This day in history... (warning: graphic photo)

March 16, 1968



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/mylai.html

My Lai Massacre

"On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the village of My Lai. "This is what you've been waiting for -- search and destroy -- and you've got it," said their superior officers. A short time later the killing began. When news of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves through the US political establishment, the military's chain of command, and an already divided American public."

snip


"As the "search and destroy" mission unfolded it soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly. Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports offered after the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped, and then killed. For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire."

Or would we be kept abreast of the Michael Jackson trial instead...

I don't know if we'd hear about something like this today. It would probably come out eventually but I'm not sure anyone would pay attention.

....although I hope and prayer nothing will ever be like My Lai ever again.

if and when we ever learn it

:cry:

so many people SEE the daily Iraq violence on TV and say "What's wrong with that?"

the TORTURE PHOTOS were laughed at and called 'frat pranks'...and nobody much cared...


the SHOCK AND AWE, as we killed massive numbers of Iraqis, was CHEERED like a football game...


this is truly a CLOCKWORK ORANGE era in America...where VIOLENCE is just viewed like entertainment and amusement....




when Mai Lai photos came out....we were not watching heinous depraved VIOLENCE on TV, all the time...there were 4 TV channels in Detroit, and programming was standard stuff...leave it to Beaver, Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers, and the NEWS hour...TV signed off at about 1 AM...Mai Lai STOOD OUT as unacceptable VIOLENCE....today, the IRAQ Violence just merges into the daily full-color VIOLENT ENTERTAINMENT, mixed with mel gibson "christian slasher snuff movies" (which also would never have been shown thirty years ago)....

In 1968, there were almost no violent regular TV shows, no violence on cable (what cable?), and admission to violent movies was restricted, and most of the showings were confined to drive-in theaters where most of the theater-goers didn't go for the movie anyway:evilgrin: Thus, when people came face-to-face with real violence (even it was on TV or in print media), they would be shocked.

One reason why I stopped watching TV in the '70s was the plethora of violent programs that started filling up the airwaves.

My understanding is that this was a staged event for the media, supposed to show how soldiers entered villages and made them safe. Except they forgot to clue the soldiers into this so they did their usual and got caught at it.

I am NOT saying soldiers want to go kill everyone, but this is what happens, and happened and was caught. In my opinion, this was a big reason the USA quit VietNam, media coverage, deaths on the news at dinnertime in middle-USA households.

Will our media be free enough again to be able to report war atrocities?

They have learned nothing.

Michael Jackson or whomever the latest star problem person is in the news. Media control=crowd and mind control

the brown-nosing officer, wanted to keep it covered up. Hasn't changed much has he?

Security Council tapes, I'll Never forget those. Waving his 'anthrax' vial around and pointing to 'not exactly as illustrated' evidence of trucks moving WWWWMMMMMMMDDDDDDDeeees in Iraq.

worthless fabricatin' fucker.

and one of them trained his helicopter's guns on his fellow Americans to stop the slaughter, and ferry people to a hospital.

Link: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_hero.html#HUGH%20THOMPSON:

Outnumbered American heroes, just like we are now, no???

:shrug:

And what is going on in Iraq? Where is the press? Where is a Walter Cronkite? Probably can't happen today.

They did a great segment on him on 60 Minutes a few years ago.

I wonder what happened to all the people involved in My Lai. I hear Calley is a jeweler in Georgia now. (I half expected him to be involved with the swift boaters.) I mostly wonder about the people that were there that day that didn't follow the orders, like the one guy who shot himself in the foot so he would be air-lifted out of there. It must have been insane in there that day. I've read accounts that say it was much worse than what we've heard.