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Chapter Ill, Reading 7 Impunity Training in hand, a torturer then requires direction or at least "permission" from a superior to put that training to use. If they thought they would be admonished or disciplined for their actions, few torturers would take the risk. In an atmosphere of impunity, however, almost anything goes. In The Winter Soldier Investigation, by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Lieutenant jon Drolshagen described just such an environment during the American occupation of Vietnam. Coupled with the horrors Drolshagen was experiencing in the war itself-horrors that left him "hardened," in his own wordsthe setting was optimal for the infliction of cruelty. I was a prisoner ofwar interrogator. I was in Vietnam from '66 to '67. Being an interrogator the way I was, you definitely don't win hearts and minds. I've heard about these "Bell Telephone Hours," where they would crank people up with field phones. I guess we did them one better because we used a 12-voltjeep battery and you step on the gas and you crank up a lot ofvoltage. It was one of the normal things. I'll give a little background. I started out in Vietnam as a platoon leader, seven months in the field doing little fire fights, killing people, etc. You get a little bit hardened, I guess. You become a super-hawk or whatever you want to put it at. Mter a while, people in my unit were a little bit weary of going out in the field with me. I started enjoying killing people a little bit more than you're supposed to, I guess. Even for the United States, I guess you can like it too much. I was taken out of there and put in the civic action. The basis of the civic action is to win the hearts and minds of the people , propagandize them to our way of thinking. We're supposedly building schools for them, getting medical aid to them, food and clothing, all the nice things that you can think of that you would want to do for people that are ''less than we are" so we can bring them up to our standardswhich is amazing for a country that's been there an awful lot longer than we have. Instead ofdoing this type of thing, we had a major that enjoyed doing other types of things. We worked more as an intelligence unit to gather information for our brigade and division. My area was from the city of Tay Ninh, the Tay Ninh province, down to Phu Cuong, which Cu Chi bisected.24 A little bit north of that is another village that we had commandeered, some head honcho's hootch,25 which is a big place-you keep your beer cool in it-and where we could carry on interrogation without outside people knowing what was happening. Drolshagen, The Winter SoldierInvestigation 133 There was another lieutenant and a major there that was an adviser to the Vietnamese battalion down there. There were Vietnamese officers, enlisted men, and NCOs26 and American officers, enlisted men and NCOs that were present for the wiring of prisoners. You could take the wires of a jeep battery (it's a tremendous amount ofvoltage), put it most any place on their body, and you're going to shock the hell out ofthe guy. The basic place you put it was the genitals. There were some people who really enjoyed that because people would really squirm. The maJor that I worked for had a fantastic capability of staking prisoners , utilizing a knife that was extremely sharp, and sort offilleting them like a fish. You know, trying to check out how much bacon he could make ofa Vietnamese body to get information. Prisoners treated this way were executed at the end because there was no way that we could take them in to any medical aide and say, 'This dude fell down some steps," or something , because you just don't get them kind of cuts and things like that. That was our basic way ofgetting the information that we needed from prisoners, suspects or whatever. These people were not taken in to the 25th Division headquarters, which is stationed in Cu Chi. These were utilized out in the ARVN areas.27 We would go back into base camp at night, and being red-blooded American like we were, we'd go down to the Officers Club and get blasted and talk to people. So...

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