Posted on 09/25/2018 5:32:26 AM PDT by SJackson
Reflecting on an untold story -- to honor National POW/MIA Recognition Day
Editors’ note: Last Friday, Sept. 21, 2018, our nation, led by our president, solemnly marked National POW/MIA Recognition Day, during which we honored all American prisoners of war and expressed our deep gratitude and respect for what they endured and -- as empirical evidence suggests -- in some cases may very well be continuing to endure. Indeed, we pay tribute to those who never returned -- and, of course, also to their suffering families. In honor of this sacred day, Frontpage has deemed it important to run Jamie Glazov's article, Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam from Breitbart's Dec. 8, 2016 issue. We hope that our leadership and citizens will take serious action on this issue. We will always remember and we will never forget.
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Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam.
By Jamie Glazov
The death of communist tyrant Fidel Castro has yielded much-deserved coverage of the monstrous nature of his tyrannical rule.
What has gone virtually unreported, however, is the direct and instrumental role Castro played in the torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The story of Castro’s atrocities against American soldiers in this conflict is rarely ever told, least of all by our mainstream media.
During the Vietnam War, Castro sent a gang of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” As Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley have documented in their book Honor Bound in a chapter entitled “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” one of the primary objectives of this “program” was to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human being could withstand.
Castro selected American POWs as his guinea pigs. A Cuban nicknamed “Fidel,” the main torturer at the Zoo, initiated his own personal reign of terror. He was described in documents based on POW debriefings as “a professional who was trained in psychology and prison control in Russia or Europe.”
Among Fidel’s torture techniques were beatings and whippings over every part of his victims’ bodies, without remission.
Former POW John Hubbell describes the horrifying ordeal of Lt. Col. Earl Cobeil, an F-105 pilot, as Fidel forced him into the cell of fellow POW Col. Jack Bomar:
The man [Cobeil] could barely walk; he shuffled slowly, painfully. His clothes were torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black and purple from head to toe. The man’s head was down; he made no attempt to look at anyone. . . . He stood unmoving, his head down. Fidel smashed a fist into the man’s face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of black rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the man’s face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. His failure to react seemed to fuel Fidel’s rage and again he whipped the rubber hose across the man’s face. . . . Again and again and again, a dozen times, Fidel smashed the man’s face with the hose. Not once did the fearsome abuse elicit the slightest response from the prisoner. . . . His body was ripped and torn everywhere; hell cuffs appeared almost to have severed the wrists, strap marks still wound around the arms all the way to the shoulders, slivers of bamboo were embedded in the bloodied shins and there were what appeared to be tread marks from the hose across the chest, back, and legs.
Earl Cobeil died as a result of Fidel’s torture.
Maj. James Kasler was another of Fidel’s victims, although he survived the torture:
He [Fidel] deprived Kasler of water, wired his thumbs together, and flogged him until his “buttocks, lower back, and legs hung in shreds.” During one barbaric stretch he turned Cedric [another torturer] loose for three days with a rubber whip. . . . the PW [POW] was in a semi-coma and bleeding profusely with a ruptured eardrum, fractured rib, his face swollen and teeth broken so that he could not open his mouth, and his leg re-injured from attackers repeatedly kicking it.
Castro’s reign of terror against American POWs in Vietnam was just another grotesque reflection of the communist dictator’s barbarism and sadism. After the end of the war, U.S. investigators launched a manhunt for the Cuban program torturers. In the midst of their hunt, investigators cataloged over 2,000 Cubans who were in North Vietnam during the late 1960s. Unfortunately, officials failed to positively identify the torturers at “the Zoo” at that time.
Today, some evidence suggests that some of the Cuban Program torturers may be living in the United States. The investigations and pursuits of these monsters continues – and it is never too late, we may hope, with Donald Trump entering office, to bring them to justice. But it will require intense effort on our part. It is the least we can do for Lt. Col. Earl Cobeil, and for all those who shared his torment and pain at the hands of Fidel and his communist monsters.
Trump should go after McCain’s tormentor. I always thought it should be the Trump Doctrine. Any harm comes to any American will be punished in kind. They know who this guy is. The Vietnamese can confirm it.
Followup to yesterday’s POW thread.
Look I understand there are a lot of Vietnam veterans on this board.
I appreciate what you went through, I get it. I was nearly old enough to be drafted for the war. It was a huge, terrible mess. A lot of people died, on all sides.
I get that.
But I feel Vietnam is a special place. I really do.
I have huge concerns about China, and about the people who have been deindustrializing America by building up China.
China is a real threat to us, globally, and I am glad finally, Trump seems to get that.
But Vietnam is not, in my view. I have now lived here (in southern Vietnam) for two years.
I do not think Vietnam is a threat. I think we need to keep improving the relationship between America, and Vietnam.
Just my opinion.
I’ve been a FReeper for a long time.
Vietnam is a special place.
No doubt Obama raised the issue with his idol Fidel when he visited him. “Gee Uncle Fidel, tell me the story how you tortured those mean ,bad white guys in Vietnam”.
Bookmark
Joking- right?
McCain was eating lobster and boning whores when he was a POW.
The abandonment of our POWs in Vietnam and Laos is McCain’s legacy. He owns it.
Thanks. Shiite, never knew this. Good God, it’s awful.
Friken communists should be shot on sight.
Find them. Hurt them.
Does that mean Colin K needs to stop wearing his Che shirt / S
The guy endorsed by Colin Kaepernick.
Thanks for the ping. I had heard of this, but not the details.
Thanks for responding.
I understand your feelings. I really do.
However, I have found Vietnam to be a surprisingly nice, very positive place.
I was quite surprised. I came here thinking I would make a stop, while travelling through Asia.
Three months, I thought.
Instead I found this place almost exactly what I was looking for.
Now understand, this is not a good place to come for pick-ups. But it is, almost exactly, completely a good place for a serious relationship.
Just understand that to me, Vietnam is surprisingly a very nice place for an American. In the entire two years I have been here, I have encountered exactly TWO people who seemed to have a thing against Americans.
Two.
I have never before encountered such a universally supportive population, anywhere.
Ever.
Now maybe I will become more cynical at some time in the future.
But right now, I am almost entirely positive about the place.
With one note: you should not use a real cell phone on the street.
They will be snatched. I know, they will.
But other than that, this has thus far, anyway, been creating for me a very surprisingly good impression. I was quite pleasantly surprised.
Much better than what I expected.
Highly recommend two term congressman Bill Hendon’s book, “An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia”. His book is a good point of departure for additional research on the subject.
Our Indy Civil Air Patrol Squadron was named after Col James H Kasler.
His daughter is a successful designer.
suzannekasler.com
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