                                                     [wcrimes.txt 08/24/91]

            WAR CRIMES TRIAL FOR HUSSEIN CONSIDERED BUT CRIMES OF
                       VIETNAM'S PRIME MINISTER IGNORED
                         Tom Cartwright  U.S. VETERAN
                                                           
   The Congressional Human Rights Caucus is holding hearings to determine
   if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein should be tried as a war criminal for
   his troops' harsh treatment of "Coalition," including American,
   prisoners of war during the Persian Gulf conflict. Also under
   consideration for war crimes prosecution of Hussein is the Iraqis'
   brutal treatment of the Kurdish minority in Iraq and the people of
   Kuwait during Iraq's brief occupation of its tiny Arab neighbor state.

   Meanwhile, however, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the
   Senate's new Select Committee on matters relating to America's
   unaccounted for POWs and MIAs, appears willing to overlook the atrocious
   war crimes of Vietnamese communist officials, including Vietnam's new
   prime minister, Vo Van Kiet, a key member of the Viet Cong Central
   Committee during the war in Vietnam.

   Kerry, in fact, while ignoring Vietnam's war crimes is urging that the
   U.S. trade embargo against the communist state be lifted because it
   would assist, he says, in gaining more information on missing American
   military personnel in Indochina.

   "If you want to quickly provide yourself with greater access to
   information," Kerry, a Vietnam vet who became an anti-war resistor,
   said, "by God the best thing you can do is get everybody you can into
   the country and be able to have a commerce and exchange, not only in
   goods, but in information."

   Kerry at the time was on a fact-finding mission to Southeast Asia to
   check out as chairman of the new Select Committee recent reports of live
   American POWs still being held by the communists.

   Other U.S. officials oppose lifting the trade embargo and normalizing
   relations with Hanoi until there is an acceptable political settlement
   of the conflict in Cambodia, Vietnam's western neighbor, and progress on
   accounting for nearly 2,300 American POWs and MIAs had been made.

   Kerry called the policy "a silly, silly approach" and said he would push
   for an early debate in the Senate of a resolution to lift the embargo.

   Actually, Kerry was in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam long
   before his appointment as chairman of the Select Committee, as was Sen.
   John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.)
   wants to appoint as vice chairman of the panel.

   Ironically, McCain, who is himself a former POW of North Vietnam, has
   more than a passing interest in the war crimes accusations facing
   Hussein, since his wife, Cindy, testified before the Human Rights Caucus
   as witnessing the atrocities of Hussein's troops in Kuwait while she
   served as part of a medical team that went to Kuwait last April, after
   Iraqi forces had been driven out.

   Mrs. McCain testified that the Iraqis stopped feeding patients at a
   hospital for the mentally retarded and that many of them starved to
   death as a result.

   Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chairman of the caucus task force on Kuwait,
   said the "case for pursuing with a war-crimes tribunal against Saddam
   Hussein and his toadies . . . is overwhelming."

   "Saddam's actions in Kuwait, his wanton destruction of the environment,
   and his mistreatment of POWs cries for swift and unyielding justice,"
   Weldon said.

   But where are the "cries for swift and unyielding justice" for Vietnam's
   Prime Minister Kiet and his "toadies" during the Vietnam War.

   ON MILITARY COMMITTEE

   In 1960, Kiet was named to the Central Committee of the Communist Party
   in South Vietnam and served on the military committee of the party
   throughout much of the war.

   The Central Committee was responsible for running Viet Cong operations
   in South Vietnam.

   Kiet was "a significant figure in running the war in the South," Douglas
   Pike, editor of "Indochina Chronology," a quarterly published by the
   Institute of East Asia Studies of the University of California at
   Berkeley, told the U.S. VETERAN.

   Pike, America's leading expert on the Viet Cong who spent 15 years
   studying their history and infrastructure while assigned to the U.S.
   Embassy in Saigon and is the author of the book, "Viet Cong," and other
   volumes about Southeast Asia, said of Kiet's part in the war effort that
   there was "no doubt about it."

   If Congress was to call a caucus on war crimes of Kiet and Company, one
   of the first witnesses who could be called would be Sen. McCain, who
   could offer testimony about the treatment of American POWs while in the
   custody of some of the thugs now serving in the Vietnamese government
   under Kiet.

   The treatment of U.S. prisoners of war by the Iraqis, although severe,
   pales by comparison. Doubters can ask Sen. McCain or any of the hundreds
   of others held by the Hanoi crowd and Kiet's Viet Cong in South Vietnam,
   who were repatriated at the end of U.S. participation in the war.

   Noting that Kiet, like Hussein, was responsible for the actions of his
   troops in the field, a caucus on war crimes might consider some of the
   following atrocities:

   1. The execution by the Viet Cong of Capt. Humberto Roque "Rocky"
   Versace of Norfolk, Va., and SFC Kenneth M. Roraback of Baldwin, N.Y.,
   in 1965. The communists' "Liberation Radio" (the voice of the Viet Cong
   Central Committee) announced on Sept. 26, 1965, the execution of Versace
   and Roraback in retaliation for the deaths of three Viet Cong terrorists
   in Da Nang. Vietnam claims to be doing its best to return the remains of
   dead POWs and MIAs, but neither Versace or Roraback have ever been
   returned. Certainly, the government of Prime Minister Kiet must know the
   location of the remains of two American servicemen whom they murdered in
   cold blood.

   2. On June 24, 1965, the Viet Cong announced on Radio Hanoi that Army E4
   Harold George Bennett of Perryville, Ark., had been shot in retaliation
   for Viet Cong terrorist Tran Van Dong's execution, after a trial, by the

   South Vietnamese government. Again, Bennett's remains have never been
   returned, but how could the government of Prime Minister Kiet not know
   the location of the remains of a POW who was executed under the
   direction of the Viet Cong Central Committee?

   3. In late November, 1988, the Hanoi government repatriated the remains
   of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edwin B. Tucker of Baldwinville, Mass., whose F8C
   Crusader was shot down near Hon Gay City in Quang Ninh Province of North
   Vietnam on April 24, 1967. Tucker had died on the operating table of the
   city hospital at Hon Gay, after which the flesh was boiled from his
   bones and his skeleton was wired together and placed on display as a
   teaching aid at the Quang Ninh Medical School. It remained there while
   Kiet served from April, 1982, as chairman of the State Planning
   Commission in Hanoi and while he served as deputy prime minister, and
   acting prime minister in early 1988. The remains were returned after the
   U.S. government agreed not to publicize where the skeletal remains had
   reposed for the previous 15 years. The reason: so Hanoi would not be
   embarrassed.

   4. A total of 3,000 Vietnamese civilians were murdered, under orders of
   Kiet and the others of the Viet Cong Central Committee, during the
   communist occupation of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Many were
   later found to have been buried alive.

   5. On January 15, 1967, South Vietnamese troops discovered the remains
   of 81 Vietnamese civilians massacred by Viet Cong forces in the Mekong
   Delta. Many of the bodies were mutilated.

   6. On June 15, 1967, the Viet Cong "Liberation Radio" reported the
   execution of U.S. civilian Gustav C. Hertz, that this American had paid
   a "blood debt to the Vietnamese people."

   7. The capture, torture and execution of Marine Lt. William M. Grammar
   and Army Sgt. Orville B. Frits by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces
   in Quang Tri Province on May 23, 1967.

   These cases are just a sampling of the cases of brutal atrocities, for
   which Kiet and his "toadies" could be held responsible as war criminals.

   In World War II, Japanese, German and Italian military and civilian
   officials were charged with war crimes because of the atrocities
   committed by men who had served under them, just as the congressional
   Human Rights Caucus wants Hussein prosecuted as a war criminal.

   For Sens. Kerry and McCain, at least a little honesty is warranted. It
   is not because of the help it will bring to the accounting process of
   some 2,300 American POWs and MIAs that normalization of relations and/or
   the lifting of the trade embargo with Vietnam is being pushed.

   It is because of big bucks being sought by international bankers, big
   oil companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all seeking commercial
   ties with Hanoi.

   And soon, since Hussein, like Kiet and Company, is not about to sur-
   render himself for trial as a war criminal, the same bankers, big oil,
   and U.S. Chamber of Commerce will be seeking to do business with Iraq.

   As for war crimes and an accounting of MIAs from the Persian Gulf
   conflict, including, yes, some Americans, no doubt a Sen. Kerry will
   come forth to say that is "a silly, silly approach."

                   [distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK]
