My Lai
Category

Reflections on the My Lai Memorial Exhibit and the American War in Vietnam or How to Get Away with Murder

Not looking backward therefore shapes how we look forward. Let us begin by examining how the American establishment has failed to come to terms with the meaning of the American war in Vietnam by a calculated process of reframing

March 21, 2019 • Featured, My Lai • Views: 120

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Forgotten Hero Hugh Thompson

PHOTO: Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson speaks with reporters at the Pentagon on Dec. 4, 1969, after testifying about the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam. (Associated Press) This essay originally appeared in the opinion section of

May 30, 2018 • Featured, My Lai • Views: 1038

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Ernest Medina, Army Captain at My Lai

Photo caption: Capt. Ernest L. Medina on a visit to his hometown, Montrose, Colo., in 1970 after he had been charged in the massacre of Vietnamese in 1968. Photo Credit: Gary Settle/The New York Times This obituary originally

May 16, 2018 • My Lai, Presente! • Views: 630

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The Tip of the Iceberg: My Lai Fifty Years On

Photo by Ronald L. Haeberle | CC BY 2.0 This article originally appeared at counterpunch.org. By Michael Uhl. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the

March 31, 2018 • Featured, My Lai • Views: 569

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Remember My Lai

Photo: Some of the villagers huddle together with black bags covering their heads. Son My, South Vietnam. March 16, 1968. Library of Congress. This post originally appeared at informationclearinghouse.info. WARNING: This

March 22, 2018 • Featured, My Lai • Views: 679

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Video Clips from My Lai On the 50th Anniversary- May 16, 2018

This post originally appeared at vietnampeace.org. My Lai Ceremony Short clip from the ceremony in My Lai, Vietnam today before a crowd of 1,000 people, including Veterans for Peace, the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee

March 21, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 667

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50 years after My Lai massacre, survivors remember

Photo: Do Ba, 60, was rescued by the helicopter crew of Hugh Thompson and Larry Coburn, during the My Lai massacre, but his mother and two siblings were killed. Credit: Thomas Maresca/For USA TODAY This article originally

March 19, 2018 • Featured, My Lai, Vietnamese Voices • Views: 655

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Vietnamese survivors remember My Lai massacre with horror and confusion

Photo: Ha Thi Quy, 93, a survivor of the My Lai massacre, remembers the tragedy that killed her mother and daughter. Photo by Pham Linh. This post originally appeared at vnexpress.net. By Pham Linh. Some people are trying to

March 19, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai, Vietnamese Voices • Views: 1107

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The Truth Behind My Lai

Photo: Vietnamese villagers killed by American soldiers during the My Lai massacre in 1968.CreditRonald S. Haeberle/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images. This article originally appeared at the nytimes.com.

March 17, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 746

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My long turn against the war: One nurse’s story on the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre

Photo: Veterans against the war (PEDIN, JOHN). This article originally appeared at the nydailynews.com. By Susan M. Schnall. In 1967, I was a Navy nurse at Oak Knoll Hospital, which was built during World War II in Oakland,

March 17, 2018 • 50 Years of GI Resistance, Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 860

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Vietnam marks 50 years since U.S. massacre at My Lai

By James Pearson, Reuters / March 16th, 2018. QUANG NGAI, Vietnam (Reuters) – Vietnam marked 50 years since the My Lai massacre on Friday in a memorial ceremony at the site of the killings that was attended by survivors

March 17, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 551

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The GI Resistance Continues: Vietnam Vets Return to My Lai, Where U.S. Slaughtered 500 Civilians

Photo: Two Vietnamese children lie on the ground as they’re about to be shot. Son My, South Vietnam. March 16, 1968. Wikimedia Commons This article originally appeared at democracynow.org. As a group of

March 16, 2018 • 50 Years of GI Resistance, Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 822

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50 Years After My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, Revisiting the Slaughter the U.S. Military Tried to Hide

Photo: A Vietnamese man puts down his head and cries. Son My, South Vietnam. March 16, 1968. Library of Congress This article originally appeared at democracynow.org. Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers

March 16, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 820

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Shame and guilt of My Lai massacre must be kept alive: American veteran

An American soldier throws bamboo sieves into the fire of burning houses during the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968. Photo by Ronald Haeberle. This article originally appeared at vnexpress.net. By Pham Linh. Many young

March 16, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 667

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The Unlearned Lesson of My Lai

Photo credit: Claro Cortes / Reuters. This article originally appeared at theatlantic.com. By CONOR FRIEDERSDORF. A half-century after a brutal massacre in Vietnam, the United States still struggles to hold itself accountable

March 16, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 622

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My Lai Exhibit Highlights Dark Anniversary Of Vietnam War

Photo: People visit the My Lai Exhibit in San Diego in this undated photo. CREDIT: VETERANS FOR PEACE SAN DIEGO. This article originally appeared at kpbs.org. By Steve Walsh. Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the My Lai

March 16, 2018 • Connections to Today, Featured, My Lai • Views: 632

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My Lai (a book review) PART ONE

This review originally appeared at thiscantbehappening.net. March 16, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre by: Michael Uhl A book review of: MY LAI: VIETNAM, 1968, AND THE DESCENT INTO DARKNESS By Howard Jones

March 16, 2018 • Books, Featured, My Lai, Reviews • Views: 728

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Mission statement

The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans For Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam — which is now approaching a series of 50th anniversary events. It represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon’s current efforts to sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.

Upcoming Events

This Month in History: 1969

March US forces in Vietnam peak at more than 540,000.

Polls indicate that 19% of Americans want the war to end as soon as possible, 26% want South Vietnam to take over responsibility for the war from the U.S., 19% favor the current policy, and 33% want total military victory.

National Draft and Military Law Panel of the National lawyers Guild files suit to protect the rights of GIs marching in Easter antiwar demonstrations.

March 2 GI civilian conference held at Wright State University in Ohio.

March 4 President Nixon threatens to resume bombing the DRV (North Vietnam) in retaliation for NLF attacks in the South.

March 15 U.S. troops go on the offensive inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) for the first time since 1968.

March 17 President Nixon authorizes Operation Menu, the secret bombing of Cambodia by B-52s, targeting enemy supply sanctuaries located along the border of Vietnam. See March 18, 1969-May 26, 1970 entry below for further details.

March 18 Reps Jeffrey Cohelan and Robert Leggett, both California Democrats, accuse the Pentagon of handing out “unconscionable, excessive, and unfair” sentences to soldiers convicted in a sit-down protest at the Presidio Stockade. See entries for October 14, 1968 and February 14, 1969.

Fort Lewis – Pvt. Isaac Barr, who had refused orders to Vietnam, is dragged on to a plane and shipped to Vietnam.

Fort Jackson – Founder of GIs United, Pvt. Tommie Woodfin, is” acquitted of charges of circulating GIs United petition asking for a post meeting to discuss the war.”

March 18-May 26, 1970 Operation Menu – the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos — the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia and Laos — is launched. Operation Menu was succeeded by Operation Freedom Deal, which lasted until August 1973. Operation Menu marked an illegal invasion of neutral countries which had not attacked the US and with which the US was not at war, setting a dangerous precedent for future preemptive military actions. Eventually more bombs were dropped on Laos and Cambodia than combined on Germany and Japan in World War II. Laos became the most bombed country in history. Agent Orange was also widely sprayed. The targets of these attacks were presumed sanctuaries and base areas of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and forces of the NLF, which Nixon and Kissinger thought, utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The US also built up General Vang Pao’s Hmong forces in the northern and southern regions of Laos.

The impact of the bombing campaign on the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the PAVN, and Cambodian civilians in the bombed areas is disputed by historians, though undoubtedly it led to the collapse of a neutralist Cambodia.

An official United States Air Force record of U.S. bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965; the bombings were an escalation of what had previously been tactical air attacks. Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon authorized for the first time use of long-range B-52 heavy bombers to carpet bomb Cambodia.

This bombing campaign was carried on in extreme secrecy was closely supervised by Kissinger with the help of Air Force Colonel Claude Sitton. A duel reporting system (to circumvent the Strategic Air command’s normal command and control system) wars set up to pretend that South Vietnam was the target of the Cambodia and Laos bombings. The real documentation was destroyed (in a special furnace) while false documentation was created to justify expenditures.

The simultaneous rise of the Khmer Rouge and the increase in area and intensity of U.S. bombing between 1969 and 1973 incited speculation as to the relationship between the two events. Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, argues:

“Apart from the large human toll, perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused…The CIA‘s Directorate of Operations, after investigations south of Phnom Penh, reported in May 1973 that the communists there were successfully ‘using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda’… .The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia was partly responsible for the rise of what had been a small-scale Khmer Rouge insurgency, which now grew capable of overthrowing the Lon Nol government”

March 20 Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale., collectively known as the Chicago 8 are indicted for alleged actions at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — charged under the anti-riot provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The Chicago 8 indictment alleged crimes of three kinds: that all eight defendants conspired (together with another sixteen unindicted co-conspirators) to cross state lines to incite a riot, to teach the making of an incendiary device, and to commit acts to impede law enforcement officers in their lawful duties; that David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale individually crossed state lines to incite a riot; that John Froines and Lee Weiner instructed other persons in the construction and use of an incendiary device.

Black Panther, Bobby Seale, the eighth man charged, had his trial severed during the proceedings, lowering the number from eight to seven. The evidence against Seale was slim as he was a last-minute replacement for Eldridge Cleaver and had been in Chicago for only two days of the convention. On November 5, 1969, Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced him to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, each count accounting for three months of his imprisonment, because of his loud protests, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, hence the “Chicago Seven“. During the trial, one of Seale’s many protests led the judge to have him bound and gagged,

The 16 unindicted co-conspirators are: Wolfe B. Lowenthal, Stewart E. Albert, Sidney M. Peck, Kathy Boudin, Corina F. Fales, Benjamin Radford, Thomas W. Neumann, Craig Shimabukuro, Bo Taylor, David A. Baker, Richard Bosciano, Terry Gross, Donna Gripe, Benjamin Ortiz, Joseph Toornabene, and Richard Palmer.

March 21 Fort Jackson – Fort Jackson 9 (later 8), are arrested for “holding an illegal demonstration, … breach of the peace, … and disobeying an order.” See entry for May 20.

March 22 In this wide ranging discussion of Vietnam strategy, probably drafted by NSC staffer Morton Halperin, the central role of the Soviet Union in White House thinking about a diplomatic solution to the war is evident; so are ideas closely related to linkage and the Madman Theory-that Nixon is out of control and is capable of even seemingly irrational actions. According to Kissinger/Halperin, “There is no question that the Soviets could play a major role in bringing the war to an end if they decide to put pressure on Hanoi.” To accomplish that, it was necessary to “change the current Soviet calculation of gains and risks” associated with pressuring their Vietnamese allies. One way to do that would be for the Soviets to see risks in not helping Washington: “Within Vietnam we must worry the Soviets about the possibility that we are losing our patience and may get out of control.” Escalatory measures might be “considered in this light.”

9 antiwar protestors arrested for ransacking the Dow Chemical company in Washington DC. Dow produced Agent Orange and napalm for use in the war.

March 28 Fort Dix – SP/4 Allen Myers is arrested for posting sticker advertising April 5th GI-civilian demonstration in New York.

Tacoma – Founders of The Shelter Half coffeehouse are tried for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” See entry for October 1968.

March 29 Letters from Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour results in a U.S. Army investigation into the My Lai (Mỹ Lai) massacre.

Vietnam Full Disclosure

My Lai
Category

Reflections on the My Lai Memorial Exhibit and the American War in Vietnam or How to Get Away with Murder

Forgotten Hero Hugh Thompson

Ernest Medina, Army Captain at My Lai

The Tip of the Iceberg: My Lai Fifty Years On

Remember My Lai

Video Clips from My Lai On the 50th Anniversary- May 16, 2018

50 years after My Lai massacre, survivors remember

Vietnamese survivors remember My Lai massacre with horror and confusion

The Truth Behind My Lai

My long turn against the war: One nurse’s story on the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre

Vietnam marks 50 years since U.S. massacre at My Lai

The GI Resistance Continues: Vietnam Vets Return to My Lai, Where U.S. Slaughtered 500 Civilians

50 Years After My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, Revisiting the Slaughter the U.S. Military Tried to Hide

Shame and guilt of My Lai massacre must be kept alive: American veteran

The Unlearned Lesson of My Lai

My Lai Exhibit Highlights Dark Anniversary Of Vietnam War

My Lai (a book review) PART ONE

Mission statement

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50 Years of Resistance In & Out Of Uniform

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Upcoming Events

My Lai Memorial Exhibit March 22nd-24th

NYC Fundraising Party w/ music by Peter Yarrow & Fine Cut preview

Commemorating Violent Conflicts and Building Sustainable Peace

On Burns/Novick PBS Documentary

Philip Jones Griffiths’ Viet Nam

This Month in History: 1969

2016 National Book Award Finalist, Viet Thanh Nguyen:

Agent Orange Awareness

My Lai Category

Mission statement

Sign Up for Updates

50 Years of Resistance In & Out Of Uniform

Like Us on Facebook

Upcoming Events

On Burns/Novick PBS Documentary

Philip Jones Griffiths’ Viet Nam

This Month in History: 1969

2016 National Book Award Finalist, Viet Thanh Nguyen:

Agent Orange Awareness

My Lai
Category