Anniversaries of Mai Lai Massacre and Iraq invasion

Anniversaries of Mai Lai Massacre and Iraq Invasion


I was surprised to find this in the BBC today. There are great reporters working for the BBC but the editors seldom allow material such as this, Israel wants the BBC closed down. The article explains well, the mentality behind massacres at Mai Lai in the Vietnam war and the Haditha massacre, after the Iraq invasion. Strangely the first massacre created an outcry worldide, at that time, today the American media couldn't care less, about covering their war crimes or be bothered to cover the massacres, in Iraq properly. They have also cultivated a care less culture in our modern world to such atrocities.


Perhaps its because the American media has been flooded by CIA undercover agents, working for the media. Since the troubles in Ireland, our media in Ireland, has been inundated with British secret service agents, writing unadulterated black propaganda, in a revision of our history and to potray the liberation struggle, as simply sectarian. The sectarianism as has happened Iraq, is stirred up by the invaders as counter insurgency tactics. These war crimes of creating sectarianism or divide and conquer which the British used all over the world and taught the Americans has now murdered more than
1,185,800 children, women and men in Iraq since the illegal invasion. The sectarian tactics used , whether racist, religous or sexist are taught by the British to the US, after their years of experience with colonial war crimes in the past.


All of this coincides with the assasination of hundreds of honest real journalist worldwide in the last few years, often by hired assassins of the secret services. Anyway the 15th of March, was the anniversary, let us hope that there are still a few human beings left, who are not brainwashed, who still have empathy for the victime of our modern day Holocaust, committed daily by the US government, with more that 3 trillion tax dollars of their citizens money. Their country is almost bankrupt from this madness. They have to pay the Sunni insurgents to stop shooting at them, so that they can potray to their people before the election, that things are getting better ! Like Ireland, this makes young people angry, who then take up arms to defend their families. Is it any wonder young people from the middle-east are so angry about these massacres, being treated as second class citizens in their own country, or the Nuclear weapons the US has given Israel, a tiny rogue state, to bully their neighbours, and threaten their failies withextinction.


It is rather strange that the western media will not try to find the answers, as to why thousands of young people are committng suicide, using their bodies as weapons in the middle-east, when they witness these massacres and injustice. Woiuld you be angry, if your people were murdered and treated like this ? The media meantime controlled by the CIA, M15, M16, are brainwashing us into believing, all of these war crimes and torture are ok !. I will probably be censored soon, as I was already, in the British media, for writing this material. My Lai: Legacy of a massacre

By Celina Dunlop


Forty years on, and "My Lai" is synonymous with "massacre".

Women and children in My Lai, Vietnam, shortly before they were killed by US soldiers
504 people were killed by US soldiers in the My Lai massacre

The killing of Iraqi civilians at Haditha has often been referred to as a modern-day My Lai.

The name is shorthand for slaughter of the defenceless, the benchmark of American wartime atrocity.

The murders of 504 men, women, children and babies happened in a northerly province of South Vietnam on 16 March 1968.

It proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.

Yet, most of what we know about the event comes from a single, widely publicised court martial in 1970-71.

A young Lieutenant - William Calley - in Charlie Company was tried and
convicted of murdering 22 "oriental human beings" in My Lai on that
sunny morning in 1968.

Forgotten tapes

Media attention on Lt Calley's trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth.

Before that trial got under way, the United States army had, behind
closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at
My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority
had deliberately covered up a massacre.

Convened on 1 December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The
Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into
The My Lai Incident, known in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry,
was chaired by Lt Gen William 'Ray' Peers.

In just 14 weeks, the Peers Inquiry conducted a comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation into the events of 16 March.

More than 400 witnesses were interviewed, and their testimony was tape-recorded.

When the inquiry concluded on 15 March 1970, those recordings were boxed-up, stored and forgotten.



Bodies of women and children lie in the road leading to the village of My Lai, following the massacre


That day it was just a massacre. Just plain right out, wiping out people

Leonard Gonzales
Testimony to the Peers Inquiry

In 1987, they were shipped to the US National Archives, as one
small portion of a massive group of records of US Army activities in
Vietnam.

There they remained hidden, never catalogued, never investigated, never uncovered - until last year.

I spent many months trying to track down the tapes.

Again and again, I was told they did not exist, but after much
persistence, 48 hours of recordings from the key witnesses were
declassified and made available to me.

And on 15 March, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the massacre,
some of the most powerful testimony will be broadcast for the first
time, on the Archive Hour on BBC Radio 4.

Some of the interviewees' statements reveal the mentality of the soldiers involved in the massacre.

"I would say that most people in our company didn't consider the
Vietnamese human... A guy would just grab one of the girls there and in
one or two incidents they shot the girls when they got done," said
Dennis Bunning.

"That day it was just a massacre. Just plain right out, wiping out people," said Leonard Gonzales.

"Kill everything"

The wider, more awful truth that Gen Peers uncovered, was that
this was an illegal operation, planned and co-ordinated at Task Force
level by Lt Col Frank Barker.

It wiped out not one but three villages: My Lai, Binh Tay and My Khe.

And not one, but two companies were involved: Bravo and Charlie.

Both of these companies were given the same briefing by their
respective commanding officers, permitting them "to kill everything and
anything."

"It's not just the people of Task Force Barker that are on trial...
It's the Army, it's you and it's me... and it includes our country and
our people in the eyes of the world," said Gen Peers, during his
investigation.

He concluded that 30 senior officers had been negligent in their duty.

After the inquiry, 14 officers were charged with crimes.

Ha Thi Quy, a survivor and witness of the 1968 My Lai massacre, pictured here in September 2007
Ha Thi Quy, a survivor of the massacre, remembers the dead

But the only participant convicted of anything at My Lai was Lt William Calley.

Gen Peers also proposed new methods of training soldiers,
guidelines for the treatment of civilians in wartime and new army
leadership criteria.

His recommendations still influence today's army training manuals.

"The My Lai Tapes" are a record not only of atrocity writ large but also of heroism.

They are a record of how war can bring out not only the worst but also the best in people.

Above all they are a record of lessons learned 40 years ago, in My Lai,
Binh Tay and My Khe - lessons that should not be forgotten.

Celina Dunlop is picture editor of the Economist. The Archive Hour:
The My Lai Tapes will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2000 GMT on
Saturday, 15 March, 2008. You can also listen online for seven days after that at Radio 4's Listen again page.