they're ice skating in hell: Calley apologizes for My Lai

[justdrew]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/74138.html

William Calley, the former Army lieutenant convicted on 22 counts of murder in the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, publicly apologized for the first time this week while speaking in Columbus.

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."

of course, the people that gave the orders were never convicted of a damn thing. Nor were the "leaders" and their "supporters" who aided and abetted that evil war.

[pepsified thinker]

it took away from the jaw-on-the-floor impact of this when I read a bit further and saw that he isn't entirely apologetic. He still views himself as having done wrong, but clings to a 'just following orders' basis for his actions, saying in response to a question that he was guilty of valuing the lives of his troops too much.

He also doesn't outright deny the account of of Hugh Thompson, the chopper pilot who landed and saved some of the villagers by means of facing down Calley and/or other American troops, but in his apology Calley does a modified 'I don't recall' that avoids answering for the implications of that face-down with Thompson.

Here are some links for Thompson's story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5133444

[MinM]

Just read a recent story about how Seymour Hersh's reporting on this ostensibly served as a limited hangout in order to protect the larger atrocities .. namely Operation Phoenix.

B-1 Bob Dornan used the Lt. Calley story of alll things as a way to sidetrack an interview that Mort Sahl and Jim Garrison had on The Steve Allen Show while they were attempting to educate America on the JFK assassination.

Anyway this stream of consciousness was triggered after reading this recent piece in the Nation ..

Why Don’t Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?

Instead of confronting the truth, we scrubbed the record clean—and we’re still paying for it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Christian Appy
February 9, 2015

http://www.thenation.com/article/197425 ... ed-vietnam

[Twyla LaSarc]

[quote="MinM » Sat Feb 14, 2015 7:37 am
Anyway this stream of consclikeiousness was triggered after reading this recent piece in the Nation ..

Why Don’t Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?

Instead of confronting the truth, we scrubbed the record clean—and we’re still paying for it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Christian Appy
February 9, 2015

http://www.thenation.com/article/197425 ... ed-vietnam

[/quote]

I suppose many of us can be forgiven for not knowing much about vietnam. being quite young when it occured. I remember two things. The body count graphics on TV news and the fact I could never get a satisfactory answer from any adult of just what Vietnam was. I'm pretty sure that I even had to figure out that it was a tropical asian country on my own.

Granted, I must have been younger than 6 or 7, it bugged me then.

I read a book last year (in a spate of reading, not sure which author any more) that delved into the bombing raids and other events in Vietnam and Laos (IIRC as recalled by journalists on the ground) and it opened an awareness for me of just how much america has always done this sort of thing and how hard it is to percieve those facts that it has discreetly 'omitted from record'.

IMO, War is strange. We glory in it and revel in it and unlike sex we get our rocks off in public over it. However it is conversely, like sex, since when it is over, the parties involved often roll over with cigarettes and prefer not to talk about it in detail, storing up that data for the next bout.

Who knows what is out there on those old tape storage devices that no computer can read anymore? Of course most of it is taken up by cats, I'm sure. Perhaps amnesia is essential to empire.

[MinM]

With the reporting of Sy Hersh back in the news it makes me wonder if this is designed to distract from something else? As with the Lt. Calley story.

Aside from protecting Operation Phoenix another consequence of the Calley story seems to have been to shift some of the animosity focus. From those who made the war possible and were profiting from it to the poor saps that got dropped in that hellhole.

Lisa Pease had a theory about the SLA kidnapping of Patty Hearst. Basically that it was designed to drive a wedge between the peaceniks and the limousine liberals. If that was the plan .. mission accomplished.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

With the reporting of Sy Hersh back in the news it makes me wonder if this is designed to distract from something else? As with the Lt. Calley story.

Well...has Seymour Hersh ever reported anything about Operation Gladio? Just wondering.

I went looking and found this:

Smoke and Mirrors: Was Seymour Hersh’s ‘Bin Laden Raid’ Report a Red Herring?

[MinM]

With the reporting of Sy Hersh back in the news it makes me wonder if this is designed to distract from something else? As with the Lt. Calley story.

Well...has Seymour Hersh ever reported anything about Operation Gladio? Just wondering.

I went looking and found this:

Smoke and Mirrors: Was Seymour Hersh’s ‘Bin Laden Raid’ Report a Red Herring?

This seems pretty much spot-on ..

While Hersh’s London Review of Books bin Laden report appears to expose aspects surrounding the SEAL Team 6 raid, it still supports the idea that bin Laden was alive and was being housed in the Abbotabad compound, something which has been questioned since the operation took place.

Was Hersh’s bin Laden report just another variation of the official story?

Truth be told, as many informed readers are while aware of, Washington’s foreign policy planners have taken full advantage of the public’s perception of 9/11 and the ‘new world order’ it ushered in afterwards. But in order to reinforce what neoconservatives described at the time as a “100 year war”, aka the ‘War on Terror’ deception – the bin Laden avatar needed to play a large role during the Obama administration just as it did during Bush’s tenure, a role that ISIS now serves today...

http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/05/13/s ... d-herring/

Thanks, srp

[stillrobertpaulsen]

You're welcome, MinM. And thanks for the Lisa Pease link. Right now, I'm reading The Assassinations that she and Jim DiEugenio put together from some great Probe Magazine articles. Needless to say, it's extremely good.

[MinM]

Every time I read him I think "limited hangout".

There is little to no reason to assume any of the "OBL killing" story actually involved OBL at all, that it involved killing him, any of it. There is zero credible evidence that anything that happened that night was what our Dear Leaders said it was.

From .. My Lai, to Watergate, to Camelot, to OBL and beyond .. SMH has covered a lot of stuff over the years.

[seemslikeadream]

thank you Miss M...thank you very much

March 16, 1968

You consider me the young apprentice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xeRnAgEK6Y

You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between the Scylla and Charibdes.
Hypnotized by you if I should linger
Staring at the ring around your finger.
I have only come here seeking knowledge,
Things they would not teach me of in college.
I can see the destiny you sold
turned into a shining band of gold.

I'll be wrapped around your finger.

.
I will listen hard to your tuition
And you will see it come to it's fruition.



..