Wikileaks about to drop "the bombshell"

[Coyote]

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 experienced the same 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 was no 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 conspiracy. 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-as-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 say 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 asked for more 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.”

[/quote]
A stupid declaration I agree, but one that is understandable in an environment of fear such as that. Not saying I agree with it, but that it is understandable.

I'm going to skip the rest. I think my point is made-- what is described here is true from the points of views of these soldiers and Marines. I don't doubt for a second that there are and were people who were more than willing to just shoot up anything that moved to protect themselves, and damn the repercussions.

But to imply that every one of us over there was like that is wrong and paints the wrong picture. My experiences are as valid as these guys' experiences, yet I notice that no one from my company was interviewed for our experiences. They wanted the guys who went in there as fearful cowboys and who wouldn't question ROEs or target validity.

I'm certain that the indignant howls of outrage are already being readied to call me an "apologist" or an Nazi goosestepping jackbooted thug, etc etc etc. Note that my interest here is not in excusing anything that happened as described in the article, but showing that no one single expreience can be applied as a blanket over everything that happened in Iraq. I was in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle during the worst parts. I wasn't in an office, philosophizing about the Iraqi people. I was meeting them. I didn't partake of or see any "atrocities" and it is wrong to paint a picture that we were "ordered" or even hinted at to kill indiscriminantly or even encouraged to do so. It was quite the opposite for us.

Some of the things described were wrong and deserve questioning (shooting the farmers because they were out at night). Some of these make sense if you understand war (firing at anything strange that comes close to you when there is combat going on). Some of these are war as it has always been conducted by everyone throughout history (dehumanizing an enemy to make it easier to kill) and I feel it is just sensationalism to add it here.

Try to understand that no, I am not trying to say that brutality is "OK". it isn't. But things that appear to be senseless, baseless brutality for no reason may actually be understandable (note I didn't say excusable, just understandable) as long as you remember that the context is war, and war is supposed to be brutality of a certain type, and ideally war is to be avoided for precisely that reason.

[Drone]

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.

One of my Team Sergeants told us a story about this on Sunday as part of our Law of War/ROE classes (we get them every couple of months, just to remind us how we're supposed to act). They were indeed told not to stop for anything, but were told to make every effort possible to avoid civilian casualties if at all possible. So it's not like they were just told to kill everything in their way no matter the cost.

[Punarbhava]

I just came across an interview on CivSol with two soldiers. One of them was the soldier who got the children out of the van in the video.

http://www.civsol.org/content/second-me ... ileaks-inc

The men in the audio clip echo some of what those in this thread have said, and have some other insights.

[Skylon]

There wasn't much of a 'we' in the Iraq war. The neocons hijacked the system.

Neocons who were voted in by the people.

Saying that the system was hijacked is just a way to reduce the people's responsibility.

More than a fair share of Democrats also voted in favor of the invasion.

Rar, rar, its all Bush and Cheney's fault...yeah, they got their fair share of the blame but I'd say from the top down, there was a total failure in everybody's (American Press I'm looking at you especially) civic duty in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Anyone with half a fucking brain should have been able to connect that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, but American views on the region are so warped, one "towel head" is as good as another (we'd had a decade of hearing how evil Saddam was, it must be him)! I have co-workers who don't know the fucking difference between Palestine and Pakistan.

Then there's the WMD argument, however I don't see US troops blasting the shit out of Iran and North Korea (or hear any calls to in 2003).

Bush and Cheney will remain the obvious scapegoats for Iraq, but really nobody of note stood up and said "this is crazy, why Iraq". America was hurt, and wanted to take its rage out on something (I would have rather it was Osama Bin Laden). In 2004 and 2007, in two classes I'll never forget the issue of Iraq boiling down to "But...we were scared after 9/11!" I'd add "stupid" to that as well.

[Coyote]

I think one of the things that launched Obama into the public spotlight at the time was he was one of the tiny handful of dissenting voices on striking at Iraq...At the time, the impression was that anyone who didn't go along was essentially through.

[General Brock]

There wasn't much of a 'we' in the Iraq war. The neocons hijacked the system.

Neocons who were voted in by the people.

Saying that the system was hijacked is just a way to reduce the people's responsibility.

It doesn't reduce the people's responsibility, in my eyes. The system was hijacked, remains hijacked, and un-hijacking it also the people's responsibility. Failure means compliance with a seriously flawed democracy and all the crimes it is capable of.

[General Brock]

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 also don't doubt that many American soldiers acted as responsibly as they could. All the high command had to do was let circumstances and the lowest common denominator of behavior happen.

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?

Probably eat the cookies. Sure, I know there was an instance in Northern Ireland where some old lady fed soldiers sandwiches with broken glass, but there was no known precedent for Iraqis acting that way, and if the cookies looked good, why not?

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 experienced the same 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.

What kind were they? I'm not being facetious here; was it a local recipe?

Onward...

I notice they cherry picked certain tales to be as lurid and damning as possible. Were not my experiences as valid?

Just as valid. You were confronted with choices and you made decent decisions. Some other units and individuals, did not.

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.

Again, I don't doubt that there were units that maintained high morale through good behavior. That does not exonerate the units that did not.

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 was no chance of investigation-- not an "official policy".

Yes, but it did go on, and apparently often enough to be seen as an unofficial policy by some soldiers.

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.

Nor would there have been any reason for it to be pan-Iraq. The Kurdish north, for example, was remarkably calm.

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.

Not every unit followed the spirit of accounting controls. Heck, cops in peacetime sometimes don't follow similar rules under somewhat less arduous circumstances. If the executive will to accountability isn't there, its not going to happen.

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.

The goal appears to be to create an American satellite in the Middle East using the experience in taming Latin America.

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.

Can't argue with that. However, misunderstandings are also inevitable.

This is different from any other war? Or even any other side?

This was a war of choice. The Iraqis didn't start it, and Saddam had enough control that no Iraqi militants could ignite the pretexts of a war with America on their own as in Afghanistan. America is in the wrong here; the neocons lied to the world and their own people, everyone saw through those lies, and either agreed with the program or were poorly positioned to stop it. This is very unlike any war in history.

... 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.

Maybe, maybe not. If I were your commander, I'd be very circumspect about what I ordered you to do.

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.

If your patrol is stopped for any reason, children won't be hit by a moving vehicle, which seems to be the context of Ewing's account. Child suicide bombers have appeared in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and have happened in Iraq, but appear to be far rarer.

The problem with this is that it may, indeed, be the case but the impression will be that there is a "cover up" or conspiracy. 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.

Part of the big picture is to break the resistance. Different units will respond according to their inclinations, but the outcomes can be predicted. Some units will behave just as abominably as their more desperate opponents, some will not. Dead civilians sends a clear message; don't make trouble and don't support trouble. The randomness of it only adds to the psychological effect.

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.

You weren't police officers either. Suppose every police officer in Detroit was given broad nudge-wink latitude; some would try to maintain their moral convictions, some would... not.

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".

The Hutaree were also a joke. Apparently, they were lured to a wake and caught en-route without any weapons. Their plans are out of a B movie. Even the militia movement considered them 'out there'. Iraq's civilian criminal gangs are easily more dangerous than some ad hoc wannabe militia, more dangerous than even the Iraqi resistance.

That part I remember. A curfew was imposed and we did stop a car full of drunk-as-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.

So how many Iraqis celebrated their 'freedom' and didn't make it home?

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.

The best best known tactic of resistance fighting is to strike from the civilian population, yes. Any Iraqi dumb enough to resist in uniform in the field was dead or captured long ago.

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.

An unusual war zone wherein the opponent is resorting to guerrilla tactics to fight, because they can't win conventionally and the invaders have no legitimate reason for being there in the first place.

I'm not interested in condemning individual soldiers for trying to stay alive, or failing to uphold high moral standards in conditions where they aren't given much realistic encouragement to do so. The anti-war movement is interested in pulling the plug on that entire antihuman system.

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.

This is supposed to be some big surprise? Its a war that should never have happened. The stages of resistance and reaction to resistance are well known and studied.

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 say 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.

And some Iraqis and reporters died because some American soldiers fired indiscriminately. American allies in Iraq, such as the British, were put off by the level of American aggression and the deaths of reporters, what with "US forces appear to have allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger happy cowboys in an area where civilians were moving around."

Its been that way from the beginning. Trigger-happy troops taking any excuse to fire and being oblivious to discerning between combatant and non-combatant.

Simpson berates 'trigger-happy' troops

John Simpson

Simpson: 'It isn't too dangerous to operate here if you are sensible and careful - and lucky.' Photograph: PA

BBC news reporter John Simpson has hit out against the "trigger-happy" behaviour of US troops in Iraq and claimed he saved an old Iraqi man from being shot by gung-ho marines.

The veteran reporter, who spent time with American forces in Tikrit, praised British troops for their conduct during the war but said in an interview with Soldier magazine that the Americans "lost control".

"They lost all control - screaming, shouting and kicking people," Simpson said, adding that US soldiers' fear of snipers led to a 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude.

"One of the marines shouted 'Snipers!' and put up his gun, pointing it at a man on a rooftop. I could see it was an old boy putting out a blanket to air and I said to him in a quiet voice that I would be the witness at his trial for murder if he pulled the trigger. He stopped," said the BBC reporter.

Simpson said he believed British troops had handled the situation better because of their years of experience in Northern Ireland, where he began his career as a reporter in 1969.

"The benefits from the army's Northern Ireland experience have been considerable. I saw that experience put to really good use in Basra. British soldiers didn't treat the local people like enemies, but like citizens that needed help. It was the same in Bosnia and Kosovo," he said.

"In Iraq you could see the stark difference between the way the Americans behaved and how the British did things. It was Northern Ireland that gave the British that experience and that edge."

The veteran foreign correspondent said the situation he experienced in Tikrit would never have arisen with British soldiers.

"They are so much in control. We have a first-class army, which is excellently disciplined. The American military culture does not have the business of careful control of firing weapons. If they took a leaf or two out of the British handbook they would do themselves and everyone else a favour," he said.

Simpson was wounded by US troops during the conflict in a horrific "friendly fire" incident that killed his translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed and 17 others, as well as causing 45 injuries.

Simpson filed a remarkable report by phone just minutes after the bomb landed on the convoy, breaking off at one point to tell a US army medic coming to his aid: "Shut up. I'm broadcasting... Oh yes, I'm fine - am I bleeding?."

The BBC later showed pictures of the tragedy shot by cameraman Fred Scott, who at one point is seen wiping blood from his lens, of Simpson and others running around trying to treat the wounded in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, while vehicles burned in the background.

Speaking about the incident in the interview with the Ministry of Defence magazine, Simpson recounted the horrific attack in detail for the first time.

"We were going forward with a convoy of Kurdish and American forces," he recalled. "As we approached a town several Iraqi tanks fired at us and the American commander called up an air strike. Two F-14s came in low and I saw the missile leave the aircraft."

It landed a few yards away, the explosion blowing up cars in the convoy, most of which were laden with ammunition.

"There was a lot of panic and unpleasant sights. People burning to death or staggering around with their insides in their hands. Our translator, Kamaran, had some shrapnel through the femoral artery and I don't think he stood a chance," said Simpson.

The rest of the BBC team travelling with Simpson when the attack happened sustained minor injuries and the reporter told of his pride in his team.

"My whole team behaved superbly, nobody lost it and I was very proud of them. They behaved in the finest traditions of the BBC."

Simpson, who sustained ruptured eardrums and remains deaf in his left ear, said he would like to see justice done for Mr Muhamed's family.

"We owe it to them to find out why it happened and to see if it's possible to avoid it in the future. And I'd like to see what disciplinary measures were taken. It is not a crusade but a desire to see what went wrong," said Simpson.

In the interview, Simpson also reminisces on his previous assignments and criticises both the US and British forces for their conduct during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s.

"It was terrible, horrifying and wicked. It was a war crime that went on for three years and was appalling. I didn't feel that Britain or the Americans came out of it very well, and I don't think the BBC covered itself in glory," he said.

The British ministry of defense was also annoyed at Americans for using more force than was in their judgment, prudent and productive. It not just a civilian judgment.

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.

That obviously didn't happen. A lot.

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.

OK.

We were under strict orders to not even touch prisoners unless absolutely necessary. Shoving or pushing was discouraged but allowed.

Nice to know what rules were being observed in the breach. Again, not every soldier was hell-bent on being an ass, let alone commit atrocities. Some tried very hard to and were very successful at keeping their morals intact. An many did not fare as well. to the detriment of thousands of Iraqis.

It really doesn't change the fact that unfortunate incidents happened, and that whatever the official orders and policy was, an 'unofficial' policy of doing whatever it takes to break the resistance was apparently being followed, and included letting soldiers 'go medieval' with modern weapons as such soldiers deemed necessary.

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 asked for more clarification, myself, I don't know what rank this guy is but younger soldiers need to not be intimidated about asking for clarification.

I'd also bet those verbal orders weren't officially written down anywhere, and to most soldiers, would tend to take precedence over any written orders.

“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.

And then what? Be assigned 'point' position for life? Be seen as someone inclined to endanger lives in his unit and hence no longer part of the herd and deserving of the protections of the herd? Peer pressure and authority have a lot more serious methods of enforcement in the military, and that's even before combat.

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.

It wasn't a priority.

This type of indiscriminate killing has been typical from the initial invasion of Iraq.

Typical for some. Not for all. Misleading.

Dead is dead. That does not appear misleading at all to those faced with it.

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.

Everyone knows that. You seem to think civilians have no idea what is going on. Those opposed to the war do; that's why they oppose the war and want to see it brought to an end.

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.”

A stupid declaration I agree, but one that is understandable in an environment of fear such as that. Not saying I agree with it, but that it is understandable.

I'm going to skip the rest. I think my point is made-- what is described here is true from the points of views of these soldiers and Marines. I don't doubt for a second that there are and were people who were more than willing to just shoot up anything that moved to protect themselves, and damn the repercussions.

Including tarring yourself and every other soldier who tried to do their job honestly.

But to imply that every one of us over there was like that is wrong and paints the wrong picture. My experiences are as valid as these guys' experiences, yet I notice that no one from my company was interviewed for our experiences. They wanted the guys who went in there as fearful cowboys and who wouldn't question ROEs or target validity.

Well, if you didn't do anything wrong, you won't be quoted as having done any wrongdoing. Mainstream media and even Fox news can deliver any number of 'feel good' stories about soldiers doing their job right. People will wonder what went wrong, why those crazy Mulsims continue to resist.

I'm certain that the indignant howls of outrage are already being readied to call me an "apologist" or an Nazi goosestepping jackbooted thug, etc etc etc. Note that my interest here is not in excusing anything that happened as described in the article, but showing that no one single expreience can be applied as a blanket over everything that happened in Iraq. I was in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle during the worst parts. I wasn't in an office, philosophizing about the Iraqi people. I was meeting them. I didn't partake of or see any "atrocities" and it is wrong to paint a picture that we were "ordered" or even hinted at to kill indiscriminantly or even encouraged to do so. It was quite the opposite for us.

I don't doubt your integrity. You weren't flying that Apache. It too bad you weren't, or that reporter might still be alive.

However, the entire neo-conned U.S. military can't hide behind a few good men.

(note I didn't say excusable, just understandable) as long as you remember that the context is war, and war is supposed to be brutality of a certain type, and ideally war is to be avoided for precisely that reason.

Those of us opposed to the ware are not unaware of the contexts.

Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered

1 April 2010

Battle to destroy hearts and minds

The dismantling of Iraqi intellectual life may have been a deliberate strategy, Roger Matthews learns

(Dahr Jamail contributed a chapter to this book.)

I first went to Iraq in 1984 to work on archaeological excavations near Mosul. Our workers were Yezidis from the neighbouring villages and together we worked long hours in the hot sun. Over the following few years I lived in Iraq as resident director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and worked on projects all over the country. We suspected then that we might be living the last years of a golden age of Mesopotamian discovery, uncovering Iraq’s uniquely rich and important cultural heritage in collaboration with colleagues from Iraq and many other countries.

Today, the discipline of Mesopotamian archaeology lies in tatters; Iraq’s universities and its antiquities service face an uncertain future in the midst of a harrowing present; standards of education, literacy and international engagement have plummeted to levels unknown in the history of Iraq; and the world continues largely to turn its back on calls for assistance from our Iraqi friends and colleagues. All this in a country renowned throughout the Arab world and beyond for its sophistication and open-mindedness, epitomised in the Arabic saying “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads”.

The editors and authors of this book believe that the planners of the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq were not simply grossly negligent in allowing Iraq to descend into this hell. Their argument is that the planners consciously facilitated the dismantling of Iraq’s intellectual, academic and cultural apparatus in order to wipe the slate clean as a prelude to the rebirth of the country as a neo-capitalist secular democracy that would serve as a model for change across the Middle East. “To be remade, a state must be rendered malleable”, as the editors of this volume observe. Hulagu and his Mongol hordes doubtless understood this when they ransacked Baghdad in AD1258.

In pursuit of this argument, the authors evaluate the impact of the invasion and regime change on multiple aspects of life in Iraq since 2003. Chapters deal in turn with the ideology of neoconservatism, cultural cleansing as state policy, the destruction of Iraq’s archaeological, historical, cultural and archive resources and memories, and the terrible impact of the invasion and the subsequent chaos on Iraq’s many minority groups, of whom the Yezidis are but one. The core of the book concerns the fate of Iraq’s academics, who have suffered dreadfully in the past seven years. A sombre appendix to this book states that at least 432 scholars (and probably many more) from across all disciplines have been murdered. No Iraqi academic is safe from the threat of kidnap, torture, death or all three.

Later this month, the Seventh International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (http://www.7icaane.org) will take place in London. Many papers will deal with the archaeology of Iraq/Mesopotamia. But they will be heard by pitifully few Iraqi ears. Iraqi academics wishing to attend cannot obtain visas in Baghdad: they must make the expensive and sometimes dangerous journey to Amman, where they may or may not succeed in obtaining their papers. Of a predicted 1,000 participants from around the world, we expect fewer than six Iraqi scholars - a shameful reflection on Britain’s treatment of its academic colleagues in Iraq.

As for the Yezidis I worked with a quarter of a century ago, they are clinging to their lands and their holy places in the face of repeated shootings, bombings and persistent persecution. Let them stand as an emblem of today’s Iraq, of a friendly, outgoing, clever people whose injustices and sufferings are laid bare in this angry, articulate book. For now, the emphasis and energies must shift to assisting Iraq and all its people in reclaiming their rightful place in the world. All of us, in academe and beyond, can help with that.

posted by Dahr Jamail | April 5th, 2010

[General Brock]

Double post error.

[CJvR]

I dont think the Arab world needs any assistance in combating "intellectual life" since they seem to have been involved in self lobotomy for centuries.

[Gandalf]

There wasn't much of a 'we' in the Iraq war. The neocons hijacked the system.

Neocons who were voted in by the people.

Saying that the system was hijacked is just a way to reduce the people's responsibility.

It doesn't reduce the people's responsibility, in my eyes. The system was hijacked, remains hijacked, and un-hijacking it also the people's responsibility. Failure means compliance with a seriously flawed democracy and all the crimes it is capable of.

So, how was the system hijacked to start the Iraq War?

[Beowulf]

Wired interview

Fairly lengthy, but insightful interview of the guy seen running with the kids.