[NYTr] That's Me, a Marine, a Murderer of Civilians
ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
sent by wtillow - March 7, 2005
[The hazards of reporting on the U.S. occupation of Iraq:
On March 4, in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers shot the Italian reporter Giuliana
Sgrena. They shot to kill, and succeeded with 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.
Additional information:
1. Il Manifesto, the paper Giuliana Sgrena works for, is described as a
"communist paper."
2. These are the titles of Sgrena's recent articles for Il Manifesto:
Ten Thousand Iraqis in US and British Prisons (Dec. 29, 2004); Two thousand
victims in Fallujah (November 26, 2004); Napalm Raid on Fallujah? (Nov. 23,
2004); The Death Throes of Fallujah (November 13, 2004); Stop the Massacre
(November 12, 2004); Bombs and Tanks, Hell breaks in Fallujah (November 9,
2004); Imminent Attack against Fallujah (November 6, 2004); Flight from a
Fallujah massacred by Bombs (October 21, 2004). And then there are these
two: Interview with Iraqi Women tortured at Abu Graib (July 1, 2004); and UN
- US crimes in Iraq (June 5, 2004).
3. The sender of this email, WTW, learned about Il Manifesto when he
came across the interview reproduced below. That was 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")
Patrizio Lombroso's interview with Jimmy Massey appeared March 3, 2005 in
the Italian paper Il Manifesto. (See
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/www.ilmanifesto.it)
The interview was also carried on the Spanish web site,
http://www.rebelion.org/www.rebelion.org, appearing on March 4 2005.
Because no version in English was available, I translated it in order to
make it more accessible. WTW]
***
"That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians"
Patrizio Lombroso's interview with Jimmy Massey
Il Manifesto, March 3, 2005
"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 t they use to say that because of the horrors I've seen in
the war, I've lost my mind.
Where 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% of them are
under 20 years.
*
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