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Barbarity in Vietnam was even worse. Atrocities were widespread and commonplace, including massacres, rape, torture, mutilations, wanton mass destruction, use of chemical and biological weapons, and as Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger: "We're gonna level that goddam country. We're gonna hit 'em, bomb the livin' bejusus out of 'em." Kissinger concurred in replying: "Mr. President, I will enthusiastically support that, and I think it's the right thing to do."
US forces got carte blanche to carpet bomb, incinerate entire villages, burn people alive, fire freely on civilians, murder wounded prisoners or beat them to death, throw people out of helicopters, torture sadistically, gang rape young girls, and commit every imaginable atrocity to people called gooks, vermin, or as General William Westmoreland described them, "worthless termites." Against them, as in the Middle East and Central Asia, inflicting any form of human suffering is permissible.
Torture by US Police
For decades to the present, police have used torture to intimidate, extract confessions, treat people of color especially sadistically, especially black men. In Chicago, the practice has been scandalous according to the Human Rights at Home Chicago Police Torture Archive. Below is the timeline of one of the most egregious examples:
-- in May 1972, the notorious Jon Burge (trained in torture techniques in Vietnam) was assigned to the Area Two detective division on the city's South Side, a predominantly black community;
-- in August 1972, allegations of torture against him and other detectives surfaced;
-- in May, 1973, Anthony Jones was tortured by electric shock and suffocation with a plastic bag;
-- in 1977, Burge was promoted to sergeant;
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