Haunting Lesson from Vietnam

The Vietnam 'war' was horrible. There are horror stories about life in the jungle and the killing of innocent civilians in acts so brutal that it causes, for me, emotional shock. Some stories have already surfaced about horrible stories from Iraq like Haditha, and the siege of Falluja. I wonder what, and how many, horror stories will continue surface, in time, about the current 'war' (of occupation) in Iraq. Here's an excerpt from a Robert Parry article about one horrible incident from the Vietnam War. The article is entitled The Truth About Colin Powell:
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My Lai

On March 16, 1968, a bloodied unit of the Americal Division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4.

With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians – mostly old men, women and children – from their thatched huts and herded them into the village’s irrigation ditches.

As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants.

Some parents used their bodies futilely to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded.

The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage.
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Aldo Leopold: "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

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