Calley Apologizes For My Lai Massacre

August 21, 2009

Lt. William L. Calley, Jr., in April 1971, during his court-martial at Fort Benning, Ga

Speaking in a soft, sometimes labored voice, the only U.S. Army officer convicted in the 1968 slayings of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai made an extraordinary public apology while speaking to a small group near the military base where he was court-martialed.

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," William L. Calley told members of a local Kiwanis Club, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported Friday. "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."

SNIP

Wearing thick glasses and a blue blazer, he spoke softly into a microphone answering questions for a half-hour from about 50 Kiwanis members gathered for their weekly luncheon in a church meeting room.

"You could've heard a pin drop," said Al Fleming, who befriended Calley about 25 years ago and invited him to speak. "They were just slack-jawed that they were hearing this from him for the first time in nearly 40 years."

Both Fleming and Lennie Pease, the Kiwanis president, told The Associated Press in phone interviews Friday that Calley's apology came at the beginning of his brief remarks before he began taking questions................

Only comment to this I will give is it isn't only about the slaughter, Atrocity and not the only one, of these Innocent Vietnamese but also the Soldiers Killed and Maimed, in an invasion and occupation that should never have been, as a direct result of! As in All Wars Atrocities bring the Blowback and aid the so called enemy, those fighting to rid their country of an occupier, and are no different then that we accuse of in our self righteous arrogance and apathy!!