Talk:No Gun Ri massacre

Improving the article: Lead and Background sections

We’ll begin improving this article section by section, in some cases cleaning up syntax, and in other cases trimming extraneous, pointless wordiness. General Dean, Bosnia etc., among other things, bloated the article unnecessarily by 1,000 words; a further 200 words was added recently with an unsourced paragraph (“On November 17…”) that is inaccurate when it’s not simply repetitive of what the article has already established. In the most important cases, we’ll restore references to the U.S. military’s long-running rejection of the No Gun Ri allegations (removed without explanation or justification) and Army investigators’ suppression of evidence (removed without explanation or justification).

In the lead section, “authorizing the use of lethal force” is wordy and inaccurate, since we’re talking about direct orders to “shoot” and “fire”; the reference to a “series of reports” is incorrect and incomplete; and the reference to Taejon is gratuitous, since the paragraph above already establishes the rationale for the shootings and Taejon is dealt with in the body of the article.

The Background section can be trimmed, saying the same thing in 25 percent fewer words – e.g., “refugees fleeing the onrush of the North Korean advance” is redundant; this has just been established in the preceding graf. In addition: The quote attributed to the 25th Infantry Division war diary appears misattributed, since the Army investigative report and Conway-Lanz (and my own files) show it only in 1st Cav Division archives. At the same time we’ll add a quote from a U.S. official saying soldiers regarded all Koreans as the enemy.

Finally, the insertion of irrelevant events during the Chinese civil war will be removed. Surely we don’t think a good Wikipedia article should be an ever-expanding grab bag of “fun facts” that are not essential to the subject at hand. Charles J. Hanley 14:59, 18 February 2014 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

The material you call bloat, some would call relevant material which provides a great deal of context to the article and has been cited by other WP:RS as such.

The phrase “authorizing the use of lethal force” is more accurate than shooting.

The Nork infiltration at Taejon was specifically mentioned by Muccio in his letter. That certainly belongs in the lede.

There is no misattribution in the 25th ID War Diary. I suggest you check your sources again as I have found this particular passage mentioned several times in other reliable sources.WeldNeck (talk) 19:49, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

I think Cjhanley’s edit was more accurate. “Authorizing the use of lethal force” seems to me an interpretation. Any wordings that may suggest potential interpretation or inference should be used very prudently or should not be used at all. Using actual wordings from military documents will give the wiki readers a better sense of No Gun Ri and its background. The actual quotes in those documents are,

“fire everyone trying to cross lines” in Communication Log, the 8th Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, July 24 1950

“All civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly” in Memorandum, Commander, 25th Infantry Division, 27 Jul 50

“we strafe all civilian refugee parties” in Memorandum to General Timberlake, Policy on Strafing Civilian Refugees, Colonel T.C. Rogers, 27 Jul 50 and

“all civilians moving around the combat zone will be considered as unfriendly and shot” in Journal, HQ 25th Infantry Division, 26 Jul 50.

To me, these wordings suggest actual orders of “shooting” rather than giving the power (“authorizing”) to make decisions on shooting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SeoulScholar (talk • contribs) 05:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

WeldNeck, you continue to trample all over Wikipedia's principles of cooperativeness, assumption of good faith, and everything else. Incredibly, you seem to feel you have a right to revert, wholesale, intelligent and well-informed edits. And all the while you continue to fail to grasp the simplest of points. For one, orders to consider civilians enemy and "shoot" them, and to "fire" everyone trying to cross the line, are not a grant of "authority" to shoot. They are ORDERS to shoot. Do you not grasp that?

Do you not understand that the lead should be kept to the barest of essentials, and certainly does not need to repeat the rationale for shooting refugees? Once it's stated in the second paragraph, it doesn't need to be repeated in the third.

Do you not understand that an event in the Chinese civil war has no place in this article, especially when the text is nearly illiterate? Why did you revert that deletion?

One had hoped for a more cooperative spirit in 2014, but it appears that you're only interested in pushing your POV.

Finally, please cite for us a "reliable source" that attributes that quote to a 25th Infantry Division "war diary." You simply footnote the document, not a secondary source. But do you have the document? Meantime, the Army IG report, the Conway-Lanz book and my own files find that quote only in the 1st Cav Division. Please come ahead with a source. Charles J. Hanley 23:30, 18 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

There is an issue with the War Diary citation, I will correct that. WeldNeck (talk) 14:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

There are many, many more corrections needed in this article, not to mention the need to fix the lousy writing, restore essential points that you deleted because they disturbed your point of view, eliminate your falsification of the wording of orders etc etc etc. How about continuing your corrections by restoring to the lead the fact that the Pentagon stonewalled for years on the allegations (or come up with a reason why readers should not know that), correcting "authorizing lethal force" to what the orders actually said, and getting rid of the ridiculous Chinese civil war material? How about it? Charles J. Hanley 14:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I cannot understand why Weldneck continues to make unnecessary edits which blatantly undercut the spirit of Wikipedia. Just a couple of basic examples: Why did Weldneck remove references to the fact that the U.S. military rejected the No Gun Ri allegations for years? And the fact that its investigators in 2001 suppressed incriminating evidence? An understanding of the truth about No Gun Ri requires the restoration of those essential facts. Will you, Weldneck, restore those facts now?Reader0234 (talk) 16:14, 19 February 2014 (UTC) Reader0234 (talk • contribs)

Events of July 25-29, 1950

Continuing the fixes, this section will now read in a logical, sequential manner, with 200 fewer words, and yet with strong new descriptive quotes from a variety of new media and academic sources (quotes from Chung Koo-hun, Yang Hae-sook, Kerns, Preece, Levine, Patterson, Durham).

We'll tighten the Ha Ga Ri material, saying the same thing in fewer words; trim superfluous material; eliminate out-of-place military jargon (2-7, 1-7); note that arriving North Koreans rescued children. We'll note the specific number of men who testified about a supposed exchange of fire (as has been said, Wenzel is not quotable on this because he contradicted himself on this point at various times).

We'll also eliminate the pointless discussion of whether air controllers were in the area. As has been pointed out, that material is drawn from a section of the Army's 2001 report that is rife with deception, specifically suppression of documents showing air-control activity, air operations and a division spotter plane in the immediate area at the time. Leaving this pointless discussion in the text would require many more words and sources knocking down the untruths, while adding nothing at all to the article. We still wouldn't know how the air attack originated. It would also require upending the article's entire structure, to note, for one thing, the Air Force command's report that it was strafing all refugees approaching U.S. lines. This "Events" section should be limited to what happened on the ground from the 1950 point of view of the survivors and soldiers. Charles J. Hanley 16:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

There's issues with all the eyewitnesses and removing some because they, according to you, "contradicted themselves" is dangerous considering how many witnesses the AP cited who stated they were taken out of context or directly misquoted by the AP team. As for the Norks "rescuing children" ... is that some kind of joke? WeldNeck (talk) 17:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Two North Korean newspapers from Aug. 1950 describe the after-scene of the massacre. These were found from NARA. The actual citation of one of these is Choson In Min Bo (조선인민보, Korean People’s Daily), by Chon Uk (전욱). Aug 19 1950. These sources include information that North Korean solders met some children and elderly who survived from the killing and they escorted them to the villages. WeldNeck, that is not a “joke.”

In addition, the 2008 article from the journal Rhetoric & Public Affairs, cited as the source for the sentence about the North Korean rescue, now expunged by the uncomprehending WeldNeck, quoted survivor Yang Hae-sook as saying, "If they did not come to No Gun Ri ... if American soldiers stayed there longer, no one would have survived from that tunnel," and survivor Chung Koo-Ho as remembering that the North Koreans advised them not to leave the tunnel until nighttime, or they'd be killed by U.S. warplanes. Chung said, "On the way home, North Korean soldiers even gave us meals ... I felt a sense of same race-consciousness." The survivors, of course, told the same to many journalists and to South Korean government interviewers. It's simply a well-known fact. And so, WeldNeck, how about restoring this fact to the article? No joke. Charles J. Hanley 22:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Casualties

This section will be improved by sharpening the sourcing on the report of 218 casualties. Charles J. Hanley 17:23, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Aftermath

This section will be improved by restoring the sentence -- unjustifiably deleted without a word of explanation -- regarding the fact that no investigation was conducted in 1950, despite knowledge of the massacre. Charles J. Hanley 17:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Petitions

This section will be improved by restoring text that was deleted without explanation regarding the survivors' 1994 petition and the Army's claim of combat, and by restoring text regarding the official history's agreeing with the survivors on two points. Charles J. Hanley 19:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

it was deleted because you are using Appleman as a source to make an arguemnt which Appleman is not making. Its a combination of sources to make a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. WeldNeck (talk) 19:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Appleman on page 179 says the 1st Cav Division took up positions in the Yongdong (No Gun Ri) area, and on 203 that it "faced no immediate enemy pressure" prior to its withdrawal from the area. Quid est demonstratum. Charles J. Hanley 19:41, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but it doesnt work that way. WeldNeck (talk) 20:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

What is the "it" that doesn't work what way? What you're saying is that the official Army history didn't uncover the whereabouts of an entire Army division in late July 1950. Please, WeldNeck, this is a serious subject. If you cannot engage seriously, if you can only deal dismissively with others while having nothing to offer, I would urge you to stand down for a while and let knowledgeable people repair this article. Charles J. Hanley 21:33, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Knowledgeable people who also have raging COI's? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WeldNeck (talk • contribs) 21:35, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Are you or are you not going to restore the official history reporting the location of the 1st Cav? Surely you understand the point: the Army kissed off the petition without even checking the official history. There's nothing that "doesn't work," nothing to be disputed, about what the history says. Will you restore what you've wrongly deleted? Charles J. Hanley 22:44, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I take your silence to be a "no." We'll fix it. Charles J. Hanley 23:19, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Weldneck- Speaking of conflict of interest and POV problems how about yours? You seem to repeatedly nitpick on things that point to responsibility in the higher ranks. You ignore Pete McCloskey's statements which seem to me to support the conclusion that what happened at No Gun Ri resulted from orders issued by general officers. Hanley's alleged POV & COI have been debated for months yet WP has not pulled the plug on him? That says something to me about the merit of the criticism. Hanley has made it clear who he is so we know his NGR connection. Who are you? How do you explain your POV/COI issues? The fact that you devote so much time to this small slice of the police action tells me that you may have an axe to grind. Come on out of the shadows and be as open as Hanley. Let us see what makes you tick. In closing, I'd like to say that your snark & attitude, obvious even to a newbie, is offensive and not in the WP spirit.Breckenridge51 (talk) 23:59, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Hey, another one of Hanley's meat puppets, welcome to the show. As for McClosky I dont usually take input from holocaust deniers too seriously, but hey there's a first for everything I suppose. WeldNeck (talk) 00:36, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what a meat puppet is but from what I've seen of your track record it must be a nasty crack. And then the slam on McCloskey- deabate 101- when they go to the personal attacks they've got nothing else. As to McCloskey's alleged anti-semitism, what does that have to with his veracity on NoGunRi- just more smoke and mirrors from you. Your real issue with McCloskey is that despite his documented heroism in the Korean War, he's never been a member of the protect Mother Green club, as you so clearly are. Here's a question- you'll toss out McCloskey as reliable because of something he may have said once, does that apply to Bateman, who seems to be the foundation of your entire approach? Bateman- a self-identified serving military officer has written several times recently about how if he came to power he'd scrap the Constitution and take discriminatory action against law abiding gun owners. Clearly his career is terminal so he'll write these things, but he's crazy, not to mention seditious. So I throw out Bateman because I disagree. That's your reasoning on McCloskey & most everything else here. Here's my pov- my Dad was a rifle platoon leader in 1952 Korea with the 7th ID; I was a company grade officer for a few years & most of friends were em's. I resent it when people like you try to blame the lower ranks to protect a few top dogs and the Service.Breckenridge51 (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Meatpuppet – it means Hanley asked you to come into this debate.

As for McCloskey he like Bateman seems to drink more Kool-Aid the longer they are around and the effects seem to compound with every passing year. While that certainly doesn’t disqualify either of them I am not just going to acquiesce to a tirade made on a Wikipedia talk page. McCloskey had some bad experiences with the Cav in Korea and certainly and that clouds his ability to be an impartial arbiter here. To McCloskey’s point that the Army is to blame because it sent inexperienced units to fight the KPA … you go to war with the Army you have not the army you want. That’s a simple truth about warfare and the nature of it.

Were there general guidelines to fire on refugees – yes, when they were approaching US positions it was left to the discretion of the CO’s or commanding NonComs to determine if they were a threat and what to do about it. A Life Magazine dispatch by John Osborne sums this dilemma up quite well:

“Oh, Christ, there’s a column of refugees, three or four hundred of them, coming right down on B company.” A major in the command tent says to the regimental commander, “Don’t let them through.” And of course the major is right. Time and again, at position after position, this silent approach of whitened figures has covered enemy attack and, before our men had become hardened to the necessities of Korean war, had often and fatally delayed and confused our own fire. Finally the colonel says, in a voice racked with wretchedness, "All right, don’t let them through. But try to talk to them, try to tell them to go back.” “Yeah,” says one of the little staff group, “but what if they don’t go back?” “Well, then,” the colonel says, as though dragging himself toward some pit, “then fire over their heads.” “Okay,” an officer says, “we fire over their heads. Then what?” “The colonel seems to brace himself in the semidarkness of the blackedout tent. “Well, then, fire into them if you have to. If you have to, I said.”

In this situation, what are the soldiers or their commanders supposed to do? There are many examples of the KPA using refugees to cover their movement and infiltrate their troops (a point the AP teams does its best to ignore or gloss over even though the evidence to the contrary is quite staggering). It was a bad situation for the soldiers and an even worse situation for the refugees, but what were the options?

Were there specific orders given from any officer present that day to fire on the refugees – although the AP would like to convince the reader otherwise, there is no documented order to fire on the approaching refugees and individuals there have conflicting accounts as to whether or not there were verbal orders given

The narrative the AP and much of the rabidly partisan and anti-military portions of the press and academia want to convey is that these blood thirsty/brainwashed troopers were ordered to fire on defenseless noncoms by wicked commanders who didn’t care how many pee-ons they put through the meat grinder … oh yeah, and they all liked it too. Furthermore, the AP and other pushers of that POV want the reader to believe there was no rationale for these orders (which there was) and any rationale given was baseless (which they weren’t). For Christ sake, look how many times the AP team was caught using fake witnesses or misrepresenting the interviews with the witnesses they had. If their story was that strong, they wouldn’t have needed to resort to such sloppy techniques and deliberate misrepresentation to make it.

Tell me, if you were an infantry man explain to me this: how could a group of civilians take sustained fire by an entire battalion for three days and any of them survive? That’s the story the AP is telling here. According to them, the 2-7 attacked these refugees nonstop for three days. If that were so, how did any of them survive?

Along the same lines, how did aerial surveillance taken ten days after this not find any bodies? Do you honestly think a couple hundred corpses could be stacked up under that rail bridge and the survivors would have taken to time to do this with the KPA only a few miles away and advancing on their position?

Its ridiculous on its face.

(WeldNeck, how can you, again and again, show such ignorance of basic facts of No Gun Ri and yet deign to have some right to shape the Wikipedia article on the subject to your liking -- i.e., pro-refugee killing? The bodies weren’t dragged in and stacked up; they were there to begin with, in heaps of dead later attested to from all sides, SKorean, NKorean and American. At least four GIs spoke of seeing “stacks,” “a crowd” etc. of dead; Garza, who walked among them, said, “They were stacked on top of one another, trying to prevent getting hit. … I saw little babies trying to nurse on dead mothers.” Every paragraph of this latest comment of yours is full of similar nonsense. What is “ridiculous” is that the Wikipedia community has allowed this stuff to be spewed out for so long, and to infect such an important article. Charles J. Hanley 22:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC) ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

More than likely, a few died when the mortars went off and a handful more when someone got jumpy and fired into them. That’s the extent of the “massacre”.

As for my POV – its really none of your business but let me assure you I am not, as you put it, trying to blame on the enlisted and junior officers to spare the “top dogs” in the service. WeldNeck (talk) 21:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

A lot to sift through here. As to meat puppetry you'll think what you want. You could be bateman or a his "fanboy", no way to know. On to McCloskey/Bateman- an awful lot of what you want believed is your opinion. Example- you throw MCC out because his experiences bias him in your opinion, but not Bateman, although you do allow he's drunk the koolaid. But it appears to9 this observer that McC's out because he supports Hanley's pov & bateman is in because his book suypports your pov. No logic there. You may not want to believe McC but your opinion isn't conclusive reason for others to disregard him. In addition I read thru McC statement just now and you badly misstate his opinion. He says nothing about inexperienced troops. His comment was regarding UNTRAINED troops. this is certainly one of my issues with the entire general staff in FE Command. Maybe MacArthur was too busy playing Emperor of Japan but his staff were not requiring that troops be trained up nor did division commanders do it. Here's a quote from SECDEF Bob Gates new book "The key to success, as with most things military,is training, education and above all, strong and principled leadership up and down the chain of command." Truman & Congress are to blame for not enough troops, but the Generals are to blame for untrained troops. I threw in the Gates b/c you were paraphrasing Rumsfeld. I'm afraid I have problems with your next point as well. There were not general guidelines- there were orders. I've read them. In the Army I knew, the brass didn't issue general guidelines, unless they were in CYA mode. But in this case, in this desperate time they were ordering that if refugees tried crossing/coming thru lines they were to be shot.Period. The Osborne excerpt is very powerful, but I can't tell whether the original story was hard news reporting or a 'this is what war is like' piece. I'd also feel a little more confident in the excerpt if it didn't have a major giving orders to a regimental commander[usually a full colonel] But putting that aside for a minute it shows why war is such a bitch. That's why the existence of ORDERS in this instance is important. Let's be clear KILLING CIVILIANS is against the rulesPERIOD. So the regimental commander follows orders and hopes the USA wins the war. If North Korea wins"I was just following orders' doesn't help. He'd be just like all the fellows tried at Nuremburg. If the US wins he's committed war crimes but the Army doesn't care and they wouldn't go after the Gen'ls who gave the orders. If, as you suggest, he ordered his men to shoot civilians w/o orders from higher and his rationale is 'Gee it was a tough spot and what was I to do? Well then he could be in a world of hurt. It's as simple and unfair as that. But in war, fair isn't even in the same universe. Sherman didn't say "War can be a trying experience" now did he? HELL is what the man said. I'm not gonna debate infiltrators, they are a red herring. I'll also point out some inconsistency here. On the one hand you argue no orders, then bring up infiltrators to justify the orders. Infiltrators is a red herring because ordering troops to shoot civilians is aginst the rules. Refer back to previous sentences. OK- moving on "Were there specific orders give by an officer present?" Once in a while you write something that makes me question whether you have ever been in the military, or maybe you think you'll blow one by me. The Place officers would have been present at was a battalion in combat. Commander a major, at most LTC. At best 4 rifle companies, maybe a weapons platoon. He's not writing up orders, depending on the situation he calls them together, or uses the radio or sends one of his staff,xo,s1 etc to them. ORAL orders. The company commanders- CPT's or 1LT's- get their platoon ldrs together and pass on the order they got. Plt ldrs. go to squad ldrs. who then tell the men. Sorry to say- the point about no proof of orders may be true but there would not ever be written proof at that level- just not the way the Army works. You either know that or you don't. Inconsistency among the troops about whether orders were given. Well, DUH? That would have been true 40 minutes later, much less 40 years. Moving right along- the rant about the press and academia. That's not a not a knock on you, it is a rant & I do it myself all the time. I don't see it so much about the military but guns and politics. DON"T get me started. BUT- Hanley's book is very sympathetic to the grunts. I haven't read anything that attempts to paint them as bloodthirsty or that they liked doing what they were ordered to do. Seems to me Hanley's target are the Big Green Machine and the 'evils' of war. Referring to your comment about 'wicked commanders' I didn't see that in the book either. My personal opinion is that in a war, officers from platoon to corps/Army, give orders that result in men dying. By the time some LT's make it to stars they've learned that lesson. You can't do what needs to be done w/o men dying. Maybe it gets easier the further away you are, like the difference between a rifleman and a bombardier. If you haven't read any of Rick Atkinson's non-fiction trilogy about WW2, you really should. More about Atkinson later.

  Next topic- battalion firepower. 1st off- never said I was in the Inf. My dad was. I spent my time wearing crossed cannon. But I can answer your question b/c I do know small unit tactics and how the Army functions defensively. In terms of who would be shooting at the civilians, it would be only those troops who were dug in at the at the point the civilians approached. Maybe a a few squads, a platoon? And some mortar, firing from behind the front line. This is another of the things that make me wonder. You've hinted of military experience with jargon {norks,etc] but then you refer to non-combatants as noncoms, the previously mentioned expectation of written orders being issued from Battalion down to Company cmdrs in the field in combat and then the battalion firepower as if all the riflemen and machineguns in a battalion would be in the same place at the same time. Also, no one was attacking. They were in place shooting at the civilians and not non-stop. Whoops, the wife is telling me to get off the computer & get something done. Life, huh? To sum up for today. I can certainly see that you're pretty pissed about the bias in the press and academia. Join the club. But the specific angry comments don't hit their mark about this book. I mean bloodthirsty troops & all that. Not in the book, or this wiki art that I can see. Also- you assured me that you weren't looking to blame the troops and shield the brass but that is exactly where your 'logic' seems headed. Civilians WERE killed; if no orders were given to 2/7 then elements of that unit killed civilians w/o orders. This is exactly what Clinton's coverup said [we know how truthful he is] blamed it on a few grunts, just like always. You may want to believe numbers of dead were lower than Hanley says, but even dozens is still killing civilians, it matters, because to be cynical/realistic about it, people found out about it. And your scenario seems to me to lead right to blaming a few frightened enlisted men and incompetewnt jr officers. You say that is not your intent but that's the direction of your arguments are going. Don't you see that or were you just blowing smoke up my butt figuring I'd go away. Bottom line- no blaming rifle platoon line troops on my watch. What puzzles me is why NOGUNRI? Why not Benghazi or the IRS, or Fast & Furious.````

Looks like I may have screwed up here. not all got in & I'm out of time. Try to fix it another day.Breckenridge51 (talk) 21:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

...I...uh... Drugs? ...What am I even looking at here? Timothyjosephwood (talk) 09:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Investigations, 1999-2001 investigations

This section will be improved by:

• Recasting the first paragraph to clarify.
• Adding, improving sourcing.
• Restoring Army's years of dismissing allegations, and the specific reasons for the shootings cited by the Army report. (Again, critical elements deleted with nary an excuse from WeldNeck.)
• Adding a key quote from the prime minister's office regarding orders to shoot at No Gun Ri.
• Substituting a better quote from adviser McCloskey, and adding a quote from adviser Gen. Trainor regarding le0adership to blame.

Charles J. Hanley 19:41, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Legal framework

This section will be improved by trimming the unnecessarily wordy reference to the 1949 Geneva Conventions' status. Charles J. Hanley 22:50, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Further evidence emerges

This section will be improved by:

• Restoring the reference to the Army's acknowledging it had deliberately omitted the incriminating Muccio letter from its investigative report. (Outrageously, WeldNeck had removed this crucially important fact twice, from the article's body text and from the caption to the document excerpt, as usual without any attempt at justifying its removal. How could one justify trashing the most glaring example of the 2001 cover-up? Too glaring?)
• Improving sourcing.
• Inserting ex-soldier's testimony about shooting civilians.
• Noting new academic research that found much strafing of refugees in 1950.

Charles J. Hanley 23:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Aerial imagery, excavations

This section will be improved by trimming and being made more logical by, for example, putting the important explanation of the disposition of bodies (under the bridge etc.) in the first paragraph.

The paragraph "Archeological survey" was also weak, relying on prospective articles as sources and lacking the forensic team's final report and explanations, now inserted. The excavations are now incorporated under the "Aerial imagery" heading. Charles J. Hanley 14:39, 20 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Just a word of caution - any attempt to downplay the most important piece of information and the only truly objective evidence will not be allowed. WeldNeck (talk) 17:23, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

What should be "not allowed," WeldNeck, is your arrogance. Meantime, the "only truly objective evidence" is a highly questionable and seriously questioned half-century-old roll of film whose key frames were spliced into it by unknown hands at Defense Intelligence, from a camera that couldn't see anyway under the bridge where the bodies were? What about the ream of documents showing orders to shoot refugees? They're not "objective"? What about the ambassador's letter and USAF operations chief's memo saying refugees are being deliberately killed? They dreamed that up? What about the hundreds of American bullets and bullet holes that forensic teams documented in the bridge's concrete? What about the bullet-damaged faces and bodies of survivors? What about the graves of the dead, and the July 26 memorials for the dead? What about the area residents and North Korean eyewitnesses and the GIs who agree with the survivors about heaps of dead in the tunnel, including Command Sgt. Maj. Garza's "two or three hundred piled up there"? What about the South Korean government's confirmation of a minimum of 218 casualties? What about the U.S. government's affirmation that they were killed by "small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing" -- a hell of a lot of firepower? The deeply suspect -- and, at the very least, irrelevant -- aerial recon photos eventually became the last flimsy refuge of a little band of flag-waving denialists who, bizarrely, argue out of one side of their mouths that the U.S. military had to kill refugees (after all, one was found carrying a radio!), and out of the other that No Gun Ri didn't happen, that the overwhelmingly powerful evidence should all be disregarded because... well, just say it ain't so, not our good ol' American military. And this article, sadly for the truth and sadly for Wikipedia's ideals, has been in the clutches of one of them, for too long. Charles J. Hanley 19:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

• highly questionable

Other than the fact that it is one of the few pieces of physical evidence and it absolutely demolishes claims that several hundred refugees were killed, what makes it “highly questionable”?

• seriously questioned

Seriously questioned by whom, the South Korean team who couldn’t be bothered to look at the originals when offered?

• half-century-old

What does age have to do with it?

• roll of film whose key frames were spliced into it by unknown hands at Defense Intelligence,

Index map were the only things spliced into the footage. Additionally, the DIA team cut frames around the railway tunnel for easier viewing. Originals from the overflight mission were available for the South Koreans to inspect if they chose to do so. An interesting observation is that the DIA analysists were not given the specifics so their analysis.

• from a camera that couldn't see anyway under the bridge where the bodies were?

The analysis were able to determine what was into the tunnel to a depth of three meters. Were the hundreds of bodies stacked in the rail tunnel intentionally placed in a location where the analysts could not see them, or was this mere coincidence?

• What about the ream of documents showing orders to shoot refugees? They're not "objective"? What about the ambassador's letter and USAF operations chief's memo saying refugees are being deliberately killed? They dreamed that up?

None of that is physical evidence as to what took place. The aerial footage is.

• What about the hundreds of American bullets and bullet holes that forensic teams documented in the bridge's concrete?

Interesting you should bring this up and I don’t really understand why its not in the article. The FBI team found a grand total of 316 bullets marks at both the culvert and tunnel. Considering the Korean claims that 7th Cavalry soldiers fired at them for up to four days with both machine guns and small arms for hours at a time something just doesn’t add up. How could there be only 316 bullet marks if thousands, potentially tens of thousands, of rounds were fired for four days?

The Koreans determined that 20 of the 50 bullets they were able to recover (not hundreds) were from 50 cal. With no eyewitnesses stating any strafing took place while the refugees were under the bridge these 50 cals must have come from a different engagement as the heavy weapon companies assigned to the battalion were only armed with 30 calliber machine guns.

• What about the graves of the dead,

What graves? To the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been one documented excavation of any grave or graves related to this event.

• and the July 26 memorials for the dead? What about the area residents and North Korean eyewitnesses and the GIs who agree with the survivors about heaps of dead in the tunnel, including Command Sgt.

What of the witnesses who recalled far fewer numbers of dead and injured? I know it wasn’t enough for the AP to twist their words out of context when reporting their story, but are you going to claim that every account is exactly the same?

• Maj. Garza's "two or three hundred piled up there"?

What physical evidence supports this?

• What about the South Korean government's confirmation of a minimum of 218 casualties?

Confirmation based upon what? 60 year old contradictory recollections?

• What about the U.S. government's affirmation that they were killed by "small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing" -- a hell of a lot of firepower?

Where does the DAIG report confirm that the numbers of dead are anywhere near what the Koreans claim?

• The deeply suspect

Suspect only to you evidently.

• -- and, at the very least, irrelevant

How can photographic evidence of the aftermath be irrelevant?

• -- aerial recon photos eventually became the last flimsy refuge of a little band of flag-waving denialists who, bizarrely, argue out of one side of their mouths that the U.S. military had to kill refugees (after all, one was found carrying a radio!)

I am not arguing that anyone had to do anything, only that there were severe aggravating and mitigating factors involved in these decisions.

• and out of the other that No Gun Ri didn't happen,

Never said it didn’t. No one says it didn’t. All I am arguing no one ordered the attack and claims of several hundred dead cannot be supported by any of the physical evidence.

• that the overwhelmingly powerful evidence should all be disregarded because... well, just say it ain't so, not our good ol' American military.

Eyewitness testimony, especially memories that have been contaminated by unethical teams of journalists are especially reliable. WeldNeck (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

(Restoring deleted paragraph) WeldNeck's "To the best of my knowledge" underlines one aspect of the WeldNeck problem: He knows so little, and so often misreads or misunderstands, and yet so disrespects Wikipedia and its contributors as to blanket-revert contributions by those who do know the facts (and the unknowns) of No Gun Ri.

To cite just a few examples from above:

• It's untrue that "Index map were (sic) the only things spliced into the footage." Frames 29-35 -- of the bridge -- were spliced in. (Read the report).Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I did read the report, and you shouldn’t mislead readers on something so easily verifiable.

NIMA IA verified that the ON consisted of 86 continuous unspliced frames of imagery with a film leader containing mission and coverage data (index frame) spliced into the roll. At some point in time, damage to the Original Negative had occurred; tears -- repaired with transparent tape -- were found on frames 41, 51, 52, 53, 58 and 59. The film was somewhat brittle; the tears probably occurred during some previous reproduction process, though the repairs with transparent tape appeared to be recent (tape was unyellowed and flexible).

Good God, WeldNeck. When will this insanity end? We can't spend all our time debunking your misreadings and nonsensical points. The suspicious splicing was spotted by the South Korean experts on the FOURTH-GENERATION COPY, not on the Original Negative. Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• He doesn't understand that the great bulk of bullets and bullet marks would be found on the tunnel walls below the roadway that raised the floor level by six feet in later years. As for some "FBI team," it "found" nothing. No one from the FBI or any other U.S. ballistics experts went to Korea. The Koreans did the ballistics work, checking a good sampling of bullets to confirm they were, indeed, U.S. military ammo.
• No .50-calibers with the 7th Cav Regiment at No Gun Ri? G Company's George Preece manned and fired one at No Gun Ri. The cover photo of the disgraceful book by WeldNeck's friend Bateman, showing one being fired that summer, bears this U.S. Army caption: "A .50 Cal. Machine gun squad of Co. E, 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, fires on North Korean patrols along the north bank of the Naktong River, Korea."Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Right you are, but just to confirm, this would be the same George Preece that stated on many occasions after you quoted him in the article that you misquoted him and used his interview out of context to support a version of events he didn’t witness?

The AP article also stated "the Koreans said the Americans may have been seeing their own comrades' fire, ricocheting through from the tunnels' opposite ends. 'That's possible', said Preece. 'It could actually have happened, that they were seeing our own fire, ...We were scared to death'," said Preece, a career soldier who later fought in Vietnam. When interviewed by the U.S. Team, Sergeant First Class (Retired) George Preece said, "I've got a feeling it was a blast. A muzzle blast coming out of that tunnel. Again, now, it could have been. I'm not putting that out of possibility, but I don't see how. I mean it could have been. I mean ricochets from this guy shooting from this tunnel. I've had that told to me before too, but it's -- I don't believe that." He also said: "I saw flashes coming out from under the bridge and you saw where the shells were hitting. And it's close to that machine- gun over there. You could see where it was hitting the dust, hitting the rocks, and things...And when they [soldiers] shot into it, there wasn't that many rounds shot into it."

Once more, WeldNeck, NOBODY was misquoted. Hiding behind your anonymity, you blithely slander as unethical and dishonest accomplished professional journalists whose work was re-endorsed by the Pulitzer committee after Bateman managed to get his baseless garbage into print, and you slander wounded war veterans as liars at the same time -- when you know nothing about this other than what you read from a 7th Cav apologist and a highly deceitful Army cover-up report. Your statement in your edit summary that Col. Carroll was "grossly misquoted" is an outrage. Even Carroll didn't say he was misquoted. You just wildly throw this stuff around because you're anonymous and unaccountable and -- thus far -- Wikipedia hasn't reined you in. As for Preece, he's on videotape saying what he was quoted as saying. From the tape: Q: "And then an order came to fire on these people?" A: "Yes, sir. I know the order was given for them to fire." Q: "You saw bodies piled up. How many?" A: "One hundred, 150, 200. I just don't think it was right to kill women and babies. We felt bad about it, but when you've got orders you've got to do what the uppers say. They'll get you for treason and everything else." Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

"NOBODY was misquoted" ... hmmmm ... who to believe ... the close to a dozen individuals who testified that they were misquoted or the AP that misquoted them ... hmmm .... gosh that's a tough one, I'll have to think about that. WeldNeck (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• "To the best of my knowledge" there are no graves? This is another Bateman-inspired inanity. Go to Korea. They'll show you graves, including many where the government disinterred remains and reinterred them at a memorial cemetery near the massacre site.
• What of those who said there were fewer dead? They've long been in the article: in the lead ("Estimates of dead have ranged from dozens to 500"), and in the Casualties section ("7th Cavalry veterans' estimates of No Gun Ri dead ranged from dozens to 300.") When the only man to lead a patrol through the tunnel, career soldier Garza, supports the survivors' estimate of hundreds of dead, that merits attention -- and not the snide "what physical evidence supports this?" as though only skeletons still stacked there would do.Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

The views you claim that have been long in the article are not given the WP:WEIGHT they are due. They are intentionally downplayed because they don’t support the AP reporting. And, for the record, is Garza the only individual who testified to going into the tunnel after the shooting? Think fast, the credibility of the AP is on the line here.

The appearance of the lowball casualty estimates in the article's very first paragraph and again in the section dealing with the subject (Casualties) is hardly downplaying. As for their "not supporting the AP reporting" ... Wake up, WeldNeck: It was the AP reporting that first carried the lowball estimates. AP's own reporting does not support its own reporting? A couple of things that seem not to occur to you: Almost all the Americans were hundreds of yards away and had little idea of body count, and men accused of a war crime might be expected to minimize the damage done. No? Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• The aerial photos -- real or rigged -- are irrelevant because the overwhelming bulk of witness statements from all sides -- survivors over the decades, uninvolved South Koreans in 1950 and in recent years, North Korean journalists and military documents in 1950, 7th Cav veterans in recent years -- and the official South Korean investigation say there was a large number of casualties. Hence, if someone wants to interpret the aerial photos to indicate otherwise, there must be something wrong with either his interpretation (doesn't he realize bodies are out of sight under the bridge?), or the photos (the splicing; the two flight paths on allegedly the same roll of film; nearby streams running high while the No Gun Ri stream is almost dry on supposedly the same day and same film roll, etc).Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Your thoughts on the aerial footage are pretty well established … they are fakes. How else could you explain it ... its like there’s a conspiracy afoot to discredit the AP’s reporting and all the juicy information they gleaned from individuals like Ed Daily.

Our "thoughts" on aerial footage have no place in the article. Journalists deal in facts, and the fact is that the South Korean experts suspected the footage had been doctored. You've managed even to mangle that fact in the article. The bottom line should be clear, at least to clear thinkers: Is there something wrong with the mountains of documentary evidence and near-unanimous testimony, from every corner, pointing to a substantial bloodletting at No Gun Ri, or is there something wrong in the aerial-photo category, including the simple fact that the photos, whether authentic or doctored, couldn't see the bodies that Koreans and Americans alike say were stacked under the bridge? Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

South Korean "experts" thought they were doctored because it was so detrimental to a politically sensitive issue. They had the opportunity to view the originals and chose not to, that alone speaks volumes. Secondly, the testimony only seems "near-unanimous" because the AP team intentionally distorted so many of the US eyewitness accounts which is why you want to see so much of this removed from the article. WeldNeck (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

• Finally, WeldNeck wants to "argue" (his word) that mitigating factors were involved in "these decisions" to shoot refugees. Decisions. Very next thing, he "argues" that "no one ordered" the No Gun Ri shootings. Which is it, were decisions made to shoot refugees or not? This points up the bizarre dichotomy of such POV pushers: The U.S. military can't be faulted for ordering the shooting of refugees, but it didn't do it. Two very well-placed battalion radiomen were among those who heard orders to shoot at No Gun Ri. What's more credible, some anonymous WP user's "argument" or the unambiguous word of men who were there? In any event, the article shouldn't "argue" anything. It should report the facts and the unknowns. That's what knowledgeable people will continue to do. Charles J. Hanley 00:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I am not saying no one gave an order to fire, just that there is no documentation to support that the soldiers of the 2-7 were ordered to do so and firsthand accounts differ. There’s a difference between established ROE’s and formal orders. WeldNeck (talk) 02:56, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Of course there's no documentation of orders. The regimental log for those days is missing from the National Archives! Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

And for the record, Mr Hanley ... do you still believe "There was no “documented infiltration” among the refugees to be found in the records of front-line units in the time leading up to No Gun Ri". WeldNeck (talk) 03:09, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Later developments

This section will be improved by expanding a footnote to list other No Gun Ri novels. Charles J. Hanley 15:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

original research

This section appears to be a rather clear cut case of using primary sources to support original research. I see that there a few secondary sources buried within it, and I plan on moving what is salvageable back into the article shortly. The rest should probably remain here until the content is published in reliable secondary sources.--Wikimedes (talk) 18:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

It's not immediately clear to me what information is contained in the secondary sources (and perhaps over-cited with primary sources as well) and what information has no secondary source support. It will take a bit of time to sort this out. If the intent was to provide additional credibility to the secondary sources by showing the original documents in support, it would probably be better to provide links to the primary sources in the citations rather than using primary sources directly in the article.--Wikimedes (talk) 18:27, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I believe you initially misinterpreted what was done in this section. It is principally sourced to secondary sources with supporting cites (and links) to the documents discussed in those sources. The seeming exceptions might be the direct citation of the Army investigative report on No Gun Ri, which was a widely published/disseminated document (i.e., not something requiring original archival research) and its accompanying Statement of Mutual Understanding. Your suggestion of placing the document links in the footnotes is an interesting one, but on this subject the documents are so important that subordinating them in that way would risk depriving the reader of vital information. I strongly suggest restoring this very important section, and if you still spot anything you feel lacks proper citation, tag it with the "citation needed" tag. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 20:06, 27 March 2014 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I restored most of the content to the article, with some refactoring.[1] Much of the content was criticism of the US Army report, so I put it in the US and ROK investigations section. I was unable to find online text for any of the news reports. If Sloyan or Kim criticized the Army report for failing to mention the Air Force’s targeting of civilians, then the criticism could be mentioned. As it is, the article says that they found evidence of targeting civilians without connecting their findings to the Army report. While it would be admirable for a Wikipedia editor to scour the entire Army report to find that a particular piece of information wasn’t included, that really would rise to the level of original research.

While it’s entirely possible that Hanley (ref8) mentions that the 14 additional declassified documents contained “fair game”, “shoot all refugees”, etc., I couldn’t tell from the position of the inline citations, so I will leave that for someone else to put in if it can be referenced properly. The Conway-Lanz citation (ref13) is probably superfluous if the cited details of the Ambassador’s letter are contained in the Park (ref14) or Yonghap (ref15) articles.

The primary sources I put in the External links section.[2] I disagree that removing them from the inline citations “risk[s] depriving the reader of vital information”. Wikipedia readers are not expected to read the secondary sources, much less the primary ones. If, for example, a reliable secondary source (Mendoza ref8) claims that the Army report did not mention that something vital was missing from the National Archives, that’s generally good enough for Wikipedia; we don’t have to directly cite the Army report (or the National Archives) as well. Providing links to the primary sources is above and beyond (and sometimes too much) what’s required in Wikipedia. My personal preference (as a writer and a reader) is to have links to lots of additional information so that interested readers can pursue things as far as they want. It even pains me to decouple the page numbers in the primary sources from the text that refers to them – someone went through a lot of trouble to find them and someone will want to verify the information without having to repeat that work.

Anyhow, I hope I’ve put the information back in that should be there and that the organization and citation have improved as a result.--Wikimedes (talk) 04:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

It will take some time to sort out what has been done here. One overriding point: As said, the documents are very important to this subject, all the more so because one contributor pushing his POV has repeatedly added sugarcoating words in describing such orders to shoot refugees -- words tending to exculpate but that don't exist in the documents. Without those links in the body, when an order is mentioned, the reader is unaware that one can see for oneself the truthful words. This is not primary sourcing but supplemental to the secondary sourcing. It does no harm, it adds no words, but it adds considerable authority to the article, while protecting it against efforts to distort. Charles J. Hanley 16:24, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Responding to message left on my talk page [3] as well as the above.

Thanks for taking the time to go through everything. My apologies for guessing wrong about what was in the Sloyan article. That seemed to be what the position of the citation indicated, but as this proves, it’s really impossible to tell without having read the source. This alone is enough for me to revert my reshuffling of the “Further evidence emerges” section and leave an OR tag on it for someone with more knowledge of the sources to sort out. Moving the parts that deal with the US Army report to the section on the US and ROK investigations is still a good idea, but I don't have the sources to do it properly. I did take out “emerges” from the section title – this evidence has already emerged. (Changing “Continuing appeals” to “Further appeals” might be a good idea as well, or perhaps merging it with the Petitions section.)

I do think that the article could do with some restructuring, and I’ll mostly leave my earlier edits in place. (These were never intended to be a finished product, so please do continue to tweak as you see fit.) The article seemed pretty disjointed before my reorganization. The last paragraph of the AP investigation section is not about the AP investigation, for example. Too bad I missed it earlier.

I think that the article is too intricately crafted to survive the multiple authorship that is part of Wikipedia. Organizing some portions of the article more topically than chronologically might help. Probably “Petitions” should be grouped with “Continuing appeals” (or even merged?), so I’ll leave it where it is for now. It might make sense to put the Investigations section back under “Aftermath”, since technically they are part of the aftermath, but the AP investigations and the paragraph beginning “Information about the refugee killing...” should probably be kept in the Investigations section.

I had thought that the Truth and Reconciliation “[C]ommission’s work of collating declassified U.S. military documents with survivors' accounts” would make it appropriate to include it the Investigations section. If it doesn’t, please do move it somewhere more appropriate.

I’m putting this in the middle where it is less prominent so we can focus more on content than behavior. You’ve twice in this discussion accused another editor of harming the article by POV pushing without providing any evidence, and this is worse than useless. If you want some of the contentious content of the article changed, bring it to the talk page. If you’ve already done this and consensus has gone against you let it go. If you’ve brought it to the talk page and are in a deadlock with your nemesis, you could take it to WP:Dispute resolution or maybe try a Request for comment. But don’t waste other editors’ time and goodwill by throwing out accusations of bad behavior.

Back to content. I’m not sure what to do about the paragraph I titled “Possibility of investigations into other killings of civilians during the Korean War”. Only 1.5 sentences seem to have anything to do with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In total it reads like the conclusion to a hard-hitting newspaper expose, with its purpose being to drive home the opinion that the US Government is not doing enough in regards to its role in killing civilians in the Korean War. Although I generally agree with that opinion, such presentation is not really appropriate for an NPOV encyclopedia article. Focusing the paragraph on one of its topics (reparations for other incidents or investigations into other incidents) could be a way to improve the paragraph.

I wasn’t planning on getting too heavily involved in this article (famous last words), but there’s another thing that should be looked into. Paragraph 2 in “Further evidence emerges” contains “The report did not address the order in the 25th Infantry Division to shoot civilians in the war zone.” I am unable to find such an order in the linked journal page [4]. The closest thing I see is an order to notify a (South Korean?) chief of police that “civilians moving around in combat zone will be considered hostile and shot.” (2200hrs, SerNo 736) This is very different from ordering 25th ID soldiers to shoot civilians. Nor do I think that the chief of police is going to be ordered to shoot civilians; I think the chief of police is being informed so that he will keep civilians out of the combat zone. Is there something else on the page that I’m not seeing? This ties in to our discussion on primary vs. secondary sources: Did Mendoza’s law review article claim that this page contained an order to 25th ID soldiers to shoot civilians or was this a Wikipedia editor’s interpretation of the scanned document in Commons?

I have again presented a lot of information to digest. Please take your time. I hadn’t planned on spending too much time on this article and would be quite happy to spend weeks away from it before digging in again.--Wikimedes (talk) 12:06, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. The article will get another look at some point and tweaked as needed. To immediately address a couple of your points: On the 25th ID document, no journalist, scholar or military lawyer who has reviewed this and accompanying 25th ID documents has ever seen it as anything but an affirmation that 25th ID troops (not Korean police, who were scarcely present anyway) would be shooting civilians in the war zone, as the neighboring 1st Cav Division did during these same days at No Gun Ri. On July 26-27, 1950, 25th ID commander Kean in two additional communications directly ordered units to consider civilians to be enemy and "treat them accordingly," and to take "drastic action" against civilians. See "Category: No Gun Ri Massacre" at Wikimedia. As for the POV pushing, the evidence you seek is strewn all over the Talk page stretching back eight months. Efforts at dispute resolution were fruitless as admins either ignored requests or threw up their hands ("I'm in over my head," said one). This is a seriously, seriously distressed article, laced with defamatory material (Hesselman and Flint, inter alia), rank untruths and nonsense, and black holes where WeldNeck excised examples of the U.S. Army's investigative whitewash (one instance of many: suppressed testimony such as "The word I heard was `Kill everybody from 6 to 60."') His answer to efforts to restore some integrity to the article is blanket reverts. No Gun Ri Massacre stands, as of now, as a prime example of the vulnerability of free-for-all editing to manipulation. Rather than chastise honest contributors for pointing out these problems, one would do better by immersing oneself in the subject and helping remedy the problems. By the way, the "disjointedness" in the article that you rightly perceive, along with the misspellings, bad syntax and other minor issues, is largely the doing of this one contributor. Finally, one question: What strikes you as original research in that section where you've placed the OR tag? Thanks again. Charles J. Hanley 15:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

It would be accurate to characterize the 25th ID document as an indication that the 25th ID would in the future be shooting civilians. As it stands, the article claims that it is an order to shoot civilians, which is not accurate. If a secondary source (Mendoza?) claims that there was an order to shoot civilians and that the US army report did not mention this order, citing this source and removing the citation of the 25th ID document would be a good way to correct this inaccuracy.

I'm not seeking evidence of editorial malfeasance, I'm asking you to cut out the attacks on other editors and focus on content. If an editor comes along later to contest changes that you and I have agreed to, we can deal with that when it happens.

As I said in my first post, the Further evidence emerges section appears to be a Wikipedia editor's compilation of information derived from primary sources. Removing the primary source citations so that the focus is on the secondary sources (and adjusting content as is needed to accurately reflect the secondary sources) would help. Moving criticisms of the US report to the section covering the US report would also help. How about putting this in the US and ROK investigations section?: "Pat Sloyan wrote that the US report's description of a July 1950 Air Force memo failed to acknowledge content of the memo indicating that refugees were being strafed at the Army's request.(ref Sloyan)"--Wikimedes (talk) 20:18, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

You’ve arrived belatedly to a very sad movie. You’d have to review thousands of archived words in Talk to understand -- as far as “cutting out” criticism of one user -- what has gone on. Everything from last August (when the heavy POV pushing began) to this January has been archived, except for the “Other POV’’ section of August 2013 that leads off the current Talk page, still live apparently because a final comment was added in January 2014. The failed attempts at reasonable discussion, now archived, are deeply dispiriting reading for any WP idealist.

The 25th ID document reference could be more precisely worded. It may have been that the wording initially referred to another document, which was shuffled around in the article’s demolition derby of recent months.

Your idea of combining “Further evidence” with “investigations” ought to work; I believe that would simply amount to removing the “Further evidence” section headline and creating a much longer single section (desirable?). One wrinkle is the “Legal framework” section that comes between. The reader needs to be informed at some pertinent point what the laws of war say about targeting civilians. Perhaps those essentials could briefly lead off the section on official investigations.

As for “original research” in the “Further evidence” section, all the documents mentioned and linked to are identified in the secondary sources that, sentence by sentence, are referenced. I understand you’re suggesting explicitly attributing each sentence to the secondary source (as in, “Newsday’s Pat Sloyan reported that…”). Depending on the wording, that could suggest the possibility of some question about what is being reported, that there’s only this one source, when there’s no question; the document is there for all to see (and other secondary sources could be added). Anyway, rewording might be worth a try. But the section doesn’t merit an OR tag. All the document links could be removed, the secondary sourcing left alone, the section still stand as is, and the reader be the poorer for it. (The documents, remember, are stored in the Wikimedia system, just like the photos that adorn the article. In fact, two of the documents appear as photos. Surely the photos are not "original research.") Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 19:52, 30 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Just so I understand your fourth paragraph: The Further evidence and Legal framework sections are already subsections of the Investigations section, and have been for quite some time. Do you mean combining "Further evidence" with "US and South Korean military investigations"?--Wikimedes (talk) 10:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I thought you were suggesting. My real point is that combining them does nothing but remove a subhead -- which would seem a natural, desirable break -- and create a more cumbersome section. In any event, let me have a go at it this weekend, including clarifying the "Further evidence" section and perhaps incorporating the "Legal framework" material more smoothly into other sections. Charles J. Hanley 13:13, 4 April 2014 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Upcoming is a reworking of the midsection of the article following some of the suggestions of Wikimedes, and in other cases restoring a more logical flow. Specifically:

• The "Petitions" section is restored to its original position, flowing out of the 1950 events and leading to the 1990s journalistic investigation.
• The "Legal framework" section is eliminated, with its three elements placed elsewhere.
• The "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" section, which would confuse readers in the middle of the No Gun Ri investigations text, since the TRC was not involved in the investigation, has been restored to its place at the end, as a 2005 upshot of the 1999 revelations.
• The "Further evidence" section is tied more closely and logically to the "Investigations" section. Its sourcing has been clarified, and there's more precise wording regarding the 25th ID document.

NOT YET DONE: Rationalizing the links to documents. Some are in a "Notes" section at the bottom. Some are now listed in External Links. And some probably are still linked to directly from the article text. That's a chore for another day.

Meantime, let's not lose sight of the fact that this exercise was a minor one compared with what must be done to rid this article of its severe problems -- glaring untruths and defamatory material, blatant whitewashing via deletions, and general nonsense. Charles J. Hanley 20:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

The sound of one hand clapping. WeldNeck (talk) 13:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Taking the “Investigations” subheading out and making everything part of the “Aftermath” section works. I see that you have changed the reference and the content in the sentence beginning “[t]he report did not address…”, addressing my OR concerns for that sentence. Breaking the large amount of content on the US and ROK investigations into smaller sections works, but I’ve retitled the Further investigations section to accurately reflect its content, which is criticism of the US report and a couple sentences of evidence supporting that criticism.

I’m still concerned about original research in the first several sentences of the “Additional criticism” (Further evidence) section. Did Pat Sloyan’s 19 January 2001 report criticize the joint statement of mutual understanding for failing to assert that no orders were given to shoot civilians? Did his report say that the joint statement should have included this assertion because that was a central finding of the US military report?

Breaking up the Legal framework section works. You've undone a few of my reorganizational changes, but I won’t pursue those further.--Wikimedes (talk) 16:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, Wikimedes, but I missed this until now (I, at least, find Watchlist alerts to be erratic). On your question about the opening of the "Additional criticism" section: No, noting the difference between the mutual statement and the U.S. report is, in my view, a simple statement of fact about a central point. A close reading might infer, of course, that the Koreans told the Americans, "There's no basis for saying that," and the Americans conceded the point, though only in the mutual statement. In any event, that paragraph can be referenced -- not to Newsday/Sloyan, which reported solely on the Air Force memo -- and I'll do so. By the way, it's a semantical point I've been loath to raise since there are more pressing issues facing this article (the snide crack above gives you a hint of what we face), but news reports aren't normally described as "criticism." When the journalist Sloyan reports a key document was misrepresented, or Woodward/Bernstein report a White House link to the Watergate burglars, that's simple reporting of an important fact. Others can do the "criticizing." In this article, it's the survivors committee, ex-Rep. McCloskey et al. But I'll not contest the new section head. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 18:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Take your time. Thanks for addressing my last OR concern for the section. It looks much better now. It’s good that the criticisms of the US report have solid factual evidence to back them up, but they remain criticisms – else why mention the US report at all?

Although we still disagree on a few issues, we have worked together to improve the article, and since you have most of the expertise in the area and access to the sources, you’ve done most of the work, so thank you.

Not really related to OR, but I made one more structural change; Background sections are usually “top level” sections. (I checked several of the articles on WWI and WWII battles to make sure).--Wikimedes (talk) 22:58, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I've been reading through the talk page archives, which are quite off-putting. Nevertheless, I was just wondering about the two South Korean news articles ("Seoul Awaits US Explanation on No Gun Ri" by The Korea Times and "US Still Says South Korea Killings `Accident' Despite Declassified Letter" by Yonhap news agency), because they contain the very important assertion that the Pentagon "deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 report." I have been unable to find the sources. Also, there's a reference to a mysterious "25th ID war diary," which is never actually quoted, in the background. I completely agree that the degree of original research here is a bit high, but I think that's unfortunately the nature of the beast in this case.

I also looked for, and found, the master's thesis by Dale Kuehl, easily accessible with a google search. It might provide some interesting information, although it was not published after the critical discovery of (frankly damning) documents.

Finally, while I most certainly do not want to rekindle this dormant dispute, is there a consensus on the use of Bateman? He is a prominent source, even if he has been criticized.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 21:58, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Further evidence emerges

A joint U.S.-South Korean "statement of mutual understanding" issued with the separate 2001 investigative reports did not include the assertion that no orders to shoot refugees were issued at No Gun Ri. But that remained a central "finding" of the U.S. report itself, which either did not address or presented incomplete versions of key declassified documents previously reported in the news media.

File:No Gun Ri-Col. Rogers memo-recropped.jpg

In this excerpt from a July 25, 1950, memo, the U.S. Air Force operations chief in Korea, Col. Turner C. Rogers, reports U.S. warplanes are strafing South Korean refugees at the U.S. Army's request because of reports of North Korean infiltrators disguising themselves as civilians. The Army's 2001 investigative report on the No Gun Ri refugee massacre excluded this passage from its description of the memo. Full text.

In describing the July 1950 Air Force memo, the U.S. report did not acknowledge it said refugees were being strafed at the Army's request. Later research found such U.S. air attacks on refugees were common in mid-1950. The report did not address the order in the 25th Infantry Division to shoot civilians in the war zone. In saying no such orders were issued at No Gun Ri, the Army did not disclose that the 7th Cavalry log, which would have held such orders, was missing from the National Archives.

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 shooting of 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" and to "shoot all refugees coming across river".

In this excerpt from a 1950 letter to Dean Rusk, John J. Muccio, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, informs the assistant secretary of state of a meeting held with the South Korean government at which it was decided to warn refugees not to flee south at the risk of being fired on, and to fire on people approaching U.S. positions despite warning shots. The letter, dated July 26, the day the killings began at No Gun Ri, was deliberately omitted from the Army’s 2001 investigative report.

In 2005, American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of a declassified document at the National Archives in which the United States Ambassador to Korea in 1950, John J. Muccio outlined guidelines and polices agreed upon by US and ROK forces regarding the increasingly severe refugee crisis. The document detailed curfew policies, evacuation procedures and leaflet operations warning refugees fleeing south that they would be fired on if they advanced on US positions and ignored warning shots. Pressed by the South Korean government, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged it deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 No Gun Ri report.

The Korea Times and Yonhap articles on the Muccio letter, not directly found online, can be found through the (subscription) Lexis-Nexis database. In addition, the Korea Times piece can be found at this blog link: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/progressivealternativenetwork/conversations/topics/20833?l=1 . Also, a further source is an AP article of April 13, 2007, findable at http://www.japanfocus.org/-M-Mendoza/2408/article.html (where the date seems to have been dropped).

The Kuehl master's thesis is cited in the article. As for Bateman, as one who with journalistic colleagues spent years reporting on No Gun Ri, amassing a enormous wealth of information about the knowns and unknowns, I can only describe his book as an almost indescribable mess of wild imaginings, self-contradictions, gross errors and sophomoric polemic.

The sad, simple fact is that this article is a shameful example of the corruptibility of Wikipedia, a place where a single angry, anonymous man with an agenda can stage a daylight mugging of the truth while WP admins stand by and do nothing, saying in one case, "I'm in over my head." It would take me all day to list all the lies and nonsense in the article, untruths whose presence less knowledgeable readers, unfortunately, might not suspect. Charles J. Hanley 23:13, 26 April 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Thanks for the links. Also, my apologies for not seeing the Kuehl thesis cited; my concern was that it was published before more recent revelations, and so some of its conclusions might be faulty. In any event, I truly appreciate your efforts in uncovering this story.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 00:17, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Every one of your points has been addressed. If you would like to rehash them, please be specific about any item you find lacking. We all know your thoughts about Bateman ... you even went so far as to harangue his editors into not publishing his book (which was very well received by the way). I'd also as that you keep the personal attacks to a minimum here. WeldNeck (talk) 13:48, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I am not getting involved at all, and I have no intention of bringing up this again. I also did not say anything derogatory about Bateman, and I am not taking sides in this dispute.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 23:08, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

@GeneralizationsAreBad:, sorry, I should have been more clear about who my response was directed at. I was replying to Mr Hanley not you. WeldNeck (talk) 13:29, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

It's fine. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

rev2 Spring 2015

I was asked by GeneralizationsAreBad to look over the article, particularly the overuse of primary sources and potential original research. The “Additional criticism of the U.S. investigation” section seemed like a good place to start. From my interactions with Cjhanley last year, I am under the impression that the content of this section is covered in the secondary sources cited, and that the unconventional use (by Wikipedia standards) of primary sources is to provide further information for the reader interested in verifying the basic claims. (I have not read the secondary sources myself, and as a result my contributions will necessarily be somewhat limited.)

Leaving the issue of primary sources for a moment, below is a draft revision of the “Additional criticism” section, reorganized and somewhat shorter. So far only (abbreviated) citations using secondary sources are included in the draft, but I’ll get back to primary sources before changing the article. Pictures have been left out at the moment to concentrate on the text. The 2 omissions from the U.S. report directly relating to the No Gun Ri Massacre, being the most relevant to the article, are grouped together in a single first paragraph. Coverage of numerous omissions relating to communications on other attacks on civilians has been shortened because they are less relevant (though still relevant) to the article. (Perhaps not including a single example is too much shortening?) The section might be short enough that the heading is no longer needed.

(Additional criticism of the U.S. investigation)
The U.S. report was also criticized for several omissions. Not included in the report was a July 26 letter from the US Ambassador to Korea notifying the State Department that the U.S. military, fearing infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugee groups that approached U.S. lines despite warning shots.[Conway-Lanz, Sahr 2006 and 2005] Pressed by the South Korean government, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged it deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 report.[Park, KT 200662; Yonhap 20061031] Also, although the report found no evidence of orders to fire on civilians in the vicinity of No Gun Ri, it did not disclose that the 7th Cavalry log, which would have held such orders, was missing from the National Archives.[Mendoza, Stanford Law 2002]

More than a dozen other documents of orders, authorizations, and other communications on United States Forces attacking civilians at other times and places early in the Korean War were also noted to have been missing from the US report.[Hanley 2012 in Suh; AP 20010113; Sloyan, Newsday 20010119;

The U.S. – South Korean Statement of Mutual Understanding, released at the same time as the report, was criticized for not mentioning the U.S. report’s assertion that no orders to shoot refugees were issued at No Gun Ri, which was a key finding of the report.[Hanley 2012 in Suh]

This is not a final draft, but is something like this desirable? I’ve only read primary, and not the secondary sources so I may have introduced errors in moving things around. Is the content still correct and properly referenced?--Wikimedes (talk) 01:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Just noticing this late on 24 May. (Watchlist alerts are awfully erratic, in my experience.) Allow me a couple of days to review. Meantime, tomorrow I expect to post important Talk comments for many interested parties explaining the desperate state of this article, so full of falsehoods, including material defamatory of two Korean War veterans, lacking in essential facts and so incoherent at times. Charles J. Hanley 03:10, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

In the third paragraph, I assume that this sentence and accompanying documents are cited to "Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths?"

Such as communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees north of the firing line "fair game"[66] and to "shoot all refugees coming across river".[67]

Best,

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 16:01, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

That's correct. I believe sometimes the secondary source that mentioned the documents is cited at the end of a sentence that itself contains links to those documents. In this case, the secondary source came first, but the intent was the same. Best, Charles J. Hanley 16:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Wikimedes, checking your draft above, I’ll make the following points:

• The one truly expendable element in the current section is its first graf, the discussion of the MOU. In any event, your draft misreads that graf by suggesting the MOU was “criticized” for not including the U.S. assertion of “no orders.” No, instead, that graf strongly implies that the South Koreans told the Americans, “Our joint MOU cannot contain your baseless ‘no orders’ business” – baseless because the 7th Cav log containing any orders is missing. But that entire graf, i.e., all mention of the MOU, can go.

• The Muccio letter is extremely important. A new book on NGR says it “proved that the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching refugees during the Korean War.” Diminishing its presence in the article, by not giving it its own paragraph, for example, would be unfortunate. But at the very least, I believe Muccio (a well-known figure from the Korean War) should be named, and the July 26 date should be followed by, “the day the killings began at No Gun Ri.”

• Rather than “the report found no evidence of orders to fire on civilians …,” I would suggest, “the report said no evidence was found of orders to fire on the No Gun Ri civilians…”

• Regarding “More than a dozen other documents…,” this graf now blandly distills into a few words the truly stunning “kill” orders – prima facie war crimes – the likes of which military lawyers said they had never seen elsewhere in 20th-century U.S. military history. I strongly believe the reader should know that refugees were declared “fair game” and troops were told “shoot all refugees” – i.e., examples should be quoted. Also, it’s crucial to note these were colonels and generals issuing the orders.

• Meanwhile, the Turner Rogers USAF memo, dropped from your version, is second in importance only to the Muccio letter: One day before the NGR refugees are strafed to begin the killings, Rogers reports the USAF is strafing refugees. Then the U.S. report of 2001 covers up this fact. That’s an essential, to note explicitly, in my view.

• Also, do understand, at least for your background knowledge, that all these “kill” orders were prominently highlighted by Army/Air Force historians doing research for the Army investigators, but were then deep-sixed by the Army. These documents were not “missing” through some inadvertence, an inference some might very well draw from the bland "missing." Hence, the current wording that "the Army had not disclosed its researchers' discovery..."

Hope that helps. Looks like your sourcing remains correct. As you note, the document links would have to be restored. Best, Charles J. Hanley 16:30, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

You continue to remove any context to SOP's regarding refugees. They were only to be fired on in certain locations, only when they refused to stop moving towards US lines, there had been many documented cases of North Koreans infiltrating US forces using fake refugees. I know you want all of this stripped from the article but since its been reported in multiple reliable sources that just aint gonna happen. WeldNeck (talk) 16:37, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Weldneck, please, all the context is in the article and was -- in sensible, readable, accurate form -- long before you got involved. Now, what's this about taking it upon yourself to delete my Talk entry? Don't you realize that's a first-degree felony at Wikipedia? I strongly suggest you put it back. Charles J. Hanley 17:06, 25 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Questions on unit organization

It's difficult to tell from the article (and the links) which units the 2nd Battalion is part of. 7th_Cavalry_Regiment#Current_status has 2nd Battalion < 3rd Brigade < 1st Cavalry Division < 7th Cavalry Regiment. Was this the case at the time of the No Gun Ri Massacre? Was the 7th Cavalry Regiment part of the 8th Army, which is also mentioned in the article? (Is there a corp level between the regiment and the army levels?)--Wikimedes (talk) 04:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

The organization: 8th Army, 1st Cavalry Division, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Battalion (Companies E, F, G, H). There were no corps organized at this point in the war. Charles J. Hanley 12:45, 24 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Thanks, I never would have gotten that. I added a note with this information to the last paragraph of the Background section, where the unit levels are mentioned in close proximity to each other.--Wikimedes (talk) 23:19, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding peer review

(A version of this has also been posted to the Military History Project, appended to the request for peer review/RFC)

GeneralizationsAreBad,Wikimedes, Drmies, kmhkmh, in ictu oculi, ErrantX, Bbb23, Mark Arsten, warshy … I, for one, would welcome a peer review of No Gun Ri Massacre, as proposed by GeneralizationsAreBad at the Military History Project, in hopes the reviewers will prove to be intelligent, unbiased one way or the other about the U.S. military (and about Asian people), willing to put in the time necessary to understand the No Gun Ri story and the article (including reading the Talk archives back to August 2013, as GeneralizationsAreBad apparently has done), and cognizant of the fact that they themselves should independently review authoritative, professional sources on the subject.

Over the past 21 months, the article has become an example of the worst of Wikipedia. A single angry POV pusher, profoundly ignorant of the subject, has been allowed to make no less than 124 edits in a furious effort to minimize and excuse the mass killing of South Korean refugees by the U.S. military in 1950, a bloodbath confirmed by two governments and whose basic facts are enshrined in a museum and 33-acre memorial park at the site. While loading the article with countless falsehoods and purging it of crucial facts, he also turned it into an often incomprehensible mess.

GeneralizationsAreBad sensed that the article has become "stable." That is only because the journalists and academics who know the subject well became disgusted long ago with a system, Wikipedia, that allows one deeply biased "editor" to revert, without discussion or explanation, every effort to restore established, well-sourced and important facts to the article, facts he killed out earlier. Appeals to WP administrators for help simply led to being sent from one forum to another, with admins either ignoring the appeals or saying they weren't up to dealing with this serious problem. Those of us who are expert on No Gun Ri then decided to let the article fester. This POV pusher's juvenile bullying approach to WP has antagonized and drawn disapproval from dozens of contributors elsewhere: EdJohnston, Mark Miller, Lightbreather, Geogene, petrarchan47,

EkoGraf, Spike Wilbury, Canoe1967, Hanibal911, Darknipples, Oilyguy, Faceless Enemy, PinkAmpers&, PinkAmpersand, Pseudonymous Rex, Cuchullain, Widefox, Theme, Viriditas,Ubikwit, Jobrot, Coretheapple, Scjessey, PresN, Objective3000, NorthBySouthBaranof, Josh Gorand, DragonflySixtyseven, Skywriter … (He has great interest in the subject of guns, and in some imagined threat to the white race called Cultural Marxism).

Perhaps the WP community would catch up with him, it was thought. This all is a sad commentary on WP's failures -- thus far.

I will post separately below (under READER BEWARE) a litany, with diffs, of the incredible run of blanket reverts WeldNeck made over just one period of a few days to kill any effort to restore integrity and truthfulness to the article. I strongly urge all interested parties to study it. You'll see that in his frenzy he even attacks simple efforts to restore sense and syntax to the gibberish. (Whoops, just in: Sorry, but WeldNeck has now unilaterally deleted my posting at Talk:No Gun Ri Massacre that listed the serial reverts and serious problems he has created with the article. That's right, he not only owns the article, but he now owns Talk, too. Let's see what we can do.... OK, the material WeldNeck doesn't want anyone to see is at [[5]])

Finally, to address a couple of points raised by GeneralizationsAreBad:

• On primary sources, this was discussed with Wikimedes some months back. The links are to documents cited in the article as coming from footnoted secondary sources, i.e., the "primary" sources are actually supplemental -- and valuable, since the reader can check the text firsthand and see that nothing has been misinterpreted. This is important, too, because WeldNeck has invented and tainted the article with wording that doesn’t exist in the documents, to sugarcoat orders to kill refugees.
• The suggestion that some "middle ground" has been reached between "diametrically opposed viewpoints" is more than troubling. The journalists and historians who amassed the facts of NGR have no "viewpoint." They're professionals whose job is to gather and report facts to establish as complete a picture of the truth as possible. It's those facts that are under attack here (again, please see the recounting below). Can anyone seriously see equivalence between those professionals and this out-of-control, unqualified, unidentified guy WeldNeck? The havoc he has wreaked should be answer enough. Thank you. Charles J. Hanley 14:44, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Alright. In all respect, I think you have argued your case very well and have been persuasive. Personally, I can fully understand your frustration in dealing with these edits. I agree that some are definitely questionable.

By "stable," I merely meant that I believed the situation had died down, owing to the lack of editing activity. Not unreasonable, since there had been no activity in a year. I was not endorsing or condemning the page itself, I just meant that the relative calm provided an opportunity to look the page over and possibly make improvements. In terms of the primary sources, I saw that Wikimedes had dealt with this. My mistake for not noticing, I just didn't want someone who opposed this section removing it on account of "original research" or "primary sources." It is a very important part of the article, to be sure. I support including the documents as supplementary, since good secondary material is already in the article supporting them.

Perhaps by "diametrically opposed viewpoints," I merely meant the contradictions between sources, such as the original story, Bateman's book, the Army investigation, etc. Initially, part of my concern was that the latter two sources would have been rendered inaccurate or incomplete by new research (Sahr.) I was referring to the very different versions of No Gun Ri provided by each source, but I was not specific enough. Sorry if this was perceived the wrong way, I did not mean to attack anyone.

Best,

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 15:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Understood, GeneralizationsAreBad. Your motivation was clear and your involvement welcome. Dealing with this problem has left us a little sensitive, despite having sworn off it for many months. You can see the seriousness of the problem in the fact that WeldNeck has now unilaterally deleted my READER BEWARE report on article issues from the Talk page. We'll deal with it. Best, Charles J. Hanley 16:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

He hasnt argued his case well. He wants sources that conflict with his POV removed. The Bateman material is the most serious because he actually contacted the books publisher and attempted to bully them into retracting it before it was published.

Now, one of the three AP writers, Charles Hanley, is apparently trying to suppress publication of a new book -- "No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident" -- that takes another view of what happened at No Gun Ri. The book, written by U.S. Army Maj. Robert Bateman, is highly critical of the AP story, calling into question the reporters' sources and research. But Bateman's book isn't the first time the AP story has been criticized.

If this doesnt stop Mr Hanley I will go to ANI and have you banned. Your behavior certainty warrants is. WeldNeck (talk) 16:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Jesus. I have been reading back on this conflict for over an hour, and I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I can't tell is Hanley is a subject matter expert and neck is a wingnut, or Hanley is a bleeding heart too close to the story and neck is just a rational dissenter. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 11:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I assure you, Timothyjosephwood, it's the former. Have you looked at the litany of outrages over one brief period, at [[6]] ? That's just an inkling. I believe most people would find his actions in immediately ripping that posting of mine from Talk yesterday, on down to such petty offenses as not allowing us to correct his grammar, make clear what the problem is. If you'd like to help restore more truth and sense to the article, please do. If I can help, please ask. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 15:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

By the way, if more evidence can help, it's been pointed out to me that a compilation of earlier WeldNeck outrages that I put together in October 2013 is still extant, at [[7]]. This one's probably more reader-friendly than the one WeldNeck deep-sixed yesterday. Reading this one, in particular, will give you a sense of the crucial material missing in the article, purged by WeldNeck. Otherwise, coming to the article cold, one might say, well, it's awfully messy, but seems complete. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 16:07, 26 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Your objections were noted and discussed. I dont know what else I can say on this topic other than you are beating a dead horse. WeldNeck (talk) 16:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Please, WeldNeck, don't be surreal. You discuss nothing. You revert, over and over. Did you "discuss" your action yesterday in immediately stripping my litany of your edits from Talk (edits that were accompanied by not a peep of "discussion")? You must know what you did is a Class-A felony on WP. Anyone interested can go to User talk:WeldNeck and find serial complaints about your highly disruptive, arrogant behavior, including one user who complained that you've engaged in "POV pushing on every article" you've touched. But anyone going to your Talk would have to be sure to check the page history for the huge chunks you've deleted (another no-no). Somehow you've fallen through the disciplinary cracks on WP, a symptom of systemic weakness, not enough admins to take on hard cases. Boy, wouldn't we have a lot to "discuss" if you hung up your POV Warrior spurs and got real. Charles J. Hanley 16:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Your post from yesterday can be found in multiple places on this this talk page, has been addressed point by point and is beginning to look like spam. WeldNeck (talk) 18:57, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I am submitting a request for dispute resolution. This is rapidly becoming a repeat of the previous debate. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The formal request is here: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Talk:No Gun_Ri_Massacre

I am hoping for the best.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, scratch that. It was closed quite quickly. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 21:15, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Restoring content

I am restoring content by Cjhanley that was removed. WeldNeck, per WP:TPO "Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning...you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission.". That is a no go, no matter how much you personally disagree with it. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 20:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of AP journalists that confirmed the No Gun Ri Massacre in 1999, and produced the definitive book on this Korean War event. We have developed considerable further information on No Gun Ri in the years since. I must forewarn Wikipedia readers that this article, No Gun Ri Massacre, is fatally compromised with falsehoods, including defamations and fabrications, and with the omission and suppression of crucially important facts, all for the purpose of minimizing and excusing the mass killing of South Korean refugees by the U.S. Army in 1950. These assaults on the truth have been perpetrated by a single WP user, going by "WeldNeck." It is unclear whether he has done this at the behest of or with the knowledge of members of the U.S. military (one vandal at this article was previously traced to the U.S. Army intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona).

• Do you have any evidence that I am part of some grand conspiracy to edit this article? If not, Id kindly ask you not repeat this allegation again. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The dozens of serious problems are too numerous to detail, but they range from the defaming of two wounded Korean War veterans, Flint and Hesselman, as liars;

• Flint and Hesselman’s service record show conclusively they weren’t there and had been evacuated for injuries. No defamation here. The AP’s star witness and fraud Ed Dailey had so contaminated the memory of everyone he came in contact with, Hesselman actually said "I know that Daily was there, I know that. I know that.". Hesselman has done a fine job destroying his credibility all on his own. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

to the falsification of wording in U.S. Army orders to shoot refugees to make the orders seem more benign; to the suppression of a soldier's statement, on British television, that his company commander ordered the troops to "kill them all" at No Gun Ri. Many, many other examples are just as damaging to the truths of No Gun Ri.

• Joseph Jackman’s version is in the article, as is the link to the BBC. You should actually read what I added sometime. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia administrators have proven incapable, thus far, of taking control of this sad situation. Until things can be remedied, readers looking for a truthful version should refer to the article as it stood in mid-2013, before this anonymous user's depredations. That can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&oldid=561319728 .

New and significant material has emerged since then, but WeldNeck has taken "ownership" of this article and simply reverts attempts to restore its integrity. To give you a taste of how WeldNeck operates, and some of what's false and what's missing from the article, following is a litany of his actions from just the space of a few days. Read the description, then click on the "diffs" to see this outrageous behavior and to understand better what's so deeply wrong about the article. Charles J. Hanley 14:44, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

IN THE INTRO SECTION (With none of this does he offer even a nonsensical explanation; he claims the edits he's quashing weren't explained on the Talk page, when they obviously were, on 18 February 2014.)

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=596072606&oldid=596065018

• Reverts simple efforts to improve the syntax in the first paragraph.
• In the second paragraph, removes identification of the media source for the reports.

• Covered in main body of the article. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes the fact that the Army had rejected the survivors' claims for years before finally having to acknowledge the killings in 2001.

• Covered in main body of the article. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Reverts the correction of wording of the crucially important orders. As WP readers can see from the documents, they were direct orders to "shoot" and "fire on" civilians, not "authorization to use lethal force," as he would like them to have been. He restores his fabricated language.

• It’s the same thing. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Restores the redundant reference to the rationale for the killings.

• Covered in main body of the article. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

N THE BACKGROUND SECTION

• Reverts an effort to correct the sourcing of a quote from the 25th Infantry Division to the 1st Cavalry Division.

• Which has been corrected. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Reverts an effort to tighten up an overly long section, to say the same thing in many fewer words.

• Well, that’s certainly your interpretation. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Restores misleading wording saying refugees were "moving toward U.S. positions" (as though they were some advancing military unit) rather than simply "streaming down the roads."

• That’s verbatim from the documents. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

IN THE EVENTS OF 25-29 JULY 1950 SECTION (Again, he explains none of this.)

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596207049

• Reverts an attempt to simplify and tighten the long first paragraph regarding pre-No Gun Ri events.

::::* Once again, that’s certainly your interpretation. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)	

• Removes a survivor’s statement that soldiers were shooting the wounded.
• Restores false statements that no air controllers were in the vicinity.

• There weren’t any assigned to the regiment … that’s a verifiable fact. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes statements from ex-soldiers discussing why they opened fire.

• Herman Patterson was not there, that’s been verified. Preece and Kern also stated that they were taking fire from the tunnel ….. I wonder what Mr Hanley didn’t include that in his version? WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Restores wordy, gratuitous detail about the battalion panic before No Gun Ri.

::::* Background is noteworthy and is only one paragraph.  WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC) 	

• Removes new statements from soldiers about opening fire on the refugee crowd under the bridge.

• Removes soldier Jackman’s statement that his company commander ordered them to "kill them all."

• That’s in the current article. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes the fact that three out of 52 ex-soldiers interviewed claimed there was gunfire from the refugees, the fact that other veterans questioned this, and the fact that there is no such reference to an encounter with infiltrators in unit documents.

::::* Interviewed by who? If you mean the AP, we’ll need additional verification because the AP has been documented misquoting individuals it has interviewed on this subject. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)	

• Removes a statement from a survivor about soldiers shooting babies, women and disabled people over three days.

• Removes a statement from an ex-soldier saying that to deny it happened would be a lie.

• Restores a false statement indicating the 1st Battalion was involved in killing refugees.

• Removes a statement from survivors who said they were rescued by arriving North Korean troops.

IN THE AFTERMATH SECTION (Again, no discussion, no explanation for his action.) (FYI, old section headings, which changed, are difficult to trace beyond this.)

−

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596211427

−

• Inserts a ridiculous statement that "the AP team could find no evidence of an investigation." No one, including the Army, found evidence of a 1950 investigation.

* According to … oh yeah .. the AP. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596223458

• With no explanation, removes references to two instances in which the official U.S. Army history supports statements by the survivors -- that there was no combat at the time and place of the killings, and the 1st Cavalry Division was in the area at the time.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596241739

• With only a lame rationale, again removes a reference to the fact that the Army had dismissed the allegations for years.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596242032

• With an explanation based on a false statement, removes the specific rationales given in the Army report for the shootings, three reasons that can be read as self-contradictory.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596242208

With nonsensical rationales:

• Removes the fact that only three soldiers spoke of gunfire from the refugees, changing it to "several".

• Removes the survivors' committee statement that the U.S. report was a whitewash, and removes a quote from their leader asking how could the killings have been carried out over 60 hours without orders.

• Removes a quote from U.S. investigation adviser Gen. Trainor laying blame on U.S. officers.

• Cites an incorrect source for a statement from the South Korean investigative report.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596244676

• With a nonsense rationale, again removes the fact the Army dismissed the allegations for years.

• Removes U.S. investigation adviser Gen. Trainor's statement that the investigation confirmed the news reports' central charges.

• Again removes three specific, contradictory rationales given for the shootings in the Army report.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=596256219

• In typical semi-literate fashion, inserts a pointless sentence about the unreliability of memories; includes a silly untruth about Korean survivors "remembering" soldier Daily at the shootings.

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=597417218

• The unreliability of 60 year old memories is very relevant to the discussion and was raised by the US army investigation and considering how the survivors remember an individual who was proven not tp be there, its especially relevant. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Inserts a sentence about Korean investigators declining to review aerial photos, but the material cited in the footnote carries no such information.

• Look again. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=597987257

Without explanation:

• Reverts an effort to restore logical order to this section by noting the Korean explanation -- that the bodies were under the bridge -- in the first paragraph.

• Which would have been impossible considering the US analyst could see nearly 10’ into the bridge. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes a soldier eyewitness statement that 200-300 bodies were piled up under the bridge.

• Not directly relevant to the aerial footage. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes these facts: the South Koreans suggested the aerial footage was not from stated date; the U.S. analyst worked with fourth-generation (i.e., fuzzier) copies; the U.S. analyst recommended a future process of certifying the integrity (authenticity) of aerial photos.

• Your attempt here is to imply the South Korean’s believed the reconnaissance footage was fake (not surprising they would make this claim considering how completely it undermines their narrative) and the US analyst agreed with them. The US analyst most certainly did not agree with this allegation and makes it very clear that he personally verified the footage he was looking at by comparing it to the originals. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Restores gratuitous background (Bosnia etc.) on the U.S. analysts.

• The background is not gratuitous, it explains to the readers what the qualifications and experience of the analysts is and why they were qualified for this kind of work. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Restores a false statement regarding U.S. fighting holes being intact. (Some were filled in, as reported by survivors, who said bodies had been placed in them.)

• according to the analyst, this isn’t true. The fighting holes were intact. Look at the source for this. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes local villagers' explanation of what happened to the massacre victims' mass graves.

• The local’s account is still in the text. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Reverts an effort to update the section on the 2007 excavation by citing post-excavation news stories, to replace uninformative pre-excavation sources.

• This section was updated … the excavations turned up nothing. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Removes a quote from an ex-soldier that "if you saw any Korean civilians in an area you were to shoot first and ask questions later." He doesn’t like this quote, and so he ludicrously claims the source, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, is "unreliable".

• The individuals name is not given and considering the sources well documented history of misusing sources, it needs to be given to properly evaluate it. WeldNeck (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

It should be more than abundantly clear that this is an all-out assault on the truth, and on Wikipedia's principles, by someone whose only interest is in suppressing as much as possible anything that puts the U.S. military in a negative light.

Thanks to Timothyjosephwood. Deletion is verboten, especially in this kind of situation. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

This material has been posted over and over again by Hanley (with fewer personal attacks upon me too I would add) and has been responded to. Hanley does not seek compromise or consensus on this article, he wants his POV to be the only one presented deposit what other reliable sources might add and more than anything he wants to see all content sourced to Bateman removed. That .. aint .. gonna .. happen.

However, since I am such a glutton for punishment, I shall endeavor to respond to all these points. WeldNeck (talk) 20:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Please do. Apparently GeneralizationsAreBad was also brought here from the ANI. Hopefully we can take this a point at a time. I will attempt to moderate as best I can. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 21:28, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that. WeldNeck (talk) 21:31, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

My God, I see here WeldNeck is pretending that his barrage of reverts -- and it's his method as well as his substance, or lack thereof, that's so highly objectionable -- is all perfectly reasonable. There is so much nonsense in what he says above that it would take many hours to demolish it all. Note, for example, how he says the service records of Hesselman and Flint conclusively say something. He doesn't have their records; the AP does. He's simply parroting nonsense fabricated by the truly terrible Bateman, the 7th Cavalry Regiment officer and apologist for No Gun Ri. I must sign off, but please, please, don't believe a word WeldNeck spouts. Charles J. Hanley 22:15, 26 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Its been reported in many reliable sources that Hesselman and Flint were evacuated with injuries before any refugees were killed. Would you like me to list them here? WeldNeck (talk) 01:32, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Feeble attempt at moderation 1

Ok, so we have to parse this out if we are going to do anything but endlessly debate. Posting pages long diatribes will not help in actually agreeing on individual edits. So we'll take it by as small a piece at a time as we can (what am I getting myself into). First difference challenged by Cjhanley:

"The massacre allegations were little known outside Korea until the publication of a series of reports in 1999"

vs

"The massacre allegations were little known outside Korea until publication of an [a disputed] Associated Press (AP) report in 1999"

The burden of proof here seems to be on Hanley. Was it in fact a series of reports or was it a single report? Did the AP break the story and others followed? Or did the same AP authors publish multiple reports based on the same research? Was the AP report a WP:FRINGE theory at the time that was followed up by no one? Or were they simply the first to publish on the matter? Timothyjosephwood (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Here is one of the problems with Hanley's complaints: he's not even complaining about the right thing. The text, as it exists in the article (added by me no less) is as follows:

"The massacre allegations were little-known outside Korea until the publication of a disputed Associated Press (AP) story in 1999"

That texts is nearly identical to the text he wants in, which makes me wonder, what is he even complaining about? WeldNeck (talk) 21:50, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Timothyjosephwood, you smartly were working from the top of my "litany of outrages," but that list was actually put together months ago. Why "AP" was ever removed by WeldNeck is beyond me, but I see that he restored it in order to insert "disputed." I very much appreciate your diving into this, and in a systematic way, but give me a day to review and update the list of WeldNeck edits. Alternatively, we could conduct an experiment, and you could watch while I try to restore purged facts and remove patently untrue material (with explanations), and we see how WeldNeck reacts. For the moment, I'm afraid I have to duck out for a commitment. Charles J. Hanley 22:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

If the story was covered in a "series of reports" by multiple sources, then whether one source is disputed is a moot point. One can easily find sources for the 9/11 attacks that are disputed, but the core of the issue is that the disputations are WP:FRINGE and the stories are WP:MAINSTREAM. So the original question stands. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Add what you like, but if it cant stand on its merits I will change it. WeldNeck (talk) 01:27, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

You are not the sole arbiter of merit and you do not WP:OWN this article. If either of these parties engages in unilateral editing in disregard of the discussion on this talk page, I will push for sanctions. Also, make an effort to remain WP:CIVIL, which both of you have had difficulties with. Ideally, I would like for one of you to convince me that your edit is the most correct according to WP standards, which I will try to elucidate since both of you seem fairly unaware. I would then like to recruit another third party to concur and make the edit. That way I'm not involved in any ensuing edit wars and I remain a third party in the case that sanctions are needed. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 01:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

My apologies, I misunderstood. If you like to update what you think is wrong then we can go from there. It seems appropriate that you list grievances as WeldNeck's suggestions appear to simply be the article as it exists. This is possibly due to WP:EDITWAR, but that's an issue for ANI. This isn't about punishing people for violating WP standards; it's about having a third party opinion on the individual edits. I await your list. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 00:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I will shortly post here a new section, "Fixing the article," stepping back, taking a breath and proposing possible ways to proceed, elaborating on what I suggested to Timothyjosephwood above. Charles J. Hanley 14:15, 27 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Fixing the article

I’ll propose below, for comment, a couple of alternative ways to proceed to fix No Gun Ri Massacre. But first ….

The recent interest shown by Wikimedes, GeneralizationsAreBad and, now, Timothyjosephwood presents a real opportunity to improve the article and bring it back to high WP standards. In the past couple of years, new sources have been published and there have been new developments, including a more settled estimate of the dead from South Korean authorities. They belong in the article.

But it will be a demanding task; there’s a hell of a lot wrong here. And, most of all, to fall back on a cliché, it’s essential not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. One big “forest,” clearly, is the way-out-of-line behavior of WeldNeck, not just at No Gun Ri Massacre, but Wikipedia-wide, as evidenced by the repeated warnings from other contributors, including many he simply deleted from his Talk page, as with Viriditas’s edit-warring warning at [[8]], and including Widefox’s observation [[9]] that he has engaged in “POV pushing on all the articles you have edited.” As said, one must go back in his Talk history to find the thousands of illicitly deleted bytes. Then recall his outrageous action of just two days ago, killing my posting here at NGR Talk, and his taunting “have fun with this” when he posted his frivolous bid for a topic ban at ANI. When you combine all this with his dozens and dozens of rapid-fire, unjustified, unexplained reverts at No Gun Ri Massacre, I think it should be clear this is a guy who cannot be trusted on anything.

The “trees,” the distractions, are the red herrings that WeldNeck and other denialists wave on No Gun Ri. (Before WeldNeck, there was an NGR denialist going by "Kauffner" who got banned for general mayhem around WP.) The denialists arose in the year 2000, grasping at anything to attack those whose research work exposed No Gun Ri and thereby made the U.S. Army look less than saintly. One of their problems, along with their blinding anger and their obtuseness about so many things, is that they’re stuck in the year 2000.

Since then, after long investigations, the South Korean and U.S. governments confirmed that the U.S. military killed the trapped refugees at NGR “by the effects of small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing”; it emerged that more than a dozen military documents showing orders to shoot civilians were suppressed in the U.S. investigation; a Harvard historian reported (in 2005) the discovery of a U.S. ambassadorial letter to the State Department warning, on the day the NGR killings began, that the Army had decided to shoot approaching South Korean refugees (another suppressed document); other media organizations, including the BBC, replicated and then advanced the NGR story beyond the original reporting; a government committee led by South Korea’s prime minister certified a minimal death toll, with identified victims; and the government built a large memorial park and museum at the site where the facts of NGR are enshrined in exhibits and informational material, and where a new, consensus death toll is accepted. This is the “forest” to keep in mind.

Other knowledgeable journalists and academics have looked to me to maintain integrity on this subject in WP and elsewhere, as a retiree with more time available to learn WP's basics and monitor things. But they and I literally haven’t had the stomach even to read the article for many months, so disgusted were we at the way one out-of-control guy was allowed to run roughshod over the truth, not to mention turn it at times into a semi-literate, illogical mess. I’ll swallow hard and read it now.

A couple of possible ways to deal with this problem:

• TimothyJosephWood, admirably, was willing to dig right in yesterday. He started from the top of my “litany” of WeldNeck’s unjustified reverts (a list done months ago but never posted until two days ago), and it turned out that first revert, a minor matter, had been remedied since I first noted it. A possible solution: I’ll compare my two lengthy lists of problems (from late 2013 and late 2014) and update them into one that lists problems that still exist. And Mr. Wood or others could then work from that. That might take me one day to prepare.

• Alternatively, I myself could begin making edits, and other interested parties could stand by and observe the reaction (and ask for better explanations from me or whatever). In that case, I might as well also assemble some of the new material and sourcing I refer to (to include new external links etc.). That might take me until the weekend.

• A third and most efficient approach: Restore the article to its mid-2013 status, salvage the truthful, useful material added since then, and add the new material.

In any event, interested parties with the time really should compare that mid-2013 version [[10]], with the current one. For one thing, it was 1,400 words shorter, and at 5,400 words could have been even tighter than that.

I hope timothyjosephwood, GeneralizationsAreBad and Wikimedes, in particular, are willing to continue to work to improve the article, and will let me know in which of these and other ways I can help. Many thanks. Charles J. Hanley 14:39, 27 May 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Mr Hanley’s solution seems simple: take all the work done on this article in the past two years and delete it, taking it back to a point in time where his perspective was the only one presented in the article. All other perspectives on this subject, with the exclusion of his own, should be removed. That’s not a viable option and certainly doesn’t adhere to the spirit of this project.

From the exchange yesterday, it should be evident many of his specific critiques are no longer valid and he is not staying current with the article in its present form. Hanley cant really quantify his issues with the article other than he doesn’t like it.

If you actually look at the history of the article, out of the dozens of edits I have made adding a substantial amount of information from Relabel Sources, very few have been reverts.

One of the reasons I like the anonymity of this project is I don’t have to worry about my real life being disrupted by my activities here, a luxury other historians who ran afoul of Mr Hanley haven’t been afforded.

He has called my place of employment, he has called my boss at work (to try and get my boss to stop my research, before I'd even published a word), he called and wrote to my editor to try and get the book stopped. He has called and written to my friends. He has sent historians who had the temerity to write favorable reviews of my book scathing letters causing great emotional distress

Considering he is currently trying to dig up information about me offline, this is rather troubling to say the least.

Even the title of this section is telling .. it assumes there is something fundamentally “broken” with the article in its present form and it needs “fixing”. The article currently considers all significant POV’s in proportion to their relative weight. Nothing “broken” about that. WeldNeck (talk) 15:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

As said, beware the red herrings and the nonsense, and let's get to work fixing the article. Cjhanley (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:42, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

WeldNeck, I have to agree on this. As I said to Cjhanley below, I don't care if one of you is literally Hitler. I am not assuming that there is something wrong with the article. I am recognizing that Hanley believes there is. If he can propose edits, supported by WP:RS, and you cannot offer an effective counter argument as to why the edit should not be made, then the edit will go forward. If this is not the case then the article will stay exactly as it is.

At the base of it, neither of you can claim WP:CONSENSUS if all you have is two people who disagree. That's why we are bringing others here. Either we will build consensus that the article needs changed and this will protect it against reversion, or we will build consensus that the article is fine and that will protect it against further changes.Timothyjosephwood (talk) 07:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I would be honored to help out with anything I can, but as of now, I am not exactly sure how I can contribute. I think the divide between how we all think "fixing" this article will work is the major challenge right now. I think the best thing we could do is lay out the ground facts that are accepted by all... if there are any. Timothyjosephwood, I thank you for your patience and help in all this, and I would like your opinion on what I could do to help. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 18:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

A brief WeldNeck primer (please do read)

(Let me try again on this, to clear up confusion)

One sometimes despairs of being able to explain to people who haven’t the time to see for themselves just how outrageous WeldNeck’s behavior has been on this article, and how, frankly, dim his thinking can be on this subject, and presumably on all others where he’s behaved outrageously. After reviewing his rapid-fire, no-reasons-given reverts of things he doesn’t like, I ask you to consider just these three, one of them nice and fresh:

• Just now, he deleted, without discussion, a brief sentence in the article summarizing the controlling laws of war on treatment of noncombatants, claiming it was “irrelevant” to an article on a mass killing of noncombatants. Truly. Take a look.

Its called WP:SYNTH ... do you have a reliable secondary source that discusses this? There wasn't one in the article so I removed it based on this. WeldNeck (talk) 19:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Here [[11]] he reverted a rewrite that sought to raise higher in the section on aerial photos the crucial fact that the 2001 South Korean investigative report, drawing on accounts from survivors and nearby residents, said bodies remained inside one tunnel, out of sight of airborne cameras. WeldNeck decided to bury that essential explanatory item low in the section. No discussion, no excuse. When Timothyjosephwood re-posted my litany of reverts last night, WeldNeck hastily wrote of this that the fuzzy aerial photo saw “nearly 10 feet” under the bridge, and what all those Koreans say is “impossible.” So, WeldNeck gets to decide, sitting in his underwear and anonymity somewhere, a half-century later, when and where we are allowed to hear from the South Koreans on this pivotal point.

The aerial photo wasnt "fuzzy", it was taken from 3500'. Even with 1950 era technology, the photo's offered good resolution as indicated by the NIMA analyst. With respect to the depth of view, here is what the NIMA analyst said:

No corpse or other objects on the railroad -- NIMA IA found no indications of human remains on the imagery. Of particular interest was the area of the railroad bridge; the obliquity of frames 32, 33, and 35 allowed the IA to look approximately 3 meters into the openings of the bridge arches on the upstream side and the area was found to be clear of debris or human remains

The angle of the photo allowed the analyst to see 3 meters into a 5 meter deep bridge. Is it Mr Hanley's assertion that several hundred bodies were stacked only in the 2 meter portion of the underpass that the camera could not see? WeldNeck (talk) 19:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

What!? As usual, you've got everything wrong. I'll have to find the precise dimensions, but those tunnels were, what, 120, 150 feet long. I have no idea what "5 meter deep" means. Please, WeldNeck, common sense. Charles J. Hanley 19:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

The tunnel is not 150' deep. WeldNeck (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

(Hanley again)

• Finally, here [[12]], Weldneck removed a key item on the extent of NGR casualties, a North Korean journalist’s 1950 report that proved a half-century later to be correct. No discussion, just WeldNeck's edit summary, “Are we really quoting a North Korean journalist?” And then, “Nork sources should not be used.” He seems not to have caught on to the fact that it was the U.S. Army that covered up No Gun Ri for 50 years, and the North Koreans who got it right at the time. (Expressing disbelief, he later also purged the article of tunnel survivors’ statements, sourced to a Korean scholar's new book, that NK soldiers rescued them. He apparently believes North Koreans don't rescue children, but eat them.)

Umm, correct me if I am wrong, but the account from the Nork "journalist" is still in the article, isnt it? WeldNeck (talk) 19:31, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

The point, obviously, is no thanks to you. Charles J. Hanley 19:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Please stop the personal attacks. It's not doing any good, and we all know that you disagree with each other. No need to criticize how "dim his thinking" is, or make snide remarks on what another user is wearing. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, GeneralizationsAreBad. I apologize if anyone's sensibilities have been ruffled. But I would sure like to see some indignation from other quarters, if only to ask WeldNeck to stop fooling with the article while others ponder how to improve it. Charles J. Hanley 20:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I fully agree that edits should be put "on pause" while we talk about it. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:09, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

The tunnels' dimensions: 24.5 meters long, 6.75 meters wide (each tunnel) and 12.25 meters high (from the 2001 South Korean investigative report). The suggestion that there was only a sliver of space left for hidden bodies in a minuscule (5-meter) tunnel, and so there weren't any bodies, is, to put it mildly, bizarre. This kind of uninformed, cherry-picking, nonsensical "theorizing" has been a staple of denialists from the beginning. For example, in an online piece that's unfortunately linked to at the article's end, an ex- or active military officer theorizes that there couldn't have been bodies stacked up under the bridge because the stream ran through there, and No Gun Ri villagers used it to do their laundry or somesuch, and so they wouldn't have tolerated the bodies. Wild, since this officer never was there and never spoke with any Koreans, and since the stream flowed not through the tunnel with bodies, but its twin tunnel. But she pushed the button knowing she had proven all those eyewitnesses, Korean and American, wrong! Charles J. Hanley 21:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

That still doesn't explain why the recon photos showed nothing .... who are we to believe 50 year old memories or our lying eyes. Regardless, the point is moot, this information and what it implies has been widely reported in reliable sources. WeldNeck (talk) 21:25, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Right. Three dozen South Korean survivors; plenty of ex-GIs, including Command Sgt. Maj. Garza, who saw 200-300 bodies in the tunnel; uninvolved No Gun Ri villagers who returned there to find "hundreds" of bodies down the road; at least two North Korean journalists who filed separate news stories from the scene; captured North Korean army documents reporting on NGR; 75 families who all celebrate their ancestors' death days on July 26; a 2005 South Korean prime ministerial committee report that confirmed a bare minimum of 218 casualties; and a government foundation overseeing the park/museum that estimates 250-300 dead, mostly women and children.... they've all got faulty memories that, miracle of miracles, all happen to coincide. But you've got (no, you don't; you've only heard about them) the half-century-old film frames that U.S. Defense Intelligence spliced into a roll purportedly from 8/6/1950 and that South Korean experts recognized immediately were highly suspicious and that led even the Pentagon analyst to recommend a more secure system of handling in the future. Frankly, the lady's laundry-day theory holds more water, so to speak. I know you won't listen to any of this, WN, but I write for the benefit of others, since the often incoherent "Aerial imagery" section is way overblown. Charles J. Hanley 22:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Other veterans on the scene have a drastically different recollection of events. I'm surprised you didnt mention Ed Daily, he had some pretty vivid recollections of that day. What about the Koreans who remember Daily being there that day? Are we supposed to believe their memories over documentation (that the AP couldnt seem to figure out) that proves Daily wasnt there? The fact still remains the only piece of physical evidence completely demolishes claims of hundreds of bodies and freshly dug mass graves. I could only imagine the Korean's seeing the footage and flipping their lids that it did not confirm what had been beat into their heads for years. Telling someone over and over what happened and then not being able to corroborate that with the physical evidence must have been tough, the cognitive dissonance must have been a bitch for them. The NIMA specialist verified the images he looked at matched the originals. Interestingly enough, the NIMA specialist wasnt given any background on what he was looking at, he was just told to find evidence of human remains, thereby removing any bias he may have brought into the process with him.

To the point, not one reliable source calls into question the authenticity of the photos. If I am wrong, please provide a citation that I can verify.

And being the only physical evidence from that day, I think the section could use significant expansion into its results. WeldNeck (talk) 23:20, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we need to set some ground rules

Please review Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, both of you. Cjhanley, I don't care if WeldNeck is literally Hitler. WeldNeck, the fact that one user launches a personal attack does not justify doing the same. Both of you please review WP:CIVIL. This isn't about the user; this is about the article. This isn't about grand philosophical arguments; this is about edits. Any discussion that does not directly propose an edit is not useful and will be ignored. It will probably be helpful if both of you propose edits to me or GeneralizationsAreBad, and simply refrain from talking to one another. You are not going to convince the other person here, but you may convince one of us.

WeldNeck, per WP:DR, please address any potential edits in the talk page and reach WP:CONSENSUS before adding the edit. If you do not, I'm pretty sure we have enough people here that we can just revert anything that you do. We will seek at least a ban for you on this page for WP:EDITWAR and the discussion will happily move on without you. This is at least your third warning. To be clear, from this point on I will personally revert any edit that you make on this page regardless of content or reference if you do not address it first on the talk page and reach consensus.

In case you don't know, all of these are links to WP policy and guidelines. There is a reason these are in place: because without them the discussion spirals into two years of useless debate and the article suffers. This will be done the right way. It can be done the right way with you or without you.Timothyjosephwood (talk) 23:49, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Now please propose a specific edit. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 23:49, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Lets expand the aerial imagery section to include more about what was and what wasn't found. This being the only physical evidence of the events is seems underemphasized in the article. Would you like specific language? WeldNeck (talk) 00:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

• I'd also like language added quoting some of the Korean survivors who claimed to remember seeing Ed Dailey. I can dig up a source for this. WeldNeck (talk) 00:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I would like specific language. Really, what I expect is for you to post the exact proposed edit here on the talk pages. See for example the multiple revisions of the conscription section we went through on the talk for sexism. We cannot judge the veracity of a hypothetical section. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 00:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to propose the ground rule that sources must be provided by the editor making a statement. Challenging the other editor to "prove them wrong" is belligerent and negates the point of sourcing. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 01:43, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

This is probably a good idea. This has gone on so long, and the two parties are so familiar with each other's sources, it seems the discussion often doesn't cite anything. This leaves me in the dark trying to grope around in the discussion history to find what they're talking about. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 05:27, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I would like Timothyjosephwood to take charge and not allow our friend to pour still more dreck into the article. Let me explain, as briefly as possible.

"Frustration" is hardly the word for what has gone on. For my own mental health, I had to stand back for a year or so and let WP readers be terribly misinformed and confused by the rank nonsense that has polluted this article. This was after some early attempts via ANI and elsewhere to bring WeldNeck under control, get him thrown off WP or whatever (and after still earlier attempts to reason with him, nice guy style). As said, the admins were, frankly, useless ("in over my head"). I'm probably not a good litigator, since someone did get the previous polluter, Kauffner, banned, for nonsense he was perpetrating elsewhere. Your appearance heartened me -- two or three sensible people who want to improve the article, and presumably recognize its importance. In fact, TJWood's suggestion of establishing the known basics and starting from there is, theoretically, a good one. I would favor starting an entirely new article. But WeldNeck is still here (I don't have the stomach right now to litigate), and I worry that he'll mislead you with his aggressive, sure-sounding b.s. I'm struggling to try to summarize the problems for you... Let me say this, for one thing, the article is incredibly bloated with material (guess whose) that is gratuitous and contradicted or flatly disproved by other material, other material that guess-who won't allow to be inserted (instant revert, w/o discussion). It's all mutual-cancellation and a terrible waste of words. The examples are numerous. Just a couple:

• He's got Buddy Wenzel saying there was gunfire out from the refugees; I knew Wenzel very well and he said just the opposite for years (on the record), until apparently influenced by another vet (known to me) or misquoted/misconstrued by the highly untrustworthy 7th Cav apologist Bateman (WN's source). The article only needs the statement that a couple of (unnamed) vets said there was gunfire out, but there's no concrete or documentary evidence for that.
• Stuck in May 2000, he insists on playing up this nonsense that witnesses Flint and Hesselman were "not at NGR." But the two guys (who'd been called cold by reporters, had had no contact with others for 50 years, and described the NGR scene and their place in it when asked a simple question about "any trouble with refugees") were so pissed off at this lie purveyed by Bateman that they released their medical records to reporters. The records supported the fact they were there (Hesselman, slight flesh wound, was never evacuated; Flint was evacuated after the initial refugee killings). A story was published to that effect nationwide. The Flint-Hesselman garbage doesn't even belong in the article, but as a compromise it was proposed to cite the knockdown story. WeldNeck reverted it. Consequently, you might actually believe these two wounded vets just made up the NGR story (like everyone else, according to our friend).

Just two of many examples. Let me quickly make two more points. Do you know why just now he says he wants to insert some fantasized survivor quote that the survivor saw Daily at NGR (the one ex-soldier who almost certainly was not there)? Because in his mind that demolishes the credibility of everybody who remembers this mass slaughter. What insanity. After years of official investigations, in-depth journalistic reporting, scholarly journal articles and books that confirmed the mass killing, can this article possibly need a bloated section discussing the vagaries of memory and this supposed woman who supposedly (?) spotted a particular big-nosed white guy from 200 meters away while she was ducking bullets?

My final point, a very important one, is that WN gets most of his nonsense from the Bateman book. I thought two years ago it was decided here that Bateman, the 7th Cav activist, was a grossly unreliable source and didn't belong in the article. So, I'm sorry, but I must ask you to take a minute and carry out a simple exercise, so that you, Timothyjosephwood, GeneralizationsAreBad and Wikimedes, can see instantly how deceitful that book is (Bateman didn't go to Korea, didn't interview Koreans and spoke with very few soldier witnesses). This is copied from a 2013 Talk archive:

---

What follows is an important example, but only one of dozens from Bateman’s book, of the distortions, misrepresentations, misreadings of military documents and (as in this case) outright fictions that he fashioned on the way to propounding baseless “theories” about the massacre. Here, from page 120 of his book, is how he purported to show there were enemy infiltrators among the refugees slain at No Gun Ri:

``There were guns, and these guns were collected, turned in to the company supply sergeant, and then passed through him to the battalion supply sergeant, finally working their way up to regiment. Soldiers from one of the nearby platoons collected a Japanese rifle and the Russian submachine gun during a subsequent sweep through the refugees and sent the weapons up through the supply channels, thereby giving some of the only documentary evidence that South Korean communist guerillas were among the South Korean refugees."

The footnote for the above paragraph cites ``S-4 (supply) Journal, 7th Cavalry Regiment, entry for July 28, 1950." But Bateman didn’t replicate the document for readers, or even quote from it, and he twice refused to share the “source document” when asked for it by the AP journalists who first confirmed the killings. The AP team subsequently obtained that S-4 log on their own. It’s at [13]. (Click a second and third time to zoom.) Anyone reviewing it with an honest, logical mind will instantly see the flimflam.

The 28 July 1950 entry – in the last sentence of the second paragraph – reads, with no surrounding context: ``Captured enemy equipment -- 1 Jap rifle; 1 Russian sub-machine 7.62mm." There's nothing saying who found these weapons, where, when or how. There's nothing at all to link them to the refugees or to guerrillas or to July 26 or to the No Gun Ri area or to the 2nd Battalion.

What ``nearby platoon"? What ``company"? What ``subsequent sweep"? This is all fiction. An irrelevant document was hijacked, and random weapons were arbitrarily attributed to imagined “guerrillas" at No Gun Ri, in apparent desperation to produce a central “finding” for a worthless book. There are many, many possible explanations for two weapons turning up in the Korean war zone in the last week of July 1950. One of them: The 7th Cavalry war diary shows ``two prisoners" captured 3 miles southeast of No Gun Ri, in another valley, on July 27. (In a final affront to the truth, Bateman’s use of ``some" implies there is other documentary ``evidence," but he offers none, because there is none.)

Does anyone want to defend this kind of claptrap as “reliable”? This example is blatant and easily comprehended. Many others are just as outrageous. Charles J. Hanley 22:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC).

---

Please do dig in, fellow contributors, but beware. Cjhanley (talk)

First, you continue to show your complete disdain for this process with the never ending personal insults. Secondly and more to the point all the material I have added is cited to a publication that meets Wikipedia's criteria for a reliable source. If you are going to opine about how Bateman is too "unreliable" to be used here, perhaps we should see what some other individuals have had to say about the AP's work

Jeffrey Grey, professor of history UNSW

On 13 May 2007, Janet Valentine wrote: "Among the myriad points of dissonance in the discussion of No Gun Ri are the different standards by which journalists and historians work."

It's perhaps worth just reminding ourselves as well of a point that Bob Bateman makes in the introduction to his account of No Gun Ri:

'It now appeared that the AP won the Pulitzer Prize for a story in which fully one quarter of its mentioned sources on this side of the Pacific had not been at No Gun Ri or were not members of the 7th Cavalry at the time, but who were nonetheless feeding the AP and other reporters what they wanted to hear. Even more damning . . . was the fact that several of the veterans they represented as having witnessed or taken part in what the journalists all but called a massacre said they were misquoted or that their words were taken out of context.' (p. xii)

My question is a simple one: given this, why should we be expected to have any more confidence in Mr Hanley's interpretation of events when he throws a few documents and bits of documents at us, than we can have from the sort of 'evidence' on which he and his colleagues placed so much weight originally, and which has been exposed as false?

(Dr) Jeffrey Grey Professor H&SS/ADFA

Historian Paul Westermeyer

I am not an expert on No Gun Ri, but this comment bring a larger historiography question to the point.

Whatever happened at No Gun Ri, it is no longer the province of journalists, but of _historians_. Journalism allows a margin of error that history cannot tolerate, the justification for that is that Journalism is immediate, there may not be time to gather all the facts on unfolding events. Moreover, Journalism is driven by sensationalism and scandal. The journalist looks for the 'scoop' and jealously hoards his sources against his fellow journalists. Journalism, constrained by time, tends to accept sources at face value, especially witnesses. And Journalists. Constrained by time and writing for an impatient audience, spend little time or effort on understanding the context of their story. They do not place it within the framework of larger events.

Historians, in contrast, are _not_ driven by immediate concerns. They can, and should take as long as needed to ferret the truth of an event. They are not deadline driven. Historians should not be driven by sensation or scandal, but by historical importance and relevance. Many 'sensational' stories are interesting, but they are not historically relevant. Historians do not hunt for the 'scoop', nor do they hoard sources (or should not). On the contrary, the more historians who examine a given issue, the better. Historians spend a great deal of time carefully examining their sources, _especially_ witnesses, and especially witness speaking long after the fact. And every historian must answer the question of context fully.

Anyone who has worked with veterans and oral history understands the ways in which war stories shift and then solidify into myth. Last year I interviewed some Medal of Honor recipients, these were all men who had been formally interviewed about these specific events many times. It was clear that they were reciting the 'Story', something honed, unintentionally, over the years through subconscious readings of what the listener found interesting or shocking. Our job would be easier if everyone possessed total, objective recall, but we do not. That is why history is difficult, and why journalism cuts that corner to save time.

Finally, as I mentioned I am no expert on No Gun Ri, but I attended graduate school with Bob Bateman. He is an extremely ethical, skilled historian and he would never attempt to white wash any crimes or scandals he discovered in the Army, or his regiment. Bob is not an 'apologist' for this event but he is a historian who demands, as we all should, careful attention to the sources.

Paul Westermeyer, Historian, History Division Marine Corps University

Now, lets get back to the brass tacks of working on this article and leave the personal insults and professional grievances for another forum. WeldNeck (talk) 15:14, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

(All I can say regarding that is that Westermeyer and anyone else should carry out the very simple exercise I prescribe above and then tell me about Bateman's ethics. Good grief. And, WeldNeck, if we're not to assess the reliability of sources here, tell me what other forum you're talking about.) Meantime: My apologies to the others for just now not directly addressing your earlier points in this section, but TJWood's very understandable feeling of groping in the dark made me feel I ought to at least try to summarize briefly one kind of problem plaguing the article: simple bloat, with gratuitous, sometimes moot material. (And another: Bateman proved himself a highly unreliable source.) I truly think starting over might be the best route, if painful and demanding. But short of that, I would suggest editing from the top -- while resisting any new unnecessary bloat. One necessary addition to the intro would be the current, updated official estimate of dead: 250-300, as cited at the government museum (source: Korean news story). Charles J. Hanley 15:27, 28 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

If I could, I would remove all Veteran statements sourced to the AP because of the source contamination they introduced with Ed Dailey. The fact that Daily contacted veterans of the 2-7 after he spun his yarn for the AP and in all probability convinced them into remembering his version of events remains very troubling. WeldNeck (talk) 15:42, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll be Captain Obvious here and remark that a main issue is the conflict between Bateman and the AP story. This is the very conflict that I initially tried to address with my first comment here, and I think it needs to be settled for good. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 18:47, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Both meet the WP:RS criteria and both should be used. Thats been my position from day one. There are obviously more verifiable holes in the body of the AP's work but with that said it still can be (and has been by me!) used in the article as a source. WeldNeck (talk) 19:01, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

GeneralizationsAreBad, I'll respond to yours below on the edits, but first I must say: I beg you, Timothyjosephwood and Wikimedes to perform the simple, two-minute exercise prescribed above, linking to Bateman's fraudulently hijacked document, to see, in easy, comprehensible fashion, how deceitful the man was in putting his "book" together. My colleagues and I assembled a 10,000-word demolition of that book, finding more than 100 jaw-dropping examples of how utterly untrustworthy the man is. His self-contradictions alone would make a serious scholar sick. (In fact, please do search the Talk archives for BW5530, a serious scholar who skewers Bateman in a dispassionate and informed way.) I will be happy to send our Bateman critique to you all. Just email me at cjhanley@att.net. Again, Bateman, a 7th Cavalry veteran and association activist, who vowed to get the AP for what it did (as quoted in the Wash Post), did not go to Korea, did not interview the surviving victims or any Koreans, and interviewed only four vets from NGR and didn't quote them on casualties or "kill" orders (one was Wenzel, who told us and others first he saw 75, then 200 dead on the tracks). I didn't want to get into this, thinking the Bateman sourcing was limited, or we could discuss it later. But, on the other hand, if you all take the time to examine this issue, I'm sure you'll see Bateman's a horror show and should be held unreliable, and considerable turmoil will be avoided later. Charles J. Hanley 19:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Greetings colleagues. I am a fairly experienced editor with some knowledge of the subject, and have been attempting to catch up on the vast reams of material that has been generated thus far. I have an initial suggestion, to seperate the Bateman issue from the overall discussion to improve the article. (From my reading of it, it could be in far worse shape than it is at the moment). I suggest Bateman be taken to the WP:RS noticeboard, so a wider consensus can be reached as to it's suitability. Also, I would urge Civility, and the Assumption of good faith, as has been urged several times in this complex and emotional discussion. Regards Irondome (talk) 19:49, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Bateman was brought to WP:RSN but there was little imput. Based on the reviews of his book there wasn't any criticism outside Hanley here on the talk page. WeldNeck (talk) 20:05, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I have just submitted a request. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I added the reviews I found from last time and thats all. WeldNeck (talk) 20:18, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposed edit 1

Starting with the intro section, and the first paragraph, I propose that we change the following (no refs in an intro):

The No Gun Ri Massacre (also referred to as the Nogeun-ri incident) occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (and a U.S. air attack) at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul, South Korea. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500; in 2005, a South Korean government report listed 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported, while the U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as "unknown".

References

Instead it should read:

The No Gun Ri Massacre occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, and a U.S. air attack, at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul, South Korea. In 2005, a South Korean government inquest certified the names of 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported. The government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated as of 2012 that 250-300 were killed, mostly women and children.

References

WP intros are to be tight and footnote-free. The word “incident” is tendentious, an effort to minimize a major historic event (the “My Lai incident”? the “Malmedy incident”?) With the estimate now established by the government-funded museum/park (the foundation, which of course will be footnoted in the body of the article), it’s time to relegate the early, widely varied estimates to the lower “Casualties” section. The Army's "unknown" of 2001 (it didn't investigate casualties) also belongs there, if in the article at all, since it adds nothing to our knowledge and was long ago superseded. "Inquest certified the names" is a more precise description.

"Incident" is another common, all be it less common, name for these events. Leaving only the south Korean estimate in the introduction to the exclusion of all other estimates starts the article off on a bad foot by minimizing other WP:RS's. WeldNeck (talk) 18:15, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

WeldNeck, is "incident" a common name for the event or is it used by a small minority of sources? What sources refer to the event as an incident? Are they numerous and prominent per WP:UNDUE. What are the other estimates and from whom? Why is the unknown estimate notable enough to include in the lead per WP:LEAD?

Cjhanley, try to remember to sign your comments. It makes it difficult to follow who is saying what. Are there other estimates that can be used besides Korean? You'll forgive me if I see Korean sources as being as suspect as American. They both have an agenda. Are there third party secondary sources? Timothyjosephwood (talk) 23:25, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Here's what I got, searching by exact words in quotation marks on Google and Google Scholar:

Google Scholar:

"No Gun Ri Massacre": 65 results

"No Gun Ri Incident": 63 results

Google:

"No Gun Ri Massacre": 5780 results

"No Gun Ri Incident": 1740 results

Just food for thought.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 00:12, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

When I search scholar for "Nogeun-ri incident" I get six hits. Two of them are duplicates. So it's really four hits and two of them are in Korean, so I have no idea what they are. I realize we're arguing about anglicizations of non-latin based words. You could make the same arguments on topics rooted in Arabic. Someone in the depths of the talk (no idea who) suggested that we include the name of the event in Korean. Maybe we could try to enlist someone on WP who speaks Korean to provide this and skip the whole debate? Timothyjosephwood (talk) 01:24, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, since the event took place in Korea, it's a good idea to have the Korean name in the first line of the article (I can't remember if it's "allowed", "recommended", or "required".) As GeneralizationsAreBad states below, inclusion of a name is more a matter of whether a name is used (commonly or in scholarly works) than whether the name is accurate or tendentious (we have articles on the Pig War and the Great Leap forward for example). I'll take a closer look later, but I'd like to skip a lengthy debate if possible, which can by itself take months.--Wikimedes (talk) 07:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• Is the strafing incident generally considered to be part of the No Gun Ri Massacre? Also, do most reliable sources agree that this strafing incident happened?--Wikimedes (talk) 07:57, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm late spotting these points/questions:

Strafing: Yes, it was the beginning of the carnage. And yes, of course, even the U.S. Army report said NGR refugees were killed by strafing. If you raise this question because you've been confused in reading the article's discussion of an air attack, welcome to the club. There's entirely too much pointless wordage on this, seemingly to raise doubts on something universally accepted.

Other estimates on casualties: Well, there was the North Korean reporter who counted about 400 bodies at the time; there was Command Sgt. Maj. Garza, who led a patrol through the tunnel and said he saw 200-300 bodies stacked up (others remember that patrol returning and talking about the heaps of bodies); and then the very early eyewitness estimates. But no other official estimates, except earlier SK government numbers that evolved into the 250-300 we can now cite.

On the Korean-language name for the massacre, I don't speak Korean but have learned that one Korean term used has sometimes been inadequately translated as "incident." I'm told by bilingual people that the Korean term is much weightier, signifying more an important event or episode. And, of course, they use a Korean term translated as "massacre." So, do we want both of those in the Hangul alphabet? Or leave it for now, as Wikimedes seems to suggest? Charles J. Hanley 18:43, 29 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Proposed edit 2

Still in the intro, moving to the second paragraph, I propose that we change the following:

The massacre allegations were little-known outside Korea until the publication of a disputed Associated Press (AP) story in 1999, containing interviews with 7th Cavalry veterans, some of which corroborated Korean survivors' accounts. The AP also uncovered orders to fire on refugees approaching U.S. positions due to the KPA's use of these groups to cloak troop and guerrilla movements. The United States Department of the Army conducted an investigation and, in 2001, concluded the three-day event was "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing", rejecting survivors' demands for an apology and compensation.

References

Instead it should read:

The massacre allegations were little-known outside Korea until publication of an Associated Press (AP) story in 1999 in which 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated Korean survivors' accounts. The AP also uncovered orders to fire on civilians approaching U.S. positions because of reports of enemy North Korean infiltration via refugee groups. The U.S Army conducted an investigation and in 2001, after years of rejecting survivors’ claims, acknowledged the killings but described the three-day event as "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing." It rejected survivors' demands for an apology and compensation.

References

Again, WP intros are to be tight.

• If the AP report was “disputed” in 2000, it was affirmed and vindicated by 2001 in two government investigations, and by subsequent journalistic and official inquiries – i.e., the reference is moot, and the NGR Massacre article doesn't hang on the long-ago, original AP report. (The "dispute" remains in the body, though way overblown.)

It was never affirmed and vindicated. Saying that over and over again doesn't make it any more true. WeldNeck (talk) 18:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The sentence describes how the massacre became known to the outside world, and this is not disputed, so I think "disputed" can be done away with in this sentence. However the report was found to be flawed in some respects and this needs to be mentioned (see my tweak below).--Wikimedes (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• The phrase “some of which” is gratuitous and illogical. When more than dozen ex-GIs backed up the Koreans’ story, it was corroborated, it happened, and that was the thrust of that story. It didn't say there was some "doubt" because some men we talked to didn't want to talk, told us to go to hell etc.

This is not gratuitous. Many of the veterans the AP quoted later turned out to be not present or testified to the IG they were misquoted or quoted out of context by the AP. Therefore it is more accurate to say that "some" of the veterans the AP interviewed corroborated the Koreans because they certainly all didnt. WeldNeck (talk) 18:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think a reader would assume that "7th Cavalry veterans corroborated" means "every single 7th Cavalry veteran corroborated". That some veterans recanted (and weren't there) is in my tweak below.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedes, No one "recanted" and only one GI, Daily, was most likely not there (though passing on essentially truthful, second-hand information). The lies are from the dreadful Galloway's story. Somewhere here (search "Hesselman") I explain that the medical records of Flint and Hesselman clearly back up the fact they were there during the bloodbath. Look, they got cold calls after 50 years in isolation and immediately described the event the way the Koreans did. They were there, period. (The Mad Reverter deleted that knockdown story, re the med records, from this article, and of course left in the lies.) As for "recanting," Patterson claimed he was misquoted as calling it a "wholesale slaughter." He did use the term, twice, in two different phone interviews. On video, he then talked about 300 being killed at NGR. Galloway claimed Kerns said he was misquoted. At a 7th Cav reunion later, Kerns slapped me on the back and said his beef was that his local newspaper headline called it a "massacre" and "I never said it was a massacre." That was Galloway's "misquote." (Jeez, how have I kept my sanity through all this?) Then Carroll complained that we interviewed him for two hours but used only a bit of it. That's the news biz, of course, and what we used was his confirming that the 2nd Bn, 7th Cav opened fire on those refugees. That was the news. NOBODY was misquoted; The Associated Press doesn't misquote people. And nobody recanted. Some of these guys recounted NGR to other media. Which leads me to a crucial point...

What is this focus on the AP of 1999 and what these two mendacious characters, the 7th Cav ex-roommates Bateman and Galloway (and, understand, Galloway knew nothing; Bateman fed him his cockamamy ideas), cooked up to smear honest journalists? AP got the ball rolling, but many other news organizations replicated and advanced the story, and the U.S. Army retreated and acknowledged what happened. This article's not about the AP and its tormentors but No Gun Ri. The single flaw in that long-ago story, Daily's second-hand info, doesn't even belong in this article. (Oh, wait, there was another flaw: we quoted a colonel as saying he knew nothing about NGR; he later told the Pentagon he witnessed it. Shall we go crazy over that???)

Anyway, the observation above was correct: Calling the AP story "disputed" in the intro makes it sound as though there's some doubt that the massacre occurred. It occurred. Do view the BBC documentary; it's very well done. Charles J. Hanley 19:17, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Cjhanley's suggestion "a dozen 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated" below works for me if others find "7th Cavalry veterans corroborated" ambiguous.--Wikimedes (talk) 08:12, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

IF the AP says a a dozen 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated the story does this include or exclude those who later stated the AP misquoted them or were found to not have been at No Gun Ri during the killings? WeldNeck (talk) 19:27, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• KPA? (Jargon peppers the article and must be removed).

Korean People's Army ... you like brevity. WeldNeck (talk) 18:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Acronyms that are used in the article should be spelled out at first use with the acronym following in parentheses: Korean People's Army (KPA). There's probably a specific guideline on this, but I think it's flexible with the overriding goal being understandability for the reader. Linking is similar. In general terms, I would favor spelling them out at first use in both the article and the body. I don't have a strong opinion on whether "North Korean Army", "Korean People's Army", etc. is used throughout the article, as long as it's clear to readers what is meant. Other than that, we probably have bigger fish to fry.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• The fact the survivors sought justice for years and were rejected by the U.S. is an essential element of the NGR story and should be in the intro. It was repeatedly removed from the intro and the body by one contributor, with no explanation.

They waited until after the statue of limitations for compensation claims was over. 18:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Charles J. Hanley 18:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

If "incident" is used significantly enough, then it should be kept in, I imagine. I can definitely see where you're coming from with "My Lai incident," but that's a question of WP:COMMONNAME. Since the Army's investigation was a major event in the fallout of NGR, I wonder if putting in a brief mention to their "unknown" is significant. "Enemy North Korean" is perhaps a bit redundant, and I wonder if there would be a way to condense "rejecting survivors' claims" and "rejected survivors' demands." On grounds of specificity, I think that "some of which" is necessary, even if it makes the intro seem wishy-washy. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Googling turns up 413,000 "No Gun Ri Massacre" and 1,740 "No Gun Ri Incident." The Army's "unknown" in the Intro was long accepted. But, really, it says absolutely nothing, it came before the serious death toll work in Korea, and it could be worked into the Casualties section below, although it might puzzle readers (Why "unknown"?). Come to think of it, sticking with "undetermined" in the first sentence of the Intro might be debatable. But I won't debate, and I won't debate keeping the strange "unknown" in the lead. I call the NKs "enemy" because that hasn't been established yet, i.e., who's fighting whom. Unsure re your "rejecting" query, but the survivors' claims were rejected as far back as 1960. The new "demands" were rejected in 2001. Could be made "denied survivors' demands." Charles J. Hanley 19:50, 28 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Whoops, missed the "some of which." I believe at some point the intro said something like, "an AP report in which a dozen 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts." That better? It seems our friend would want us to add, "... and 4,399 surviving veterans of the regiment did not, but the AP vows to find them all to achieve unanimity." To me, once a critical mass of corroborators is reached, that's the focus, not, as I said, the guys who wouldn't talk or said, "Hmmm... I don't remember. Goodbye." Or, and this is true, the ex-officer who said, "Er... I may have remembered that at one time, but I don't now.... Goodbye." That ex-officer later told the Pentagon interrogators he saw it all. Charles J. Hanley 20:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Sorry for not clarifying regarding "rejecting." I meant that these two facts might make more sense if they were grouped together into a single sentence. I think their placing is fine as it is now, I'm not sure what I was thinking. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 20:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Mr Hanley, to the best of my knowledge the AP team has never been able to substantiate which veterans they accurately quoted and who were actually where they said they were when they said they were there.

Not to beat a dead horse, but here's an example

At 1st Cavalry headquarters, division commander Maj. Gen. Hobart R. Gay was told South Korean refugees were killed by North Korean troops in a crossfire at No Gun Ri, the division information officer recalled. “I think that’s what he believed,” said Harold D. Steward, an ex-colonel from San Diego.

Steward, for the record, is a retired Lieutenant Colonel and told the IG he was different from what the AP reported:

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Steward told the U.S. Review Team that he was misquoted; what he said was there were confirmed reports of civilians killed in crossfire throughout the Eighth Army sector. He did not specify areas where these incidents might have taken place. Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Steward stated that he never said that civilians were killed at No Gun Ri in a crossfire.

Mr Hanley, was Steward one of the dozen veterans you claim corroborate the AP's version of events? WeldNeck (talk) 20:34, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

'Neck, I've told the others I can't possibly respond to your nonsense point by point. Calm down, and ponder the possibility that a retired colonel (and LTCs are colonels) might dissemble when hauled before Pentagon interrogators investigating a war crime. I will say this, and you can consider this the answer to any similar nonsense you raise: The Associated Press doesn't misquote people; NOBODY was misquoted in its No Gun Ri reporting, no matter what they may have said after the explosive headlines hit the streets and they regretted talking, or were coached or had their words twisted by 7th Cav apologists; many are on videotape. By the way, in the end (by the time their book was published) the journalists had 26 ex-GIs confirming NGR, and the Pentagon an additional nine. That's over and out for me for the day. It's my wedding anniversary. At least my wife loves me. Charles J. Hanley 20:57, 28 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Cjhanley, what book? Spare a thought for the uninitiated. Please cite things you are referring to. Also, where is the vindication in 2001 coming from? Assume I am an idiot. Shove the sources in my face.

WeldNeck, your first quote seems to be WP:CHERRYPICKING, and taken out of context. You appear to be quoting an article that is completely about the event, in order to cast doubt on the event. Your second quote seems at best irrelevant to your argument, and at worst to argue against it. If there were civilians killed throughout the sector, doesn't that add credence to the killing of civilians generally? Timothyjosephwood (talk) 00:23, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps this:

The massacre allegations were little-known outside Korea until publication of an Associated Press (AP) story in 1999 in which 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated Korean survivors' accounts. The AP also uncovered orders to fire on civilians approaching U.S. positions because of reports of enemy North Korean infiltration via refugee groups. Although some of the interviewed Veterans were later found not to have been present at the massacre, some veterans later recanted their testimony, and some of the details are disputed, the account of the massacre was found to be essentially correct.

The U.S Army conducted an investigation and in 2001, after years of rejecting survivors’ claims, acknowledged the killings but described the three-day event as "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing." It rejected survivors' demands for an apology and compensation.

My comments on the specific points are threaded into the points. I think a sentence on the flaws in the AP report, but it's basic correctness, is needed here. Also the army report would probably be better in the next paragraph.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• Was "because of reports of enemy North Korean infiltration via refugee groups" part of the (or another?) AP report? If not the sentence should probably be reworded.--Wikimedes (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I really have no opinion one way or the other, but thanks for contributing to the discussion and proposing a third party edit. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 05:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I think a good compromise would mention the dispute, but also mention that the basic facts were confirmed by separate investigations. Thanks for the proposal. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 13:50, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

We need to define what the basic facts are before we state they were confirmed by separate investigations. WeldNeck (talk) 19:29, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Let me address the questions above:

Timothyjosephwood, the book is The Bridge at No Gun Ri (Henry Holt and Company, NY, 2001). I'll be glad to fedex a copy to any of you. As I told Irondome below, I'll also immediately send you the 2010 article from the academic journal Critical Asian Studies, which details the Army whitewash report of 2001 and can serve as an NGR primer, if you'll email me off my user page, or at cjhanley@att.net. Re "vindication": The U.S. Army rejected the Korean survivors' petitions for years, even said the 1st Cavalry Division (7th Cav's parent) wasn't in the area; in 1999, the AP found ex-GIs who were involved and who described the mass killing, corroborating the survivors' accounts in general and in many details (AP also found "kill" orders from the war front); in 2001, the Army (and the SK Defense Ministry in a separate report) reversed itself and acknowledged that the 1st Cav (i.e., 7th Cav) killed the trapped NGR refugees, concluding, “…it is clear, based upon all available evidence, that an unknown number of Korean civilians were killed or injured by the effects of small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing.”

Wikimedes asks, "'because of reports of enemy North Korean infiltration via refugee groups' part of the (or another?) AP report?" Yes, of course. The rationale was stated very high in the story. Also high in the story was a quote from ex-soldier Patterson, "It was assumed there were enemy among these people."

Also, somewhere here I believe TJWood is suggesting a line that includes something like "several AP witnesses weren't there." This is absolutely untrue. Only one, a fellow named Ed Daily, apparently wasn't there (even that isn't 100-percent clear, but we can't get into that). WeldNeck has poisoned this article with the garbage about Flint and Hesselman. As I think I've pointed out, those two guys' medical records made perfectly clear they were there (they were not medically evacuated, at all for Mr. H, not until after the initial killings for Mr. F). That fact was reported in a nationally distributed report, but WeldNeck deep-sixed that fact and citation from this article. (Sheesh! I think some of you have awakened to what's going on, but Irondome needs to catch up.) Daily's having essentially truthful but second-hand info is a truly minor sideshow, but one the denialists have seized on as a smokescreen for other garbage. Daily appeared in the 56th paragraph of the AP story, something like the 7th of 9 GIs quoted.

I think I should post the original AP story at my user page, or here at Talk. That's the very minimum any editor tackling this article should read. Thanks.

Oh, someone asked about the Tinkler article. I'll find it. Charles J. Hanley 14:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Cjhanley Only one, a fellow named Ed Daily, apparently wasn't there (even that isn't 100-percent clear, but we can't get into that).

Wow ... did I just read that right? Are you stating there is a possibility (that naturally you cant get into) that Daily may have been present?

With respect to Hessleman and Flint, this has been gone over but it bears repeating.

The daily "morning report" from H Company, 2nd Battalion, obtained from the Army’s Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, shows that Hesselman was transferred from No Gun Ri on July 26. The July 27 morning report, typically filed at 8 a.m. each day, places Hesselman at the 15th Medical Clearing Battalion, some 25 miles away from No Gun Ri. The morning report is considered the most accurate record of where and when a soldier served. The H Company morning report for July 27, 1950, states that Hesselman was transferred on July 26 after sustaining an unspecified wound during a small-weapons skirmish with North Korean forces.

According to the 7th Cavalry’s war diary, reviewed by U.S. News, Flint was transferred on July 25 from No Gun Ri, more than a full day before the alleged massacre. War diaries were updated sometimes days after events, typically at the regiment level, and can be inaccurate. Asked about the apparent discrepancy between the 7th Cavalry war diary and his statement to the AP, Flint told U.S. News, "My memory is not so good."

In fact Hesselman's memory is so compromised, he actually remembers seeing Ed Daily at No Gun Ri: "I know that Daily was there, I know that. I know that."

For the record, Daily was as important as he was because he was the first "veteran" the AP spoke to who stated Captain Chandler ordered them to open fire. Chandler was supposed to tbe the Lt Calley of the AP's opus. WeldNeck (talk) 19:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposed edit 3

I propose that we change the following line:

Norman L. Tinkler, an H Company machine gunner remembered firing on white-clad people coming down the railroad tracks toward the bridge, including "a lot of women and children.” He stated that he had fired roughly 1,000 rounds and assumed "there weren't no survivors".

References

Instead it should read:

Norman L. Tinkler, an H Company machine gunner, remembered firing on the refugees as well believing the group to be harboring North Korean Troops. Tinker stated he was not under orders to fire but did so recalling an incident from the prior day where North Korean infiltrators had disguised themselves as refugees and attacked.

References

Tinkler has given multiple statements on how much he fired and how long he fired for. Because of this, I would like to remove reference to that and only concentrate on what he has not provided contradictory statements on. WeldNeck (talk) 18:32, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

WeldNeck, we're trying to take this in some sensible order, from the top. Let's leave poor Tinkler alone for now. Charles J. Hanley 18:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

No, I like this order better. WeldNeck (talk) 18:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Galloway says that Tinkler stands by his statement. If necessary, we could say "Tinkler reported he fired at least [x rounds] for at least [y time]." I would support including more of the detail from Tinkler in the original version that doesn't deal with shooting, since he hasn't apparently contradicted that part. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:27, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Galloway in general, please be aware of something. As noted on page 44 of A Century of Media, a Century of War (Lang, 2006, New York) by Robin Andersen: "… The truth of the incident did not rely on one faulty memory of war. Other evidence and testimony provided ample proof that a massacre took place. Only later was it revealed that the attempt to discredit the story came from the military affairs reporter at U.S. News & World Report, Joseph Galloway, a member of the veterans group opposed to the story." Also, from page 19 of Truth Claims: representation and human rights (Rutgers University Press, 2002, New Brunswick), in an essay by NYU historian Marilyn Young: Galloway's US News article "neglected any discussion of Korean witnesses or the general orders of the day: 'No refugees to cross the lines. Fire everyone trying to cross lines.'" What she's saying is that Galloway, disgracefully, didn't tell readers there were Korean survivor witnesses who told the same story as the ex-GIs Galloway was struggling to discredit, and didn't tell readers there were orders flying across the war front to shoot civilians. Does that sound to you like a reliable source for this article? He later left the magazine. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 16:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

I cant find the Kansas Star article, and the other two links seem to be broken. We're going to need to provide sources before we start asserting whether Tinker made conflicting statements or whether he stood by his word. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 01:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I've posted the KC Star article at User:Cjhanley/KC Star Tinkler article, Timothyjosephwood and GeneralizationsAreBad. But, guys, why do this "rabbit trailing," to use TJW's phrase? Tinkler's quotes are decidedly tertiary. There are various quotes from Tinkler from various media. He says he machine gunned a lot of people; he says he doesn't remember orders; that's because everybody was shooting; other guys, closer to the company commanders etc., remember orders ("Kill 'em all"). I don't get the Tinkler thing 'Neck has foisted on you. Let's deal with the intro section, then the next section etc., no? I'm sorry I know so much and you know so little, but what am I supposed to do? Charles J. Hanley 14:39, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

WeldNeck proposed an edit, and I offered my input. We can get to everything in due time. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 15:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, thanks for posting sources. It saves us all a lot of trouble. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:05, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

ummm

Jesus. I have been reading back on this conflict for over an hour, and I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I can't tell is Hanley is a subject matter expert and neck is a wingnut, or Hanley is a bleeding heart too close to the story and neck is just a rational dissenter. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 11:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I am picking up the latter at this point. After over four hours of reading the arguments and counterarguments. I still have no POV on this, but WP is not a mouthpiece for AP, and dissenting voices must be heard. I am concerned especially by the copious use of oral testimony which appears in several cases to have been repudiated by the original source. I would suggest a removal of all oral testimony from the article, as they cannot be counted on as WP:RS, especially if they are subsequently disputed. I would further suggest this article be completely rewritten by editors who are not so "involved", professionally or emotionally. Irondome (talk) 23:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

A rewrite would be messy, but I'm prepared to roll up my sleeves. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 23:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Me too. Irondome (talk) 00:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:TIND, let's wait and see where this goes. Remember, this is talk, not ANI. We should be evaluating sources, not editors. Timothyjosephwood (talk) 02:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Irondome, I'm afraid you're misreading things horribly. TJWood is trying to ringmaster a rational assault on improving the article, and so I am trying to refrain from "personal attacks" (although how can someone who (Personal attack removed) suffer from personal attacks, since nobody knows who he is?). But since this article can only be further damaged by editors coming in truly innocent of what has been going on, I implore you to look at the "Reader Beware" section here [14], outlining WeldNeck's technique of blitzkrieg reverts. To top it off, he immediately deleted that section from Talk. You see, (Personal attack removed) .

Secondly, you've said you know something about No Gun Ri. How did you learn about it? Have you read the book The Bridge at No Gun Ri, which is the definitive story (up until 2001), written by the journalists who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize? I can't get the book to you instantly, but I can send you a lengthy article from the academic journal Critical Asian Studies that in 2010 meticulously detailed the elements of the Army's 2001 whitewash report on NGR, if you will email me off my user page, or simply at cjhanley@att.net. That article, in passing, gives one a very good picture of the basic NGR story. (and that article is now posted at User:Cjhanley/Critical Asian Studies article, Irondome.)

• I would welcome any new material from both of you gentlemen. I would certainly study it with keen interest. I already note some links have been thoughtfully posted by Mr. Hanley. I would certainly welcome any additional material. I certainly have no intention of making any significant edits until I have fully appraised all new material and the frankly vast history of the disputation. Regards, Simon. Irondome (talk) 19:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC) That's very good to hear. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 19:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

(Back to Hanley)

Finally, you have to be aware as you proceed that No Gun Ri denialists, spewing falsehoods, slandering the Korean victims, slandering the "yellow journalists" who exposed NGR, have been active on the Internet since 2000. They're simply (Personal attack removed) The previous one on WP, going by "Kauffner," got banned.

It's getting a little tiresome being told to lay off the "personal" stuff, when I'm being told so by people who haven't bothered to read up on the facts and who seem to think there's some equivalence between the professionals who did the hard work for years on this subject, and an anonymous serial reverter (at many other articles as well) who somehow has escaped being shown the door. Thanks! Charles J. Hanley 13:33, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:NPA: "The prohibition against personal attacks applies equally to all Wikipedians. It is as unacceptable to attack a user with a history of foolish or boorish behavior, or one who has been blocked, banned, or otherwise sanctioned, as it is to attack any other user... Often the best way to respond to an isolated personal attack is to simply ignore it... editors are encouraged to disregard angry and ill-mannered postings of others when it is reasonable to do so, and to continue to focus their efforts on improving and developing the encyclopedia."

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 13:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Synth (?)

The following sentence -- while undoubtedly true -- violates WP:SYNTH:

Although established international laws of war, such as the 1907 Hague Convention, held belligerents responsible for the conduct of their subordinates,[49] Clinton later told reporters, "The evidence was not clear that there was responsibility for wrongdoing high enough in the chain of command in the Army to say that, in effect, the government was responsible."[50]

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 23:58, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Yep. The next question is: when a reference is found that contains this factual information, what should the proper NPOV wording be? The question after that is: when half the article is made up of short, factual, well-referenced, relevant, implicit (or explicit) criticisms of the US Army and US Government, how can one make the article read like a neutrally-worded encyclopedia article instead of a piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism?--Wikimedes (talk) 04:28, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

You've hit the nail on the head. I think a complete review for wording would help. I'll do my best to work on it.GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 13:26, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

A few citations still needed

I read through the article a few times and found a few things that still need citations. You guys seem to be working on multiple things at once now, and the tags will still be there when you get the bandwidth to deal with it.

Collapsed description of citations needed. Please delete the hatting when you’re ready to tackle it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I found citations for the first two, but the article might be better without the sentence cited in the first one and a page number is still needed for the 2nd one. I’m not sure about the 3rd one so I didn’t tag it in the article. 1) Picture caption: “Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans fled south in mid-1950 after the North Korean army invaded. North Korean forces used the refugee crisis to cloak the movement of infiltrators and guerrilla forces.” Although there is supporting evidence for the second sentence elsewhere in the article, such a blanket statement should have its own citation. I found support for this in the US No Gun Ri Review Report and reworded accordingly. The first sentence can probably remain without citation. Alternatively, I think this picture would be fine without the second sentence. Also I don’t see any evidence that there were NK infiltrators in this group of refugees, so it might be better not to mention NK forces in this picture’s caption. 2) Picture caption: “North Korean snipers dressed in the white garments common among refugee groups being searched and interrogated by American and South Korean troops in early August of 1950.” Page number needed. (I copied the citation information from the Wikimedia picture page, but there was no page number listed for the US No Gun Ri Review, and pictures are not included in the Wikisource copy of the US No Gun Ri Review.) Page # 71. WeldNeck (talk) 15:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC) 3) “During the Battle of Taejon later in mid-July, hundreds of North Korean soldiers, many dressed in white to disguise themselves as refugees, infiltrated behind the lines of the U.S. 24th Infantry Division and played a crucial role in the defeat of the 24th at Taejon. The battle resulted in the capture of Major General William Dean, the conflict's highest-ranking prisoner of war.[5] “: Is the first sentence covered in citation 5? (It looks like it is, so I didn’t tag this in the article, but it would be good to be sure). 4) “At the war’s outbreak, the United States declared it would abide by the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions' articles regarding protection of civilians during wartime.[24]:113 The Hague Convention and the U.S. Army's own contemporaneous Rules of Land Warfare manual said that belligerents must distinguish non-combatants from combatants and treat them humanely.[27][28]” Secondary sources are needed for the second sentence. (On an unrelated note, it’s a bit jarring for the first paragraph of the aftermath section to be about things before and during the massacre. Smoothly incorporating the “legal framework” (which I believe used to be its own section) into the article is tricky business, so it might take some work to come up with a good solution.) 5) “In 1994, the U.S. Armed Forces Claims Service in Korea dismissed one No Gun Ri petition by asserting that any killings took place during combat. The survivors' committee retorted that there was no battle at No Gun Ri,[33] but U.S. officials refused to reconsider.” Did US officials even respond to the survivor’s committee’s “retort”? A secondary source describing the officials’ refusal is needed. Or is this also in the Victim’s Review Report cited later in the paragraph?

--Wikimedes (talk) 00:48, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Good points. I can and will certainly help, but as you note I think we've got a number of balls in the air. In fact, if we can restore a section-by-section process here, perhaps you could raise each of the above in the appropriate section? Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 15:52, 29 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

Posted articles should help greatly

I have posted at User:Cjhanley/Critical Asian Studies article the extensively detailed and sourced 2010 article on No Gun Ri from the scholarly journal Critical Asian Studies. While examining the irregularities of the U.S. Army investigative report on No Gun Ri (and also citing the South Korean report at times), it also introduces the reader to the facts, the gaps and the nuances of the No Gun Ri story. I highly recommend it to anyone editing this WP NGR article.

As noted, I also posted at my user page the KC Star article on Tinkler.

If anyone wants to see any other source material from No Gun Ri Massacre, please ask. I'll email it or post it as needed. Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 15:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks very much, this is helpful. Where might I be able to find Sahr Conway-Lanz's "Beyond No Gun Ri?" After a lot of looking, I've been unable to find the whole thing. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 18:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, I've found some more articles which may or may not be helpful:

"A War Crime against an Ally's Civilians: The No Gun Ri Massacre," by Tae Ung-Baik, published in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. (Volume 15, Issue 2, Article 3 -- 1-1-2012)

"No Gun Ri Incident: Implications for the U.S. Army," by Moo Bong Ryoo, published by the United States Army Command and General Staff College.

"Silencing Survivors' Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story?" by Suhi Choi, published by Michigan State University Press in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2008, pp. 367-388.

GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 18:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Choi is here: User:GeneralizationsAreBad/Choi GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:20, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Moo Bong Ryoo is here: [[15]]

Tae Ung-Baik is here: [[16]] GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:23, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Cliff notes on No Gun Ri

Irondome,GeneralizationsAreBad, Wikimedes, Timothyjosephwood, I just realized the easiest, least painful way to ground yourself in the No Gun Ri story is to watch the BBC's excellent documentary on No Gun Ri, here [[17]]. Jeremy Williams' online accompanying BBC report is here [[18]] German ARD television also did another very good hour-long documentary, here [[19]]. That, I believe, is the first link of five, the film having been split up for some reason. The links are all there in the right-hand column at YouTube. Charles J. Hanley 16:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the best backgournd source I have found is this paper from Dale C. Kuehl. He provides a most reasonable reconstruction of the events beginning on page 73 but the whole paper is worth a read if you are interested. WeldNeck (talk) 16:50, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Kuehl, who was helped with documents by AP, is an Army guy with a clear protective bias (not reckless and dishonest, like Bateman, but an honest guy looking for the best interpretation of things). Secondly, his master's thesis (not a usable source on WP, one thought) is outdated, as I think GenrealizationsAreBad noted previously, as well as misleading and uninformed. Outdated because the discovery of the Ambassador Muccio letter, reporting a theater-wide policy to shoot approaching refugees, came three years later. I won't belabor; if anyone's interested, I can point out further problems. (Of course, he didn't go to Korea, didn't talk to victims etc.) Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 17:52, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I wince at throwing out sources, but are master's theses truly not usable on WP? Some of the background did seem helpful, but we can always source it from elsewhere if need be. GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 19:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I saw such a "rule," but one probably observed more in the breach. Maj. Bong's thesis, which you retrieved, takes, as I recall, a more forthright approach than Kuehl. (They both were studying at the Command and General Staff College.) The Sahr Conway-Lanz article in Journal of Diplomatic History, which won some kind of annual award from diplomatic historians, is very important (and led to his book, Collateral Damage). It's probably not available online, but I'll risk arrest and post the relevant section at my user page. Charles J. Hanley 19:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC) Ah, spoke too soon; I have only hard copy of Conway-Lanz. If I can figure out a way to scan bits and post, I will. Charles J. Hanley 19:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)