SwiftVets.com

[Craig]

Quoted from a newsgroup:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"..... But he says he could not stop others from being gunned down even
after they had been marched into a ditch.

Approximately 170 people were marched down in there, including women, old
men, babies. And GIs stood up on the side with their weapons on full
automatic and machine gun fire.

“There were no weapons captured. There were no draft-age males killed. They
were civilians,” says Colburn, referring to the ditch filled with bodies.
“It was full … some of the people were still, they were dying, they weren't
all dead.” ....."


"..... To begin with, the military service academies started inviting him
to visit and give lectures on military ethics to young soldiers.

And Thompson began to open up as he told those soldiers unforgettable
stories about My Lai: “A lot of the girls didn't scream too much because
they had already cut their tongues out. A bayonet can kill two real quick if
they're pregnant. It got nasty that day. I personally, I mean, I wish I was
a big enough man to say I forgive them, but I swear to God, I can't.”
....."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/60minutes/main615997.shtml

An American Hero

May 9, 2004


Hugh Thompson


Former helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson was finally honored decades
after saving defenseless Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. (Photo: CBS)

"I saved the people because I wasn't taught to murder and kill. I
can't answer for the people who took part in it. I apologize for the ones
that did." Hugh Thompson

(CBS) President Bush was "shocked, and appalled" by what American soldiers
did to Iraqi POWs.

Now, meet an American hero who says he felt the same way more than 30 years
ago in a different American war: Vietnam.

Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot in 1968, on a day American soldiers
gunned down more than 500 unarmed civilians in a village called My Lai.

The dead were women, old men and children. And even more of them would have
died if Thompson had not confronted his fellow soldiers, stopped their
murderous rampage and airlifted a number of civilians to safety.
Correspondent Mike Wallace reports.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
For years, the U.S. military tried to cover up the My Lai massacre. And Hugh
Thompson was treated not as a hero, but as a traitor. But this past March,
all that changed for Thompson, at a special ceremony in Nashville, Tenn.

It was a night Thompson never dreamed would happen. For years, he'd been
treated as an outcast, a turncoat, because he had dared to question his
fellow American GIs who said they were just following orders.

But this night, at last, he was being honored and inducted into an elite
fraternity, The Army Aviation Hall of Fame: "As an OH-23 pilot with the
123rd Aviation Battalion, CWO Hugh Thompson flew over the Vietnamese village
of My Lai on March 16, 1968, as U.S. troops were killing civilians."

That day back in 1968 was truly barbaric. Young, inexperienced American
troops, told by their leaders that My Lai was an enemy stronghold, rounded
up civilians, burned down their huts and then shot hundreds of them down in
cold blood.

Thompson, believing at first it was a legitimate combat operation, was
flying his small chopper over My Lai that day, trying to draw enemy fire
away from the American GIs on the ground. But there was no enemy fire.

When he saw the piles of bodies, he felt sick and ashamed. What happened was
so shocking, so inconceivable, that 60 Minutes asked Thompson and his
gunner, Larry Colburn, to go back with us to Vietnam and explain it all to
us for a story in 1998.

Thompson told 60 Minutes he landed his chopper near a rice paddy, and while
his crew covered him with M-60 machine guns, he managed to save some
civilians from being murdered. But he says he could not stop others from
being gunned down even after they had been marched into a ditch.

Approximately 170 people were marched down in there, including women, old
men, babies. And GIs stood up on the side with their weapons on full
automatic and machine gun fire.

“There were no weapons captured. There were no draft-age males killed. They
were civilians,” says Colburn, referring to the ditch filled with bodies.
“It was full … some of the people were still, they were dying, they weren't
all dead.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
As Thompson and Colburn were recalling the horrors of that day for 60
Minutes, an elderly woman walked toward us. She said that she had been
dumped in the ditch back in 1968, but had survived, shielded by the bodies
of the dead and the dying.

“Sorry we couldn't help you that day,” says Thompson to the woman.

She said she wanted to know why there were so many villagers killed that
day - and why Thompson was different from the rest of the Americans?

“I saved the people because I wasn't taught to murder and kill. I can't
answer for the people who took part in it,” says Thompson. “I apologize for
the ones that did. I just wished we could have helped more people that day.”

In fact, they did help more people. Thompson and Colburn found nine or 10
villagers cowering in a bunker. They radioed for a couple of choppers, which
airlifted all of them to safety.

60 Minutes managed to find two of the women they'd saved. Mrs. Nhung, who
was 73 at the time, was 43 when she was rescued. Mrs. Nhang was only 6.

“Didn't you take your life in your hands, Hugh, when you got out and told
the American soldiers who had been killing that they'd better quit and let
these people get out of the bunker,” Wallace asked Thompson, who wouldn’t
answer.

“Yes sir, he did,” says Colburn. “And he didn’t even take a weapon with him.
He had a side arm. He didn’t even have it drawn. He just placed himself …
And I was thinking that, at that point, anything could have happened. And we
watched Mr. Thompson go to the bunker and bring the people out.”

“There was just no value whatsoever on life,” says Thompson.

Wallace reminded the two men about another woman they tried to warn as they
hovered just above her in their chopper. An Army photographer had taken her
picture.

“We saw her in the tall grass and … I motioned for her to stay,” says
Colburn. “I was hoping she wouldn’t be detected. When we came back, she was
in this condition. … There’s a big difference between killing in war and
murder. Cold-blooded murder.”

“What do you call it when you march 100 or 200 people down in a ditch and
line up on the side with machines and start firing into it,” asks Thompson.
“Reminds me of another story that happened in World War II, like the Nazis.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Stunned by what he had seen that day, Thompson reported back to his
superiors.

But from the very beginning, the military tried to cover up the massacre.
And that wasn't all. Thompson is uncomfortable talking about it, but before
the Hall of Fame ceremony in Nashville, he and Colburn told 60 Minutes that
the U.S. military had stopped providing him with adequate back-up on his
chopper missions after My Lai.

“He was placed in a very precarious position as far as the missions that he
was carrying out,” says Colburn. “He didn’t have any adequate cover in my
opinion. Instead of being followed by two armed gun ships, he had another
scout helicopter.”

Scout helicopters are not equipped with the machine guns and rockets carried
by the larger Huey gun ships.

“It seemed like he was really going out on a limb when he was going out
without adequate cover,” says Colburn.

How many choppers did he lose? “I think three or four, something like that,”
says Thompson.

Actually, Thompson crashed a total of five times. And the last time, he
broke his back.

Why has none of this ever been told before? “I don’t know,” says Thompson.
“I just sorta like went underground. I didn’t mention it to anybody.”

Thompson may have clammed up, but word of what he had done followed him when
he returned from Vietnam to the United States. And he kept paying a price
for turning on his fellow soldiers at My Lai.

“I'd received death threats over the phone,” says Thompson. “We didn’t have
caller ID. But it was scary. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals
on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy.”

He said that when he went to the Officer’s Club, there would be “100 people
in there after work, and five minutes after I was there, you know, it seemed
like it was me and the bartender left.”

“This was because the truth, I don't think, was out there. This was, I was
somebody that was crying and whining about a few people getting accidentally
killed,” says Thompson. “There was no accidental killing that day. It was
murder.”

But when Thompson testified about those murders to Congress in 1970, his
testimony was kept secret. He says they didn’t want the story out: “Well,
not when one of the senior Congressmen here in the secret testimony say if
anybody goes to jail that day, it'll be that helicopter pilot.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
With the truth hidden away, Thompson admits he felt very much alone. For
years, he remained silent about My Lai. The military, meanwhile, continued
to give him the cold shoulder.

But that began to change shortly after our story aired on 60 Minutes. To
begin with, the military service academies started inviting him to visit and
give lectures on military ethics to young soldiers.

And Thompson began to open up as he told those soldiers unforgettable
stories about My Lai: “A lot of the girls didn't scream too much because
they had already cut their tongues out. A bayonet can kill two real quick if
they're pregnant. It got nasty that day. I personally, I mean, I wish I was
a big enough man to say I forgive them, but I swear to God, I can't.”

He says he continues to lecture at West Point and the Naval Academy, trying
to tell today’s troops “to be a soldier and act like a soldier.”

The tide turned some more when the Pentagon finally recognized Thompson,
Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, their crewmate who died in Vietnam after My
Lai. All three were awarded the prestigious Soldier's Medal.

But 30 years had passed since the massacre, and Thompson says it was
strangely unsatisfying. Too late, he says, from a reluctant military
leadership.

But he felt far different on the stage in Nashville, as he was inducted on
the first ballot into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame.

He says it’s a big honor. “This is my peers electing me to put me in there,”
says Thompson. “This is my fellow aviators. And that makes me feel good.”

[carpro]

Thompson certainly meets my definition of a True American Hero.

Bless him.

[Greenhat]

[95 bxl]

[Craig]

[sparky]

You'd have thought there would have been someone in Calley's group who would have done the same thing. Instead, they seemed to be just doing something routine.

Thompson was indeed a true hero:

[95 bxl]

[carpro]

How many reported it, Craig? It only takes one. That's why its so hard for these things to go unreported.
This group is not just about Kerry and its not just about the truth. It's about the truth about Kerry.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[sparky]

"How many reported it, Craig? It only takes one. That's why its so hard for these things to go unreported. "

If Thompson's helicopter hadn't been there, it would have gone unreported. If Seymour Hersch hadn't reported it, it would have gone unnoticed and it would just be one incident less in the package of incidents that I call a pattern.

95bxl states:

[carpro]

I have never said Kerry committed war crimes. The only ones I know of that he might have committed are not on your list.
The words "might have committed" tell why I haven't mentioned them.

If Kerry had held himself to this same simple standard, we would not be having this conversation today.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service."

[sparky]

[carpro]

[sparky]

I see. In other words, it's innuendo.

Actually, I think you're lying. When the initial accusation ("Kerry himself admitted to being a war criminal") didn't pan out, you tried a new approach: "You miss the point entirely, but I've heard other stuff that I won't repeat about his war crimes because I'm too good for that" routine.

Man, you guys crack me up!

[carpro]

[sparky]

I know exactly of what you speak. I'll post it again since it fit so well: