Former Marine's claims false
Pookie
By Ron Harris
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
WASHINGTON - For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has
been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other
Marines committed in Iraq.
In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian
immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told
how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens
of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Among his claims:
. Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.
. Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.
. Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and
children killed by American artillery.
Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill,
Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in
nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as
numerous broadcast reports.
This year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan and he's spoken
at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.
News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without
any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the
Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year
veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.
He wasn't.
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according
to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions and the five journalists who
were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and reporters from the Associated Press and the
Wall Street Journal.
Massey, 34, of Waynesville, N.C., was with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines
based out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit went to the Middle East in
January 2003 and participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Massey was discharged in December 2003, shortly after returning from Iraq,
due to depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
He began turning up in news stories last spring with accounts of military
atrocities. Massey's primary claim has been that Marines from his
battalion - some of whom, he told a Minneapolis audience, were "psychopathic
killers" - recklessly shot and killed Iraqi civilians, sometimes, he said,
upon orders from their commanders. During a hearing in Canada, Massey said,
"we deliberately gunned down people who were civilians."
The Marine Corps investigated Massey's claims and said they were
"unsubstantiated."
From the beginning, Massey misled reporters.
In early interviews, he told how he had lost his job at a furniture store
because of his anti-war activities. But when asked about the incident in an
Oct. 19 interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey said that he had quit his
job but never felt pressure to leave.
"I left on good terms," he said.
He also backtracked from allegations he made in a May 2004 radio interview
and elsewhere that he had seen tractor-trailers filled with the bodies of
Iraqi civilians when Marines entered an Iraqi military prison outside of
Baghdad. He said the Iraqis had been killed by American artillery.
He told listeners the scene was so bad "that the plasma from the body and
skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the
tractor-trailer bed."
He repeated the story during the Post-Dispatch interview. But when told that
the newspaper's photographs and eyewitness reports identified the trailer
containing all men, mostly in uniform, Massey admitted that he had never
seen the bodies.
Instead, he said, he had received his information from "intelligence
reports." When asked if those reports were official documents, he answered,
"No, that's what the other Marines told me."
The details of Massey's stories changed repeatedly.
For example, he almost always told his audiences and interviewers of an
event he said he'd never forget: Marines in his unit shooting four Iraqi
civilians in a red Kia automobile.
In some accounts, Massey said Marines fired at the vehicle after it failed
to stop at a checkpoint. In another version, he said the Marines stormed the
car.
Sometimes he said three of the men were killed immediately while the fourth
was wounded and covered in blood; sometimes he said the fourth man was
"miraculously unscathed."
Sometimes he said the Marines left the three men on the side of the road to
die without medical treatment while the fourth man exclaimed: "Why did you
shoot my brother?" In other versions, he said the man made the statement as
medical personnel were attempting to treat the three other men, or as the
survivor sat near the car, or to Massey personally.
There is no evidence that any of the versions occurred.
Massey told a version of the story before an immigration hearing in December
in support of an American soldier trying to flee to Canada. The Seattle
Times reported Massey's allegations in a story about that hearing. Then,
Massey said he and the Marines killed four of the demonstrators. In other
interviews, he said the Marines shot at 10 demonstrators and killed all but
one that he let crawl away.
In interviews with more than a dozen 7th Marines and journalists who were in
the military complex that morning, none can recall such an incident.
The Marine Corps readily admits that some of its men shot civilians, but not
intentionally, they said. The Post-Dispatch reported on the second day of
the war that Marines in one battalion had mistakenly shot and killed members
of a British-based television network while shooting at Iraqi attackers.
When Marines moved into Baghdad a month later, the Post-Dispatch reported
two separate automobile-related incidents in which Marines from Massey's
battalion inadvertently shot and wounded 12 civilians. All of the passengers
survived following treatment by medical personnel.
One of the checkpoint shootings is apparently the basis for one of most
shocking recollections claimed by Massey in numerous speeches and
interviews: The shooting of a 4-year-old girl in the head.
While touring with Sheehan in Montgomery, Ala., he told of seeing the girl's
body. "You can't take it back," he said, according to the local newspaper.
But in the interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey admitted that he had
never seen the girl.
No 4-year-old died in the incident or was even wounded, according to
witnesses, including a Post-Dispatch photographer at the scene who filed
photos of the incident that were published in the newspaper.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002606782_massey06.html
hob
"Pookie" <pooki...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:rMsbf.1508$oP5....@fe09.lga...
jjm...@aol.com
Black Elk
news:rMsbf.1508$oP5....@fe09.lga...
> Former Marine's claims false
Massey put his name on the line to tell his side, where are the names of his
detractors?
---
After leaving the Marines, SSgt Jim Massey is speaking out about the actions
he and his platoon took in Iraq, specifically in terms of civilian
casualties and un-gentlemanly behavior on the battlefield. Massey's
participant account of what Iraq is really like on the ground obviously
contradicts the official storyline. He is therefore a pariah.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski77.html
---
--
They Knew...
Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned
before the war that its Iraq claims were weak
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/they_knew_0802/
--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1435181,00.html
-snip-
Attn. Walmart Shoppers
If his story is true, he has at least 2 balls more than you Pootie-tang.
Carefree Conservative
<jjm...@aol.com> wrote
> Support our troops, asswipe.
absolutely. i put one of those cheesy ribbon thingies on my car.
David Hartung
I think the whole point of the story is that the former marine is lying.
hob
<jjm...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1131310793.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Support our troops, asswipe.
always support the troops who risk dying -
not the assholes who send them to far off places to die
>