (Bateman being one of them) so no need to rely controversial journalistic sources for now. WeldNeck (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Well so where are they (aside from Bateman)? If the 2 reviews are representative for the reception of his book in general, then Bateman is ok as a source. However they do not really address the criticism raised, so at the moment I'm a bit skeptical regarding their represetative nature.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thats three reviews, not two, and they are representative. The criticisms raised were not cited to a wp:RS and were made by two anonymous Wikipedia editors (is that all it takes to discredit the reliability of a source? ). WeldNeck (talk) 17:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- You misunderstood me here. I wasn't asking for reviews but other research article into the subject. That is another academic publication that has assessed the various sources in detail, those reviews don't do that. As far as the criticism of the other editors is concerned, there isn't necessarily a need for citing anything, this the discussion page not the article. And while an editor can of course use citations on the discussion page as well to show, that the criticism is not just his personal assessment or to bolster his argument in general, he doesn't have to. His personal assessment can nevertheless point out valid issues. The neglect of Korean sources in Bateman's work is a concern independent of any citation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thats three reviews, not two, and they are representative. The criticisms raised were not cited to a wp:RS and were made by two anonymous Wikipedia editors (is that all it takes to discredit the reliability of a source? ). WeldNeck (talk) 17:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Well so where are they (aside from Bateman)? If the 2 reviews are representative for the reception of his book in general, then Bateman is ok as a source. However they do not really address the criticism raised, so at the moment I'm a bit skeptical regarding their represetative nature.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- We do have them (Bateman being one of them) so no need to rely controversial journalistic sources for now. WeldNeck (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Dale Kuehl
Dale Kuehl's paper What Happened at No Gun Ri?: The Challenge of Civilians on the Battlefield (available online, just Google it) has a very concise and reasonable account of the events leading up to and during the killings. This begins at page 80 and continues on for some time. He goes into some detail about the issues with the AP's work (and to be fair, he has some criticisms of Bateman as well.
While focusing on the Korean point of view, the AP does not clearly address the complexity of the battlefield. They downplayed reports of guerrillas intermingling with refugees as exaggerations by soldiers. They do not mention North Korean attacks that used the refugees to mask their movement as recorded by army records and press accounts on 24 July, 26 July, and 28 July. The AP does not mention guerrilla attacks in rear areas of the division during this period. On midnight 25 July, just an hour before 2-7 CAV’s panicked withdrawal, thirty guerrillas fired on the division headquarters at Kwan-ni. At 1415 hours on the 26th in the same area guerrillas wounded two American soldiers.3 Other documents report enemy snipers in rear areas and attacks on artillery units.4 The Division Artillery reported that the enemy was even using children as young as ten years olds to observe and report on positions.5 Finally, the AP also does not address measures taken by the 1st CAV Division to deal with the refugee problem. They do not mention the evacuation of refugees from Yongdong by train on 23 July, or the 30,000 refugees that passed through Yongdong that day.6 Measures taken by the 191st Counter-Intelligence Corps and the division’s 545th MPs also receive no mention.7 These omissions combined with emphasis placed on orders by Gay to the 8th CAV gives one the impression that the 1st CAV indiscriminately killed civilians in their area of operations.
Kuehl particular emphasis that the area around No Gun Ri, forward of the 2/7, 2/8 , 2/5 etcetera, was a fluid and active combat zone during the killings in late July of 1950 with the KPA massing for an offensive and this detail is almost completely absent from the article (and the AP's account as well). If there is agreement, I would like to incorporate a great deal of his reconstruction of the events in to the article under the Events of 25–29 July 1950 section. WeldNeck (talk) 18:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Isn't that a thesis? I don't think it would be a RS unless you could demonstrate it was widely cited.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- I have to plead my ignorance on this ... I don't know, is it only a thesis? Hers is the citation from Google scholar. Its actually all ready cited in the article Kuehl, Dale C. "What happened at No Gun Ri? The challenge of civilians on the battlefield". U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. June 6, 2003. Retrieved February 10, 2012. Biblioscholar (2012). ISBN 1249440270. WeldNeck (talk) 18:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Well, the "descriptive note" in your link says "Master's thesis". Look at WP:RS: "Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence". Has Keuhl's thesis had such influence? I wouldn't know, but look into it.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- will do thanks for the tip. WeldNeck (talk) 18:55, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Any opinions on using Kuehl's notations to construct the events of late July? WeldNeck (talk) 19:04, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- A Master thesis, that has not been published otherwise (in journal articles, as a book with an academic publisher), is not suited as a source for WP, in particular not with contentious content as in this article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Did you read his reconstruction of events ... very thorough. I wonder if his reconstruction can be cited to other RS's like the US Army report or other histories of the early days of the Korean War? WeldNeck (talk) 01:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Well army reports are source that is not without problems either. Nevertheless they tend to be compiled/reviewed/read by a larger number of people and are in doubt treated as a primary source. And no I didn't look at the this master thesis yet, I just stated WP's general attitude towards a master thesis as a source.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Did you read his reconstruction of events ... very thorough. I wonder if his reconstruction can be cited to other RS's like the US Army report or other histories of the early days of the Korean War? WeldNeck (talk) 01:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- A Master thesis, that has not been published otherwise (in journal articles, as a book with an academic publisher), is not suited as a source for WP, in particular not with contentious content as in this article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Well, the "descriptive note" in your link says "Master's thesis". Look at WP:RS: "Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence". Has Keuhl's thesis had such influence? I wouldn't know, but look into it.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- I have to plead my ignorance on this ... I don't know, is it only a thesis? Hers is the citation from Google scholar. Its actually all ready cited in the article Kuehl, Dale C. "What happened at No Gun Ri? The challenge of civilians on the battlefield". U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. June 6, 2003. Retrieved February 10, 2012. Biblioscholar (2012). ISBN 1249440270. WeldNeck (talk) 18:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)