From My Lai to Abu Ghraib

There is a sad coincidence this week in marking not only the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, but also the 40th Anniversary of the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War.

It was March 16, 1968 that the US armed forces, stuck in a war that was increasingly desperate and un-winnable, undertook a reconnaissance mission to locate and flush out members of the Viet Cong. Military intelligence believed that Viet Cong were located in the hamlets and villages of Son My and My Lai and a major offensive was executed.

As Charlie Company landed on the morning of March 16th, Soldiers, unable to find any evidence of Viet Cong guerilla forces in the villages began to attack anything that moved, a massacre that resulted in the death of up to 500 Vietnamese civilians, many of them women and children.

The details of the massacre, along with searing images of the carnage was a turning point and an attitude shift for the public, fueling outrage from the anti war movement and world nations condemning the attack.

Fast forward to this week’s 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War, a conflict that seems eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam War. A war in Iraq that was approved based completely on false and misleading evidence of WMD’s and Al Quaida Connections. A War in Iraq that brought us the images of Abu Ghriab prison torture. A War in Iraq and a President that supports torture techniques by vetoing the Intelligence Authorization Bill. A War in Iraq that even the Pentagon debunked by quietly releasing their report last week admitting there was no smoking gun, no direct connection between Saddam’s Iraq and Al Qaeda. 600,000 Official Iraqi government documents that disproved all the statements of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

Almost 4,000 American troops killed, anywhere from 82,000 to 1.1 million Iraqi civilian deaths directly or indirectly related to the Iraq War.

Helicopter gunner Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai this weekend to pay tribute to those killed during the massacre 40 years ago. Remembering the terrible event, Colburn is reminded not only of My Lai but recent images from Abu Ghraib:

“We’re supposed to learn from the mistakes of history, but we keep making the same mistakes.”