General Brock wrote:The entire article:
Iraq War Vet: “We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us”
by Dahr Jamail
April 7th, 2010 | T r u t h o u t
I read this article, and while I don't doubt that the people interviewed are telling the truth, I also have to point out that the situation differed greatly across units and time of deployment, as well as locale.
What we have here are a collection of anecdotes told by various Soldiers and Marines. I can relate my own experiences for comparison-- not to invalidate you or the article, but simply to demonstrate how experiences for one serviceman in one area are not necessarily representative of the entire picture.
...“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”
My experience: I was on neighborhood patrols in Baghdad, the area around Fallujah. This was in 2004, and Fallujah was by no means tame or friendly.
A woman came up to us with a fresh-baked plate of cookies and offered them to us. There was a platoon of us (about 20 guys) in a built-up area in Baghdad. It was night. We'd already, in the last few days, been out on several calls to respond to situations where there wa sweapons fire. I'd already completed 2 months in the Sunni Triangle, where we were attacked by everything small from small arms fire to car bombs. We'd captured a guy who had been trying to train his 14 year old kid to fire RPGs; I'd inventoried personal effects of dead guys to send home. So now that there's a bit of context, a strange Iraqi woman walks up, bold as brass, to offer us cookies.
What do you do?
I was one of only about 5 guys who rolled the dice and accepted the cookies, saying "
shukran" and trying to... hell, I don't even know. Accept the generosity at face value and show graciousness for it? I knew damn good and well it could be a set-up. Turned out they were pretty good, if a bit dry. A lot of the guys who did not take cookies thought those of us who did were crazy, indulging in unecessary risk.
Back home, some easy-chair-sitting wanna-be quarterback would laugh and chastise me for "being paranoid about cookies, fer chrissake". Perhaps if they'd been there and expereinced th esame things, they'd be a little hesitant, too, and I don't blame any of the guys who refused the cookies. BTW, for the record, everyone who refused cookies was polite to the lady.
Onward...
The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media in the US.
I notice they cherry picked certain tales to be as lurid and damning as possible. Were not my experiences as valid?
Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.
They were not lax in my experience; we were expected to follow ROE and deadly force was last on a long list of escalations. They were particular about allowing us warning shots (at the time). Of all the shots I fired and saw fired personally in Iraq, nearly all were warning shots that hit no one, and each time situations were diffused. Deadly force was not necessary, and the guys I was with talked big about kiling people, but despite having chances to do so where they most likely would not have been questioned, they chose not to.
“During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot,” Washburn’s testimony continued, “The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond. Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry ‘drop weapons’, or by my third tour, ‘drop shovels’. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent.”
I heard of this done, but never saw it. In my experience it was very rare, and to be done on the sly when there wa sno chance of investigation-- not an "official policy".
Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.
“One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation…. One of the snipers replied back, ‘Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ The lieutenant colonel responded, ‘You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.’ After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.”
I never experienced this, although I can't say it never happened. Which is kinda my point-- the ROE
did change a lot, and what this 82nd Airborne guy experienced was not necessarily typical of the way it was done Iraq-wide.
Vincent Emanuele, a Marine rifleman who spent a year in the al-Qaim area of Iraq near the Syrian border, told of emptying magazines of bullets into the city without identifying targets, running over corpses with Humvees and stopping to take “trophy” photos of bodies.
“An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by,” he said, “This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment.”
The events described above? Free-fire, potshots, trophy photos? Under no circumstances whatsoever were we ever allowed to act like that, ever. I was even told not to take a picture of prisoners we had bound, even though they'd bene caught red-handed (the aforementioned RPG guy).
We had to make a written statement every time we fired and there had to be a witness to sign off on what the firing was for, and we had to be ready to describe in detail our rationale for taking shots and what precautions we took to minimize excess casualties. We were supposed to do that for
every "shots fired" incident, but since they allowed warning shots and realized the corresponding paperwork would be too much, they downgraded it to "shots fired that resulted in injury, death, or significant property damage" (ie, if we shot up someone's car).
It was drilled into our heads over and over again that we were to minimize unecessary civilian casualties, and that the goodwill of the people was our objective as much or more so than any territory or town that could be taken.
Kelly Dougherty - then executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War - blamed the behavior of soldiers in Iraq on policies of the US government.
“The abuses committed in the occupations, far from being the result of a ‘few bad apples’ misbehaving, are the result of our government’s Middle East policy, which is crafted in the highest spheres of US power,” she said.
Unfortunately, this is true from my point of view; I've always felt that US policy towards the Middle East was a stitched-together pastiche of short-term advantages and half-assed goals that are clumsily applied to a region with a long memory.
Michael Leduc, a corporal in the Marines who was part of the US attack on Fallujah in November 2004, said orders he received from his battalion JAG officer before entering the city were as follows: “You see an individual with a white flag and he does anything but approach you slowly and obey commands, assume it’s a trick and kill him.”
That sounds evil and horrible, but unfortunately it is true-- false surrenders happen, and they are not unique to this war. I actually think this is sound policy. If someone doesn't obey your instructions, be ready to fire.
Brian Casler, a corporal in the Marines, spoke of witnessing the prevalent dehumanizing outlook soldiers took toward Iraqis during the invasion of Iraq.
This is different from any other war? Or even any other side?
“… on these convoys, I saw Marines defecate into MRE bags or urinate in bottles and throw them at children on the side of the road,” he stated.
This is plain cruel, and something my unit would not tolerate. Admittedly, some of the guys thought it was funny to throw the pork MREs to the kids on purpose, although I tried to stop them. But these sorts of events were the individual initiative of assholes, not the result of a directive or order from the chain of command to do this sort of thing.
Scott Ewing, who served in Iraq from 2005-2006, admitted on one panel that units intentionally gave candy to Iraqi children for reasons other than “winning hearts and minds.
“There was also another motive,” Ewing said. “If the kids were around our vehicles, the bad guys wouldn’t attack. We used the kids as human shields.”
Completely contradictory to my own experience. We tossed candy and food to kids but were told specifically to throw it as far away as possible for two reasons: one, so the kids didn't approach moving vehicles and get struck (creating resentment) and two, we were also warned that the insurgents were trying to trick kids into carrying suicide bombs up to soldiers in vehicles for candy only to be detonated.
In response to the WikiLeaks video, the Pentagon, while not officially commenting on the video, announced that two Pentagon investigations cleared the air crew of any wrongdoing.
A statement from the two probes said the air crew had acted appropriately and followed the ROE.
The problem with this is that it may, indeed, be the case but the impression will be that there is a "cover up" or consoiracy. There isn't anything to "cover up"-- it is right there and being seen. The problem may simply be that the ROE or EOF needs to be looked at, or there is a need for more solid intel before deploying-- things we won't know, because we don't know the big picture context.
Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah beginning in February 2004 for roughly one year.
Speaking on a panel at the aforementioned hearings about the ROE, he held up the ROE card soldiers are issued in Iraq and said, “This card says, ‘Nothing on this card prevents you from using deadly force to defend yourself’.”
Of course. This is not news. It is expected. You are supposed to read this sentence, in the context of all the "sanctioned atrocity" stirring read in the rest of this article, and assume it means that you are given a Liscence to Kill indiscriminantly. Attempts to mitigate civilian casualties were all over my battalion when I was there; a concerted effort was made to avoid unecessary killing of civilians. But, yes, if push came to shove and we felt we were in imminent danger, we were expected to defend ourselves. We were, after all, soldiers, not social workers.
Kokesh pointed out that “reasonable certainty” was the condition for using deadly force under the ROE, and this led to rampant civilian deaths. He discussed taking part in the April 2004 siege of Fallujah. During that attack, doctors at Fallujah General Hospital told Truthout there were 736 deaths, over 60 percent of which were civilians.
For us, "reasonable certainty" meant
fewer civilian deaths. And while I personally was not in Fallujah in April of 2004, I was in the neighborhood next to it for the October 2004 uprising when the Marines and Iraqi National Guard went in to drive out insurgents. They left and came to our neighborhood to get away.
Bear in mind that th enumber of "civilian" deaths may or may not mean that the civilians were innocent or fighting. We were fighting civilians at the time, and they were fighting us. It is dishonest to assume that just because someone was a "civilian" meant that they were harmless and innocent. The Hutaree Militia in the USA were "civilians".
“We changed the ROE more often than we changed our underwear,” Kokesh said, “At one point, we imposed a curfew on the city, and were told to fire at anything that moved in the dark.”
That part I remember. A curfew was imposed and we did stop a car full of drunk ass hell Iraqis out joyriding at sunset. We told them to go home and avoid Americans, who'd fire on them for the crime of being idiots.
Kokesh also testified that during two cease-fires in the midst of the siege, the military decided to let out as many women and children from the embattled city as possible, but this did not include most men.
“For males, they had to be under 14 years of age,” he said, “So I had to go over there and turn men back, who had just been separated from their women and children. We thought we were being gracious.”
The enemy purposefully mixes among innocent populations precisely to create this dilemma and make us the "bad guys". We do the best we can, since, indeed, we are not given Superman powers in basic to just "know" who is who. If the enemy would oblige by putting on proper uniforms and fighting out in the field so that only combatants were involved, things would be better for all.
Steve Casey served in Iraq for over a year starting in mid-2003.
“We were scheduled to go home in April 2004, but due to rising violence we stayed in with Operation Blackjack,” Casey said, “I watched soldiers firing into the radiators and windows of oncoming vehicles. Those who didn’t turn around were unfortunately neutralized one way or another - well over 20 times I personally witnessed this. There was a lot of collateral damage.”
I was in Camp Victory during "Blackjack". I didn't see the things being described, but it is worth remembering that during an insurgent uprising, it is fairly obvious what is going on. Car bombs, rifle fire. It is not like a day in America, where mom and the toddlers are going to the mall without a care in the world when all of a sudden evil soldiers materialize out of nowehere and start blazing away. There comes a time in a war zone when it is prudent to assume that anyone out there during the shooting is involved in the shooting to a degree, and destroying a person's car while leaving them alive is in fact being very open-minded about their possible innocence while others are shooting at you.
Jason Hurd served in central Baghdad from November 2004 until November 2005. He told of how, after his unit took “stray rounds” from a nearby firefight, a machine gunner responded by firing over 200 rounds into a nearby building.
“We fired indiscriminately at this building,” he said. “Things like that happened every day in Iraq. We reacted out of fear for our lives, and we reacted with total destruction.”
It happens. I understand it, even if I don't like it. It's called "war", and it is one of the reasons why, ideally, it is to be avoided. Yes, if someone shoots at us from a building, we're going to fire at that building.
Hurd said the situation deteriorated rapidly while he was in Iraq. “Over time, as the absurdity of war set in, individuals from my unit indiscriminately opened fire at vehicles driving down the wrong side of the road. People in my unit would later brag about it. I remember thinking how appalled I was that we were laughing at this, but that was the reality.”
It happened to us a lot in the Sunni Triangle, when we were escorting old Iraqi munitions to be destroyed. Vehicle-born IEDs, or VBIEDs, were being deployed against US convoys. We had truckloads of munitions. We wouldn't let people pass on th ehighway in case they were VBEIDs, but some people would get frustrated with the slow pace of our convoy. They'd cross the median and drive at high speed on the shoulder of the opposite lane.
We were concerned that this was an attempt to get ahead of us and then come at us with a VBIED from ahead rather than behind. We extended our "no pass" zone to include cars trying to overtake us in the opposite road. My first shot of the war was a warning shot at a car trying to do exactly that.
What I'm trying to sya is there is a context for these things. We didn't fire "indiscriminantly", we fired for a reason --traffic control-- and as far as I know none of us ever killed any Iraqs this way or even tried to.
Other soldiers Truthout has interviewed have often laughed when asked about their ROE in Iraq.
Garret Reppenhagen served in Iraq from February 2004-2005 in the city of Baquba, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) northeast of Baghdad. He said his first experience in Iraq was being on a patrol that killed two Iraqi farmers as they worked in their field at night.
“I was told they were out in the fields farming because their pumps only operated with electricity, which meant they had to go out in the dark when there was electricity,” he explained, “I asked the sergeant, if he knew this, why did he fire on the men. He told me because the men were out after curfew. I was never given another ROE during my time in Iraq.”
While there is a
technical truth to the notion of killing someone because they were out after curfew, the context provided here sound slike the sergeant knew what he was doing and did it "for kicks". Personally, this soldier should have reported it and ideally the sergeant should be investigated for the unecessary killing.
Emmanuel added: “We took fire while trying to blow up a bridge. Many of the attackers were part of the general population. This led to our squad shooting at everything and anything in order to push through the town. I remember myself emptying magazines into the town, never identifying a target.”
We were never allowed to fire without identifying a target, and in fact made fun of the Iraqi National Guard because they did exactly that.
Emmanuel spoke of abusing prisoners he knew were innocent, adding, “We took it upon ourselves to harass them, and took them to the desert to throw them out of our Humvees, while kicking and punching them when we threw them out.”
We were under strict orders to not even touch prisoners unless absolutely necessary. Shoving or pushing was discouraged but allowed.
Jason Wayne Lemue is a Marine who served three tours in Iraq.
“My commander told me, ‘Kill those who need to be killed, and save those who need to be saved’; that was our mission on our first tour,” he said of his first deployment during the invasion.
Those are absurdly vague instructions, and probably the initiative of the commander. I would have aske dfo rmore clarification, myself, I don't know what rank this guy is but younger soldiers need to not be intimidated about asking for clarification.
“After that the ROE changed, and carrying a shovel, or standing on a rooftop talking on a cell phone, or being out after curfew [meant those people] were to be killed. I can’t tell you how many people died because of this. By my third tour, we were told to just shoot people, and the officers would take care of us.”
That right there was one of those situations where a soldier should have asked for clarification or asked for orders to be put in writing. Those are rediculous and irresponsibly vague and broad orders that need to be questioned.
When this Truthout reporter was in Baghdad in November 2004, my Iraqi interpreter was in the Abu Hanifa mosque that was raided by US and Iraqi soldiers during Friday prayers.
“Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying [US soldiers and] Iraqi National Guards entered,” Abu Talat told Truthout on the phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. “Everyone starting yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!”
Poor training and cultural preparation-- people in the USA think that "Allahu Ackbar" is what is shouted right before a terrorist attacks so he can go to Allah as he kills infidels. A bunch of people went into a mosque, probably already told the place was full of insurgents, and what's the first thing that happens? The people inside jump up and start screaming a phrase that American soldiers all think is, essentially, "we're attacking! We're attacking!"
We didn't get our cultural class until we were halfway through our deployment. I was one of maybe two or three guys in the entire Battalion that knew anything about Middle East culture and I'd been trying to educate and mitigate wherever I could until we got our cultural awareness class. It was a class we should have had as we were mobilizing, or as soon as we got in-country. Inexcusable.
This type of indiscriminate killing has been typical from the initial invasion of Iraq.
Typical for some. Not for all. Misleading.
Truthout spoke with Iraq war veteran and former National Guard and Army Reserve member Jason Moon, who was there for the invasion.
“While on our initial convoy into Iraq in early June 2003, we were given a direct order that if any children or civilians got in front of the vehicles in our convoy, we were not to stop, we were not to slow down, we were to keep driving. In the event an insurgent attacked us from behind human shields, we were supposed to count. If there were thirty or less civilians we were allowed to fire into the area. If there were over thirty, we were supposed to take fire and send it up the chain of command. These were the rules of engagement. I don’t know about you, but if you are getting shot at from a crowd of people, how fast are you going to count, and how accurately?”
During the initial invasion I can see this sort of ROE being issued. It was a regular shooting war at the time. Pushing a kid out to the road to get a convoy to stop so it could be hit with pre-registered artillery or mortars? Yeah. You don't stop for shit. War is not a day at the mall or going to school.
Moon brought back a video that shows his sergeant declaring, “The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive.”
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- PeZook
