On March 15, 1968, Army Lieutenant William Calley led a horrendous massacre of Vietnamese civilian men, women, and children at My Lai, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War, only revealed in November 1969.
Between 350 and 500 innocent villagers were murdered, with rape and mutilation and torture of women and children and the elderly, with 26 soldiers charged with the outrageous war crimes, but only Calley served a short time, eventually having his sentence commuted to house arrest by President Richard Nixon.
This massacre increased the antiwar opposition in America to the Vietnam War, which bitterly divided America.
In June 2003, the first revelations of horrendous abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq became public.
Widespread human rights abuses were occurring, with the use of torture, all types of shocking mistreatment on a grand scale, and many US troops seemingly enjoying what horrendous acts they were perpetrating on prisoners.
These actions were authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush, and many other White House staff, who knew what was occurring, even if not directly involved.
News media revealed the horrors, and showed many Army personnel, including many women, were involved in actions, and with photos showing their glee at what they were doing. Only a small number of troops were held accountable and served sentences after convictions.
It led to a belated apology by President George W. Bush in May 2004, but clearly, it led to greater troubles and expansion of the war in Iraq, which continued until 2011.
International law had been violated, and clearly, war crimes of massive abuses had occurred, and there was a sense that, like with My Lai 35 years earlier, there was never adequate accountability.
So many victims of both war crimes in 1968 and 2003-04 never received any justice, and so many victims lost their lives because of out of control military forces, which were also in league with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Now in 2025, we have attacks on so called “drug boats”, supposedly linked to Venezuela, and it seems likely that soon there will be an armed invasion of that South American nation, and a new military intervention, authorized by Donald Trump!