Extra

Fifty years ago, U.S. soldiers attacked the Vietnamese village of My Lai. They met no resistance but ended up slaughtering 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men in what became known as the My Lai massacre. The U.S. military attempted to cover-up what happened and would have succeeded but for the persistence of a young reporter, Seymour Hersh. 

The soldiers raped the women, mutilated their bodies and torched their houses One U.S. soldier said he was ordered to “kill anything that breathed.” During the court martial proceedings the soldiers stated they were under intense pressure from the Pentagon to report body counts which was the metric used to measure success. More Vietnamese would have been killed had it not been for the courageous act of a combat pilot, Hugh Thompson, who witnessed what was happening and landed his helicopter facing the US soldiers. He ordered his two gunners to train their weapons on Lieutenant Calley and his combat troops to stop the slaughter or be shot. Thompson removed the Vietnamese civilians and flew them to safety. Only one soldier was convicted for the mass killings, Lieutenant William Calley. He served only three-and-a-half years under house arrest. 

The war continued for another seven years claiming the lives of a staggering 3.8 million Vietnamese 800,000 Cambodians and 1 million Laotians. John Kerry and other Vietnam Veterans Against the war discussed the atrocities unearthed in the Winter Soldier investigation, where over 150 veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.