Replies to post #407618 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Charles G Boyd, retired Air Force general and POW. I kept thinking how well any POW was doing in living to Boyd's 83. What an experience that would have been. Kept thinking that until reaching your bold

"But as he saw it, “the defining experience” of his life was the 2,488 days he spent in confinement in North Vietnam, where he was tortured and beaten at prisons including Hoa Lo, a notorious detention center that American POWs nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton.
For about 18 months, he occupied a cell next to a young naval officer, John S. McCain, and got to know the future U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate by communicating through a series of coded taps on the wall, which POWs used to share stories and information."

Had to be a defining experience. Then, it's always good to read of a marriage saved. Well done to them both there. He looked like a decent guy



and proved his wisdom in 2016 when he voted for Joe.

[brooklyn13]

The man flew 88 bombing missions over North Vietnam. I forget, N. Vietnam attacked America, when?

Why is he not considered a war criminal - why is he celebrated as some sort of hero? What about all of the dead Vietnamese civilian non-combatants he killed?

It's cool to repeatedly bomb a small, basically powerless, country in Asia that posed no threat to America? And did nothing (Gulf of Tonkin hoax notwithstanding), to deserve being attacked? Accomplished killers get medals for this?

The Nuremberg trials pretty conclusively rejected the defense of following orders as a legitimate defense for killing civilians.