re: #207 electrotek

Excellent, will do. I still believe Calley should have been executed by a firing squad.

I ended up writing it last night as a rough draft lol and I’m at 3 pages, sheesh. For someone that has no historical link to SE Asia, I sure tend to get very emotional and passionate about this.

The problem, for the Nixon administration, was that a huge number of others were at least equally guilty. The company commander, Captain Medina, was in the thick of it. Besides Calley’s 1st platoon, 2nd platoon (2LT Stephen Brooks) killed upward of 80 civilians, while 3rd platoon (2LT Jeffrey Lacross) killed at least 10 despite being held in reserve through most of the operation. The battalion commander, LTC Barker, observed the whole operation from his chopper and the Division commander, MG Koster, flew over while it was going on. Both claimed they saw nothing untoward. Yet, Hugh Thompson and his crew, who just happened to fly by during an unrelated mission, were so alarmed at what they saw that they landed and intervened. Nixon was not willing to punish all of them, so essentially none were punished.