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My Lai saviour & US hero dies - expose UK-US state terrorism, PC racism & Coalition war crimes

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 12 January 2006
1 comment

Wars and conflicts USA History Gideon Polya

HUGH THOMPSON, the American helicopter pilot who courageously intervened to save Vietnamese civilians from massacre by US troops at My Lai, Vietnam in 1968, has died.

HUGH THOMPSON (Vietnam veteran, US Army helicopter pilot, Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, Soldier’s Medal) (4/15/1943-1/6/2006) was an American hero and a profoundly decent human being of the kind whose decency and courage surely give hope for all humanity.

On March 16 , 1968, Hugh Thompson (24) and his 3 man crew flew over My Lai, Vietnam, and were perturbed to see the bodies of men, women and children scattered over the landscape.

They landed and determined that there was an ongoing massacre of Vietnamese villagers by US soldiers.

Thompson finally landed in the line of fire between Vietnamese civilians and menacing US soldiers. He confronted the senior US officer, ordered his men to shoot any US soldiers shooting at civilians and persuaded about 10 terrified civilians to leave their shelter.

Thompson radioed for a further helicopter to evacuate the survivors and then rescued a further civilian, a boy, from a ditch.

Thompson was angrily vocal on his return to base: "I threatened never to fly again. I didn’t want to be part of that. It wasn’t war."

18 months later the My Lai Massacre eventually surfaced in the media. Thompson testified to Congress, a military inquiry and at the court martial that eventually convicted ONLY one US soldier - Lieutenant William Calley - for involvement in the massacre of 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.

NEARLY 40 YEARS ON, WHO WILL DEFEND THE UTTERLY INNOCENT TODAY - THE DEFENCELESS INFANTS & THEIR MOTHERS - FROM MASS MURDER & PASSIVE GENOCIDE IN CRIMINAL WARS IN OCCUPIED IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN?

According to the latest UNICEF report (2005), in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality was 122,000 in Occupied Iraq, 359,000 in Occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the occupying country Australia (noting that in 2004 the populations of these countries were 28.1 million, 28.6 million and 19.9 million, respectively) (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry...).

About 1,300 under-5 year old infants will have died in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan on Christmas Day alone and 0.5 million will die in the coming year due to non-provision by the US-led Coalition of life-preserving requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm).

Racist, lying mainstream media will simply NOT report this horrendous, ongoing mass murder, mass infanticide and passive genocide in the name of UK-US “democratic imperialism” (actually democratic Nazism, democratic tyranny and UK-US state terrorism). The “politically correct racism” (PC racism) of Australian and Anglo-American mainstream media and politicians supports UK-US state terrorism through DENIAL of racism and IGNORING of horrendous UK-US Coalition war crimes.

PEACE IS THE ONLY WAY BUT SILENCE KILLS & SILENCE IS COMPLICITY - WE ARE OBLIGED TO INFORM EVERYONE ABOUT EGREGIOUS INHUMANITY.

A detailed, formal complaint has been sent to the International Criminal Court charging the Coalition with war crimes in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (for the full text see Countercurrents, 21 December 2005: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-p...).

Follow the shining example of American hero Hugh Thompson DFC and PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE.

Dr Gideon Polya
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpo...

Forum posts

  • After this incident he was given more dangerous missions for reasons which are not difficult to figure out..but he did them...was agent orange responsible or a contributing factor in his cancer ?

    (from an article by Jessica Bujol some extracts;

    Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later,

    "These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them," Thompson recalled in a 1998 Associated Press interview.

    Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai.

    In 1998, the Army honored the three men with the prestigious Soldier’s Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. It was a posthumous award for Andreotta, who had been killed in battle three weeks after My Lai.

    Lt. William L. Calley, a platoon leader, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killings, but served just three years under house arrest when then-President Nixon reduced his sentence.

    Author Seymour Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the massacre in 1969 while working as a freelance journalist. The massacre became one of the pivotal events as opposition to the war was growing in the United States.

    "You can’t imagine what courage it took to do what he did," Hersh said.
    Although Thompson’s story was a significant part of Hersh’s reports, and Thompson testified before Congress, his role in ending My Lai wasn’t widely known until the late 1980s, when David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, saw an interview in a documentary and launched a letter-writing campaign that eventually led to the awarding of the medals in 1998.

    For years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those who considered him unpatriotic. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.

    Moral of the story its easier and quicker for murders to be pardoned than heros to be acknowledged for their humanity first then their bravery. In this case 30 years or half his life.
    Are there such men now serving in Iraq............?

    cheers, jt