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  1. #151
    Thailand Expat AntRobertson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by majid View Post
    They raped the women with M16s, bayonets. They sodomized children. They decapitated people. They killed a monk, threw him down a well with hand grenades. It was so obscene. They did everything but eat the people.

    comment from an american helicopter pilot
    How on earth can any rational person try and justify that by: 'it's war, stuff happens'; or 'yeah but others do it too'.

  2. #152
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    No it was or is not right.
    Babelfish doesn't seem to have an idiot redneck to English option. Can someone translate?

    It's a boring story made interesting by the absurd attempts of the resident right-wingers to avoid saying killing women and children is wrong. Clearly, for them, what carries moral weight isn't the act but the subject. Americans killing women - somewhere between mildly reprehensible and good; Anyone else killing women - bad. This is so obviously wrong that it's hard to believe anyone with a mental age in double figures could argue for it but that's exactly what's going on here. As hard as you look, those who wrap themselves in the flag just can't bring themselves to condemn it, which probably shouldn't surprise but it does.

  3. #153
    Thailand Expat AntRobertson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan View Post
    It's a boring story made interesting by the absurd attempts of the resident right-wingers to avoid saying killing women and children is wrong. Clearly, for them, what carries moral weight isn't the act but the subject. Americans killing women - somewhere between mildly reprehensible and good; Anyone else killing women - bad. This is so obviously wrong that it's hard to believe anyone with a mental age in double figures could argue for it but that's exactly what's going on here. As hard as you look, those who wrap themselves in the flag just can't bring themselves to condemn it, which probably shouldn't surprise but it does.
    Well said that man.

    You did however neglect to mention the gobsmacking hypocrisy in that most of the 'usual suspects' are also amongst the most vociferous in painting of other races/cultures/religions as 'sub-human' on the basis of any act of barbarity by even a single member of said race/culture/religion.

  4. #154
    Dan
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    ^ Yes, and I'm sure in a day or two they'll be spouting off the usual guff about terrorism when here, as clear as it could be, you see state terror in action.

  5. #155
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    The Choices Made
    LESSONS FROM MY LAI ON DRAWING THE LINE


    Gunners Larry Colburn, left, and John Wennergren flew in gunships like this, or low and fast in OH23s, where they drew fire to identify enemy targets.
    Thirty-four years ago this coming Saturday, more than 500 unarmed women, children and old men were raped, mutilated and killed by American soldiers on a rampage in the Vietnamese hamlet known as My Lai.

    The massacre was stopped when a 24-year-old American helicopter pilot landed in the line of fire between the U.S. troops and Vietnamese civilians. While his 20-year-old crew chief and 18-year-old gunner covered his back, the pilot confronted one of the leaders of the massacre, then evacuated 10 villagers from a bunker. The crew also rescued a child clinging to his dead mother in a ditch.

    When you are young, terrified, far from home and surrounded by craziness, how do you hang onto your moral compass? How do you develop one in the first place?

    That's what we asked Lawrence Colburn, the helicopter gunner, who was born in Coulee City, grew up on Whidbey Island and in Mount Vernon, and joined the Army in 1966.

    As American soldiers fight a war in Central Asia where boundaries and enemies can be similarly unclear, Colburn, now 52, offers this advice to young soldiers: "Beware of peer pressure that moves you in the wrong direction."

    This is Colburn's story, in his own words, distilled from recent conversations with Pacific Northwest magazine writer Paula Bock.




    From early on, Colburn says his parents instilled in their children a strong sense of right and wrong. Here, Harry Colburn holds baby Colleen after church on Easter Sunday on Whidbey Island. In front: Sheila, Mary and Larry (about 4 years old).
    I THINK FROM age 7, people know what's right and wrong. By 18, even under a lot of stress, you know what the right thing is and you know what's wrong and try to follow your heart and do what's right, no matter what the circumstances.

    I guess I was just a normal kid. Two elder sisters, one younger. They tell me I was spoiled because I was the only boy, which could be true. I played baseball and spent a lot of time fishing on the Skagit River, salmon and steelhead. After my chores were done on Saturday, we'd ride our bikes down to the sandbar and fish all day. Skiing was also a passion. Did some duck hunting, too.

    My early memories are Whidbey Island, Deception Pass, the San Juan Islands. My father was a civilian working for the Navy on Whidbey Island. He was an engineer and he built runways. Before World War II, he worked on Grand Coulee, so he knew concrete.

    My parents moved to Mount Vernon to put us into Catholic school by fourth grade, Immaculate Conception. I was an altar boy for four years; memorized a lot of Latin.

    My father was in France for 3 1/2 years. He landed on Normandy Beach five days after D-Day. My mother said when he came back he was a different person. He was that WWII stoic, very quiet, kept everything inside, a bit of a loner. But he was a very moral man. I remember him telling me, before Martin Luther King, Jr., said it: "You don't judge a man by the color of his skin. You judge him by his heart." My father was tough but he was fair. He had a very strong work ethic and my mother was strong, too, and always home. We had an intact family.

    I listened to the JFK speech in '61. I wasn't even a teenager. I remember sitting in front of a black and white television set: "Ask not what your country can do for you."

    Maybe that was it. Or too many John Wayne movies. I felt obligated to serve. My father passed away when I was 14. The only thing anybody told me (it was the parish priest or one of my uncles): "Well, you're the man of the family now."

    What do men normally do? They go off to war.


    It was small-town America, and young men tend to seek adventure. Do their duty. I was a wild child after my father died; I didn't want to continue that way and burden my mother too much.

    I joined with a bunch of friends. It was a popular thing to do at the time. Went to Fort Lewis for basic training, Fort Polk for advanced training, Hawaii, then 16 days on a boat to Vietnam. I decided to volunteer for an aviation company. It was extra money, combat pay plus flight pay.

    We were an aerial scout unit, so we would fly tree top or below. We were basically bait. "Please shoot at me so we can get the gunships or artillery on you."

    We were flying in an OH23. Crew chief on the left (Glenn Andreotta), gunner on the right (me) and pilot in the middle (Hugh Thompson). You'd put on body armor and helmet, carry an M60 machine gun on a bungee cord, find the target and then get out of the way.

    part 1 of 3 or 4.

  6. #156
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    You felt full of adrenaline and invincible. But then, I can remember the first time I saw an aircraft go down. They scrambled us to retrieve the bodies. It was one of those monsoon days, we were losing light and we were flying out there thinking we're probably next. Then it set in. This is not high-school football, this is not a game. People die.

    What happened to me and a lot of people: You start feeling a need to take revenge. It can be motivating in a perverting sort of way. You become filled with rage. That's what motivated those people in My Lai.

    • • •

    AFTER THREE MONTHS in Vietnam, Charlie Company (Task Force Barker, 11th Brigade, Americal Division), had suffered 28 casualties, including five killed, and was down to 105 men. All the casualties were from mines, booby traps and snipers rather than battles in which troops could clearly identify an enemy. The day after a booby trap killed a popular sergeant, Charlie Company was given orders to invade an area believed to be a North Vietnamese stronghold. Though it is generally agreed commanders ordered soldiers to destroy the villages and "neutralize" the area, there is controversy over whether the directive included killing civilians. The U.S. military's official report found that "from 16-19 March 1968, U.S. Army troops massacred a large number of noncombatants in two hamlets of Son My Village, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of Vietnam. The precise number of Vietnamese killed cannot be determined but was at least 175 and may exceed 400." Later reports tallied 504.

    • • •



    "Words cannot describe" how Colburn felt last year when he and pilot Hugh Thompson, left, were reunited with the little boy they rescued 33 years earlier. Do Hoa called the vets "Poppa" and bonded with Colburn's son, Connor.
    WE WENT OUT at 7:30 in the morning. Village called My Lai 4. The military referred to it as Pinkville. It was just another mission. Started out like all of them.

    I remember flying between two treelines. You could smell the jungle, the fog rising up. It was a beautiful morning.

    You know, we owned the day, they owned the night.

    We flew over the village a couple times. I remember seeing the slicks, the Hueys, bringing Charlie Company in. Our objective was to make sure the perimeter was clear.

    It was Saturday, which was market day. We saw a lot of people leaving the village with empty containers and baskets, moving slowly, walking down this road, probably like they did every Saturday morning for generations. We went outside the hamlet and reconned around for 15 or 20 minutes and when we came back, those people we saw on the road were still there, only they were all dead. Women, children and older men.

    Oh, the children. That's what struck all of us. It appeared to be automatic weapons fire, small arms, from pretty close range. When a high-velocity round hits a child, there's not a lot of mass there and yeah, it was grotesque. Sure. Babies. Lying with their mothers and grandmothers. Baskets right there.

    That's when Mr. Thompson, we all, started trying to figure out what happened. The last thing we wanted to admit to ourselves was that it was our own men.

    People had been herded up systematically, made to get down in this irrigation ditch, and they were executed. We started marking some of the bodies that were still alive with green smoke, (dropping smoke grenades from the helicopter) so the medics on the ground could help them. We marked this one woman who had chest wounds. She was moving one arm, feebly, asking for help, so we marked her. Mr. Thompson backed up 20, 30 feet and hovered there 10 feet off the ground because he saw a soldier coming over to her. That was (Capt. Ernest) Medina. We pointed down to her. He kicked her, stepped back and blew her away right in front of us. That's when we simultaneously said something like: "You son of a bitch." Then we knew. The mystery was solved. It was people from Charlie Company.

    Mr. Thompson was determined to stop this. He landed and said to one of the soldiers standing by the ditch, "What can we do to help these people out?"

    The fellow said, "We can help them out of their misery."

    Hugh said, "C'mon man."


    The first time he saw another chopper go down, Colburn, far right, realized, "This is not a game. People die."
    As we lifted off, we heard automatic weapons fire. Glenn said, "My God, he's firing into the ditch again." Wounded people were climbing out of the ditch and they were shooting them. We checked other people we'd marked and sure enough, they'd been finished off. It felt like by marking these bodies, we were indirectly killing them ourselves.

    They raped the women with M16s, bayonets. They sodomized children. They decapitated people. They killed a monk, threw him down a well with hand grenades. It was so obscene. They did everything but eat the people.

    I didn't join the Army to do that sort of thing, even if they were sympathizers.

    And God bless the men on the ground. We would have given our lives on any day, any moment for them. Glenn did three weeks later; he was shot in the head on a mission.

    But just like in public life, you got a percentage of wackos. (At My Lai) their leaders didn't stop them. We're talking about 30 guys led by Commanders Lt. Stephen Brooks, Lt. William Calley and Capt. Medina. It was extremely poor leadership. Instead of nipping it in the bud, they escalated it.

    part 2

  7. #157
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    WE SAW SOME people in a bunker. There was a squad coming their way. We could see the kids peeking out, little kids with Prince Valiant haircuts, black bangs, black pajamas and sandals.


    Colburn, left, and Thompson return to meet the children of My Lai in 1998. "He's the real hero," Colburn says of the pilot, who put his body in the line of fire and confronted higher-ranking officers to save villagers.
    Thompson landed again. Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant (Brooks), and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said:

    Thompson: Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.

    Brooks: We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.

    Thompson: I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.

    Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it.

    He walked back to the aircraft. He said: "I'm going to go over and get them out of the bunker myself. If the squad opens up on them, shoot 'em." And he walked away.

    Glenn and I looked at each other. We looked at the GIs we were supposed to protect, we looked at Thompson.

    A million things were going through my mind. The first thing, I wanted no one to think I was going to raise an M60 machine gun and draw on them. Or they'd draw on us. I remember pointing my muzzle straight at the ground so there'd be no mistake. We had a little staredown but I caught one guy's eye and I kinda waved, thinking, hey, fellow American, and he waved back.


    UPI / CORBIS-BETTMANN
    Of the many involved in the My Lai massacre, Lt. William Calley was the only man found guilty. The Army charged him with murdering 109 civilians and sentenced him to life in prison with hard labor. Within three days, President Nixon ordered him released from jail pending appeal. He was under house arrest three years.
    Hugh went to the entrance of this little earthen bunker and motioned for the people to come out. It took a few minutes.

    He kept his body in between Lt. Brooks and the people he'd gotten out of the bunker, got them over to our aircraft, and got on the radio with his buddy, the gunship pilot who was circling above: "Danny, do me a favor. Can you come down here? Can you shuttle some of these people out of here before they get killed?"

    They landed. This is unheard of, to land a gunship and use it as a medivac. Makes you a sitting duck. Breaks all kind of military rules. But Hugh had thrown caution to the winds.

    We passed over the ditch one more time and Glenn said: "I saw something move." Hugh landed again and Glenn charged in there, mired above his knees in what was once human beings. Maybe 175 people stacked three or four high. He picked this little fellow up but couldn't get out of the ditch because it was hard to get footing so he handed the child up to me and I grabbed him by the back of his shirt. I remember thinking: I hope the buttons are sewn on well because they're going to have to support his weight.

    The child sat on my lap, limp. He had that blank thousand-yard stare. I couldn't even make him blink. He was in severe shock. He had no broken bones, no bullet holes, but he was completely drenched in blood. When Glenn picked him up, he was still clinging to his dead mother. We flew the little person to Quang Ngai hospital, an orphanage. A Catholic nun came out in her habit. Hugh took him and gave him to the nun. "Sister, I don't know what you're going to do with him. I don't think he's got any parents."

    We left him there and flew away.

    For 30 years, I prayed he was only 4 or 5 so he wouldn't remember, but when I met him (in 2001), I found out he was 8 and he remembers everything. You talk about someone to admire. This little boy stayed at the hospital for two days, then, on his own, left and went 10 miles through the jungle to his village to make sure his parents were buried properly.

    • • •

    ONLY 10 percent of men who go to war actually feel the sting. Most men are in support. Other combat veterans know exactly what I mean. Unless you saw it, smelled it, lived it, you're not capable of understanding.


    ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Thirty years after the My Lai massacre, in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, the Army awarded Soldier's Medals to Thompson, center, and Colburn, right, for "heroic performance in saving the lives of at least 10 Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of noncombatants by American forces."
    Everyone has a breaking point. (Varnado Simpson, a veteran from Charlie Company who was wracked with remorse after the massacre and eventually committed suicide) talked about how once you start killing, it just got easier and easier, the training just kicks in.

    Part of you has to be free. You can't be owned by the military. Every time I had to take someone down, it was never easy. The gun company I was in had an unwritten code: Before you make a kill, they better be trying to kill you. To capture a weapon after a kill was important to us. Go get their weapon so it's not picked up by another person and used against you. You can almost justify in your own mind: I had to do this and here is something tangible to prove it.

    How many people did you take down?

    That's kind of a personal question. (Long pause.) We used to have to keep track on a chalkboard, so I do know . . . Too many. I remember one man carrying an AK who broke from a crowd of people and ran and there was a boy, probably his son, that followed him. And they were so close together. I didn't want to kill the boy. But they were both shot. There are certain kills I wish went differently.

    There were those who lived by a different code. Shoot first and ask questions later. They were in the field. They didn't get to fly into the sunset and sleep in a bed. They had to spend the nights out there when the VC came alive and had to go on night mission and set up ambushes. I don't know if I could have made it a year in the field.

    But My Lai didn't happen at night. They didn't capture any weapons or kill any draft-age males. Also, remember, there were people in Charlie Company who threw down their weapons. They didn't take part, but did they try to stop it? No. Because they have to live with their squad leader, platoon leader and all the men around them for their tour.

    I pray that we will evolve. That's what Hugh Thompson did. He tried to take us one step up the evolutionary ladder.

    I think we're capable, but I think it's going to take another 10,000 years — if we can keep from blowing ourselves to smithereens.

    (Colburn says the deployment of troops to Afghanistan has set off inner warning bells.)

    I despise war. I want that to come across, but then again, I don't want to sound like I'm un-American. If this country were in trouble, I can still peel potatoes. I can still fly. If I had a chance to serve and protect my country, I would. But to get involved in another civil war in another country — a culture we don't understand?

    Did we learn anything from Vietnam? People were waving flags when we started sending men to Southeast Asia and when thousands of body bags started coming home, the flag waving stopped. I fear for the safety of our young men and women. The last thing I want to see is another Vietnam. The politicians have to play politics, we have to protect our oil interests and life goes on. That would be war, and here we go again. Only this could be much, much bigger. It could be in more than one country. It could last for a hundred years. These people we're dealing with know what they're doing. They've been planning for years and we've been infiltrated as well. We have to dig out of a pretty deep hole right now. I'm very concerned we will do something stupid out of revenge that we'll regret for generations.

    • • •

    IT'S A MUCH BETTER feeling to save a life than it is to take one. When I held that little boy and we took him out of there, it was worth everything. Looking back, comparing notes with other vets, I'm sure we did go through different stages of anger, denial, trying to make it go away. The best advice I got was from a professor at Emory (University), making comparisons with the Holocaust. He said, "Larry, you can't make it go away. You will take it to your graveside. What you need to do is turn it around into something positive."


    For 30 years, Colburn prayed the little boy he rescued was too young to remember the massacre. When they met in 2001, Do Hoa described everything. Now 42, he assembles electronics in Ho Chi Minh City for $40 a month. "The clock is ticking!" Colburn says. "I want him to find a wife and have a baby of his own. He wants to be a dad."
    We've been working with the Madison Friends (Quakers in Wisconsin). We dedicated an elementary school in My Lai. We're to taking donations for a modest home for Do Hoa (the rescued boy). I've done some speaking in high schools, colleges, military institutions, and we've worked with the International Red Cross.

    I see my boy reaching 10 years old, becoming an individual, doing things on his own. Just being there is important. Enjoying family activities as long as you can hold onto them. Support them and also give them a certain amount of freedom. As a parent, you watch this little boy who's going to play bang-bang and want the little green Army men. You can't take that from a child because it's part of his growing up.

    Once he was playing battle with little plastic men and I stopped him and said, "You know, that's kinda sad. And he said, 'No, Dad. I'm going to save these people over here.' And I thought, Well, OK!"

    I guess we'll see 10 years from now what happens with him. What they're going to do later on in life, you won't know.

    Of the many involved in the My Lai massacre, William Calley was the only man the Army found guilty. In 1970, he was convicted of murdering at least 22 and sentenced to life in prison. Within three days, President Nixon ordered his release from jail pending appeal. He lived three years under house arrest, then toured the college lecture circuit and married the daughter of a Georgia jewelry-store owner. He still works at the store.

    Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot, served for 13 years after Vietnam and now counsels veterans for Louisiana's Dept. of Veterans Affairs. In 1998, after a BBC documentary and book ("Four Hours in My Lai" by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim) spurred a letter-writing campaign, he was given the Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving enemy conflict. He agreed to accept if Andreotta and Colburn also received medals.

    Lawrence Colburn owns a medical-supply company outside Atlanta, where he lives with his wife and son.

    Glenn Andreotta is honored on panel 48E of the Vietnam Wall.

    3rd and final part.

    contrast the comments made by apologists here and a real hero as described in the article.

    i know who i would prefer to have my back.

  8. #158
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    The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

    some nice pics contained in the article didnt copy.

    above is the link.

  9. #159
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    Quote Originally Posted by AntRobertson
    How on earth can any rational person try and justify that by: 'it's war, stuff happens'; or 'yeah but others do it too'.
    No rational person can. No rational person is.

    Quote Originally Posted by slackula
    A strawman devouring a red herring is not a convincing argument..
    No, but you get the human debris like Blackgang who believe it is

    Quote Originally Posted by AntRobertson
    You did however neglect to mention the gobsmacking hypocrisy in that most of the 'usual suspects' are also amongst the most vociferous in painting of other races/cultures/religions as 'sub-human' on the basis of any act of barbarity by even a single member of said race/culture/religion.
    I guess you're talking about the Muzzies, eh? They're different because they want to take over the world . . . and they all have beards and shout

    Quote Originally Posted by Dan
    ^ Yes, and I'm sure in a day or two they'll be spouting off the usual guff about terrorism when here, as clear as it could be, you see state terror in action.
    Nice analogy.

  10. #160
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    No, but you get the human debris like Blackgang who believe it is
    But then you get the human fecal matter like PH and wants everyone to know how high and moral he would be is the same situation, probably have to shoot him to get him out of his hole.
    Brave and moral men are easy to find in their own home with no threats around.

  11. #161
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    Quote Originally Posted by blackgang View Post
    No, but you get the human debris like Blackgang who believe it is
    But then you get the human fecal matter like PH and wants everyone to know how high and moral he would be is the same situation, probably have to shoot him to get him out of his hole.
    Brave and moral men are easy to find in their own home with no threats around.
    Tell us again how tough you are, bg.

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    A wet and oxygen starved brain is a horrible thing. Let bg be. How would you like to spend your dying days frying meat, talking tough and posting shit?

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    very easy to understand why America is labelled the Great Satan but coming from the West I have met many Americans and they are some of the friendliest and most hospitable people in the world. However, give them a gun, a helicopter battle ship, semi-automatic weapons or anything that can kill and you have a massacre. It could be in an American high school or a Vietnamese hamlet.

    Friendly, hospitable but murderer of innocents is something we think when we talk about muslim, nazi or American conservatives.

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    BG . . . feel the walls closing in . . . ? Feel the cold and clammy draft . . . ?

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    I see that you are posting under double nics now huh Teach.

    sure to bad that so many pommie liberals are allowed free run of these forums anymore.

    Especially you ignorant TEFLers.

    OH Yea, that Squirt hockey you play,, thats a circle jerk ain't it?

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    You got me wrong but it doesnt matter.

    What are the lungs pumping -- maybe 80% as well as last year?

    Hell of a way to go old timer. They say it's like being smothered in slow motion.

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    Seems you have got me wrong too there teach,, where are you getting this shit and way off the subject ain't ya?

  18. #168
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    Quote Originally Posted by blackgang View Post
    No, but you get the human debris like Blackgang who believe it is
    But then you get the human fecal matter like PH and wants everyone to know how high and moral he would be is the same situation, probably have to shoot him to get him out of his hole.

    BG, what situation? At My Lai there were no enemy forces, there was no resistance, there wasn't a single shot fired at US forces. The nearest enemy troops were a long, long way away. The situation is that troops charged into the villages in that area and started killing and raping unarmed, unresisting civilians. Most of us are in the situation of being around unarmed, unthreatening people every day, very few of us feel the need to kill, mutilate and rape them.
    The Above Post May Contain Strong Language, Flashing Lights, or Violent Scenes.

  19. #169
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrB0b
    BG, what situation? At My Lai there were no enemy forces, there was no resistance, there wasn't a single shot fired at US forces. The nearest enemy troops were a long, long way away. The situation is that troops charged into the villages in that area and started killing and raping unarmed, unresisting civilians. Most of us are in the situation of being around unarmed, unthreatening people every day, very few of us feel the need to kill, mutilate and rape them.
    No there was no enemy resistance, and now hindsite is perfect 20/20, but at that time, and shortly after TET 68 things were jumpy as hell and here is from Wilki as what was told to the Co. Commanders.

    NLF Battalion, having retreated, was taking refuge in the village of Sơn Mỹ, in Quang Ngai Province. A number of specific hamlets within that village — designated My Lai 1, 2, 3, and 4 — were suspected of harboring the 48th.
    U.S. forces planned a major offensive against those hamlets. Colonel Oran K. Henderson urged his officers to "go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good."[12] Lieutenant-Colonel Frank A. Barker ordered the 1st Battalion commanders to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy foodstuffs, and perhaps maybe to close the wells
    As I know for a fact, then and now that Army intel was not the best and was a lot of times very faulty.

    I do not know if you have ever been in a situation such as the troops in Nam were in, most have not.
    But it was a scary place and the troops at that time were not trained for that type of a war, it was the first of a kind for most of us and it never got any better.
    You could never, ever be at ease, even in yout rack at night if sleeping above ground there was the chance that a rocket would come ripping thru your Hooch or a mortat round thru the roof and when you went for the bunkers there was always small arms fire and mortats and rockets, there was no behind the lines anywhere in the country,
    Once in Saigon on Tudo st. a youngster parked his bicycle against the window near the doorway into a tea parlor, and he went inside, and we heard later that he went straight thru and out the back and his bicycle was packed with C-4 and it blew the front off that shop and 2 viet girls were killed, at Phu Hip which was the base of the 173 airborne and the base barber was shot one night after 2 years of cutting hair, he was killed while putting a satchel charge in a Huey, at PhuKat up north a 12 year old boy was killed with a buck round from an M-79 while trying to get his launcher to fire a rocket into a group of GI's.
    Very unconventional war to be sure and no one was ever relaxed I do not think.
    I am not trying to say that MyLai should have happened nor was right to have happened and I do not know what I would have done if I had been a GI in that outfit, would I have seen that no combat people were there or would have I thought that we were killing them before they could return fire?
    The guys in those birds had a better view of waht was going on than the guys on the ground and were bound to feel a hell of a lot safer and most likely were thinking different and more clearly than the guys on the ground.
    All I am tring to do is explain to a bunch that will not have had the experience of such a thing happening to them that it is very easy to call those dudes rapists and murderers, I do boubt very much that there were any of then running around with their pants down and raping anyone, but that word does seem to pop up in a lot of things on this forum, but hard to believe and I have seen some unusual shit in my life and travels.
    Thats all and I would cut those guys some slack.

  20. #170
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    Quote Originally Posted by blackgang
    I am not trying to say that MyLai should have happened nor was right to have happened and I do not know what I would have done if I had been a GI in that outfit, would I have seen that no combat people were there or would have I thought that we were killing them before they could return fire?
    Nor do I. Nice post.

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    Quote Originally Posted by blackgang
    very easy to call those dudes rapists and murderers, I do boubt very much that there were any of then running around with their pants down and raping anyone
    It isnt posters here calling them rapists and murderers. It is fellow servicemen.

    And the record is unmistakably clear about the rapacious shit. You really should read it. It is horrific.

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    babies. children. women. really very fuked up.

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    Quote Originally Posted by majid View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by blackgang
    I am not trying to say that MyLai should have happened nor was right to have happened and I do not know what I would have done if I had been a GI in that outfit, would I have seen that no combat people were there or would have I thought that we were killing them before they could return fire?
    Nor do I. Nice post.
    Although, of course, many servicemen there did see that they were unarmed and refused to kill them. And the atrocities committed, verified atrocities, would have been outrageous under any circumstances. Do you seriously think that shooting a two year old several times at point-blank range can be justified by claiming you were neutralising him before he could return fire?

    I do agree with Blackang's point that few of us know what we ourselves would have done under those circumstances.

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    the baby and target practice is really awful. they laughed when he missed...

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrB0b
    many servicemen there did see that they were unarmed and refused to kill them
    i dont have the numbers on this. yes there were some who said forget it. another shot himself in the foot to get out of dodge. several did some killing and then just said fuk this, no more. i am unsure on the numbers however. something like 30 were originally charged however.

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