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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Iraq veteran says "We're committing genocide in Iraq"
(Jeff Riedel, wsws.org, 11 November 2004)
Massey entered Iraq as part of the initial US invasion in March 2003. He witnessed -- and in some cases participated in -- the killing of innocent civilians. During a single 48-hour period, he says, he saw as many as 30 civilians killed by US gunfire at highway checkpoints. . . . The brutality of the US military's retaliation against the growing resistance of the Iraqi people transformed his view of the occupation and changed him for life. Massey, horrified and unable to reconcile himself to what was taking place, began to speak out to his superiors. He was eventually medi-vaced out of Iraq and diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Labeled as a conscientious objector by his commanders, Massey sought legal counsel and won his honorable discharge in December 2003. . . . Massey's disillusionment with the military began as a recruiter, when he started to question the methods used by the Marines in preying on young people from economically depressed areas. His feelings would soon be deepened by his experience in Iraq. . . . "When I was on recruiting duty, I really began to question what was going on," he said. "I'm not going to say that the Marine Corps is all flat-out lies, but it is very misleading the way we enlist recruits. A lot of the kids joining the military are from the 'barrios' and 'hoods,' or the poor parts of the Appalachian Mountains, where we're sitting right here. Appalachia has some of the poorest counties in the country -- so they're sweeping them up. . . . "You know, these kids are just thankful that they've got some health care -- for a lot of them, the first time they even went to the dentist is when they joined the Marine Corps. Then you pump them full of patriotism and intangible benefits -- self-confidence and what not -- and now you're indoctrinating a young person with an ideology. . . . Boot camp is designed to dehumanize and desensitize a person to violence. I was a Marine Corps boot camp instructor for two-and-a-half years, and I know that it is designed to strip you down and rebuild you. . . . "Here's the problem in America, what we're living in is becoming an increasingly militaristic society, where poor people have been encouraged to sign up as the front line, Massey said. . . . "A large percentage of the so-called growth in this country is associated with the military. The bottom line is, for the Halliburtons and Enrons war is good, but for the poor and for all of the soldiers coming home, especially the ones coming home wounded, there's not much of a future. But for a lot of the kids getting ready to graduate high-school, the military is looking pretty good because their families have no money to send them to college." . . . In Iraq, Massey was brought face to face with this involvement. The initial invasion took on the character of a one-sided slaughter, with the world's strongest military power armed with the most technologically advanced weapons, on the one hand, and a disarmed and virtually defenseless military of a country already devastated by a decade of sanctions, on the other. . . . "We were like a bunch of cowboys who rode into town shooting up the place. I saw charred bodies in vehicles that were clearly not military vehicles. I saw people dead on the side of the road in civilian clothes. As a matter of fact, I only remember seeing a couple of bodies in military uniform the whole time." . . . "There wasn't a whole lot of direct fighting to speak of. There were some firefights -- I mean I had bullet holes in the side of my Humvee -- but it wasn't like major combat action. We took the highway the whole way up to Baghdad. They had no artillery; they had no air support. They were so weakened by all the sanctions. All of their equipment was in very bad shape. Most of their hardware was left over from the war against Iran. The first Gulf War just devastated them. I don't think they had the will or the opportunity to fight." . . . Massey said that the hostility of the Iraqi people to the presence of the US military grew exponentially over the time he was there in direct response to the brutal methods employed by American troops against the entire Iraqi population. . . . "As far as I'm concerned, the real war did not begin until they saw us murdering innocent civilians," he said. "I mean, they were witnessing their loved ones being murdered by US Marines. It's kind of hard to tell someone that they are being liberated when they just saw their child shot or lost their husband or grandmother." . . . Massey manned a number of US military checkpoints on Iraqi highways in the months following the invasion. He described how, when cars failed to stop, out of confusion or otherwise, the order was to 'light them up' or open fire. It was at one of the checkpoints that Massey's attitude toward the war reached its turning point. . . . "We signaled a car to stop and when it didn't we opened fire. They were innocent civilians. We found no weapons, no explosives -- nothing. Somehow, and I have no idea how he could have done it, but one guy got out of the car and he wasn't badly wounded. He was the brother of one of the men bleeding to death in the car. He looked at me and asked, 'Why did you kill my brother. What did he do to you?' There were 30-plus civilians killed over two days at these checkpoints." . . . Massey described the chaotic and reckless character of the roadside checkpoints and the indifference of the military leadership to the culture of the people that they were there supposedly to help. . . . "When you put your hand up in the air with a closed fist, in the Marines it means you want them to stop," he said. "But, as we later learned, it's actually the international sign of solidarity. It has a totally different meaning for the Iraqis -- to them it was a sign like hello. And that was just one example of how we were not trained properly to understand the cultural differences between us and them. . . . "The bottom line is they [the military command] don't see the need to teach culture and humanity to men whose singular purpose is to kill. And that was just one of the cultural miscues. I blame the top of the chain of command, from the President down to Tommy Franks [the former commander-in-chief of US occupation forces] to General [James] Mattis [commander of the First Marine Division]. They all knew that the military was not trained properly when it comes to dealing with Muslim culture and a foreign land. But that was not our purpose for being there." . . . In the midst of the widespread killing of civilians, Massey was struck by the callousness of the military command and the lack of humanitarian assistance they were offering the Iraqi people. This further deepened his doubts about the true purpose of the war. . . . "We actually left all of the humanitarian MRE's [Meals Ready to Eat] in Kuwait," he recalled. "We were supposed to give these out for relief, and we left them in Kuwait. They were just for show when the film crews came into the camps. We also had this big show with the medical supplies that we were prepping for Iraqi casualties. We were supposed to get in there and take care of them. . . . "But I'll give you an example of what we actually did. After we shot up this car with civilians, I called in the corpsmen to bring in stretchers. They came in and put two men on stretchers. Five minutes later, they brought them back and dumped their bodies on the side of the road. They were still alive. They were riddled with bullets-one guy was just rolling in agony on the side of the road."

posted by Lorenzo 2:13 PM