Talk:No Gun Ri massacre/Archive 4

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Full Stop

I haven't followed the article too closely for a while, but apparently there seems to be latent edit war since August now, with changes all over the map. I suggest in doubt to reset the article to the pre edit war version and then Weldeck can explain what exactly he wants to change and why. Then after editors agree the changes might be executed. In other words please argue here in concise manner rather than changing things back and forth in the article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

There really isnt much of an edit war, not that many reverts. Many changes, yes, but little edit warring. Feel free to join the discussion. Naturally, I would disagree to any "reset" of the article. Many important and useful additions have been made. WeldNeck (talk) 03:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that other editors seems to disagree with many/most with importance or usefulness of those changes. Now if everybody starts correcting in parallel it will trurn into a real edit war rather than latent one, moreover it has the potential to become increasingly chaotic.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

What other editors? Cjhanley has an obvious conflict of interest and probably shouldn't be editing here at all. I've never edited this page, but I have been following it for a while, and Weldneck's contributions seem well-sourced and in good faith to me. The idea of preemptively blanking all of his contributions because you feel things could become chaotic is ridiculous.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

What other editors? Aside from cjhanley according to the discussions above Reader0234, ErrantX, BW5530 and now myself. Whether Weldneck's edit are really well sourced seems partially a question of dispute above. That cjhanley is in a potential conflict of interest situation is certainly true, however he is editing openly under his name and probably (by far) the best informed on the topic among all currently active editors here. As long as he isn't going to push personal POV or some obviously one sided description and keeps professional distance being aware of the potential conflict of interest, I don't see a problem with him editing here on the contrary I see him as welcome expert. As far as preemptive resetting is concerned, that's a matter of personal assessment, but I can see that it might appear as unnecessary or over the top measure to others. In any case my point that in cases of increasing dispute editors should clarify and agree upon things on the discussion page first, before editing the article.--Kmhkmh (talk)

Finally someone else sees the obvious COI. Kmhkmh, there arent other editors, there is exactly one who has voiced concerns with the additions. ErrantX has popped in from time to time, but I am not entirely sure what his take is. WeldNeck (talk) 04:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Including cjhanley and myself there 5 editors that raised concerns/objections with regard to your arguments/edits (see also my posting one further up)--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Two of those editors have made only 2 or 3 talk space edits and their timing here is a bit suspicious. WeldNeck (talk) 13:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to revise some of my earlier assessments a bit after browsing some more background material, in particular on the AP versus Bateman debate, the scope of which I wasn't really aware of before.

• CJHanley has indeed a very strong conflict of interest and should not edit the article. The problem here is not so much an that CJHanley has written a lot on the subject (that would only make him a welcome expert), but that is he is involved in feud of sorts with Batemann with the reputation of each being at stake. So he is not simply a well versed expert on the subject, but he has personal stake in certain representation of it, which poses a strong conflict of interest.
• Though I still have personal reservations regarding Bateman (in particular the neglect of Korean sources is a big issue and Pentagon material that became accessible only after the publication of his book) he seems to be ok as a source. The book is published with publisher that seems reputable enough and has been reviewed somewhat positively by 2 historians and a superficial search did not produce any negative reviews. Hence my personal reservations aside I see know reason not to use him as a source.
• Considering that both Bateman and CJHanley's books/publications do have issues and that there is a lot of of conflicting information independent of Bateman and CJHanley, we are in dire need of scholarly assessments of (neutral) third parties (and as such ideally without close ties to the US military as well). Currently I'm not aware whether further detailed scholarly publications on the subject exist, without them (or a consensus among them) the WP article should refrain from attempt to describe a "true" version of events, but simply describing both versions.
• As far as the academics versus journalism argument is concerned. There is no doubt that as a general rule academic publications should be preferred journalistic publications and that historians are to be preferred over journalists. However quality and known issues of sources are to be considered as well, crudely speaking in concrete case a piece of good journalism is preferable to a shoddy academic publication. Another issue is the domain question whereas early modern history and before clearly falls (somewhat exclusively) in the domain of the historians recent/contemporary history is more if a shared domain with political scientists, journalists and others. Taking that into consideration and given the current contentious I don't see really see how we can simply favour Bateman and ignore CJHanley, instead we should (as stated before) simply describe both accounts.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that's all I have been asking for: a balanced presentation that presents all perspectives and excludes none.

I know we arent going to use him for a source, but Kuehl make a very good observation on this point:

The motivation for soldiers to shoot into the refugees would have been as varied as the number of soldiers in the area. Once the firing started, other soldiers quickly join in. Scared, untrained, lacking cohesion, missing leaders, and disorganized from the debacle the night before, soldiers panic and the line opens up as it often does with green troops in combat. Some soldiers recognize that the refugees are not a threat and do not fire. While some soldiers fire their weapons, others wanted to herd the refugees under the bridge and fire over their heads with warning shots to get them to and keep them under the trestle. Some soldiers panic thinking they are under attack. Some probably believe that they are under orders to shoot civilians and did so. Finally, some soldiers, such as machine gunner Norman Tinkler, do it because he was scared and did not trust Korean civilians.

To Kuehl's point, I think focusing on one particular perspective, like the article did before I began editing it, we leave many others, completely valid as a part but completely erroneous if used as a whole, out of the discussion. I would encourage you to read the entire paper, its quite good and very comprehensive. WeldNeck (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Events of 25–29 July 1950

I would like to rework this entire section to resemble something more similar to a narrative of events, not just fragmentary quotes of 1st hand accounts. An brief assessment of the fighting around Yongdong would be useful too, providing perspective of the larger events taking place outside of the No Gun Ri bubble. I'm not sure how to do this so as not to turn the section into a narrative of wider events in the theater although I do think they deserve mention. WeldNeck (talk) 21:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Events of 25–29 July 1950

Over the next week or so, I will be rewriting this section. It will be broken down by day to provide a better narrative of what happened where to whom and by whom. It will include all the current material in the section as well as a fair deal of additional information.

A rough outline.

• 25 July

Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri evacuated

2/7 breaks down and flounders outside Yongdong and begins a disorganized retreat to Hwanggan.

• 26 July

Refugees near the railroad bridge, attacked by aircraft

2/7 still in disorganized retreat

KPA advancing from the west

(later 26th) 2/7 put back under command and sent to guard position overlooking NGR bridge.

• 27 July

2/7 positioned overlooking NGR.

2-7 reports two columns of KPA troops south of the bridge.

Refugees take shelter near bridge underpass

Refugees shot

Possible incoming fire from T-34 tanks on the 2/7

Probing attacks on the 1/7 from the KPA 3rd division

• 28 July

Some refugees manage to flee, others sat hold up under bridge

More refugees shot?

KPA 3rd division attacks 1/7 defending just east of the bridge.

• 29 July

2/7 witdraws to Hwanggan

If any of this seems out of place, please correct and make note. WeldNeck (talk) 21:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, first go done. Before anyone takes offense take not that all material that was there is still there. I just reorganized it, placed it in chronological order and added additional information. WeldNeck (talk) 20:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

My Response to WeldNeck's Unreasonable Writings

Since I'm pretty shocked to learn one person is trying to distort the truth of both Korean and US history with his unreasonable writings and he is actually and tremendously damaging the very purpose of the WP itself by giving false information about the No Gun Ri Massacre to the public, I’d like to leave my personal comments as a Korean who knows the facts of what happened there at the tragic scene of the Massacre much better than WeldNeck.

The Committee for the Review and Restoration of Honor for the No Gun Ri Victims of the Republic of Korea examined the case and officially announced 150 people were killed, 13 were missing and 55 were disabled. Many other people failed to make a Damage Report. In this article, this person says “aerial footage showed no signs of mass graves or dead bodies.” But everybody always knew many bodies were under the bridge.

This person wants the public to think North Korean soldiers were with the refugees at No Gun Ri. But the committee said the refugees were searched by American soldiers and no impure elements were found.

This person also used Robert Bateman for information. Robert Bateman is well known to Koreans for spreading distortions and false information about No Gun Ri. He wore the 7th Cavalry Regiment badge. He is just a 7th Cavalry man defending the 7th Cavalry with untrue writings.

Wikipedia should not allow this person to mislead people with damaging false information. The No Gun Ri Massacre article should stick to the truth. Accurate Korean History (talk) 07:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

No offense but we don't need people claiming to know the facts or better person X, but we need reliable sources (preferably peer reviewed even). Wikipedia is compiled from reliable external sources and not from what individual WP editors or readers considers to the "the truth".--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Mr Inaccurate Korean History: the material is sourced to a WP:RS. That is all that's required. WeldNeck (talk) 14:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Full Stop, Part II

I (Charles J. Hanley 14:38, 21 October 2013 (UTC)) will be referring WeldNeck to the edit war noticeboard as soon as possible, to seek some action against his massive reverts, falsification of material etc., all without good-faith engagement. (See below.)

Meanwhile, I must disagree in the strongest terms possible that there is any conflict of interest when the journalists who helped establish the facts of the No Gun Ri Massacre in the first place also help to make the Wikipedia article on the subject as accurate, fair, coherent and complete as possible. (Compare the chaotic article of 2011 with the solid article of early 2013, pre-WeldNeck.) If such journalists are biased and their contributions don’t belong in the article, then what is their work doing as a footnoted source for key facts in the article? These are journalists, not polemical partisans, like WeldNeck and others, usually U.S. military-linked, who repeatedly seek to blow smokescreens, distort and falsify elements of the article, and bury the facts of No Gun Ri.

There’s a huge misunderstanding at work if one doesn’t recognize that the article is about the No Gun Ri Massacre, not about Robert Bateman’s long-ago, falsehood-packed attack on the journalists who confirmed that “my regiment,” as he called it, was responsible for those killings, a fact then reaffirmed by two sovereign governments. The outdated, debunked Bateman nonsense of 13 years ago – from a member of the institution (U.S. Army) and even the unit (7th Cavalry) responsible for the killings -- doesn’t belong in an article that’s supposed to convey in 2013 essential, objective, sound information about a historic event, information that has been doublechecked, expanded upon and updated by many journalists, academics and official investigations over those 13 years.

Contributor kmhkmh asks for scholarly assessment. One can look at contributor BW5530’s assessment of Bateman above (under “Other POV”), a devastating critique from a Ph.D. candidate who clearly is well familiar with No Gun Ri. He lists several egregious assaults on the truth by Bateman and says any one of them disqualifies him from serious consideration, and all combined put Bateman way beyond the pale of anything reliable. (Also note WeldNeck’s nasty dismissal of that contributor, typical of WeldNeck.) One can look at the Pritzker Military Library’s John Callaway’s berating of Bateman on U.S. national TV (C-SPAN) for the shoddiness of his work (``Why do the project if you can't do it right?”)(see Callaway above in Talk, and at http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/Home/Front-Center-with-John-Callaway-46.aspx). But one need do no more than read the "Bateman’s technique" section above in Talk, to see easily with one’s own eyes a blatant example of his disgracefully deceptive work, with a link to the smoking-gun document that shows it. I asked WeldNeck to absorb and respond to this example and to Bateman’s bizarre fabrication of casualty tolls ("between 8 and 35 wounded or killed"; "somewhere between eighteen and seventy civilians died"; "around 25 dead"; "perhaps as few as a dozen were killed"; a dozen to "slightly more" than two dozen killed), but WeldNeck simply ignores such requests for reasonable discourse and pushes on belligerently, with his “get lost” retorts, in an effort to turn the article into an apologia for the U.S. Army.

There are no “two versions” of No Gun Ri, any more than there are two versions of the My Lai Massacre or The Holocaust. There are the facts and the unknowns as have best been determined by dispassionate journalists and scholars, and as clearly sourced in the pre-WeldNeck article. And when the actors who matter – the Korean survivors, the ROK government, the U.S. Army – disagree on one key element or another, the article should note those discrepancies. But the article, already too long, shouldn’t descend into a morass of tertiary elements, baseless allegations, that then require more words to knock down.

WeldNeck has gotten totally out of hand. A bill of particulars will be filed to the noticeboard, but to note just some of the sabotage he has committed against this article:

• In at least three places, he falsified the description of important military documents, the “shoot refugees” orders, by adding sugarcoating qualifiers (“when they were suspected to be North Korean forces,” “if warranted,” etc.) that don’t exist in the documents. Asked to correct those, he replied, “I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.”

There is additional context to the guidelines given on dealing with refugee movements. Some of that context is given in the documents you cite. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• Twice he deleted, without explanation, as always, the crucially important fact that the U.S. Army deliberately omitted the Muccio letter, No Gun Ri’s key smoking-gun document, from its investigative report. He also deleted the link to that vital letter in a caption.

It still in the article and I have no plans to remove it. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He falsified a descriptive paragraph on the shootings by changing it to make it appear as though only South Korean investigators found the 7th Cavalry responsible, when in fact the U.S. report did the same.

The conclusion of the US and ROK are similar only in one aspect: they both agree that US forces fired on a group of refugees. Nearly every other detail and conclusion differs. To say that the two reports “agree” on anything is a terrible misrepresentation. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He deleted, with nary a notice, an ex-soldier’s testimony to the Army that they were told to “kill everybody from 6 to 60.”

There is simply no reliable source for that statement. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He eliminated a significant sentence noting that the Army failed to investigate No Gun Ri in 1950 although it knew about the killings then.

I didn’t think it was that significant. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He deleted a sentence noting that the official Army history backed up the survivors’ contention that it was the 1st Cavalry Division at No Gun Ri.

Is that even in doubt? WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He repeatedly reverts “Aerial imagery” to repeat the error of attributing to Korean analysts the U.S. analyst’s call for an authentication process of aerial imagery (while also jumbling the logical flow of that section).

Fixed. This was a really minor point and had you been more clear I would have corrected it some time ago. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• Despite a clear warning on Talk that “infiltrators” in the U.S. Army history meant uniformed enemy troops skirting the Americans’ flanks, he is in the midst of dumping “examples” of “infiltrators" into the article to build a phony case that refugees were behind the U.S. defeats.

You have gone to great lengths to rewrite the history of the early days of the Korean war to exclude any mention that Nork troops were disguising themselves and infiltrating into refugee columns. Muccio’s letter to Dean specifically mentions the role this tactic played in the defeat of the 24th at Taejon. Inclusion of this information is a must. A large number of sources, both hostorical and journalistic confirm this. You resistance to this is quite baffling. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• He even stooped to eliminating Bruce Cumings, a leading scholar of this period of the Korean War, from the Further Reading list because, as WeldNeck said somewhere, he considers him a “NORK-phile,” that is, WeldNeck doesn’t like his political outlook.

Bruce Cummings is a widely viewed as both a reliable authoritative source on pre WW2 history of Korea and a DPKR fanboy. WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• When such problems were corrected, he simply reverted to his original untruths, without discussion, even when the correction -- in good faith -- sought to preserve any unoffending wording of his.

There are many other examples. This has been a terrible, sad waste of time. And WeldNeck’s belligerence shows he won’t stop. Let’s hope the WP community sees what must be done. Charles J. Hanley 13:01, 21 October 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Where to begin.

First, it would help if you stop referring to me as a Holocaust denier.

You do have a COI, that plain to see from any outside observer.

BW5530’ opinions are just that, his opinions. Its nice that they parrot yours almost word for word (strange) but irrelevant to this discussion. When he is published, we might take them more seriously but until that time we have to stick with the reliable sources that affirm Bateman’s us as a source here.

There are as many versions of the events of July 26-29 as witnesses who saw it. Some of those perspectives conform to documentary evidence and some do not. All of it provides a piece of what happened and none of it should be excluded or tampered with (as the AP’s reports were shown to have done).

As to your specific bullet points I have addressed them above: WeldNeck (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I understand what this discussion is about. As a military historian, this problem comes up a lot. This is how it looks to me. Mr. Hanley and AP have done a serious job of historical investigation of a subject. In doing so, they have uncovered very strong evidence of a massacre of civilians by US troops in Korea, and a coverup of said massacre at various points by the US military. This is neither unusual nor earth shaking news. Official history nearly always carefully overlooks the transgressions of one's own side, and this is as true of the US military as it is of any other military. One can cite examples from as long ago as the Indian wars up through yesterday's reports from the War on Terror. In every nation's military, there is a similar view - letting the home population in on all the ugly things that happen in war undermines popular support for the war effort, thus it is seen as the duty of the military to hide actions that will upset the folks at home, and to deny them if they are alleged, and to conduct "investigations" whose purpose is to reassure one's population of the moral uprightness of one's actions. These secrets, mind you, are not concealed from the "enemy", or even our "friends" whose country we may be fighting in. They already know about it. So it is not a shattering revelation to suggest that the evidence points to a cover up of the No Gun Ri massacre.

The next question cuts closer to the bone. When such an incident comes to light, the immediate effort is to limit the damage, to suggest this was the action of one or two bad apples, troops who cracked for one reason or other, to insist that the casualties inflicted were smaller than charged, and that it was an aberration. There is not infrequently an effort to suggest that the deceased brought it on themselves; didn't follow instructions, were actually enemy combatants, were shielding enemy combatants, etc. Again, standard responses. They are to be expected, and have been seen over and over again. The motivation is to separate the incident from the mission. This is where the "final defensive fires" of rhetoric and argumentation is usually the densest. If it is suggested that the fault lies not with the lieutenants and captains down at platoon and company level, but is actually the logical outcome of policies coming from division, corps, army or theater command, then a very different picture emerges. It suggests not just that a few of our brave boys acted badly, it suggests that our country is engaged in a conflict where our top commanders do not care at all for the lives of the country we are allegedly there to protect. That goes right to the heart.

In this case, we are expected to believe that while a few troops may have acted out of fear, ignorance, misunderstanding, or "appropriate" fear that the civilians could have been Inmun Gun (DPRK soldiers), but that such fear, ignorance and disregard for the lives of Koreans could not possibly have infected the commanders of divisions, corps, armies, and the sainted Douglas MacArthur himself. In other words, some folks believe it is vital that the US must be the "good guys", and so it is impossible to accept that we could have, by policy, been willing to murder civilians.

I would suggest from reading the above correspondence, and articles regarding the incident, and this discussion, that Mr. Neck is simply attempting to prevent the article from appearing as written because it contradicts the clean black and white picture he cherishes, that the US military are the Good Guys, and so anything that suggests otherwise must be beaten down. I do hope the editors of Wikipedia will prevent him from sabotaging this important contribution to real US history. My friends who are field grade officers in the US military have shared with me their disgust at coverups of actual crimes we have committed, and believe that such are detrimental to their mission of defending our country. If we are lied to by the likes of Mr. Neck, and assured that we always "do the right thing", we as a public are unable to grasp why we seem to have so many dedicated enemies.Jack Radey (talk) 21:41, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

The above comment is pure original research and WP:SOAPBOX material, that also fails to assume good faith.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• How can anyone defend the North Korean/AP version of what happened with a straight face at this point? Looking over the original AP story, I found this quote from Flint priceless: “Some of us [shot at the refugees] and some of us didn’t....I wouldn’t fire at anybody in the tunnel like that.” The conscious of No Gun Ri? Not quite. It turns out Flint was wounded and sent to the rear the night before the incident.[1] It wasn’t just Flint either. There were three other “witnesses” quoted by the AP who weren’t actually there: Daily, Hesselman and Allen. There are no personnel records for the refugees, so we cannot verify who was there and who was not. Judging from the accounts they later gave the army investigators, four soldiers who were at NGR (Patterson, Kerns, Steward, and Peece) were misquoted. Tinkler refused to talk to the army, and gave widely varying accounts to each of the several reporters who interviewed him. Carroll and Lippincott insisted there was no massacre. “We were not using our machine guns except when we were under attack because we were short on ammunition,” Carroll told CNN.[2] Carroll was the senior officer present. Wenzel said his unit was fired on by someone who was crossing the bridge with the refugees. He and others briefly fired back. Needless to say, Wenzel got left out of the AP story. So how many died? Wenzel said there were 15-20 refugees on the bridge when he opened fire. So number killed was presumably something less than this. Kerns said he saw between four and nine bodies lying around after the incident. George Henry Thomas (talk) 09:38, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but no matter how desperately you believe in the above, it is all hogwash, all going back to one terrible fabricator in the year 2000 and clung to by people who apparently find the truth hard to swallow, who don’t want to accept that in 2001 the U.S. and South Korean governments found that the U.S. Army and U.S. airpower killed the refugees at No Gun Ri “by the effects of small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing,” that a South Korean investigative commission subsequently verified the names of 163 dead and missing and 55 wounded, some fatally, and said “many” more were killed whose names were not reported, that witnesses from every angle –- South Korean, American, North Korean – attested to hundreds of dead, and that orders were flying around the war zone to shoot civilians, no questions asked. Indeed, investigators for South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported in 2008 they were investigating more than 200 "other No Gun Ri's."

A simple exercise above (under "Bateman's technique"), linking to a document, will show anyone with a clear, open mind how deeply untrustworthy Bateman is – how much hogwash the hogwash is. WeldNeck was asked to assess Bateman’s technique there and defend it. He has been silent.

WeldNeck has done damage to the integrity of this article, and by extension, to Wikipedia. The falsehoods have been pointed out to him, plainly and indisputably, and he has refused to correct them. The efforts will continue. Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas, give "Bateman’s technique" a go, and let everyone know whether this is what you consider truthfulness. Charles J. Hanley 16:16, 25 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

My Hanley, your strawmen are getting little bit too difficult to bear. No one and I repeat no one is denying that between July 26 and July 29 1950 a number of South Korean civilians were killed by US aircraft, indirect fire from artillery and mortars and small arms fire from the 2/7. No matter how many times you accuse others of denying this, it just doesn’t stand up: everyone agrees that this happened.

You continue to assert that the AP’s verison of event is the only one notable enough to be included in the article but there are many well documented flaws with the AP reporting:

This article doesn't present a "version" of events. It draws from countless media sources, academic works, official reports. The only "version" is the one WeldNeck is trying to impose on it. WeldNeck, what is needed is for you to reverse the falsehoods and fix the errors you've introduced, rather than repeat ancient, baseless allegations from the reckless 7th Cav'er Bateman, lies that have nothing to do with Wikipedia 2013. In your desperation to gut this article, you won't even act when it's pointed out (visible to anyone at Google Books) that you have seriously misquoted that book by Sloan. Much more seriously, when will you restore the fact, deleted twice by you, that the U.S. Army in 2001 suppressed the smoking-gun "Muccio letter" from its investigative report? As for your "well-documented" nonsense, your "document" is a grossly deceitful magazine article inspired by Bateman 13 years ago. If you actually read it, you may have noticed that, incredibly, it never told readers there were two dozen Korean witnesses as well, providing powerful matching detail to what a dozen GI witnesses had told the AP. Bateman and his 7th Cav crony writing the article wanted to dupe the willingly gullible -- as they obviously have, even these days on this Talk page -- into believing the story of No Gun Ri came from a couple of GIs "who weren't there." That's WeldNeck's "document."

* The reliance on US veterans who were not present but were reported as being eyewitnesses: Hesselman, Daily, Flint

Hesselman and Flint sure as hell were there. Where's your "document" saying otherwise? The AP got their medical records, and also knew how to read company morning reports, a "skill" that eluded Bateman. Daily, AP later confirmed, wasn't there, but he was the unit's unofficial historian over the years and knew all about No Gun Ri, knowledge he shared with journalists. It also says a lot that neither Hesselman nor Flint would cooperate with the IG.

Multiple reliable source have confirmed they were not. As far as the AP confirming Daily wasn’t there, that’s a very polite way to say the mountain of evidence presented to the AP team months before the Pulitzer committee met finally cajoled the AP into admitting they had flubbed it. Daily’s role as the “unofficial historian” should have been a red flag that he contaminated many members of the 7th who were convinced that not only was he who he claimed he was but that he was at No Gun Ri with them:

When confronted with the fact that Daily could not have been at No Gun Ri, one of the AP’s other notable witnesses, Eugene Hesselman, repeated over and over again, “I know that Daily was there. I know that. I know that.”

* The misrepresentation of US veteran’s statements to support your preferred POV: Patterson, Kerns, Steward.

Nobody was misquoted. Period. The men were on videotape, audiotape and in repeated telephone interviews saying what it was said they said. Does anyone believe some men in such a situation wouldn't start dissembling once they saw the headlines and it became a "federal case"?

Well, since these supposed videotaped interviews are not available, I suppose all we have is the word of the AP team … not exactly a reliable source in this case. But if they do exist, I think they might look something like this

* Downplaying and ignoring numerous and well documented reports uses of civilian refugees by the KPA to infiltrate disguised KPA troops, mask KPA troop movements, and infiltrate KPA partisans, even ignoring KPA infiltrators attaching the 1st Cavalry division HQ on the 26th.

This is one of your most deceitful interventions, WeldNeck. How can one assume "good faith" in you when it has been pointed out that the official Army history makes totally clear that the "infiltrators" during this period were uniformed North Korean soldiers -- not troops disguised as refugees -- skirting the exposed flanks of U.S. units and attacking from behind. You now know this and yet you are dumping fraudulent "examples" of "refugee" infiltration into the paragraph under Background. When will you reverse this particular falsehood?

The official Army history does not make that “totally clear”, in face Appleman makes totally clear that North Korean infiltrators made use of refuges to hide their movements and that it was an issue throughout the war:

The large numbers of Korean refugees crowding the Yongdong area undoubtedly helped the enemy infiltrate the 1st Cavalry Division positions. On 24 July, for example, a man dressed in white carrying a heavy pack, and accompanied by a woman appearing to be pregnant, came under suspicion. The couple was searched and the woman's assumed pregnancy proved to be a small radio hidden under her clothes. She used this radio for reporting American positions. Eighth Army tried to control the refugee movement through the Korean police, permitting it only during daylight hours and along predetermined routes.

In the meantime, and pursuant to General Walker's order on the 11th, Colonel Murch's 2d Battalion, 27th Infantry, had been engaged in helping to clear the enemy from the area south of Yongsan. On the 11th Murch's battalion departed from its assembly area near Masan and rolled north toward the Naktong River. A steady stream of Korean refugees clogged the road. As the battalion pushed its way through this traffic a refugee cart overturned, exposing about fifteen rifles and several bags of ammunition. Approximately twelve North Korean soldiers disguised as refugees accompanying it fled across an open field.

* Ignoring the raging battle taking place all along the Western edge of Hwanggan.

What "raging battle" do you speak of? Do you mean 25th ID? That was east, not west, of Hwanggan, and had nothing to do with No Gun Ri. Do you mean 8th Cav at Yongdong? That's in the article. Please.

The fighting took place southwest of Hwanggan around the 26th

Contrary to the account by the Koreans and the AP, the battlefield was a dynamic place from 26 to 29 July as the North Koreans probed the American positions around Hwanggan. As day broke on 27 July, 2-7 CAV reported two columns of enemy soldiers on the railway about 1500 yards to the south of the bridge, heading toward their positions. At 0630 the 1st Battalion CP and C Company came under a mortar and artillery attack. Fifteen minutes later Colonel Nist reported to division that the regiment had successfully repulsed the enemy attack. The size of this attack suggests the North Koreans were probing the American positions to determine the disposition of 7th CAV defenses, while other units moved to the flanks and rear of the division. Shortly after this attack a friendly aircraft, perhaps called in to support the defense, strafed the 1st Battalion CP. Although no one was injured, this event led Nist to press for a TACP to help control aircraft in support of the fight.

* Representing an order given to the 8th (who were in the midst of a desperate fight to escape envelopment cause in part by KPA infiltrators) to fire on "everyone trying to cross lines" as a blanket order to all battalions.

Huh? Where do you find that? Who told you that? Ah, I remember: Thirteen years ago that was a Bateman complaint. It was false then, and false now. The WP article describes the 8th Cav order totally accurately. You're wasting everyone's time with this claptrap.

Why mention the 8th cav log if its not relevant? I agree, total claptrap.

• A refusal to accept the findings of the aerial reconnaissance analysis except to claim that they had been faked and ignoring the fact that if the South Korean analysts wanted access to the unspliced frames all they had to do was travel to the DIA and review it form themselves.

More nonsense. Journalists don't "accept" anything, or "refuse to accept" anything. We report facts. And this article reported accurately the U.S. Army's listed conclusions about that aerial analysis, and the South Koreans' counter position. That's all the article needs.

The aerial footage seems to evoke a strong degree of cognitive dissonance in you.

You continue to narrate this event from a bubble, ignoring wider events that contributed to it and the tactical situation that US forces faced in late July. WeldNeck (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Any reader of the No Gun Ri Massacre article from the period before WeldNeck began his mangling and coverup job would see that it had all the context it needed. I ask again, when will WeldNeck fix the mess he's making? He can start by quoting the Sloan book honestly and removing the dishonest "infiltration" cases. Charles J. Hanley 22:54, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

From Sloan, pg 72:

but now hundreds of enemy infiltrators, many clad in white to mingle undetected with civilian refugees who moved freely among the American troops, were all around the men of the 34th. There was no safe haven from snipers firing rifles and tossing grenades from scores of buildings, and soon after daylight, NKPA tanks rumbled into the city.

Sorry to burst another bubble. WeldNeck (talk) 00:22, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

• “Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources. While primary sources are appropriate in some cases, relying on them can be problematic," according to WP:V. In other words, this article is not a place to dump your unpublished research so you can have the last word on everything. The 2005 South Korean report receives attention here way out of proportion to what it gets anywhere else. There’s a passing mention of it in a 2007 AP story about the Muncio letter, and it has a listing on Amazon (Sales rank: 6,489,124). That’s really all I could find. There is no review, account of its contents, or explanation of who put it together anywhere on the Web except Wikipedia. In most retellings, the 2001 U.S. Army report is the end of the story. The quotes from people who carp about it and the speculation about faked photos don’t belong in an encyclopedia article. Now we’re told that unpublished video tapes confirm the AP account and disprove the Army’s report. WTF? So go write a news story about it. If you think that the Army report is a whitewash, what about the South Korean excavation of the site in 2007?[3] No bones or any evidence of a massacre were found then either. George Henry Thomas (talk) 04:46, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that the article might make problematic use of primary sources and some editors who are more interested in telling their version of the truth rather than taking an encyclopedic perspective. <Having said that however, I must say a Korean Comission report is certainly as good as any US army report and as far as reviews and perception of source are concerned, we can't simply look at US or English publications but we need to consider other language publications (In particular Korean) as well.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:34, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The U.S. Army report is a case of the perpetrator of an alleged crime investigating itself. How reliable is that? (The answer lies in this article's rather limited examples of the many suppressed documents and testimony -- that is, any examples that WeldNeck has not managed to delete.) Next, Bateman is a former officer and public booster of the regiment that carried out the killings. How trustworthy is he? Not one bit, as can easily be seen in the critique of the Bateman book and its more than 100 fabrications, distortions, misreadings and other falsehoods, the critique offered long ago to WeldNeck but that he doesn't want to read. Or one can simply check scholar BW5530’s assessment of Bateman above (under “Other POV”). The official Korean reports come much closer to what independent journalists and scholars determined about No Gun Ri. Charles J. Hanley 18:11, 19 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

We don't need "scholarly assessments" by BW5530 oder any other WP editors, we need published external scholarly assessments and so far you've provided none.--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:20, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

But who would waste time on such an endeavor, since we're talking about 1) an insignificant writer and an insignificant publisher, 2) a writer plainly tied to the alleged perpetrator in the story (7th Cavalry) and a publisher long favored by the U.S. Army, and 3) a piece of work whose sophomoric tone right from the opening pages alerts intelligent readers that this is not something to be taken seriously and to devote any more time to? We should be grateful that BW5530 did take the time to describe its fatal flaws, beginning with the fact that the writer didn't even bother to go to Korea and interview the best witnesses, the survivors. I implore anyone interested to please conduct the simple exercise offered in Talk at "Bateman's technique," so you can see once and for all for yourself the total untrustworthiness of what he writes. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 23:59, 19 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Excavations

Is there anything else on the excavations done to the site, or is just the one article? 21:07, 30 October 2013 (UTC)WeldNeck

It's not something we can use in the article, but take a look at this account. George Henry Thomas (talk) 11:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• As a newcomer to this forum and to the prolonged argument between Mr. Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press and a person who identifies himself as WeldNeck I noted that Mr. WeldNeck contested at one point Mr. Hanley's right to edit "No Gun Ri Massacre," on the killing of civilians by US troops, because of a "conflict of interest" supposedly stemming from his having reported on the No Gun Ri affair with his Associated Press colleagues. Mr. Hanley and two other AP journalists shared a Pulitzer prize for this very work. The Pulitzer prize committee does not bestow the highest award in American journalism on biased work. This particular article moreover eventually obliged the governments of the United States and South Korea to acknowledge that there had been a massacre at No Gun Ri after years of stonewalling by the US government. Nevertheless, Mr. WeldNeck refers to this article at another point in the discussion as "yellow journalism."

Mr. WeldNeck seems to rely for his own opinions on the writings of a former officer of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, the regiment responsible for the 1950 killings. Isn't this where the conflict of interest lies? Moreover, Mr. Hanley points out in the Talk discussion that Mr. WeldNeck deleted two references to the fact that Army investigators in 2001 failed to disclose the U.S. ambassador's letter saying the Army in 1950 adopted a policy to shoot refugees. Mr. Hanley also notes that Mr. Weldneck deleted a reference to the Army's failure to investigate No Gun Ri in 1950, when it learned of the killings. Doesn't deleting these two facts, which certainly appear to be crucially important in deciding whether or not there had been any official US cover-up in 1950 and 2001, bring into serious question Mr. WeldNeck's motivations?

In this regard, I note also on Mr. WeldNeck's user page that a WP administrator warns him against "POV pushing on all the articles you have edited," and says, "This is your only warning; if you add defamatory content to Wikipedia again, as you did at My Country, My Country, you may be blocked from editing without further notice."Petiso52 (talk) 15:53, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Another brand new editor with the exact same line as Mr Hanley ... thats odd. Some corrections.

My opinions arent expressed anywhere in the article, just material from reliable sources

You said that I deleted "the fact that Army investigators in 2001 failed to disclose the U.S. ambassador's letter saying the Army in 1950 adopted a policy to shoot refugees". Its still in the article:

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 use of lethal force to stop refugees in certain areas in the Korean War's early months. They included communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees north of the firing line "fair game"[53] and to "shoot all refugees coming across river

I dont know if this is satire or what:

The Pulitzer prize committee does not bestow the highest award in American journalism on biased work.

That would explain Walter Duranty, Janet Cooke or Bilal Hussein (to name a few).

Your last point to my contributions on Poitras, I was unaware how things around here worked and have since learned from my early mistakes. WeldNeck (talk) 16:33, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

All of these new editors popping up with the same line of reasoning and the same writing style strongly suggest WP:SOCKPUPPETRY.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:00, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I was think that or some form of Meatpuppetry. WeldNeck (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Nah, they're socks. These accounts are brand new--so new that none of their names are linked--and their first and only edits are to this talk page. Nevertheless, they show significant understanding of Wikipedia policy and knowledge of this debate, and there have been five of them. This is about as clear-cut a case of "where there's smoke, there's fire" as any I've seen on Wikipedia, yet your earlier investigation was railroaded when User:In ictu oculi baselessly accused you of being a sock (as though this would be mitigating evidence in the case against User:Cjhanley). User:Shirik refused to examine the IP--even though Cjhanley later admitted it was him--and absurdly claimed there were "significant differences" between BW5530 and Reader0234. Thus, only Reader0234 was ever checked, and the connection between him and Cjhanley was "inconclusive". Jack Radey, BW5530, Reader0234, and Petiso52 are almost certainly the same person. The obvious suspect is Cjhanley. If not him, then one of the users who have agreed with him, or a troll of some variety.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:59, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Checkusers will almost never comment on IPs, and certainly would not in this case. Please familiarize yourself with policy before jumping to assumptions on why a case went a certain way. That case is not even closed yet, so no decisions have actually been made. If the IP admits it is related, then it's related, and you don't need a checkuser to tell you that. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 23:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Since you're here, can you please elaborate on the "significant differences" between BW5530 and Reader0234?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that they are socks, but I do believe they have been asked to comment on the article. Their arguments are verbatim Hanley's and they only showed up recently. IMO Hanley asked them to contribute. I dont know if there's anything wrong with that, but I dont think its fair that one user can recruit other people to create a false consensus. WeldNeck (talk) 00:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• To all: throwing around sock accusations shouldn't be done lightly. File at WP:SPI, but only if you believe you can make a case based on behavior and other evidence--not on a hunch. Drmies (talk) 04:10, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Shirik wasn't able to point out a single "significant difference", because there are none. The hunch is not that there is socking, but that Hanley is to blame; that there is socking is undeniable.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

File it then. Drmies (talk) 04:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Bateman, again

With the help of another editor and JSTOR I found the reviews of Bateman's book, and then I saw that most of that had been brought up here already, on this interminable talk page. When I get a moment I'll read all of it and report here, and previous participants in the Bateman discussion are invited to comment as well, briefly. But please see my note below, a note that some of you probably won't like. Drmies (talk) 16:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the Bateman reviews, and without rereading the reviews, I recall that most were in military/military history publications, often written by military men, and uniformly written by people who themselves had extremely limited knowledge of the facts of No Gun Ri and who obviously -- and mistakenly -- assumed Bateman was writing in good faith and with a modicum of competence. As I've said, the example shown via a simple document at "Bateman's technique" above is enough, in my view, to disqualify him from any consideration as a honest writer on the subject, even aside from his obvious conflict as a 7th Cav officer. Scores of other examples exist, supplied upon request. Surely there comes a time when WP admins and contributors make their own independent judgments, and don’t simply say, “If someone else says it’s OK, it’s OK.” Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 17:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Mr Hanley comments abbreviated: WP:IDONTLIKEIT. WeldNeck (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The damage done

Drmies, if you plan to do any extensive editing on this article, I would strongly urge you to compare the current bloated, fact-challenged state of affairs with the way the article stood before WeldNeck descended on it. That's the June 24 version. A close analysis will show numerous significant elements deleted, particularly those incriminating of the U.S. military, and almost 1,000 words added, almost all of it either superfluous (Major Witherspoon? Bosnia? Hesselman?) and-or demonstrably untrue (most of the "infiltration episodes" in Background; "no air strikes" near No Gun Ri; Hesselman again; the "$400 million claim" etc. etc.) Charles J. Hanley 20:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Drmies, by all means compare the current more comprehensive version with the prior version carefully crafted to support the AP's contested narrative at the exclusion of any other relevant POV. Please be sure to note the high quality of the sources used for what Mr Hanley calls the "demonstrably untrue" "infiltration episodes". As for "superfluous", more detail is usually better than less when it relates ot the subject and leaves the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the subject. WeldNeck (talk) 20:53, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

• I think that for now I'm just going to get my kid from school, thanks. Perhaps I'll be able to have a look later tonight. But may I add that I have no intention of being (sole) judge/jury on this complicated article. Drmies (talk) 21:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
• I couldn't resist making a few tweaks to the lead in line with WP:LEAD. Please see my edit summaries, where I have tried to be complete. Drmies (talk) 22:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
  • TheTimesAreChanging, you have a point with this edit: I meant to remove the label as well, and I'll do so rightaway. Why remove the word, then? Well, that the report is "controversial" is itself possibly controversial, but the statement in the lead derived from the report is not. So its supposed controversial status is completely unnecessary and POV, since it aims to discredit, slyly, an uncontroversial statement. There is plenty of room in the article already for the various criticism of the report, and a note could even be placed in the lead, saying something along the lines of "some conclusions of the report were criticized or disputed". But doing away with the entire series as "controversial" is not warranted.

    As for your earlier edit, as I pointed out the two-paragraph news flash was published while the investigation was still ongoing, so your summary, "These are salient facts, regardless of interpretation", is incorrect: the fact reported was that no remains had yet been found. So at best that reference doesn't verify the statement, besides the fact that such references aren't necessary in the lead (see WP:LEAD), if the content is properly verified in the article. But the section "Aerial Imagery" (the second capital is incorrect, per MOS) is fraught with problems: the sentence "This analysis is significant" needs to be explicitly attributed in the text, which it isn't, and when it is it will be clear that it is ascribed to a primary source which, it can easily be argued (and I'm sure Cjhanley would argue it), is itself a party in the dispute. In other words, that entire section needs to be rewritten, and the second paragraph in that section disputes the conclusions suggested by the fast-and-loose sentence you reinserted as a fact, "no remains were found". There is no prima facie reason to lend weight to the US investigation (in the lead!) and not to the Korean investigation, which, if I read it right, basically argues "it doesn't matter that nothing was found". For crying out loud, the section closes with the US recommendation that these things need to be better documented, suggested that they weren't documented well enough to lend so much weight to the US report's conclusion. And for those reasons I will again remove the statement: extraordinary claims, especially in the lead, require strong evidence, and a. that news flash doesn't accurately reflect what was going on and b. the larger section is not adequately summarized in the lead, with the opposing report not given credence, and is itself problematic. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 05:30, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Drmies, the WP:LEDE should give a concise summary of the article's contents. The section of the article describing the issues with the AP's reporting go into detail about its deficiencies and the controversies surrounding it. The adjective should stay in.

With respect to the aerial imagery the “analysis is significant” because it directly contradicts with physical evidence that there were no mass graves as Korean civilians have alleged. The Korean investigation (not available online) obviously had reasons to find fault with it as it undermined one of their central conclusion but they were given to opportunity to review the original footage and chose not to do so. WeldNeck (talk) 14:28, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

WeldNeck, no. (And this without even addressing content, as Cjhanley is doing below.) You are giving one single adjective to characterize the report, and that one adjective is overblown and undue. It's overblown because "criticized" doesn't mean "generated controversy", and it's undue because it's one single aspect. How would you like it if I stuck in "Pulitzer-Prize winning" as an adjective? That's also true, and in many ways much truer than your term. Look, I don't need to be read some riot act about what WP:LEAD says, and about what WP:NPOV says. You just came in, editing only this one article and a bunch of drama threads related to it; I think I have just a bit more familiarity with our guidelines and with encyclopedic writing. If you and the other editor reinsert it I will have no other choice but to start an RfC on it, a widely publicized one, to generate a consensus on excluding the term from the lead (as I said before, criticism of the report is valid and can find a place in the article). It will be a waste of everyone's time since, ahem, I happen to be right on this tiny issue, and an insistence on including this POV term in the face of evidence and guidelines will only serve to suggest POV editing. I'm trying very hard to accept good faith, but those kinds of shenanigans make that difficult.

As to your second paragraph, it doesn't matter: it simply needs to be ascribed. Wikipedia's voice cannot speak to its significance unless something is stated about that significance by unimpeachable and neutral sources. Even without assuming anything about politics and partisanship, it's clear as day that an involved party cannot automatically assumed to be neutral. I am not even suggesting that something was swept under the rug: it's a simple matter of the guidelines of WP:RS and the second of our five pillars. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I would gladly welcome a "widely publicized" RfC.

The IG report and Bateman's are specific when contrasting the Korean civilians memories and the aerial footage that contradicts them. For the record though, what constitutes an "unimpeachable and neutral" source? WeldNeck (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

WeldNeck, this isn't about the AP report or whatever. It is clear that it was criticized, and it's also clear that it won a Pulitzer and is widely cited. It's about the word "controversial" in the lead. Drmies (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

For the record, once more: The only deficiency in the AP reporting was the fact that one of nine ex-soldiers quoted (one of 26 ultimately discussing the killings) turned out to have secondhand, not firsthand, information, a fact subsequently established by AP and reported by AP and by no one else. The rest of WeldNeck's "documented" (some "document") nonsense flowed from the fantasies of 7th Cav officer Bateman (and from two or three ex-soldiers who nervously, post-publication of an explosive news report, sought to hedge, with Bateman's coaching; no one was misquoted by the AP). In typical fashion, WeldNeck deleted from the article text a sentence and link to a lengthy AP article refuting Bateman's fabrications in 2000. In any event, as I've said repeatedly, none of this adds anything to our knowledge in 2013 of the facts of the No Gun Ri Massacre, and it doesn't even belong in the article. Let me frame it this way: There was another flaw in the original article, an officer with the No Gun Ri unit was quoted saying he didn't remember any such event. He later told the Pentagon he did remember it. Should we be highlighting this liar? In fact, one of the TV reports reconfirming the killings (BBC or ARD) identified one man incorrectly as a shooter. What about that? And we could list 300 examples of deceit in the Army's 300-page report, if we're interested in flaws. But, really, isn't 6,400 words too long already? Isn't the absurdity of all this apparent? Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 14:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

The "only deficiency", lest see if I cannot document some others.

Herman Patterson: Patterson was quoted in the AP report as saying that: "It was just a wholesale slaughter." He said the AP misquoted him and that this quotation referred to being overrun at Naktong not No Gun Ri.

James Kerns: Quoted by the AP as saying that he "found at least seven dead North Korean soldiers in the underpasses, wearing uniforms under peasant white." Kerns he never told the AP he saw KAP soldiers in the underpass and he saw between four and nine bodies laying down in the culverts but was not sure if they were dead

Ed Daily: Not there.

Eugene Heseelman: AP quotes him and used his statements to support their stories, but medical records confirm he was evacuated and wasn’t present. He also still believes Daily was present.

Delos Flint: quotes him and used his statements to support their stories, but medical records confirm he was evacuated and wasn’t present.

Louis Allen: AP quotes him as being an eyewitness and claims he did not see hostile fire coming from the refugees. Louis Allen stated categorically that he was in Japan on leave during this time and his service record confirms this.

Harold Steward: The AP reported that Steward heard reports in 1950 of refugees being killed at No Gun Ri. Steward also stated the AP misquoted him and he only confirmed that to the AP team that civilians killed in crossfire throughout the entire 8th Army sector and he never mentioned No Gun Ri to the AP.

There are more examples of the AP's shenanigans if anyone wants me to post them. WeldNeck (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

You're correct, of course, Drmies, about the Aerial imagery section. As I told WeldNeck on Oct. 15, "The 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." As usual, he immediately reverted a good-faith effort at compromise wording. Here's the diff of my ill-fated edit from a month ago, if useful.

And your observation regarding WeldNeck's description of the investigation in the lead ("Based on interviews with surviving US veterans and aerial reconnaissance footage") is right on. That clause is an unmistakable sign of the myopic, parochial, xenophobic POV that pervaded all of his edits since August. What about South Korean interviews, forensics on the bullets all over the bridge, archival documents showing kill orders? At one point in Talk, he even said something about "only the South Koreans" questioned the aerial photos. My God, they're only half the investigation. And they're the half that wasn't responsible for the killings! Thanks and good luck. Charles J. Hanley 12:44, 20 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I understand you feel that's all that's needed because the existence of such a substantial body of demonstrative evidence of this type would tends to significantly undermine the 50 year old memories. The South Koreans questioned the integrity of the aerial footage because that's all they could do. Based on the photographic evidence the eyewitness claims just didn't hold up so the South Koreans were left with only one course to save face: make a wild allegation that the material had been deliberately doctored. Even when the IG's team invited them to the US to inspect the originals from the archive instead of the reproductions, they refused. This refusal speaks to the motive the Korean team, they didnt want to know the truth. WeldNeck (talk) 19:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Victims' review report

This is a really, really obscure report to be mentioned in the lede. The Chosun Ilbo site has 118 stories on No Gun Ri, but none of them mention this report (See "희생자심사및명예회복위원회" site:www.chosun.com). The commission issued its casualty figures in May 2005. There's a brief mention of it in an AP story from 2007, and that's about all the English-language publicity it got. Beta Quadrant (talk) 23:05, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Did you check for publicity/reviews outside the English media (in particular in South Korea) as well?--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Hankyoreh has hundreds of stories on No Gun Ri, but only eight that mention this report. This is the story they ran when it first came out. It is four paragraphs long, and the focus is on compensation issues. There is no claim to the effect that the report came up with significant new evidence, or that it debunked the U.S. Army report. The commission was expected to authorize payment for a certain amount of money, and that might have influenced how many victims they were prepared to recognize. As I wrote above, Chosun Ilbo`s Korean-language archive has nothing at all about this report. Beta Quadrant (talk) 04:57, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

This was discussed 18 months ago at Talk (see Archive 2, "Pickett's Charge" -- yes, that's right). The commission was led by the prime minister and included Ban Ki-moon, current U.N. secretary-general, among its members. It recapitulated much of the 1999-2001 investigative findings, along with updates from the intervening years, and the certification process for the casualty figures. It is the single comprehensive English-language source for this official South Korean government information. Meanwhile, I've added to the Casualties section two news media sources referring to the certified casualty figures. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 17:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

• I don't see that information published anywhere, so we're left taking your word for it. Not that I doubt you, but there are hundreds of readily available news reports and two mainstream books that we could be basing this article on. Instead we are using this obscure source that only you seem to know anything about. This is not the way articles are supposed to be written, and somebody needs to read WP:V. If the report's casualty numbers were developed strictly to deal with compensation issue, then we may be misinterpreting them. You make it sound like Ban Ki-moon came along and blew the lid off this stuff. Beta Quadrant (talk) 03:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

400 dead

Where does this number come from? Let's take a look at that Pulitzer Prize winning AP story from 1999: "Early on July 29, the 7th Cavalry pulled back. North Korean troops who moved in found “about 400 bodies of old and young people and children” the North Korean newspaper Cho Sun In Min Bo reported three weeks later." I read the whole article, and I don't see any claim to the effect that it is a "survivor's estimate." The Victims Families Association gives the number of casualties as "218 confirmed victims". The 400 figure is not given anywhere on the English version of their website. Let's not put made-up stuff in the article. Beta Quadrant (talk) 04:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

From the July 1994 issue of South Korea's Mal magazine, quoting survivors: "The First Testimony - Massacre of more than 300 civilians in Yeongdong. Chungcheongbuk-do, by the U.S. Armed Forces during the Korean War."

From the survivors' petition to President Clinton, Sept. 10, 1997: "We had previously sent similar letters to you ... on July 5th and October 5th of 1994. ... About 400 souls roam high above the killingfield."

From the September 1999 AP story: "The Koreans, whose claim for compensation was rejected last year, say 300 were shot to death at the bridge and 100 died in a preceding air attack."

From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 17, 1999: "Survivors say U.S. soldiers killed as many as 400 civilians--mostly elderly, women and children--huddled inside the tunnel between July 26 and 29."

From this Wikipedia article: "Over the years, the survivors' own estimates of dead ranged from 300 to 500, with perhaps 150 wounded."

Will you fix the box?

We don't "make stuff up." By the way, noting your preoccupations: Are you Kauffner, returned yet again?

Charles J. Hanley 15:25, 23 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

• No need to respond. I see you've been detected as a sock. Charles J. Hanley 15:55, 23 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

• This is just so dishonest, or at any rate a novel use of the phrase “according to." Aren’t these examples quite obviously quoting the figure from the North Korean report? The claimant group also gives out the figures from the South Korean report, so it would be equally valid to say that those numbers are “according to survivors." The article is supposed to be based on published sources, so dipping into your stash of unpublished research like this is a problematic habit. 203.31.216.17 (talk) 12:01, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

There seems to be a comprehension problem in certain quarters here. Look again, they're published sources. "400" is the estimate the survivors settled on and repeated time and again. You don't like that, or them. The problematic habits (sockpuppetry, bigotry) are clearly yours. Once and for all, please leave honest people alone, Kauffner. Charles J. Hanley 16:42, 24 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

A note on COI and POV and all that

These discussions aren't very fruitful. It is abundantly clear to me that both WeldNeck and Cjhanley have a point of view that guides their comments and their editing, and many of the comments are simply not helping. Cjhanley has a habit of commenting at all-too-great length, bringing in all kinds of evidence from his personal knowledge--that doesn't discredit his comments, but in the end we need to go by what's published, and the walls of text are discouraging. WeldNeck is as combative as Hanley is, and this is creating a very unpleasant atmosphere; in addition, I think WeldNeck and TheTimesAreAChanging are too quick on the draw. (I invite any neutral editor to look at my recent edits and the reverts that followed it.) To prevent topic bans from being requested (and no doubt some would be granted) I urge Hanley and WeldNeck to refrain from editing the article for the time being, and perhaps TheTimes as well. I don't mind backing off myself, but I insist, for instance, that adding "controversial" to modify the AP report in the lead is POV and undue (just as "Pulitzer-Prize winning") would be.

In addition, I must strongly urge Hanley to either refrain from editing the talk page altogether or, at the very least, to keep comments short, to the point, and non-polemic. Kmhkmh already pointed out that Hanley has a proven professional COI here, and getting a topic ban is possible, though I wish to avoid that for now. ErrantX has criticized WeldNeck's editing style, and WeldNeck would do well to follow their suggestions. Both Kmhkmh and Errant are experienced editors here and I value their comments greatly. Now, I wish I had time to delve into the Bateman matter more deeply, but I have a little boy with pneumonia here with me and some other work to do. Can we please keep this professional? Thank you all. Drmies (talk) 16:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

As I've pointed out before, if fact-finding, objective journalists and academics who have mastered a subject, and whose reports and books are cited as sources on that subject at Wikipedia, are deemed to have COIs, then Wikipedia is surely in trouble. Meantime, forgive the "walls of text," the result simply of knowing so much (and exasperation at those who know so little and don't realize it). Charles J. Hanley 17:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Cjhanley, of course you have a COI. That's clear as day, and not in itself problematic. The question for us is whether that problematizes your editing/commenting. One of the problems noted on this talk page is that your interest leads you to spar at length with another interested editor, and that such sparring is not conducive to article improvement. BTW, I'm not sure we've seen this here before: if you are indeed you, congratulations on your fine achievement. I doubt I'll ever get a Pulitzer, and it certainly won't be for my work on Wikipedia: well done, sir, and thank you for your contribution to journalism. Drmies (talk) 18:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Drmies. But, of course I don't have a conflict, unless you believe combativeness in defense of the journalistically established facts makes one an "interested party." In this case, the interested parties are the Korean survivors and the U.S. Army. That's where any COI would lie, not with the journalists and others who pinned down the facts. As for sparring on Talk, that was the inevitable result of a single contributor's disrespectful and defiant refusal to engage rationally on the article. That's what has problematized things, and thus far little has been done about it. Charles J. Hanley 18:46, 20 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Yes, you do have a conflict of interest. You are not defending the journalistic work of some independent third party, but you are essentially defending your body of work. Defending the "journalistically established facts" of your own work do of course turn you in an "interested party". This is about as much COI as you can get (short of financial benefits maybe). The fact that you are uncapable (?) or unwilling to see that raises even more concern. Moreover from what I've seen so far, you seem to have a somewhat bitter feud with Bateman in the media over the "correct version" of the incident/massacre at No-gun ri. So with your participation here, there is a danger that Wikipedia might get misused as a "final arbiter for the truth about no-gun ri". Knowledge or final assessments need to be generate outside of Wikipedia and Wikipedia just reports neutrally on results and/or the open disputes. It is not supposed to take sides or to generate a final assessment of its own.

As far as Bateman is concerned from what we have so far, he clearly is reliable source on the grounds of Wikipedia policy (he is a Historian, his book got 2 published positive reviews by other historians and no negative published review). Now I can understand the concern that have been raised with regard to Bateman and i'm personally somewhat wary about him as well. However my personal view or that of any other WP editor ultimately doesn't matter, as we are obligated to report what reliable external sources say and not our personal conclusion or assessments. This is a core policy of Wikipedia and where writing in Wikipedia differs from many other forms of writing (see WP:NPOV, WP:RS, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, the latter you might use to request feedback from other editors regarding the use of Bateman asa reliable source). --Kmhkmh (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Please review the footnotes to this article:

CBS News, BBC News, German ARD television, Munwha Broadcasting Corp. of Korea, The Associated Press, The New York Times, Dong-a Daily, The Korea Herald, Hankyoreh, Wichita (Kansas) Eagle, Cho Sun In Min Bo newspaper, Korea Times, Yonhap News Agency, the Kansas City Star, Diplomatic History journal, Archival Science journal, Critical Asian Studies journal, Oxford University Press, Prometheus Books, Routledge publishers, Henry Holt publishers, Dunam Publishing, U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Military History, the South Korean prime minister's review commission, the South Korean Defense Ministry's investigative report, the Army IG report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea.

The body of work that is at stake in this article is not a single news report in 1999 by one news organization, but the sum of all that journalism, academic research, historiography and official investigative reporting cited above, which stretches back to before 1999 and forward to at least 2010. What is being defended are those established facts and nothing else.

When it comes to WeldNeck's efforts to distract from his depredations, by dragging in a 13-year-old, wild and baseless attack on that one news organization and that single story, it should be clear that this material of his adds absolutely nothing to the Wikipedia reader's knowledge of what happened at No Gun Ri in 1950. It's irrelevant to the No Gun Ri Massacre in 2013. It doesn't belong in the article. But it seems to be doing the trick for him.

Meantime, WeldNeck has gone about rewriting the wording of key documents, stuffing the article with patently false (check the sources) "refugee infiltration" episodes, removing crucial elements showing a U.S. military cover-up in 1950 and another in 2001, deleting quotes he doesn't like ("word I heard was kill everybody from 6 to 60"), and so on, and so on. And instead of something being done about this, we engage in a debate over a paragraph that shouldn't even be in the article? Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 22:25, 21 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Hmmm, how to respond to yet another insult free Hanley monologue.

"rewriting the wording of key documents", translation: adding all relevant material from said documents and not just the excerpts chosen for sensationalism.

stuffing the article with patently false (check the sources) "refugee infiltration" episodes, adding relevant material to the article that Hanley doesn't like. By all means though, someone verify these so Hanley will stop.

removing crucial elements showing a U.S. military cover-up in 1950 and another in 2001, nothing was removed, don't know what hes talking about. I suppose Mr Hanley thinks that if he continues to repeat the allegation then somehow it will become true.

deleting quotes he doesn't like ("word I heard was kill everybody from 6 to 60"), no reliable source for this.

and so on. WeldNeck (talk) 19:15, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Most of us obviously thought the longstanding section on the threat of infiltrators as a motivation for the No Gun Ri killings was sufficient as it stood. WeldNeck thought otherwise and greatly expanded it. I have now condensed that overly long section, retaining his added points – but without the two supposed episodes, at Chochiwon and the Yongdong “roadblock,” that I’d repeatedly pointed out were not supported by his source, the official Army history of the war’s first months by Appleman. Appleman’s text plainly describes the “infiltrators” as regular North Korean troops and says nowhere that they were disguised as civilians. Here’s the text:

Chochiwon (for which WeldNeck cited page 98)

p. 86 … "a column of tanks and infantry approaching the town from the east, and reportedly destroyed two tanks. This enemy force appears to have made the first infiltration …"

p. 87 … "the enemy tanks and increasing numbers of infiltrating enemy soldiers quickly caused confusion in the thinning ranks of the 3d Battalion …"

p. 94 … "Infiltrating enemy soldiers …"

p 96 … "Just before midnight of 10 July Colonel Jensen began to withdraw the 3d Battalion from the recaptured ridge east of Chonui, bringing along most of the equipment lost earlier in the day. When the battalion arrived at its former position it received a surprise: enemy soldiers occupied some of its foxholes. Only after an hour's battle did K Company clear the North Koreans from its old position."

p. 98 … "The North Koreans who had been driven from the 3d Battalion's position shortly after midnight, together no doubt with other infiltrators, apparently had provided detailed and accurate information of the 3d Battalion's defenses and the location of its command post."

.

Yongdong (for which WeldNeck cited page 198)

p. 198 … "During 23 July the 7th and 9th Regiments of the N.K. 3d Division began their attack on the Yongdong positions. The enemy made his first penetration southwest of Yongdong, establishing a roadblock a mile and a half behind the 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, at the same time other units heavily engaged the 1st Battalion northwest of Yongdong in frontal attack. The next day four different attempts by three American light tanks failed to dislodge the enemy behind the 2d Battalion, and Lt. Col. Eugene J. Field, the 2d Battalion commander, was wounded at the roadblock. General Palmer sent the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, and the 16th Reconnaissance Company toward the cutoff battalion. …"

I’d pointed out previously, to no avail, that Appleman makes perfectly clear in his history that he repeatedly uses “infiltration” in a classic tactical military sense, for the undetected movement of the enemy around defenders’ flanks and-or to their rear. In fact, Maj. Gen. Gay, in his long narrative for Appleman about the Yongdong defeat, never spoke of civilian-clad infiltrators, but blamed the huge gaps between his battalions, on his flanks, which let North Korean troops infiltrate. Charles J. Hanley 00:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Thats simply not true. The following from Appleman:

The large numbers of Korean refugees crowding the Yongdong area undoubtedly helped the enemy infiltrate the 1st Cavalry Division positions. On 24 July, for example, a man dressed in white carrying a heavy pack, and accompanied by a woman appearing to be pregnant, came under suspicion. The couple was searched and the woman's assumed pregnancy proved to be a small radio hidden under her clothes. She used this radio for reporting American positions. Eighth Army tried to control the refugee movement through the Korean police, permitting it only during daylight hours and along predetermined routes.

In the meantime, and pursuant to General Walker's order on the 11th, Colonel Murch's 2d Battalion, 27th Infantry, had been engaged in helping to clear the enemy from the area south of Yongsan. On the 11th Murch's battalion departed from its assembly area near Masan and rolled north toward the Naktong River. A steady stream of Korean refugees clogged the road. As the battalion pushed its way through this traffic a refugee cart overturned, exposing about fifteen rifles and several bags of ammunition. Approximately twelve North Korean soldiers disguised as refugees accompanying it fled across an open field.

Had you bothered to look at the references provided, you would see the sentence on Taejon is cited to Sloan, not Appleman. From Sloan:

but now hundreds of enemy infiltrators, many clad in white to mingle undetected with civilian refugees who moved freely among the American troops, were all around the men of the 34th. There was no safe haven from snipers firing rifles and tossing grenades from scores of buildings, and soon after daylight, NKPA tanks rumbled into the city.

This is especially important considering that Mucio used the defeat at Taejon and the Nork use of refugee infiltrators as factor in his decision.

I have also found dozens of accounts from June-August 1950 in the papers speaking of Nork troops using refugees to mask their movements. If you continue to strip the article of this crucial context, I will put every singe account I can find in the article. I believe what we have here is an adequate summary of the tactics the Norks uses which drove the US policy on refugees. WeldNeck (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Drmies, kmhkmh, in ictu oculi, ErrantX, Bbb23, what has been happening at this article is a “content dispute” only to those who won’t engage enough to understand what’s going on. Here we have an edit by me [4]to eliminate two demonstrably false elements that WeldNeck foisted upon the article. A simple – but requisite – reading of the text from the source (in my comment two comments above this, re Chochiwon and Yongdong) makes their falsehood more than clear: WeldNeck’s own source says they were North Korean troops and does not say they were disguised. Then, here [5] we have WeldNeck’s immediate revert of that edit, in which I had, in an effort to meet him more than halfway, preserved the truthful, if superfluous, parts of his original material.

This restoring of material proven false is typical of his reverts going back months, a defiant refusal to engage rationally and to act in good faith. His retorts on Talk don’t make sense. (His rant above about the Sloan book’s reference is typical wackiness; I actually improved his Sloan citation.) His threat to fill the article with all the infiltration incidents he can find (and, apparently, can fabricate) is indicative of his severe POV attitude and POV anger. He’s hell-bent on turning the article into an apologia, whatever it takes. I ask, what does it take to protect an important article against this kind of recklessness?

WeldNeck, how about showing some good faith at this point by acknowledging that Appleman DOES NOT say that 21st Infantry battalion and that 8th Cav company encountered disguised infiltrators? The section as I edited it still has plenty of infiltration material.

Will you fix it?

Charles J. Hanley 18:10, 24 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Spare your audience the rhetorical questions, there's nothing to fix.

Yongdong, from Appleman where he's perfectly clear that the Norks were disguising infiltrators as civies:

The large numbers of Korean refugees crowding the Yongdong area undoubtedly helped the enemy infiltrate the 1st Cavalry Division positions. On 24 July, for example, a man dressed in white carrying a heavy pack, and accompanied by a woman appearing to be pregnant, came under suspicion. The couple was searched and the woman's assumed pregnancy proved to be a small radio hidden under her clothes. She used this radio for reporting American positions. Eighth Army tried to control the refugee movement through the Korean police, permitting it only during daylight hours and along predetermined routes.

I chose the examples I did because they are the most significant (especially Taejon which was part of the rationale of the Mucio letter) and they happened to close to the end fo July 1950. WeldNeck (talk) 01:24, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

WeldNeck, please, be reasonable: You have inserted supposed refugee infiltrators manning a Yongdong roadblock behind an 8th Cav company, citing Appleman's page 198. But the text on the action on page 198 says nothing -- nothing at all -- about refugee infiltrators. It says the roadblock was established by troops of a 3rd Division regiment. The woman with the radio on page 199 has nothing to do with this; and Appleman's speculative "undoubtedly helped" cannot be applied to any action you choose. Similarly, Appleman on his page 98 does not say anything about refugee infiltrators fighting that 21st Infantry battalion. On his pages 96 and 98, he simply refers to "enemy soldiers" at that position. Will you fix it? Charles J. Hanley 20:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

We take your silence to be a "No." We'll fix it. That will leave Taejon and the NYTimes-reported Yongdong incident in the article, more than sufficient background on infiltration, although neither is confirmed by the official history. Charles J. Hanley 17:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Army investigation advisor's comment

I write as one of the 8 advisers to the 2000 Army IG investigation of the incident at No Gun Ri between July 25 and 29, 1950. Five of us had combat experience in the Korean War. We were given the privilege of reviewing the written transcripts of over 100 veterans interviewed by the IG.

When we interviewed the surviving refugees at Yongdong in early 2000, we believed their stories, although not in every detail. We believed that a number of casualties had been incurred when U.S. planes strafed their column on the railroad tracks between Yongdong and No Gun Ri. We believed that there had been an unknown number of additional killed and wounded in the twin tunnels under the railroad trestle at No Gun Ri. These beliefs stemmed from a review of a number of the statements given the IG by veterans in 2000.

No battle ever occurred at No Gun Ri, either with North Korean troops or guerrillas.

An unknown Army officer of high rank had asked the Air Force to strafe refugee columns approaching U.S. lines. As of July 26th, the Air Force had complied with that request. The Commanding General of the 1st Cav Division had ordered that no refugees should be allowed to cross U.S. lines. Several of the veterans interviewed by the IG confirmed that there had been orders to shoot.

The AP story, printed only after the Army had denied that the 7th Cavalry was anywhere near No Gun Ri in late July, was confirmed in nearly every detail by veterans' statements to the IG, although the number of refugees killed could not be determined by either the IG or the Advisory Group; possible casualties ranged between 100 and 300. One clerk in the regimental CP told the IG that he had typed out an officer's handwritten notes that an estimated 300 civilians had been killed. That record and key records of the regiment and battalion could unaccountably not be found.

The book, "No Gun Ri, A Military History of the Korean War Incident," by a 7th Cav officer, contains numerous errors and suppositions which were refuted by the statements of the veterans to the IG. It should be discounted as a reliable source of information, and considered as an attempt to protect the reputation of Custer's regiment which had massacred old men women and children at both The Washita in l868 and Wounded Knee in 1890. The 7th Cavalry has fought well in other engagements but it was a disgrace in its first week of combat in 1950. The blame lies not with the poorly trained, inadequately-led young soldiers, but with their officers, from General MacArthur on down, who had ordered them into combat against an extremely competent and experienced North Korean army, after stripping them of key NCOs who might have provided them leadership in a stressful condition.

I dissented from one aspect of the final IG Report to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, that conclusion that no blame attached to high-ranking officers for the killings at No Gun Ri. The later Army reports of the massacre at My Lai and the killing of Army sergeant Pat Tillman by his own troops indicate that the Army remains desirous of protecting its highest ranks.

As Washington's cavalry General, Light Horse Harry Lee,(father of Confederate General Robert E. Lee) once said: A government which sends untrained troops into battle against a well-led and experienced enemy is a murderer. Those young men of the first three divisions sent to Korea in the summer of 1950 fought and died, buying time which may well have saved the Naktong Perimeter and prevented the fall of South Korea.

Pete McCloskey, Former 2nd Lt., 5th Marine Regiment, Korea, 1951 Member of Congress, 1967-83. T88iPPq4 (talk) 19:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your insight. Did Hanley ask you to contribute?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:54, 26 November 2013 (UTC)