Coverup of Extensive War Crimes: 40th Anniversary of the My Lai Massacre

by Dr. Gary G. Kohls

Global Research, March 15, 2008

- 2008-03-14

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Global Research Editor’s Note In a bitter irony, Colin Powell, who was responsible for the coverup of the My Lai massacre acceded to a “brilliant” career in the Armed Forces. In 2001 he was appointed Secretary of State in the Bush administration. Although never indicted, Powell was also deeply implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. It is worth noting that Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the Gulf War, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers in what British war correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot entitled “Operation Desert Slaughter”. “The forty two day carpet bombing, enjoined by thirty two other countries, against a country of just twenty five million souls, with a youthful, conscript army, with broadly half the population under sixteen, and no air force, was just the beginning of a United Nations led, global siege of near mediaeval ferocity.” In the words of General Norman Schwartzkopf who led Operation Desert Slaughter “‘There was no one left to kill’… There are been many US sponsored My Lais since the Vietnam war. Michel Chossudovsky. Global Research, March 15, 2008 US Army Major Colin Powell Forty years ago this week, on March 16, 1968, a company of US Army combat soldiers from the Americal Division swept into the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, rounded up the 500+ unarmed, non-combatant residents, all women, children, babies and a few old men, and executed them in cold blood, Nazi-style. No weapons were found in the village, and the whole operation took only 4 hours. \ Although there was a serious attempt to cover-up this operation (which involved a young up-and-coming US Army Major named Colin Powell), those who orchestrated or participated in this “business-as-usual” war zone atrocity did not deny the details of the slaughter when the case came to trial several years later. But the story had filtered back to the Western news media, thanks to a couple of courageous eye-witnesses whose consciences were still intact. An Army court-marital trial eventually convened against a handful of the soldiers, including Lt. William Calley and Company C commanding officer, Ernest Medina. Continued . . .