You act as though this is the first time someone has delved into the national archives and dug up a story. Please…

However, this is a pretty pathetic form of bean counting if you ask me. Something tells me that you read through my comments and couldn’t find any real argument to make so you went ahead and picked the most obvious choice: faulting me on some technicality.

Pretty rube-ish behavior if you ask me. From your sign-off, however, it’s clear that your coming to accept your intellectual malady. That’s a good thing. Acknowledgment is the first step towards a cure my dear rube.

Signed,

Rob the rube…

Let’s mull over again the choice of words here: “earth-shaking”; “long suppressed”. In regards to the events themselves within the records, no there not all that “earth-shaking”. But when you think about the events in Korea, I find it hard to believe that most Americans even know about or care to know about such events. In other words there not public memory. American atrocities in WWII and Vietnam are pretty well known. Korea? It’s called the “forgotten war” for a reason. I think thats what Hanley’s trying to do with his stories.

Furthermore, I think the fact that he’s utilizing gov’t and official documents to flesh out his stories is rather telling. Yes there are secondary source material as well as journalistic accounts from that time. But never before has anybody gone and corroborated those events with primary sources. And when you consider this with how long it took for these documents to see the light of day, I’d say that’s a pretty significant finding that is definitely newsworthy.

On CNN they recently did a segment about newly released Nixon White House tapes. In airing a story about that was CNN trying to rehash Watergate? When scholars were going to the former USSR’s archives to pore through documents about the Stalin and Krushchev era to corroborate assumptions and theories are they attempting to rehash what everybody already knows?
Check out this Ann Applebaum piece to get a gist of what I’m trying to convey:

http://www.slate.com/id/2204549/

I think that GI is missing the point when he criticizes Hanley. As he’s shown, there is indeed a record of atrocities committed in Korea by ROK and US forces. However, when was the last time they were found in GOVERNMENT FILES open to the public? It’s not the crime itself, it’s the paper trail.

As for me “hijacking” this thread by bringing up the subject of Woo-Cumings, all I can say is that it’s bullshit. I brought up BRUCE Cumings and in their maladroit way “Mark” and “Rob” said something inane about his wife that was begging for a shoot down.

That paragraph is a fine addition to the discussion – and I actually mean that with no sarcasm. That is a discussion, not a stir of the pot for no good reason or load of insults…

On the points made, news is about what is new and needs to be known. Regardless of that, Hanley and the AP are dishonest in this train of stories, because they work to give the reader the impression that — they discovered something earth-shaking. Something never heard of before – worse: something long suppressed.

When it isn’t. GI Korea has done a pretty good job over time showing and explaining the dishonesty.