nausea

- I saw hundreds of civilians being harassed and I have my own pictures as evidence.

Army Photographer Ronald L. Haeberle

- The goal of the operation was to wipe out the city and kill all the inhabitants. The company consisted of 70 man, and on the companion's orders most attacked. We were just a few who refused. Cruel scenes unfolded.

Our comrades were as wanted. They drove people together as herbs and gathered them in groups. Then they shot them down with machine guns. 

A group of soldiers chased 20 – 30 into a ditch. There were only women and children, maybe even a couple of older men. There they stood, trembling with outstretched hands. But that didn't help. They were shot like rats.

Army Sergeant Michael Bernhardt

- I fired four volleys of shots straight into the herd… I often lie sleepless at night. Then I can see the little trembling children in front of me, how they shout "no, no".

Many Paul Medio

- I sent a nice, nice boy and they made him a killer.

Mrs. Myrtle Medio, Paul's mother

- When I returned to Phoenix after being in Vietnam, I discussed the Song My affair with a number of different people. Everyone gave me the same advice: Young man, forget what you've heard. War is war. And no one is going to believe you. You can't fight alone against the White House.

Student Ronald Ridenhour

- I imagine that was the way it was during the Hitler era in Germany.

Deputy Corporal Michael Terry

The Song My women and children have been driven together. They look with horror at the soldiers who have already raised their weapons and aim at them. A few seconds after this photo was taken, the dead lay in a pile, pierced by bullets.

Army photographer Ronald Haeberle, who took the photo, says: – As a soldier, I did not want to take photos of my comrades when they fired the deadly shots. I only photographed the victims.

A group of soldiers chased 20 – 30 into a ditch. There were only women and children, maybe even a couple of older men. There they stood, trembling with outstretched hands. But that didn't help. They were shot like rats.

Another picture shows the corpses. It is similar to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen as it appeared when the Allies moved into 1945. But that's Song My 1969.

In a third picture we see two little boys lying in a road bend. The elder tries to protect the little one by lying on him.

Haeberle tells: - A soldier shot the boys with six shots and left them lying.

In a fourth picture we see a father and his little son. They tried to escape the "liberators", but they did not come far. Next to the broken bodies is a basket of food and small items that they tried to bring.

"I thought I was hardened, but I have to admit I got a feeling of suffocation," said Liberal Senator Daniel Inouye, a veteran of World War II, after seeing the pictures.

That may not be the case, but the write-down of these lines went even worse. He threw up and thinks he knows why. 

After all, stories of bestiality and executions are nothing new. Three years ago, for example, he followed the lawsuit against "The Angel of Death from Auschwitz" in East Berlin. The atrocities, the murders, the annihilation of the helpless people arriving in freight cars, were ruthlessly rolled up. In front of the judges stood an emotionally cold, dutiful man – the perfect citizen. For 20 years, this silent mass murderer had lived among other people in the GDR. But it was all so distant. It was history.

«I fired four shots straight into the herd… I often lie sleepless at night. Then I can see the little trembling children in front of me, how they shout 'no, no'. " Private Paul Medio

In Stockholm two years ago, the reporter followed the Russell Tribunal's close-up negotiations, observed the victims of napalm and splinter bombs, and saw photographs of villages, schools, hospitals, pagodas that were extinct, heard testimonies that said the same thing. It came closer then, but the air strikes were somehow more random. They did not hit so totally.

Remembering the letters from the death sentences during World War II, imagining the image of the FNL officer being shot down on the open street by Saigon's police chief, Johnson's words recall that the goal of US warfare is solely steel and concrete.

So this, which makes the nausea overturn. Close-up horrors, the total annihilation that spares no one. The flawless faces of women and children as Army photographer Haeberle's camera have held on for the last few seconds they were alive.
Truth moment. The overwhelming feeling that this is not «History» or «mistake ", but a whole system.

Lidice – Oradour sur Glane – My Song.

- But this is not a single South Vietnamese Oradour; they must be counted for hundreds, writes the North Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan in a comment on the compilation of Song My and the French village of Oradour, which was obliterated by the Nazis in 1944.

Do we have any reason to doubt?

Several months ago, FNL and North Vietnamese publications wrote about the massacre. The number of deaths reported corresponds to the figures now provided by US soldiers. But at that time, almost no one responded.

"The World Opinion must not regard Song My as an isolated case," continues Nhan Dan, and the newspaper states, among other things:

Balangen: 300 killed and 1200 drowned.

Thang Binh: 1500 kills.

Can Tho: 600 kills.

Cong Ho Rinh: 350 dept.

And so on.

These numbers are further substantiated by what American soldiers can now tell; Song My has unleashed an avalanche; eyewitness accounts after eyewitness accounts are laughing at us from US and international press.

- During a week at the end of October we swarmed 13 villages, says a lieutenant in an interview with Reuter. It is also part of the "pacification program", an attempt to prevent the village from falling into enemy hands.

Or, as an American colonel said, with well-known colonial logic after the fighting over Ben Tre two years ago: "It became necessary to obliterate the city to save it."

"I sent away a nice, kind boy, and they turned him into a murderer." Mrs. Myrtle Medlo, Paul's mother.

Today, world opinion is beginning to realize what such rescue actions have cost and what they have been: a continuous and systematic SS massacre, protected by the CIA, censorship and pro-American politicians around the world, politicians who have warned against taking a unilateral party ( DNA's central government), or have assured that clearly stated terrorist acts were "contrary to American mood and mentality" (MP Paul Thyness).

Desperately, the Pentagon tries to limit the disclosures. First they tried to stop Army photographer Haeberle's pictures. He is threatened with prosecution for having published his testimonies of truth without permission. Also, the pictures are taken with the army camera and consequently the Pentagon's property!

An unexpected reaction when it becomes clear at the same time that President Nixon has known about the Song My massacre for months.

Then Lieutenant Calley goes to trial. There is no way around it; the revelations have come too far. One needs a sacrifice: the lieutenant must be judged in order for American society and its war to be released. Judicial consciousness becomes part of the deception – and part of the nausea.

For when the lieutenant with the harsh, insensitive features is either placed in front of the execution squad or dispatched to a life-long prison cell, the war can continue. The system will stand there unshaken, the politicians keep their speeches, the officers give their orders, the allies assure that the United States is still a rule of law and a democracy. Lieutenant Calley's blood will wash away all guilt.

The nausea – it's the tormented, frightened child and woman faces that photographer Haeberle's camera has captured – the unbroken line from Lidice and Oradour to Song My; from the SS to the US. The whole system we are today embraced by and embedded in, as part of the terrorist chain.