My Lai Revisited: 47 Years Later, Seymour Hersh Travels to Vietnam Site of U.S. Massacre He Exposed

[jakeXT]

Fifty years after the U.S. ground invasion of Vietnam began, we look back at the 1968 My Lai massacre, when American troops killed hundreds of civilians. Journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the massacre and cover-up, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his work. But Hersh never actually went there — he interviewed soldiers stateside. Forty-seven years later, he recently traveled to My Lai for the first time, which he documents in a new article for The New Yorker, "The Scene of the Crime: A Reporter’s Journey to My Lai and the Secrets of the Past." Hersh joins us to discuss how he exposed the massacre nearly five decades ago and what it was like to visit My Lai for the first time.

Transcript

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/25/my_lai_revisited_47_years_later

[flamin lib]

1. Lt. Calley served three years in house arrest and was released on

habeas corpus. He maintained that he was given orders to destroy the village but subpoenas were quashed, congressional testimony by his superiors was withheld and the trial was a sham.

As always the old guys who send young guys to do the dirty work pinned everything on the lowest guy in the chain.

Bastards, all to them.

[jtuck004]

2. "a My Lai each month for over a year"

...In May 1970, a sergeant who participated in Operation Speedy Express wrote a confidential letter to then Army Chief of Staff Westmoreland describing civilian killings he said were on the scale of the massacre occurring as "a My Lai each month for over a year" during 1968–1969. Two other letters to this effect from enlisted soldiers to military leaders in 1971, all signed "Concerned Sergeant", were uncovered within declassified National Archive documents. The letters describe common occurrences of civilian killings during population pacification operations. Army policy also stressed very high body counts and this resulted in dead civilians being marked down as combatants. Alluding to indiscriminate killings described as unavoidable, the commander of the 9th Division, then Major General Julian Ewell in September 1969 submitted a confidential report to Westmoreland and other generals describing the countryside in some areas of Vietnam as resembling the battlefields of Verdun....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
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Now we are all grown up, and look what we have done, and are doing.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

3. This photo was on the cover of Ramparts magazine

I still have the magazine - I show it to people sometimes. They can not believe that this type of reporting was done.

The Horror

[jakeXT]

4. The pictures of the 1967 issue influenced MLK on Vietnam

http://www.c-span.org/video/?160769-1/book-discussion-act-state-execution-martin-luther-king

[Iwillnevergiveup]

5. Kick and rec because

our country is very fortunate to have Mr. Hersh still around.