AP: My Lai Figure Gen. Koster Dies at 86

[Hissyspit]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBIT_KOSTER?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

My Lai Figure Samuel Koster Dies at 86

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) -- Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, who was demoted from major general after being charged in the massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai, has died. He was 86.

Koster died from renal cancer at his home on Jan. 23, said his daughter Nancy Sroka.

Koster was a major general in command of the Americal Division when some of the unit's soldiers killed hundreds of defenseless men, women and children on March 16, 1968. The Americans were not under attack, and there were no Viet Cong in My Lai.

The massacre was disclosed in 1969 by the journalist Seymour Hersh and came to symbolize the U.S. military's moral failures in Vietnam.

Koster and 13 other officers were charged in early 1970 with trying to cover up the massacre. Koster had been in a helicopter over the area the day of the massacre and insisted he was never told a mass killing had occurred.

"I accepted those reports," Koster testified in 1971 at the court-martial of another defendant. The general said he had been under the impression that only about 20 civilians had been "inadvertently killed."

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[kurth]

1. Yeah sure, "inadvertently killed"

Hundreds of them.

[iverglas]

2. I recommend visiting google images

and asking for my lai.

I imagine that few people here have ever seen these images, and they need to be seen by a lot of people.

USAmericans didn't learn the lesson of Vietnam -- not that the cost of what they did was to high for them, but that what they did was EVIL. And victims of the US around the world, up to and including Iraqis, and whoever is coming next, have continued to suffer for that failure.

http://www.readerweekly.us/issue/309/Gary_Kohls.html
(It seems to be a Christian publication, and the author writing as a Christian addressing other Christians. I just liked the succinct statement of the issue.)

... the realities of My Lai deserve to be revisited so that it will happen “never again.” The Vietnam War was an excruciating time for conscientious Americans because of the numerous moral issues surrounding the mass slaughter of a war that killed 58,000 American soldiers, caused the spiritual deaths of millions more, killed 3 million Vietnamese (mostly civilians) and psychologically traumatized countless others on both sides of the conflict.

Of course the Vietnam War was a thousand times worse for the innocent people of that doomed land. They were victims of an army of brutal young men from a foreign land that believed that the Vietnamese people were pitiful sub-humans and deserved to be killed - with some GIs preferring to inflict torture first. That kill-or-be-killed attitude is standard operating procedure for military combat units of every nation and ideology. ...

And for an example of brilliant, genuinely satirical political cartooning (as distinct from what has been in the news this week):





incoherent subject line fixed

[chelsea0011]

7. Thanks or printing that. I've always thought it was a Mad Magazine

cover with Alfred E. Newman morphed into Calley.

[iverglas]

8. the genius of it

It is, just not on Mad Magazine. ;)

We should probably point out, for the benefit of some of the young 'uns among us, that "My Lai" is pronounced "Me Lie".

Oh, sigh. I suppose we might also have to do this:



This has been done, of course:



... but I think the "me lie" formulation might fit better ...

[anitar1]

3. Death comes to all eventually. Sounds like he was

given a painful death.

[Miz Milquetoast]

4. Memory Lane

Whatever happened to Calley? I know, if he was in prison, he didn't spend a long time there.... What's he doing now--anybody know?

[laylah]

5. Jinx!

Owe me a coke :silly:

I was going to ask the very same question.

Welcome to DU where brilliant minds think alike :toast:

Jenn

[Geo55]

6. #

Today, William Calley lives in a self-imposed obscurity in Columbus, Georgia, working in a family-owned jewelry store. He refuses to give interviews or talk about Vietnam in public.