Joe Hack

American politicians cling grimly to the public myth that the actions of the US military are always beyond criticism. Its ‘unpatriotic’ to say anything else so both Democrats and Republicans routinely lavish praise on the men and women in uniform at every turn. Oh sure, they’ll grudgingly concede, if pressed, that theres the odd bad apple at places like Abu Ghraib, but overall the US military in Iraq is a bunch of heroes doing a helluva great humanitarian job. If only it were true.

That particular fairytale will take a severe hit with the publication in ‘The Nation’ magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from right across the US. In the Nation interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity. The report avoids the easy targets, widely reported atrocities like the awful and well-documented massacre in Haditha, and instead shines a merciless spotlight on a systematic and systemic pattern of human rights abuses at all levels throughout the army. “It’s not individual atrocity,” Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.

NOTE: and I can’t stress this too much. This is not some vague, anti-bush, pinko-liberal propaganda. These are the words of the men and women who have actually fought in Iraq telling it honestly like it is, unlike the sanitised propoganda you get from most of Americas tame news media.

This searing narrative of ordinary soldiers with no political axe to grind paints a picture of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded and extreme violence. A number of interviewees revealed that the military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed civilians. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat. Anyone recognise echoes of what we now know went on in Vietnam here ?“It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying around,” said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb. “Every good cop carries a throwaway,” Hatcher said of weapons planted on innocent victims in incidents that occurred while he was stationed between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March 2005. Any survivors were sent to jail for interrogation.

Civilians also died because of the reckless behaviour of military convoys. Sgt Kelly Dougherty of the Colorado National Guard described a hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. “Judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean… your order is that you never stop.”The worst abuses seem to have been during raids on private homes when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have taken place, usually at dead of night. The veterans point out that most are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians, while generating sympathy for the resistance. Sgt John Bruhns, 29, of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, described a typical raid. “You want to catch them off guard,” he explained. “You want to catch them in their sleep … You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall… Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. You’ll ask ‘Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda?’ “Normally they’ll say no, because that’s normally the truth,” Sgt Bruhns said. “So you’ll take his sofa cushions and dump them. You’ll open up his closet and you’ll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it.” And at the end, if the soldiers don’t find anything, they depart with a “Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening”. Sgt Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian in the back in 2003. “The mentality of my squad leader was like, ‘Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don’t have to kill them back in Colorado’,” she said. “He just seemed to view every Iraqi as a potential terrorist.” “People would make jokes about it, even before we’d go into a raid, like, ‘Oh fuck, we’re gonna get the wrong house’. Cause it would always happen. We always got the wrong house.

“More quotes“ Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat….”Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003

“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’… [Only when we got home] in… meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.” ….Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

“[The photo] was very graphic… They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a spoon. He’s reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and smiling.”Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota, Florida, 320th Military Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning April 2003

“The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint… and probably didn’t even see the soldiers… The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them….Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004

“The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population”… Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124 Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning April 2003

“I just remember thinking, ‘I just brought terror to someone under the American flag’.” …. Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour beginning February 2004

“A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want.”…. Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning December 2004

“I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”…..Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness, by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian, appears in the 30 July issue of The Nation.

Read it if you want the truth instead of propogandaTags:Abu Ghraib army Democrats George W Bush insurgency Iraq military Political Rants politicians politics republican Republicans terrorism US militaryAbu Ghraib, army, Democrats, George W Bush, insurgency, Iraq, military, Political Rants, politicians, politics, republican, Republicans, terrorism, US military

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Poor old George W. He’s suffering from ’surge sickness’ and it might just be terminal. One of its worst syptoms is a resolute refusal to face reality. In a speech today in Ohio he attempted once again to wave the flag for his failing ’surge’ strategy in Iraq. As an aside, does anyone else find the idea of Bush actually having a ’strategy’ kinda funny ?

Anyway, he’s asking for ‘patience’ from congress and the American people as the bloody civil war in Iraq continues unabated despite the fact that General David Petraeus is expected to report negatively in his July ’snap-shot’ report on the so-called ’surge’ in troop deployment that was Bushs desperate last throw of the dice. The ’surge’ as you will recall, was the piece of inspired ‘Alice-in’Wonderland’ thinking that sent an additional 30,000 US troops to Iraq to fight an unwinnable war. American casualties continue to mount, the civilian death-toll is horrendous, and the body-bags just keep on coming home (although as we know there has been continuing pressure on the TV companies not to show images of these on TV ).

Times have changed though. No-one seems to be listening to Georgey-boy any more. Calls for a withdrawal to begin immediately are growing in Washington, with four Republican senators last week adding their voice to those demanding a new plan and this week will see a contentious debate in the US Senate over a major defence spending bill. In fact, the rise in pressure within Congress and among the US public is so great that one official speaking to the Washington Post newspaper said that “July has become the new September”. Independent news commentators say that the president’s call for a truce in the political battle cannot mask the sharply growing sense of urgency in the White House over the need to stem the flow of Republican defections on Iraq. Vice-President ‘Deadeye’ Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials have been scurrying about in Congress during the day urging senators to remain loyal. Even before Mr Bush’s ‘more of the same’ speech White House aides were playing down the July report, calling it a “snapshot” and emphasising that not too much should be expected just yet.

On Monday, speaking to the BBC, Gen Petraeus also called for patience, warning that fighting the insurgency is a “long term endeavour” which could take decades. Eh? Say that again slowly, buddy. Decades ? So is the guy on the ground now saying that American troops are going to be sacrificed in this bitter carnage for ‘decades’ to come ? Not just your children, but your childrens children ? Well that sounds like a great strategy that the American people will be rushing to get behind, doesn’t it ?

Fact is, its all about arrogance. Bushs arrogance and dumb inability to admit he got it so horribly wrong. He invaded Iraq on the basis of lies for reasons that were more to do with oil and Isaeli pressure than anything else. There was no WMD. There was no link whatsoever between Iraq and Al Quaeda (although thanks to George W its a terrorist playground now). Bushs illegal war has cost over 600,000 Iraqi lives and made another 4 million of them into refugees. American military deaths and serious injuries in Iraq continue to escalate. The country is descending into bloody civil war and the whole of the middle-east has been destabilised. Because of the Abu Ghraib and other torture scandals,  ‘extraordinary rendition’, and Guantanamo Bay, Americas reputation as a civilized  country has been dragged through the mud internationally and the US is divided internally like never before. Thats the sum total of Bushs great Iraq strategy so far.

And his solution to the chaos ? You guessed it. No change. More of the same.

You really couldn’t make stuff like this up, could you ?Tags:Abu Ghraib American Bush congress George W Guantanamo Bay insurgency Iraq lies political battle Political Rants speech terrorist US troopsAbu Ghraib, American, Bush, congress, George W, Guantanamo Bay, insurgency, Iraq, lies, political battle, Political Rants, speech, terrorist, US troops

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!