User:Cjhanley/Detailing editorial attack on NGR Massacre

The following was originally posted to Talk:No Gun RI Massacre in May 2015

Reader Beware
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).

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; 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.

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 this article. Charles J. Hanley 19:32, 22 July 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.
 * Removes the fact that the Army had rejected the survivors' claims for years before finally having to acknowledge the killings in 2001.
 * 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.
 * Restores the redundant reference to the rationale for the killings.


 * IN THE BACKGROUND SECTION
 * Reverts an effort to correct the sourcing of a quote from the 25th Infantry Division to the 1st Cavalry Division.
 * Reverts an effort to tighten up an overly long section, to say the same thing in many fewer words.
 * 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."


 * 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.
 * Removes a survivor’s statement that soldiers were shooting the wounded.
 * Restores false statements that no air controllers were in the vicinity.
 * Removes statements from ex-soldiers discussing why they opened fire.
 * Restores wordy, gratuitous detail about the battalion panic before No Gun Ri.
 * 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."
 * Removes the fact that only 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.
 * 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.
 * 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
 * Inserts a sentence about Korean investigators declining to review aerial photos, but the material cited in the footnote carries no such information.


 * 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.
 * Removes a soldier eyewitness statement that 200-300 bodies were piled up under the bridge.
 * 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.
 * Restores gratuitous background (Bosnia etc.) on the U.S. analysts.
 * 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.)
 * Removes local villagers' explanation of what happened to the massacre victims' mass graves.
 * Reverts an effort to update the section on the 2007 excavation by citing post-excavation news stories, to replace uninformative pre-excavation sources.


 * diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri_Massacre&diff=next&oldid=598011950
 * 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".


 * Charles J. Hanley 19:32, 22 July 2015 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)