The perpetrators of the My Lai massacre went virtually unpunished. The symbol of the maassacre, Lt. Willima Calley was pardoned by Richard Nixon and didn not serve one day in jail for atrocious crimes.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/21/my-lai-massacre-49-years-later/ Quote:It is these two words, “National Shame,” that continues to hide the truth of what really happened in Southeast Asia.
... This is what the U.S. Military did on that day on March 16, 1968. I use the word “We,” because our taxes paid for the massacre, and our ignorance about the war wrote the check. Among the dead were a hundred and eighty-two women, seventeen of them pregnant. A hundred and seventy-three children were executed, including fifty-six infants. Sixty older men were also murdered. The museum at My Lai, includes the accounting of another important fact: there was another village located about a mile away from My Lai 4, called My Khe 4, that U.S. soldiers from Bravo Company on the same day, also committed atrocities. So, 407 were murdered at My Lai 4, and 97 were murdered at My Khe 4, for a total of 504 Vietnamese civilians. It also must be noted, that there were twenty rapes committed, not to include attempted rapes. I have chosen not to go into detail about how those executions were committed, or the torture and extreme suffering that was committed by American soldiers under Pentagon command. This butcher shop mentality would be extremely difficult to read and comprehend by most people. I will say this, and it is a quote from Larry Colburn, who was a door gunner on Hugh Thompson’s helicopter that landed on the ground during the massacre, and attempted to stop the killing. These are Larry Colburn’s words: ” The only thing the U.S. soldiers did not do was cook them and eat them.”
In order to understand WHY these two massacres were committed on March 16, 1968, a synopsis and history of what happened in Quang Ngai Province during the war would be helpful for the reader. I came across an article written on October 2, 1994, by award winning author, and Vietnam veteran, Tim O’Brien. The title of the article is: “The Vietnam in Me.” These are his words: ” In the years preceding the murders at My Lai, more than 70 percent of the villages in Quang Ngai Province had been destroyed by air strikes, artillery fire, Zippo lighters, napalm, white phosphorus, bulldozers, gunships and other such means. Roughly 40 percent of the population had lived in refugee camps, while civilian casualties in the area were approaching 50,000 a year. These numbers, reported by the journalist Jonathan Schell in 1967, were later confirmed as substantially correct by Government investigators. Not that I needed confirmation. Back in 1969, the wreckage was all around us, so common it seemed part of the geography, as natural as any mountain or river. Wreckage was the rule. Brutality was S.O.P. Scalded children, pistol-whipped women, burning hootches, free-fire zones, body counts, indiscriminate bombing and harassment fire, villages in ash, M-60 machine guns hosing down dark green tree lines and human life behind them.
... I have personally known many Vietnam veterans who were destroyed by their experiences in Vietnam. At least four of my friends died from Agent Orange exposure, to include my brother-in-law. One died from a head on car collision, one died homeless on the streets, and two hung themselves. It does not surprise me that more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in Vietnam. According to the Veterans Administration, one veteran commits suicide every hour in this country.
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