On this day in 1968, a platoon of American soldiers brutally kill between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a cluster of small villages located near the northern coast of South Vietnam.
During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops frequently bombed and shelled the province of Quang Ngai, believing it to be a stronghold for forces of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, or Viet Cong (VC). In March 1968, a platoon of soldiers called Charlie Company received word that Viet Cong guerrillas had taken cover in the Quang Ngai village of Son My. Led by Lieutenant William L. Calley, the platoon entered one of the village’s four hamlets, My Lai 4, on a search-and-destroy mission on the morning of March 16. Instead of guerrilla fighters, they found unarmed villagers, most of them women, children and old men.
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The soldiers had been advised before the attack by army command that all who were found in My Lai could be considered VC or active VC sympathizers, and told to destroy the village. Still, they acted with extraordinary brutality, raping and torturing villagers before killing them and dragging dozens of people, including young children and babies, into a ditch and executing them with automatic weapons. The massacre reportedly ended when an Army helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks.
The events at My Lai were covered up by high-ranking army officers until the following March, when one soldier, Ron Ridenhour, heard of the incident secondhand and wrote about it in a letter to President Richard Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and various congressmen. The letter was largely ignored until later that year, when investigative journalist Seymour Hersh interviewed Calley and broke the story. Soon, My Lai was front-page news and an international scandal. In March 1970, an official U.S. Army inquiry board charged 14 officers, including Calley and his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, of crimes relating to My Lai. Of that number, only Calley was convicted. Found guilty of personally killing 22 people, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Upon appeal, his sentence was reduced to 20 years, and eventually to 10. Seen by many as a scapegoat, Calley was paroled in 1974 after serving just one-third of his sentence.
Bad Intelligence, bad orders, bad judgement; the trial and punishments sure didn’t follow the example we set for the world at Nuremberg.
The so called village was full of VC and VC sympathizers .Did you not know that Calley and his platoon had been in that area for weeks getting their asses shot off.W ho the fuck do you think was firing on them.They were probably were just sick and tired of the God Damn Enemy being protected .Just like in this country.You know who the enemy is ,you know where they are and whose protecting these treasonous son of a bitches.Its frustrating watching here in America .I can only imagine what it would be like for Calley and his men.
200 to 500 civilians .You mean after all these years they still don’t know how many UNARMED CIVILIANS were killed .Give yourselves a fucking break.
So, according to your version WO Thompson is guilty of treason. Nice to see that what passes for a brain in your head is still as diseased as ever. You forgot to drag the eevull joos into it, though. You’re slipping, bb.
I take it you don’t know what treason is.
And know little or nothing about the situation in Vietnam either.
One thing I learned there real quick like is that anyone on the side firing at you and not trying to flee it is considered an enemy, armed or not.
My Lai was an enemy village, an enemy stronghold that actively supported, aided, protected and harbored the enemy we were at war with.
Ed ,go fuck yourself .I put you right up there with the other people on this site who are too damn stupid or lazy to do a simple Google search.
Or just don’t want to since they know it would work against them.
BB, you weren’t there, and neither was I. Therefore you’re spouting off your opinion of it, not telling the side of the men who were there. That’s what you get for Googling it.
In place of “search and destroy,” substitute the phrase “sweep and clear.” Got it?
first they draft you, send you to a rice paddy in bumfuck. then court martial your dumb ass. if you survive, a lovely welcome home. blame every ill on the dumb fuck trooper who failed to memorize the rules of war.
Ya’ know, I got used to the left hating me after I got back from Vietnam, but they finally forgave me and even did so publicly.
But what hurts to the core of my soul, and it really, really hurts, is how the right has turned against me and my fellow VV’s now.
And they were the ones that drafted me and sent me there in the first place.
Was with 2nd Bn 5th Marine Reg, Danang, ’70-’71. It was a shit deal in that we knew it was no more than a holding action and nobody wanted to be KIA in a lost cause. We took some casualties but nothing like the guys who served from ’66-’69. For us it was all about staying alive for 13 months.
I was blessed to have a platoon leader who saw it the same way.
Hugh Thompson the chopper pilot just died. He lived a humble life in northern Georgia and never crowed about his heroic deed that terrible day. As for the massacre, stop these stupid fucking wars that put our soldiers in kill or be killed situations while TPT Shouldn’tB) roll in war profits.
I was there for the 68 Tet offensive, the counter offensive and the Mini Tet’s.
I would never dream of sitting down next to a women 8 months pregnant in the August heat and say “I know how you feel Darlin”.
When you’ve been shot at from 50 ft. by someone you can’t see and are required to call in to get permission to shoot back. When 2 little boys blow themselves up with plastic while trying to blow you up. When you go without sleep or food while on your feet moving around for 3 weeks twice. When you see Westy dining with Raquel Welch in the light of a patio and you’re heart and guts and balls ache so bad you cry inside. When someone at the airport tries to gently tell you the back of your dress blues are full of white Hippie spit. When 45 years later that same liberal hippie wearing birkenstocks extends his faggy hand and says “THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE”. When your family is ashamed of you. When you are treated like a freak at the VA Hospital and made to get Evaluated by a Shrink just to get medical services. When you no longer have anything to believe in and you fall into booze and drug induced self pity laying in the gutter with you pants full of shit and you piss yourself just for the warm feeling. When your down to 100 pounds with no teeth in a dark parking lot trying to suck someones cock for a drink or a hit. When you cry your heart out wondering what the fuck is wrong with you. Then we can talk about Cally.
Our kids coming back today are just as messed up. Them I talk to.
I never took a dime of “their” crazy money for that, never wanted it. Most of us are dead or so far into the Va Psych Machine they may as well be. A concious clearing limp wristed thank you for your service is insulting but using it to clear the decks for the misery we are inflicting on people from Turkey to Burundi in the name of democracy and fighting TERROR
will earn us Gods Wrath.
Just my opinion though, right? All opinions are equal right?
On the bright side of it. Its the first time I ever agreed with or had a Warm Fuzzie for Anonymous.
++++++
Anymore, when someone says “thank you for your service” I simply say Fuck off in a soft calm voice
The thing about Vietnam to me is that it doesn’t matter if the VC played by the rules of war, or what side the non-combatants were on. It was their country. No American really gave a fuck about Vietnam. What impresses me, 40-50 years later is that the Vietnamese seem to harbor no ill will toward us. Today we get along fine. I know Americans who are still pissed at the Japs over Pearl Harbor. Really? Pearl Harbor was an attack on purely military installations. Warning or not, the ships and airfields were completely legitimate targets. If America were in Vietnam’s position, then or now, I can’t imagine any forgiveness whatsoever. Maybe it’s their buddhist morality.
Zarathusa.
I always appreciate your comments because you seem to be an honest sincere thinker so I would like to explain a few things out of respect.
We did give a damn about Vietnam and the Vietnamese and saving their and our democracy in late 67 when I arrived. We didn’t know Tonkin Gulf was a false flag. We also didn’t know the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor and Korea were false flags. We also didn’t know that Ho Chi Minh was our man on the job until we threw him under the bus after WWII to please the French. We never new the entire Media was in on the scam. We never new that Lady Bird J was making a killing on weapons sales.
I assume that Lt. Cally and his crew arrived about the same time as me. Most of us were under 21 and had just fallen off a Norman Rockwell calendar. We went to church but had no working faith of any sort to fall back on. In march of 68 TET had died down and we had time to rest and sort some things out. The demoralization that set in when we realized that everything we believed in was a lie is difficult to put in words. The anger and desire to strike out at something was strong but me and my buddies didn’t find ourselves in a situation where we could do what he did. Those Vietnamese still alive do indeed still harbor ill will but like my buddies, not many are still around and the ones that are can’t let it eat them because life is hard over there and they don’t issue self pity checks and food stamps to junkies.
We are just as brainwashed now as we were then but now we have no excuse to be. By apologizing for Vietnam we allowed ourselves to give a wink and a nod to the America the Great Rah Rah bullshit we are doing today. It allows us to pretend we aren’t funding and protecting ISIS and to deny that we have wiped 3 large countries off the map because some out of work camel jockeys flew 2 enormous hard to fly 747’s into some buildings in OUR country. It allows us to Blame millions of towel heads invading us and Europe on Radical Islam or that Russia caused the problems in Ukraine and invaded Crimea.
Antony Sutten has put out some good work on WWI and WWII with lots of documentation since you bring up WWII. Seperate from his work did you know that the Brits and Soviets and US intell all broke the Jap code way before pearl harbor and we are to believe nobody told FDR. It allowed Stalin to remove Divisions from Manchuria where they were fighting the Japanese and send them to fight the Germans.
I can’t change what happened to me or my buddies but I can control how I deal with it and how I use the info I have gathered in my effort to at least find some of the truth. When all else fails “Follow The Money”.
We had NO BUSINESS being in that country AT ALL. There is no need for any discussion about the legality, appropriateness, or necessity of anything that was done in that country because EVERYTHING was a war crime. If you don’t get that, then you don’t understand what America has been about for the past 75 years (at least).
MrLiberal
We got it and we get it. Shallow thinking closet Queers like you don’t Get It! Churning out narrow minded cute sounding cliches?
What needs to be discussed but never has been is why Pussies like you from an earlier generation crucified us while letting the bankers, politicians and media off free.
You are the reason “We” don’t want to talk about “It”. You are too in love with your intellect and the sound of your keystrokes to bother with.
Please tell me what we got out of Vietnam – aside from 50,000+ dead US soldiers, 3+ million dead Vietnamese, 1+ million dead in each of Cambodia and Laos, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, massive debts, and ultimately the rise of capitalism in Vietnam that could have been achieved with open and honest trade rather than bullets. Sad that you support mass killing based on lies (yes, the Tonkin Gulf incident NEVER happend – well documented), all for the financial profits of big banking and the arms industry. We murdered Diem, we murdered countless others, we ran heroin to the US for the CIA aboard Air America cargo planes. We left millions of innocents dead, mutilated, and our land mines continue to kill even today. Hundreds of thousands of men and children continue to suffer the effects of Agent Orange and other horrible chemicals we dumped on these countries, and the ignorant masses continue to believe the lies of the government when it comes to blindly supporting the wars that profit Wall Street while killing off Main Street. I get it. I also know that tens of thousands REFUSED to fight, went to Canada, and otherwise protested this atrocity. I also know that tens of thousands WILLINGLY volunteered to fight and condemned those who refused to. I NEVER let the worthless government, the bankers, Wall Street, or the media off the hook. Today, those same lying sacks of $#!t continue to bamboozle the gullible into more and more wars, and despite thousands of web sites proclaiming the truth, still can’t manage to figure out that THESE folks are the REAL enemies of America, not some goat herder 10,000 miles away.
Typical Twinkie Queer tactics. Turning what I said around to save Your Gay pride.
Maddow and the girls on The View taught you well.
Flea, I want to take the time to say, I appreciate what you went through. By the time I turned 18 in ’73, the war was over. I signed up for the draft but that was it.
I had expressed dismay at what happened to the neighborhood kids who I had watched as the younger kid. They played baseball in the Sears repair outlet parking lot in front of our apartment row with shared backyard and bathroom and shower on the end.
A couple of the old ladies there lost a son in the war. Doña Juanita had an old patrol flashlight in the small pile of junk outside her back door. Old lady Luz never said anything about her boy that didn’t come back.
Anyway, in case I fuck with you about other things, it has nothing to do with this. I’m glad you made it.
Coyote.
Thanks. Feel free to mess with me all you want. I’ve seen your stuff and you seem to be an honest thinker and if nobody challenges me I better worry.
If I was trying to say anything in all that verbiage its that idealistic young men who have had half their soul ripped out are capable of doing horrible things that follow them forever and I resent moralizing pussies giving sermons about it.