Why did US soldiers kill villagers in Vietnam?

BBC News; Seymour Hersh; Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

We were hippies having sex, listening to rock 'n roll, while US soldiers were killing and raping and abusing hard drugs like heroin in the peaceful Buddhist jungles of Vietnam. Why?

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Journalist recalls My Lai massacre 50 years on

US citizens for peace, business leaders for war

The US journalist who broke the My Lai massacre story 50 years ago says the horror of what happened still makes him "teary."
 
On March 16, 1968 U.S. soldiers massacred more than 500 innocent women, children, and men in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, acting on a tip-off, tracked down Lt. William Calley to Fort Benning, Georgia.

Lt. Calley had been a platoon commander at My Lai and would later be the only soldier found guilty [of 22 murders] of the massacre.
 

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Hersh also tracked down other soldiers who were at My Lai to uncover the full horror of that day.

He tells BBC Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur there were incidents so horrific he did not include them in his original reports.
 
See the Hardtalk interview in full on Thursday March 15 and Friday March 16, 2018 on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel and after on BBC iPlayer (UK only).

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"We didn't kill anybody that didn't need killing," U.S. soldiers would later rationalize.