I agree with August. Calley should have been shot.

Sure, don't you?

Yea of course. Not that I expect the US military to pass any kind of judgement on their own, that kind of stuff goes against their ways.

Then clearly you know nothing about the US or it's military.

Of course he doesn't. He's one of those, shall we say, limited individuals who thinks that the worst case tiny minority represents the whole.

Had the laws been properly applied to Calley and his superiors/subordinates, he would have been lined up against a wall and shot. The failure in this case came from the people in the system, not the system itself.

Why did the people in the system fail to properly use it? That's never been publicly explained. My uneducated guess (having not studied the case closely) is that a full investigation and trial would have revealed some unpleasant truths that the military wanted to keep quiet, possibly including the involvement/negligence of superiors and/or additional massacres. But I have no real evidence to back that up.

Trying to apply Todays standards to the 1960's is ridiculous.
In a combat zone in the 60's you could be shot for disobeying a direct order.

Talk in the 1950's (Taill Gunner Joes era) like we do today and you would be jobless and probably get the hell beat out of you on a regular basis.

That's no excuse for what Calley did.

There is another similar case, the Tiger Force and it's actions. Their crimes took place before My Lai massacre and if brought out into open might have prevented the massacre. As it is we only found out about the TF's crimes in 2002. And there are probably other similar cased that are still kept from public eye from the Vietnam war.