Saturday, November 11, 2006
VICTORY LANE (UPDATED)
The Age’s Terry Lane reviews the Vietnam War:
Victory went to the better, more honourable side.
That explains why so many Vietnamese declined to leave their honourable, better, commie-ruled homeland for loser nations like Australia and the US, and why formerly Melbourne-based Lane fled to Ho Chi Minh City as soon as he could.
UPDATE. Vietnam veteran Clarence Lee recalls his honourable captors:
"They shot me through both of my hips for torture, and now both of my hip joints have been replaced. And my left knee joint has been replaced."
He remembers the interrogators came in one day after nine months and told him he’d be set free if he told them what they wanted to know. But he had a defiant answer:
"You have shot me through my hips, you have cut my finger off one joint at a time, you have beat my foot up, and now you have busted my knee, and are you going to let me go? Duh! You think I’m really dumb?"
Holding up his left hand to reveal a stump of a finger, he told the interrogators, “Can you cut this part off here, it’s in my way."
He said the next day they began torturing him by beating him in the face.
"They beat me until I passed out, and all of this lower part was just turned to mush. See, this whole lower jaw is mold. My left eye is in plastic, and my nose is plastic.”
Terry? Your opinion on torture, please?
UPDATE/CORRECTION. This could be bad. Reader Andrei emails:
Your post quotes Clarence Lee, a Vietnam POW.
I read the story and it didn’t ring true. There are several elements that set my BS detector off. Four tours of duty in Vietnam for one.
Anyway I went to my copy of Stolen Valor and checked to see if Clarence Lee was listed as a Vietnam POW.
And he is not.
Further questions are asked (and sources cited) in this comments thread.