I don't usually rant much on here, but after stewing all night on a report from 60 Minutes Overtime that suggests Nixon was personally involved in sabotaging the prosecution of those responsible for the My Lai massacre (diaried here), I'm literally shaking with anger. As we all know, for the better part of the last 30 years we've had areas that have nada, zip, zero business voting Republican on paper giving ridiculous margins to the GOP in part because the people there have been brainwashed into thinking Democrats give aid and comfort to babykillers. And yet, there hasn't been a peep about evidence that suggests a Republican president's "dirty tricks" allowed REAL babykillers to go free--even though said evidence has been available for a quarter-century.
Let's review. According to notes that Nixon's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, took from a 1969 meeting, Nixon greenlighted the use of "dirty tricks" to discredit a witness at the My Lai courts-martial. It's strongly implied by Trent Angers in his book, The Forgotten Hero of My Lai, that those dirty tricks entailed sealing the testimony of Hugh Johnson, the pilot of a helicopter crew who intervened to stop dozens of innocent Vietnamese from being shot to pieces--and was willing to turn their guns on members of C Company to do it. Their intervention may have saved over 100 lives. According to Angers, after efforts to court-martial Johnson and the other surviving member of the crew, gunner Larry Colburn, went nowhere, Johnson worked with two congressmen to have Thompson's testimony sealed. To my non-lawyer's mind, it's very likely that had Thompson's testimony not been sealed, the 14 officers who were initially brought up on charges would all have gone to prison--and William Calley would still be in prison where he belongs.
Colburn, the only surviving member of the crew (Thompson died in 2006) was gobsmacked at the lack of reaction when Haldeman's notes were made public. It's hard to blame him. There's evidence that a president not only interfered with a war-crimes trial, but that his interference may have allowed people who were responsible for killing kids or covering it up to go free--and nobody says a damn thing? What in the world has happened to us as a nation? It looks even more obscene when you consider how much the forced-birthers rant about the sanctity of life and the need to end the slaughter of babies by the likes of Planned Parenthood. And yet, these bastards don't say anything about evidence that suggests REAL babykillers were allowed to walk? What nerve!
As I write this, there are tears of anger welling up in me. Many of you know that the prospect that it could be legal to desecrate a corpse in the name of sustaining a fetus completed a long journey for me back to the pro-choice side--somewhere I've always been at heart. But after seeing this, I don't want to hear another damn thing about Democrats wanting to kill babies. Not when you can remain silent about evidence that suggests perfidy from a Republican White House allowed 14 babykillers to escape justice. Don't you DARE say ANYTHING--a DAMN thing--about your concern for life and how precious it is when you can remain silent this.