Thursday, December 27, 2012

Condemned Afghan Sgt Bales Should At Most Get the Lt William Calley Treatment (My Lai)

The Obama administration and the Secretary of State all blame the "fog of war" for their disastrous Ben Ghazi blunder. When Hillary Clinton gets sick, she goes AWOL. When its very obvious that American soldiers "go crazy," they are condemned to death. That's what the U.S. Army is seeking in the case of Staff Sgt Robert Bales.




Our DOD  (Department Of Defense) always wanting to prove how holier than thou they are by giving the enemy every benefit of the doubt while regularly condemning our own soldiers.

Why couldn't Sgt Bales, at most, get the Lt William Calley treatment - if you recall, the Army officer who went on a rampage in Vietnam, but is walking the streets today?

Pray for Sgt Bales. Write your congressman, the President, and the Department of Defense on his behalf. No one who is not in a theater of war knows how craziness can take over a soldier. It did me in Nam in 1970.

William Calley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Laws Calley
BornJune 8, 1943 (age 69)
MiamiFlorida
AllegianceUnited States of America
Service/branchUnited States Army
RankSecond Lieutenant[1]
UnitCompany C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment11th Infantry Brigade23rd Infantry Division
Battles/wars
William Laws Calley[1] (William Laws Calley, Jr.) (born June 8, 1943) is a convicted American war criminal and a former U.S. Armyofficer found guilty of murder for his role in the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.[2]

Contents

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[edit]Early life

William Calley was born in MiamiFlorida. His father was a United States Navy veteran of World War II. Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami and then attended Palm Beach Junior College in 1963. He dropped out in 1964 after receiving unsatisfactory grades, consisting of two Cs, one D, and four Fs.[3] Calley then worked at a variety of jobs before enlistment, including as a bellhop, dishwasher, salesman, insurance appraiser and train conductor.[4]

[edit]Military career

Calley underwent forty-five weeks of basic combat training at Fort BlissTexas,[5] followed by eight weeks advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort LewisWashington. Having scored high enough on his Armed Forces Qualification tests, he applied for and was subsequently accepted into Officer's Candidate School (OCS). He then began 24 weeks of junior officer training at Fort Benning in mid-March 1967. Upon graduating from OCS Class No. 51 on September 7, 1967,[4] he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant ofInfantry. Following his commission, Calley was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion20th Infantry Regiment11th Infantry Brigade,[1]and began training at Schofield BarracksHawaii, in preparation for deployment to Vietnam.
Calley's evaluations described him as merely "average" as an officer.[3] Later, as the My Lai investigation progressed, a more negative picture emerged. Men in his platoon reported to army investigators that Calley lacked common sense and could not read a map or compass properly.[6] A number of men assigned under Calley claimed that because he was so disliked some secretly discussedassassinating him.[2]

[edit]Murder trial


Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968 in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre showing mostly women and children dead on a road.
The events in My Lai had initially been covered up by local divisional command. In April 1969, nearly thirteen months after the massacre, Ron Ridenhour, a G.I. who had been with the 11th Brigade wrote letters to the President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense. In these letters the G.I. described some of the atrocities by the soldiers at My Lai, that he had been told about.
Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 104 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Son My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. As many as 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and the elderly, had been systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage on March 16, 1968. Upon conviction, Calley could have faced the death penalty.
On November 12, 1969, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story[7] and revealed that Calley was charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese.[8]
Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970. It was the military prosecution's contention that Calley, in defiance of the rules of engagement, ordered his men to deliberately murder unarmed Vietnamese civilians despite the fact that his men were not under enemy fire at all. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) to kill everyone in the village. In presenting the case, the two military prosecutors, Aubrey Daniel and John Partin, were hamstrung by the reluctance of many soldiers to testify against Calley. Some refused to answer questions point-blank on the witness stand by citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However one holdout, a soldier in Calley's unit named Paul Meadlo, after being jailed for contempt of court by the presiding judge, Reid W. Kennedy, reluctantly agreed to testify. In his testimony, Meadlo described that during the day's events, he was standing guard over a few dozen My Lai villagers when Lt. Calley approached him and ordered him to shoot all the civilians. When Meadlo balked at the orders, Calley backed off 20 feet (6 m) or more and opened fire on the people himself, and Meadlo joined in.
Another witness named Dennis Conti, who was also reluctant to testify, described the carnage, claiming that Calley had started it and the rest of the 105 soldiers of Charlie Company followed suit. Another witness, named Leonard Gonzalez, told of seeing one of the soldiers of Calley's unit herd some men and women villagers together and order them to strip off their clothing. When the villagers refused, the enraged soldier fired a single round from his M-79 grenade launcher into the crowd, killing everyone.
Calley's original defense that the death of the villagers was the result of an accidental helicopter or aerial airstrike was quashed by the few prosecution witnesses. In his new defense, Calley claimed he was following the orders of his immediate superior, Captain Ernest Medina. Whether this order was actually given is disputed; Medina was acquitted of all charges relating to the incident at a separate trial in August 1971. Taking the witness stand, Calley, under the direct examination by his civilian defense lawyer George Latimer, claimed that on the previous day, his commanding officer, Captain Medina, made it clear that his unit was to move into the village and that everyone was to be shot for they all were Viet Cong. Twenty-one other members of Charlie Company also testified on Calley's defense corroborating the orders. But Medina publicly denied that he had ever given such orders and he had meant enemy soldiers, while Calley assumed that his order to "kill the enemy" meant to kill everyone. In his personal statement, Calley stated that:
"I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification that we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so."
After deliberating for 79 hours, the six-officer jury (five of whom had served in Vietnam) convicted him on March 29, 1971, of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. On March 31, 1971, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at Fort Leavenworth,[9] which includes the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the Department of Defense's only maximum security prison.
Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai Massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Calley was convicted. Many saw My Lai as a direct result of the military's attrition strategy with its emphasis on "body counts" and "kill ratios."
Many in America were outraged by Calley's sentence; Georgia's governor Jimmy Carter instituted "American Fighting Man's Day" and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on.[10]Indiana's governor asked all state flags to be flown at half-staff for Calley, and Utah's and Mississippi's governors also disagreed with the verdict.[10] The ArkansasKansasTexasNew Jersey, and South Carolina legislatures requested clemency for Calley.[10] Alabama's governor George Wallace visited Calley in the stockade and requested that Nixon pardon him.
After the conviction, the White House received over 5000 telegrams; the ratio was 100 to 1 in favor of leniency.[11] In a telephone survey of the American public, 79% disagreed with the verdict, 81% believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern, and 69% believed Calley had been made a scapegoat.[11]
Many others were outraged not at Calley's guilty verdict, but that he was the only one within the chain of command who was convicted. At the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit organized byVietnam Veterans Against the War January 31-February 2, 1971, veterans including First Lieutenant William Crandell of the 199th Light Infantry BrigadeAmerical Division expressed their outrage:[12]
We intend to tell who it was that gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering on full and final genocide. We intend to demonstrate that My Lai was no unusual occurrence, other than, perhaps, the number of victims killed all in one place, all at one time, all by one platoon of us. We intend to show that the policies of Americal Divisionwhich inevitably resulted in My Lai were the policies of other Army and Marine Divisions as well. We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lieutenant William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide.
There is a view in defense of Calley, South Korean Vietnam Expeditionary Forces Commanding Officer Chae Myung Shin remarks "Calley tried to get revenge for the deaths of his troops. In a war, this is natural."[13]

[edit]House arrest

On April 1, 1971, only a day after Calley was sentenced, U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered him transferred from Leavenworth prison to house arrest at Fort Benning, pending appeal. This leniency was protested by Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense. The prosecutor, Aubrey Daniel wrote, "The greatest tragedy of all will be if political expedience dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons."[14] On August 20, 1971, the convening authority — the Commanding General of Fort Benning — reduced Calley's sentence to 20 years. The Army Court of Military Review affirmed both the conviction and sentence (46 C.M.R. 1131 (1973)). The Secretary of the Army reviewed the sentence and findings and approved both, but in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years. On May 3, 1974, President Nixon notified the Secretary that he had reviewed the case and determined he would take no further action in the matter.
Ultimately, Calley served only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning. He petitioned the federal district court for habeas corpus on February 11, 1974, which was granted on September 25, 1974, along with his immediate release, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. Judge Elliott found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pretrial publicity, denial ofsubpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the United States House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. (The judge had released Calley on bail on February 27, 1974, but an appeals court reversed it and returned Calley to U.S. Army custody on June 13, 1974.) Later in 1974, President Nixon tacitly issued Calley a limited Presidential Pardon. Consequently, his general court-martial conviction and dismissal from the U.S. Army were upheld, however, the prison sentence and subsequent parole obligations were commuted to time served, leaving Calley a free man.
At his release, the press eagerly awaited his arrival at the prison's South Gate, as promised by the prison commandant. Instead, at Calley's request, he was released at West Gate and taken directly to the Fort Leavenworth airfield, where his escort had him flown home. The press were notified of his departure after the fact.
The army appealed against Judge Elliott's decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and asked an appeals judge to stay Calley's immediate release, which was granted. However, the full Court upheld the release pending appeal and decided the entire court would hear the appeal (normally not done in the first instance). The Army won a reversal of Judge Elliott's habeas corpusgrant and a reinstatement of the judgement of the courts-martial, with 5 judges dissenting. (Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 9/10/1975). In a long and extremely detailed careful opinion, the reviewing court disagreed with Judge Elliott on the law and significantly on Elliott's scope of review of the courts martial proceedings. On November 9, 1974, the Court noted that although by now Calley had been "paroled" from confinement by the Army, that did not moot the habeas corpus proceedings.

[edit]After release

Sometime in 2005 or 2006, Calley divorced his wife Penny, whose father had employed him at the V.V. Vick jewelry store in Columbus since 1975, and moved to downtown Atlanta to live with his son, William Laws Calley III.[15] In October 2007, Calley agreed to be interviewed by the UK newspaper the Daily Mail to discuss the massacre, saying, "Meet me in the lobby of the nearest bank at opening time tomorrow, and give me a certified check for $25,000, then I'll talk to you for precisely one hour."[16] When the journalist arrived to question Calley without a check, Calley left.
On August 19, 2009, while speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, Calley apologized for his role in the My Lai massacre. Calley said:
There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry....If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a 2nd Lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them—foolishly, I guess.[17][18]

[edit]


Monday, December 17, 2012

Mass Shootings And The New Generation Of Young American Zombies

Adam Lanza (Connecticut School Kid Killer), Jared Loughner (Killed and wounded, including Gabby Giffords), T.J. Lane (Recently killed fellow classmates in Chardon Ohio) ,Brogan Rafferty (Teen conspired to kill Craigslist job applicants), James Holmes (Shot up theater dressed as orange haired Batman Joker), SeungHui Choi (Virginia Tech Massacre), Anders Brevik (2011 Norway Attacks)

I cannot recall a time in U.S. history where there was such a proliferation of younger conscienceless males, who created so much death and destruction in one generation  in American society - outside of war.

Even during the Vietnam Era, many of us returning vets were admittedly "not quite right," but we were nothing like the description given to us by the liberal left as a bunch of  "psychos." Today, the U.S. has spawned a generation of teens-young adults, who have been systematically taught not to judge themselves with something called a conscience, as they have been simultaneously taught to ignore the notion of an overruling God.. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is only one of those basic commandments that has been purged from school curriculum, because teaching such would "violate the (mythic) separation of church and state." The ACLU is perpetually threatening schools, which eventually back down, from doing anything that hints at being a religious endeavor. So, if there is any common conception about what may be termed "good" (from the word "God")," it is disallowed, and  anything that is not good, is encouraged. IOW Good is out, and Bad is OK in the government schools and other institutions.

Adding to the injury, American liberal churches are more concerned  about marrying gays or saving the planet through preaching Green sermons and other feel good platitudes, as opposed to preaching the depravity of man along with Heaven Sweet and Hell Hot sermons.

I will not excuse the young men for their murderous activities, no matter if they were diagnosed as ADHD, and therefore  exempt from school discipline,  but is should be obvious that most of these men come from broken families encouraged by liberal divorce laws,permissive church policies, and psychologists. It is so tragically ironic that the very same schools which have ousted God and prayer from the public institutions, are the very same which suffer the consequences of the conscienceless youth, who have been promoted by the socialized, secularized, liberal Left. The Left has convinced us that fathers are not needed as family participants, as custody is usually granted to the divorcing mother who is the court preferred provider and role model - even for boys. So, how's that been working out, Great Society?

After all, the Dems just publicly booed God, for whatever reason,  not understanding that the first line of prevention or inhibiting of  crime (sins), is the conscience, as directed by the God of our fathers.Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Its not just Christmas that has been more under attack by the libs, its the entirety of Christianity, including the injunction Not To Kill, or Not To Commit Adultery,  which have been  savaged by the socialists, who prefer man's remedies to God's. If life means so little to our brilliant academicians like Princeton's  ethics prof, Peter Singer, who not only believes that pre birth abortion should be encouraged, but that post birth "aborting" of troublesome living children could be ethical, how easy it is for this sort of morality to trickle down from the bloody ivory towers of our higher learning institutions - into the psyches of our  conscienceless youth?

I have been hearing on the cable news rubber chicken circuit that no other countries have this sort of problem - serial massacres at such a high rate as in the United States. I have to remind them that Islam  is way ahead of the United States in its demolition of school children, and Mexican massacres are more horrific - although those mass killings are aimed more at adults. Europe and Canada are more homogeneous,  so that non-differing cultures are more likely to get along with one another (as opposed to needing to kill each other), as opposed to the myriad of American cultures which are not quite melding as diversity engineers predicted. And, if you compared the millions of Europeans who "saved up," and went to war against other Europeans - twice in two world wars in the last century - the Europeans could be seen as more savage toward one another when compared to the U.S.. Taking guns from Americans will not make us more like Europe or Canada. We are too much different from them, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.

We do not have to wait for a Zombie Apocalypse, our society has eclipsed into one.




Thursday, December 06, 2012

How The Soviets Eliminated Christmas - And, America Is Right On Track Doing The Same


The carton below is from Soviet Communist Russian times. You can see how the capitalist system is depicted as slavery - the opposite of how communism works, IE., free money, multiplied and returned to the worker - in the right frame. Tell me Obama does not think differently.

And, as many Americans kill off Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus, so the Soviets replaced Saint Nick with "Father Frost" - a man who gives out presents because he is a generous communist.

From Wikipedia Ded Moroz
"Following the Russian Revolution, Christmas traditions were actively discouraged because they were considered to be "bourgeois and religious".[8]Similarly, in 1928 Ded Moroz was declared "an ally of the priest and kulak".[9]Nevertheless, the image of Ded Moroz took its current form during Soviet times, becoming the main symbol of the New Year’s holiday that replaced Christmas. Some Christmas traditions were revived following the famous letter by Pavel Postyshev, published in Pravda on December 28, 1935.[8] Postyshev believed that the origins of the holiday, which were pre-Christian in any case, were less important than the benefits it could bring to Soviet children.[9] In 1937, a man playing Ded Moroz arrived at the Moscow Palace of Unions for the first time. Joseph Stalin ordered Palace of Unions' Ded Morozes to wear only blue coats, so that they would not be mistaken for Santa Claus.[10] During Stalinist times, Ded Moroz, Snegurochka (or "Snow Maiden"), and New Year Boy were featured in Communist-type Nativity scenes, or public appearances, with Ded Moroz as the equivalent of Joseph, Snegurochka as the equivalent of Mary, and the New Year Boy as the equivalent of the Christ child.[11]
During the period of the Soviet Union's dominance over Eastern Europe, Ded Moroz was introduced to many nations. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been efforts to revive local characters."

So, we have many more American secularists demanding that Christ be extracted from Christmas. And I might say, they all voted for Obama and other Democrats.

Below, Soviet "Father Frost" Replacement For Christian Saint Nicholas who was an actual Christian Bishop in Turkey - before Moslem invasion.
Below, is the Soviet "Nativity Scene" depicting Father Frost, the Snow Maiden (Mary's replacement), and no Jesus. The Communists sometimes added "New Year"  Boy to make it  more resemble a Nativity Scene.
Here is the Soviet Communist Russian "New Year Boy" (Jesus replacement) rightly showing his hind-end to the world.

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