I had always read that the guy was a local VC officer and he was killed because earlier he had ordered the execution of some of the general's men. Either way, he probably deserved it.

Taking the video at face value for a moment, I never knew the backstory of the photo. Interesting. 

Is it accurate? 

I think the lesson here is clear: Don't shoot someone dead "in broad daylight".

It's just bad optics. Line up a firing squad and do it in a field somewhere and you won't be judged so harshly by the camera. Or simply don't do it in front of a camera...

I didn't know that. Fuck that guy then, good shoot.

Thanks public school education. I actually had one teacher that I'm surprised didn't bring this up. He is an NFA owning, pretty sure he is a Vietnam veteran, conservative  social studies/history teacher, he liked pushing more left leaning students buttons.

I met the police chief in the picture when he came over to my house for dinner back in the 1980s when I was around 14 yrs old here in Houston.  I knew who he was and what he did in the picture since I have seen it many times before.  Unlike most people, I was familiar with the backstory of what happened so to me he was a hero.  He passed away several years afterwards

Here's the video, complete with commie brain fountain Link

The media in this country have long been liars.

Propagandists, communists, subhuman filth.

The lesson is "Fuck the lib press".

+1 but only because of the good folks on ARF

Was it RVN national police or ARVN policy to execute captured criminals/POWS?

Just wondering if this was an outlier or common practice.  I didn't know the full story of this until the internet.

I knew it was a very good and legal execution of a Commie murderer out of uniform behind enemy lines...  What I did not know was that they had UZIs in Viet Nam!

I watched the video last week.  Never knew the story behind the picture.  Didn't really change how I felt about the picture. Only good communist is a dead communist.  I felt bad that Mr. Nguyen lost his pizza restaurant.  True Americans would of supported his business.  It also remind me the time, when I was at a friend's house and his father was watching Vietnamese American news.  On the news program there was a Vietnamese parade somewhere in the States.  They were flying the RVN flag.      

The ROK troops in the Vietnam War were definitely superior to the ROK troops in the Korean War.  The Korean War turned them into some brutal communist hater.  They also made sure to send some of their best forces to Vietnam.  The Capital Tiger Division, White Horse Division, and Blue Dragon Marine Brigade all saw heavy combat in the Korean War.  You have to remember many of the officers fought in the Korean War and the enlisted were the children who survived of the Korean War.  They hated communists and took their vengeance on the NVA and Viet Cong.

From everything I've read (or heard from people that were there, and what they told me is why this is going to be pretty long) it wasn't official policy for them to execute prisoners, but they were fighting a very nasty civil war/insurgency so official policy often only went so far as people felt like following it and/or whether or not they thought that they could get away with it. And "getting away with it" really isn't exactly how Americans would think of it. The Vietnamese weren't really worried about global PR (or even their own courts really in a lot of cases) so I don't mean getting away with it legally but more like whether or not killing a guy out of hand would be something that would raise their stature among the locals or lower it. In some places popping the head VC guy whom everyone knows is the head VC guy as soon as you first walk into the village may actually back the whole village off the VC path and show you're some seriously bad motherfuckers and not to be trifled with; in other situations doing that could set the whole village against you and cause massive problems up and down the line because the whole village was either leaning hardcore VC to begin with or you nudged them that way by shooting him. The same things could happen with going the opposite of shooting, you could come in and be nice to the villagers, pass out free rice and vaccinate all the kids...and have that make the village drift more anti-government because they're afraid that if they didn't have a VC problem already they were going to wind up with one now since you're being so nice to them it's going to draw the nearby cadres over like flies to shit to see what the deal is; or they could figure you scared all the VC off so now they're your best friends. Yeah it's crazy shit, but remember they're Vietnamese not Americans, so whether or not it makes sense to most of us, it was just how it was.

Okay this is getting long and I'm probably not explaining it right because I'm tired but basically: No it wasn't official policy of the Republic of Vietnam for their army or police to shoot prisoners/suspects/etc. in the middle of the street, in fact it was against their laws; but in practice it happened, and even though it may have been illegal in almost every case that doesn't mean it was even seen as the wrong thing to do in every case. Plus you have the age old axiom of location, location, location. In Saigon or Da Nang that shit wasn't going to fly most days, but the day that picture was taken wasn't "most days" and I'm sure dozens of VC "prisoners" wound up with a bullet to the back of the head and then just dropped into a ditch in and around Saigon during Tet '68 and no one gave one fuck about it. Likely no one would have about this one either except for the fact at this one there was a cameraman present when the shooting happened. Out in the boonies though it was likely much more likely to happen, again depending on what they figured the results/consequences of doing it would be.

We, as Americans, can have a hard time reconciling something like that since to us it's usually a black and white kind of deal, but to the Vietnamese it wasn't. The thing is during the war some Americans actually figured that out too, and that lead to whole new rabbit holes like Phoenix, but that's an even bigger tangent so I'm not gonna go there now.




TL/DR Version: No it wasn't the official policy of the Republic of Vietnam but also wasn't a totally unprecedented thing either. Civil wars that are also insurgencies are complex things, add in that it's Vietnamese we're talking about with all the cultural and philosophical differences from how Westerners do/perceive things being in play and they become really complex things.

Thanks for all the effort. I appreciate it.

Yep. That's the media and left for you. Make your own reality if it serves your purpose.

+1

Yes he deserved to die, and I hope he burns in hell.

I was thinking it would be this pic:

 

The story behind it enrages me.


-K

Never seen it before.  Car bomb in Israel?

Yep. My instincts were right on too.

American student in Israel hauled out of a car by Palestinian thugs to be beaten and stabbed to death, managed to break away and stumble his way to an Israeli policeman.  Press ran it as an Israeli cop and an "unidentified" palestinian, with the obvious implication that he'd been brutally beaten by the Israeli cops.

If the S does ever HTF, I hope the press get what they deserve...first in line to be put against the wall.*



*Does not apply to those few press people who are actually interested in reporting things truthfully.

No, the lesson is the media is the propaganda arm in the war against freedom.  And that the cold war was a draw.  While the US quick approach under Reagan of bankrupt the commies worked.  The commie long term approach of corrupt the institutions of law, journalism and education also worked.  They just took longer.  Respond accordingly.

Knew what it was gonna be before opening the thread.