My Lai massacre's Calley ‘sorry’


ASSOCIATED PRESS
2:00 a.m. August 22, 2009

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Speaking in a soft, sometimes labored voice, the only U.S. Army officer convicted in the 1968 slayings of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai made an extraordinary public apology while speaking to a small group near the military base where he was court-martialed.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” William L. Calley told members of a local Kiwanis Club, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported yesterday. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

Calley, 66, was a young Army lieutenant when a court-martial at nearby Fort Benning convicted him of murder in 1971 for killing 22 civilians during the infamous massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam. Altough sentenced to life in prison, Calley ended up serving three years under house arrest after President Richard Nixon reduced his sentence.

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