There is one American atrocity he did report (for about three
days); The Killing Fields, the movie that’s based on his story, opens
by describing it. What’s the one report? American planes hit the
wrong village—a government village. That’s an atrocity; that he
covered. How about when they hit the right village? We don’t care
about that.
Incidentally, the United States’ own record with POWs has been
atrocious—not only in Vietnam, where it was monstrous, but in
Korea, where it was even worse. And after WW II, we kept POWs
illegally under confinement, as did the British.
World War II POWs
Other Losses, a Canadian book, alleges it was official US policy to
withhold food from German prisoners in World War II. Many of
them supposedly starved to death.
That’s James Bacque’s book. There’s been a lot of controversy
about the details, and I’m not sure what the facts of the matter are.
On the other hand, there are things about which there’s no
controversy. Ed Herman and I wrote about them back in the late
1970s.
Basically, the Americans ran what were called “re-education
camps” for German POWs (the name was ultimately changed to
something equally Orwellian). These camps were hailed as a
tremendous example of our humanitarianism, because we were
teaching the prisoners democratic ways (in other words, we were
indoctrinating them into accepting our beliefs).
The prisoners were treated very brutally, starved, etc. Since
these camps were in gross violation of international conventions,
they were kept secret. We were afraid that the Germans might
retaliate and treat American prisoners the same way.
Furthermore, the camps continued after the war; I forget for
how long, but I think the US kept German POWs until mid-1946.
They were used for forced labor, beaten and killed. It was even
worse in England. They kept their German POWs until mid-1948. It
was all totally illegal.