"Fifty years ago today"[this month] U.S. soldiers attacked the Vietnamese village of My Lai. U.S. troops arrived at 7:30 a.m. local time. Even though the soldiers met no resistance, they slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men over the next four hours, in what became known as the My Lai massacre. The soldiers raped women. They burned their houses. They mutilated the villagers' bodies. One U.S. soldier said he was ordered to "kill anything that breathed,'" notes Amy Goodman in recent program on Democracy Now.
The My Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd
"Well, 504 civilians, noncombatants, were mowed down by soldiers. As you said, it was horrific, but it was not an isolated incident. It was part of the culture of the war that had been created and fostered and was largely a product of the Pentagon's insistence" on high body counts in order to justify their continued war effort and their continuing, escalating insistence that the U.S. Congress give them ever more money and ever more troops. This is what led to these kind of massacres," indicated one interviewed soldier, Ron Carver, who was in the same region of the massacre as it took place. (HERE)
I would like to know when more forces and media will come clean and help historians and educators ask and answer this basic question: "How many more Mai Lais have there already been for USA forces since March 1968?"
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