40th Anniversary of My Lai Massacre

cozmik

MY LAI, Vietnam (AP) — Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai on Saturday and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War.

On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. soldiers.

On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children and elderly.

"Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby," said Colburn, a member of a three-man Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing. "He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive."

Buddhist monks in saffron robes led the mourners in prayer Saturday outside a museum that has been erected to remember the dead. An official memorial program will be held on Sunday.

Among those coming to pray was Ha Thi Quy, 83, a My Lai survivor who suffers from anger and depression four decades after the slaughter. Soldiers from the Army's Charlie Company shot her in the leg and killed her mother, her 16-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son.

Her husband later died of injuries from the massacre and another son had to have an arm and a leg amputated after suffering gunshot wounds that day.

Quy only survived because she was shielded beneath a pile of dead bodies.

"The American government should stop waging wars like they waged in Vietnam," Quy said. "My children were innocent, but those American soldiers killed them."

Ba's aunt raised him in My Lai. When he turned 18, he moved to the former Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, where he is married with a 14-month-old daughter and works at an electronics factory.

He and Colburn were first reunited at the 2001 dedication of a new school in the village. At that time, Ba was single, haunted by memories of My Lai and eager to start a family.

So much has changed since the day they first met, Ba said. The United States and Vietnam, former enemies, have become allies and developed a booming trade relationship.

"I'm glad the United States and Vietnam have become friends," Ba said. "But I still feel hatred for the soldiers who killed my mother, my brother and my sister."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ht39rriiXzQtZFQI4c01EQS86XbAD8VE23S80


Was justice served? In my opinion, no. But this hasn't stopped the U.S. from declaring itself THE moral compass in the world. Bush has described the U.S. as a beacon of justice a light in this world. lol

Of the soldiers who committed those atrocities only one guy was convicted of anything, Calley - and all he ended up with was three and a half years confined to barracks for 22 counts of murder.

Wow! That's some conception of justice.

It would do the U.S. some good to spend a little less time praising their own magnificence and a little more time acknowledging the truth.