That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians'
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That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians'
Italian reporter shot by US military writes for newspaper that tells
raw truth about US role in Iraq
by Tom Whitney
03/11/05 "San Francisco Bay View" - - On March 4, in Baghdad, U.S.
soldiers shot the Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been
released by hostage-takers. She believes the soldiers shot to kill, and
they succeeded in killing Italian Secret Service official Nicola
Calipara, who had secured her release from hostage takers and who was
with her.
Witnesses accompanying the pair, who also were wounded, told reporters
March 5 that, contrary to U.S. allegations, the car in which the four
persons were riding was not speeding and that it had already stopped at
several checkpoints on its way to the airport.
Il Manifesto (www.ilmanifesto.it), the paper Giuliana Sgrena works for,
is described as a "communist paper." The titles of Sgrena's
recent articles for Il Manifesto, including "Ten thousand Iraqis in
US and British prisons" (Dec. 29, 2004); "Two thousand victims in
Fallujah" (Nov. 26, 2004); "Napalm raid on Fallujah?" (Nov. 23,
2004); "The death throes of Fallujah" (Nov. 13, 2004); "Stop the
massacre" (Nov. 12, 2004); and "Interview with Iraqi Women tortured
at Abu Graib," show that neither she nor the paper pulls any punches
when it comes to criticism of U.S. policy and conduct.
The following interview of U.S. Marine Jimmy Massey by Patrizio
Lombroso of Il Manifesto appeared the day before Giuliana Sgrena was
released and shot. It's an interview not calculated to win love and
friendship in official Washington circles.
'Yo, un marine asesino de civiles' ('That's me, a marine, a
murderer of civilians')
"I've seen the horror that we were causing every day in Iraq. I
have been part of it. We are all just murderers.
"We kill innocent Iraqi civilians all the time. That's the way it
is. I believe they need to withdraw all foreign military troops in Iraq
right away. And I say this about other soldiers: to avoid punishment or
reprisals by the military, they don't want to talk and admit that
killing terrorists is not our mission. It's to kill innocent
civilians."
That's the way the Il Manifesto interview with Jimmy Massey went.
He's from the little town of Waynesville, North Carolina. He has
decided to draw back the veil of silence from the "noble mission"
in Iraq. Discharged from the Marine Corps for medical reasons, he has
written a diary, "Cowboys from Hell," which will be published at
the end of the summer.
"What was your rank in Iraq?"
"I was a sergeant with the Third Marine Battalion during the
invasion, in the spring of 2003."
"How much time did you spend there?"
"From March 22 to the 15th of May. Four months of hell. They had to
send me back to the U.S. because of a 'stress syndrome.' This is
the term in military jargon they use to say that because of the horrors
I've seen in the war, I've lost my mind."
"Were you in the Marines many years?"
"Twelve."
"Had you fought in a war before?"
"Never."
"You are now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War?"
"Yes, I went to Iraq initially with the idea that weapons of mass
destruction had to be eliminated. But soon my experience as a Marine
made me understand that the reality was something quite different. We
were 'cowboy murderers.' We killed innocent civilians."
"You admit having killed innocent civilians?"
"Sure, and lots of them."
"How did it happen?"
"Near my base in the south of Baghdad, our whole platoon attacked a
group of civilians engaged in a peaceful demonstration. Why? Because we
heard gunshots. It was a blood bath. The pretense that those civilians
were engaged in 'terrorist activities' didn't work for me.
That's what our military intelligence wanted us to believe.
"We killed more than 30 people. That was the first time that I had to
face up to the horror that my hands were soiled with the blood of
civilians. We laid down cluster bombs on them. The people fled, and
when they arrived at the control points we had set up with armed
convoys, I was supposed to shoot the ones that looked like they
belonged to 'terrorist groups.' Those were the directions military
intelligence gave us."
"And that's what you all did?"
"We ended up massacring innocent civilians - men, women, and
children. When our platoon took over a radio station, we went ahead and
put out propaganda to the population urging them to go on with their
daily routine, keep the schools open, etc. But we knew that our orders
were to 'search and destroy.' That meant carrying out armed
assaults on schools, in hospitals, anywhere that 'terrorists' could
hide. In reality these were traps set up by military intelligence. We
ourselves were supposed to overlook the taking of civilian lives that
were part of these missions."
"You admit that during your mission you carried out executions on
innocent civilians?"
"Yes, my platoon also opened fire on civilians and I too killed
innocents. I too am an assassin."
"How did you react after these operations when you thought about the
innocents you had killed?"
"For a while I kept on going. In my own mind I denied the reality of
me being a murderer and not a soldier who somehow could tell the
difference between who is right and who is wrong. Then, one day I woke
up and there was a young kid inside my head.
"Miraculously, he had saved himself from a massacre of passengers in
his car. He was shouting at me and asking: 'Why did you kill my
brother.' He became an obsession. I physically lost control of my
equilibrium and couldn't move or talk. I stayed in one place and
looked all the time at the wall. I was really scared, and lost."
"What measures did your superiors take?"
"For three weeks in Iraq, they filled me with anti depressives and
psychotropic drugs. That's the emergency treatment for these cases of
'traumatic stress,' when the idea of refusing to kill takes over a
soldier's life."
"Didn't their training in the United States put them at the
disposal of the Pentagon into units that were really violent and
aggressive?"
"Yes, in the part called 'boot camp' each one of us is subjected
to techniques of 'dehumanization' and 'desensitization to
violence.' But they never told me that this meant killing innocent
civilians."
"So, three weeks with antidepressants in Iraq - and after that?"
"They didn't know what to do and sent me back. Now I am out of the
military, incapacitated and disabled, with an honorable discharge."
"Are there others in conditions like yours?"
"Many. And they are still at the front. They stuff them with
anti-depressants, and after that they go back and are sent into combat
again. It's a problem that has become quite worrisome for them. One
must not say anything about it there in the military.
"In 2004, 31 marines took their own lives, and 85 made suicide
attempts. Most of those who wanted to die rather than keep on killing
are less than 25 years old, and 16 percent of them are under 20
years."
This interview with Jimmy Massey appeared March 3 in Il Manifesto. The
next day, it was carried on the Spanish website, www.rebelion.org, and
is translated here by Tom Whitney from the Spanish. Email Whitney at
atw...@megalink.net.