[Alberta's Child]

Someone posted a few links here on FR a while back about similar (smaller) incidents that never got the same media coverage as My Lai. One of the interesting things that came up in some of those incidents is that the U.S. military went to great lengths to avoid pursuing legal charges against the perpetrators. One example that was cited involved a case where the military investigators deliberately waited until after a soldier was discharged before questioning him about an incident. I didn't know this, but apparently that makes a huge difference in a case because a discharged soldier can refuse to answer questions at all, while this is not an option under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (I think this was how it was explained here).

It turns out that one of the mitigating factors in these investigations was the understanding by U.S. military brass that they never should have left these soldiers on such long combat tours in Vietnam, and they undermined the investigations to keep the soldiers from facing legal trouble for things that happened in circumstances that they never should have been involved in.

[Seruzawa]

Yeah. And the fact that prosecutions would reflect badly on the Brass careers is even more important.

[GrootheWanderer]

I went to a speech by one of the officers who investigated My Lai several years ago. He said William Calley’s intelligence score was so low would not have been drafted just a few years earlier much less been an officer.