http://www.truthout.org:80/iraq-war-vet-we-were-told-just-shoot-peopl...
ficers-would-take-care-us58378
Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers
Would Take Care of Us"
Wednesday 07 April 2010
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report
To read story with photo, click here.
On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq,
taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers
aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead
included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer
Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.
The US military confirmed the authenticity of the video.
The footage clearly shows an unprovoked slaughter, and is shocking
to watch whilst listening to the casual conversation of the soldiers
in the background.
As disturbing as the video is, this type of behavior by US soldiers
in Iraq is not uncommon.
Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific
stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation
forces.
"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."
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.
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.
"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."
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 o,re 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, o,re on all
taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units o,ring
on cars. This was my o,rst experience with war, and that kind of
set the tone for the rest of the deployment."
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."
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.
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 o,ag and he does anything but
approach you slowly and obey commands, assume it's a trick and kill
him."
Brian Casler, a corporal in the Marines, spoke of witnessing the
prevalent dehumanizing outlook soldiers took toward Iraqis during
the invasion of Iraq.
"... 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.
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."
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.
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'."
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.
"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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
"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."
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!"
"They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying,"
he said in a panicked voice, "At least 10 other people are wounded
now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation."
Iraqi Red Crescent later confirmed to Truthout that at least four
people were killed, and nine wounded. Truthout later witnessed
pieces of brain splattered on one of the walls inside the mosque
while large blood stains covered carpets at several places.
This type of indiscriminate killing has been typical from the initial
invasion of Iraq.
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?"
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."
Moon explains the thinking: "If you kill a civilian he becomes an
insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat."
According to the Pentagon probes of the killings shown in the
WikiLeaks video, the air crew had "reason to believe" the people
seen in the video were fighters before opening fire.
Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions speaks to the "basic rule"
regarding the protection of civilians:
"In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian
population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall
at all times distinguish between the civilian population and
combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and
accordingly shall direct their operations only against military
objectives."
What is happening in Iraq seems to reflect what psychiatrist Robert
Jay Lifton calls "atrocity-producing situations." He used this term
first in his book "The Nazi Doctors." In 2004, he wrote an article
for The Nation, applying his insights to the Iraq War and occupation.
"Atrocity-producing situations," Lifton wrote, occur when a power
structure sets up an environment where "ordinary people, men or
women no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit
atrocities.... This kind of atrocity-producing situation ... surely
occurs to some degrees in all wars, including World War II, our
last 'good war.' But a counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting,
especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is
particularly prone to sustained atrocity - all the more so when it
becomes an occupation."
Cliff Hicks served in Iraq from October 2003 to August 2004.
"There was a tall apartment complex, the only spot from where people
could see over our perimeter," Hicks told Truthout, "There would
be laundry hanging off the balconies, and people hanging out on the
roof for fresh air. The place was full of kids and families. On
rare occasions, a fighter would get atop the building and shoot at
our passing vehicles. They never really hit anybody. We just knew
to be careful when we were over by that part of the wall, and nobody
did shit about it until one day a lieutenant colonel was driving
down and they shot at his vehicle and he got scared. So he jumped
through a bunch of hoops and cut through some red tape and got a
C-130 to come out the next night and all but leveled the place.
Earlier that evening when I was returning from a patrol the apartment
had been packed full of people."
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** Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches ** ** Visit Dahr Jamail's websitehttp://dahrjamailiraq.com **
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