VIETNAM 16 March 2008 Forty years ago, United States soldiers shot to death 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai. Drawing parallels

On 16 Mar 1968 a US army division led by Lt. William L. Calley invaded My Lai village in South Vietnam, an alleged Viet Cong stronghold, and shot some 500 unarmed civilians to death. The massacre is the subject of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's fourth Vietnam movie, "Pinkville," and the one he hopes will prevent similar atrocities. He draws parallels to Iraq. Some My Lai analysts draw parallels to Wounded Knee.

The massacre led to a military investigation and trial and helped break the American public's support for the war. The anniversary is likely to be a time for a rescreenings of the other three Stone movies about Vietnam -- "Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Heaven & Earth" -- as well as the handful of major documentaries about the massacre. Questions that persist about My Lai include why it had been identified as a Viet Cong stronghold, what orders troops were actually given and why no one stopped the slaughter.

Stone visited the massacre site in Vietnam in September. Asked by The Huffington Post why he was making another Vietnam movie now, 15 years since the last, he replies, "Because of Iraq. ... I had no intention of making a fourth Vietnam movie at all. But this last year -- you know my feelings about the Iraq war, of course -- I think the time has unfortunately come back around to remember events like My Lai."

Americans serving in Iraq have been accused of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and of the killing of civilians in Haditha in November 2005.

Stone served as an infantryman in the Vietnam conflict. He said he thought the massacre changed the course of the war to a large degree. "Americans were shocked, as well as the Vietnamese," and it turned many neutral villagers against us.

Books and articles have analyzed the massacre in the intervening years, and several have likened My Lai to Wounded Knee, when 500 Army troopers opened fire on a Sioux Indian encampment in South Dakota on 29 Dec 1890. They killed some 150 of the Indians, including women and children. Sep/07