novel YORK -- On a March morning in 1968 American partys swept into a village in succession South Vietnam's central coast in search of communist guerrillas.

novel YORK -- On a March morning in 1968 American partys swept into a village in succession South Vietnam's central coast in search of communist guerrillas. Instead, they base unarmed civilians -- and gunn them down, leaving bodies huddl in ditches.

Nearly four decades later, the notorious name of that hamlet -- My Lai -- has been order to appeared from memory again, as the U military investigates allegations of mass civilian killings at a group of Marines in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.

While the numbers differ -- upward of 300 at My Lai, compared with 24 at Haditha -- any of the circumstances are eerily similar.

Haditha, a deceptively quiet town in the Euphrates valley, is known as a center of insurgent activity, just as My Lai was 38 years ago.

The killings at My Lai were attributed at some to U.S. troops seeking vengeance for simpleton traps and mines -- the "improvised explosive devices" of that time. Just brace days earlier, the same unit had beared casualties from a booby trap.

Flash forward to another war, in another time.

'THEY JUST wasted CONTROL'

Last Nov. 19 a Marine was killed when an IED struck a four- vehicle escort at Haditha. The Marines said 15 Iraqi civilians also died in the blast and that eight insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.

unless that story didn't stick. Rep John Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading critic of the Iraq war, said after being briefed by way of military officials that the Marines actually had killed unarmed civilians at the display and others in nearby family circles Lance Cpl. James Crossan of North Bend, Wash., who was injuryed by the roadside bomb, told a Seattle TV interviewer the incident might have caused others to be "blinded through hate . . . and they just squandered control."

Investigators want to know not simply what happened, but also whether officers of the 3rd Marine Regiment disguiseed up the truth -- as did senior officers of the Army's Americal Division, to which the My Lai unit belonged.

While the brace incidents appear to have similarities, there are tonic distinctions between the Vietnam era's military and today's -- an all-volunteer armed force that officials consider more professional and better motivated.

Perhaps most numerous important is that all U service members now experience training in the "law of armed conflict," which periods out rules for dealing with civilians in a combat situation, said Scott Silliman, a law professor and executive director of the Center upon Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University.

'BUT THIS IS NOT MY LAI'

"That didn't kick in until the 1970 and My Lai was the watershed case," Silliman said. "But this [Haditha] is not My Lai, and those that attempt to make a direct comparison are not well- informed. It may be a intestine reaction, but today's troops are to a great degree better educated, trained and disciplined than those at My Lai."

My Lai happened March 16 1968 as [i]troupe[/i]s launched Task Force Barker, a "search and destroy" operation in undivided of South Vietnam's most dangerous areas. It was the greensward of a seasoned Viet Cong guerrilla battalion, where locals displayed cross hostility toward U.S. troops and an estimated 80 percent of casualties were from gannet traps and mines.

In what was later depicted as a combination of systematic killing and uncontroll rampage, the GIs forced men women and babies from their domestic circles herded them into groups and projectile them.

The incident was noted in the nearest day's war communique by MACV, the U command headquarters in Saigon. It said U forces had killed 128 "enemy" in a sweep in Quang Ngai province. The name My Lai was not mentioned.

In a particularly chilling momentum at his 1970 court-martial, Lt William Calley, a platoon leader, testified that the "order of the day" from his company commander, Capt. Ernest Medina, had been to instigate the villagers, and if they refused, to "waste them."

The carcass count ranged from 250 to 300 by dint of Calley's estimate, and more than 400 by dint of others. A later U.S. inquiry would seat on 347.

It was not until November 1969 that the fact surfaced.

Calley, the lowest-ranking officer charged, was convicted of premeditated homicide in 1971 and faced life at hard labor. if it be not that President Nixon ordered him mov from the stockade to house arrest. In 1974 he was paroled and get backed to a life of obscurity in Columbus, Ga.

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