GRAPHIC IMAGE: What the reports on Allen TX aren't showing us. TRIGGER WARNING

[crickets]

161. Colin Powell fooled so many for so long.

https://edwardrynearson.wordpress.com/behind-colin-powells-legend-the-my-lai-massacre/

On March 16, 1968, a bloodied unit of the Americal division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4. With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians — mostly old men, women and children — from their thatched huts and herded them into the village’s irrigation ditches.

As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents desperately used their bodies to try to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded.

The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage that would stain the reputation of the U.S. Army. But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai. Some soldiers refused to obey the direct orders to kill.

A pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from Stone Mountain, Ga., was furious at the killings he saw happening on the ground. He landed his helicopter between one group of fleeing civilians and American soldiers in pursuit. Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation, the soldiers backed off. Later, two of Thompson’s men climbed into one ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a three-year-old boy whom they flew to safety.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/21/colin-powell-faustian-bargains-service-of-war

Again and again throughout his storied rise, Powell made Faustian bargains, publicly endorsing military excursions, including both Iraq wars, that he privately admitted were risky enterprises. Whether Powell knew the falseness of the intel on which his security council testimony rested, whether he genuinely failed to find evidence of the My Lai massacre or whether he regretted the first Iraq war’s toll in blood and treasure, Powell, like the military man he was, never broke ranks.

There was a time when Colin Powell had me fooled. It didn't last, and I did find out about his role in the My Lai coverup before he lied about weapons of mass destruction in front of the UN.

If I could figure it out, there was no excuse for the whole world not knowing he was a big ol' liar.

Media (and many others) turned a blind eye because it was lucrative.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.