This photo depicting the execution of Viet Cong soldier Nguyễn Văn Lém by South Vietnamese officer Nguyễn Ngọc Loan in Saigon on Feb. 1, 1968 became a symbol of the Vietnam War’s senseless brutality and helped turn American sentiment against the war. However, while the photo does indeed depict a sudden, violent, summary execution, few realize that Lém was no innocent civilian or even a prisoner of war, but instead a guerrilla terrorist who had just been caught murdering the wife, children, and 80-year-old mother of a South Vietnamese officer, a friend of Loan’s, by slicing their throats.
Eddie Adams/Associated Press/Library of Congress
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