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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (267280)	1/7/2006 8:32:59 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1573694

Hugh Thompson, helicopter pilot who rescued civilians in My Lai massacre, dies JESSICA BUJOL Fri Jan 6, 1:45 PM ET NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Hugh Thompson, a former U.S. army helicopter pilot honoured for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62. Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, hospital spokesman Jay DeWorth said. Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer and family friend, said Thompson died of cancer. "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. They landed the helicopter in the line of fire between American troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pointed their own guns at the U.S. soldiers to prevent more killings. Colburn and Andreotta had provided cover for Thompson as he went forward to confront the leader of the U.S. forces. Thompson later coaxed civilians out of a bunker so they could be evacuated, and then landed his helicopter again to pick up a wounded child they transported to a hospital. Their efforts led to the ceasefire order at My Lai. In 1998, the U.S. army honoured the three men with the 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. "It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did," army Maj. Gen. Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three "set the standard for all soldiers to follow." Lieut. William 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 Richard 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. Thompson's role in ending My Lai didn't come to light until the late 1980s, when David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, saw an interview with Thompson in a documentary on the massacre. He launched a letter-writing campaign that eventually led to the awarding of the medals in 1998. "I proudly and humbly accept it not only for myself but for the men who served their country with honour on the battlefield in Southeast Asia," Thompson said at the time of the award.

To: TimF who wrote (267280)	1/7/2006 8:44:59 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573694

re: "The good that has and will develop from the war" is a complete fantasy. ************************************ Not at all. Note that even if it has overall been a massive net disaster (and I assert that it has not) that doesn't mean no good has come from it. To assert that no good at all has come from it is rather extreme and unnecessary as well as inaccurate. "Rather extreme", eh? "Net disaster", eh? I suppose some war profiteers made a few bucks vs. 1000's dead, huge US debt, destabilization of the ME, 1000's of newly trained terrorists, loss of US esteem in the world, a breakdown of US alliances that have been carefully built over generations and administrations, etc, etc... is "the good that has and will develop from the war". Nit pick if you want but you have no sense of proportion.