[Peace-discuss] "That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians"

[C. G. Estabrook]

	"That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians"
	Italian reporter shot by US military writes for newspaper
	that tells raw truth about US role in Iraq
	by Tom Whitney 03/11/05
	San Francisco Bay View

On March 4, in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers shot the Italian reporter Giuliana
Sgrena, who had just been released by hostage-takers. She believes the
soldiers shot to kill, and they succeeded in killing Italian Secret
Service official Nicola Calipara, who had secured her release from hostage
takers and who was with her.

Witnesses accompanying the pair, who also were wounded, told reporters
March 5 that, contrary to U.S. allegations, the car in which the four
persons were riding was not speeding and that it had already stopped at
several checkpoints on its way to the airport.

Il Manifesto (www.ilmanifesto.it), the paper Giuliana Sgrena works for, is
described as a "communist paper."  The titles of Sgrena's recent articles
for Il Manifesto, including "Ten thousand Iraqis in US and British
prisons" (Dec. 29, 2004); "Two thousand victims in Fallujah"  (Nov. 26,
2004); "Napalm raid on Fallujah?" (Nov. 23, 2004); "The death throes of
Fallujah" (Nov. 13, 2004); "Stop the massacre" (Nov. 12, 2004); and
"Interview with Iraqi Women tortured at Abu Graib,"  show that neither she
nor the paper pulls any punches when it comes to criticism of U.S. policy
and conduct.

The following interview of U.S. Marine Jimmy Massey by Patrizio Lombroso
of Il Manifesto appeared the day before Giuliana Sgrena was released and
shot. It's an interview not calculated to win love and friendship in
official Washington circles.

"Yo, un marine asesino de civiles" ("That's me, a marine, a murderer of
civilians")

"I've seen the horror that we were causing every day in Iraq. I have been
part of it. We are all just murderers.

"We kill innocent Iraqi civilians all the time. That's the way it is. I
believe they need to withdraw all foreign military troops in Iraq right
away. And I say this about other soldiers: to avoid punishment or
reprisals by the military, they don't want to talk and admit that killing
terrorists is not our mission. It's to kill innocent civilians."

That's the way the Il Manifesto interview with Jimmy Massey went. He's
from the little town of Waynesville, North Carolina. He has decided to
draw back the veil of silence from the "noble mission" in Iraq. Discharged
from the Marine Corps for medical reasons, he has written a diary,
"Cowboys from Hell," which will be published at the end of the summer.

"What was your rank in Iraq?"

"I was a sergeant with the Third Marine Battalion during the invasion, in
the spring of 2003."

"How much time did you spend there?"

"From March 22 to the 15th of May. Four months of hell. They had to send
me back to the U.S. because of a 'stress syndrome.' This is the term in
military jargon they use to say that because of the horrors I've seen in
the war, I've lost my mind."

"Were you in the Marines many years?"

"Twelve."

"Had you fought in a war before?"

"Never."

"You are now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War?"

"Yes, I went to Iraq initially with the idea that weapons of mass
destruction had to be eliminated. But soon my experience as a Marine made
me understand that the reality was something quite different. We were
'cowboy murderers.' We killed innocent civilians."

"You admit having killed innocent civilians?"

"Sure, and lots of them."

"How did it happen?"

"Near my base in the south of Baghdad, our whole platoon attacked a group
of civilians engaged in a peaceful demonstration. Why? Because we heard
gunshots. It was a blood bath. The pretense that those civilians were
engaged in 'terrorist activities' didn't work for me. That's what our
military intelligence wanted us to believe.

"We killed more than 30 people. That was the first time that I had to face
up to the horror that my hands were soiled with the blood of civilians. We
laid down cluster bombs on them. The people fled, and when they arrived at
the control points we had set up with armed convoys, I was supposed to
shoot the ones that looked like they belonged to 'terrorist groups.' Those
were the directions military intelligence gave us."

"And that's what you all did?"

"We ended up massacring innocent civilians -- men, women, and children.
When our platoon took over a radio station, we went ahead and put out
propaganda to the population urging them to go on with their daily
routine, keep the schools open, etc. But we knew that our orders were to
'search and destroy.' That meant carrying out armed assaults on schools,
in hospitals, anywhere that 'terrorists' could hide. In reality these were
traps set up by military intelligence. We ourselves were supposed to
overlook the taking of civilian lives that were part of these missions."

"You admit that during your mission you carried out executions on innocent
civilians?"

"Yes, my platoon also opened fire on civilians and I too killed innocents.
I too am an assassin."

"How did you react after these operations when you thought about the
innocents you had killed?"

"For a while I kept on going. In my own mind I denied the reality of me
being a murderer and not a soldier who somehow could tell the difference
between who is right and who is wrong. Then, one day I woke up and there
was a young kid inside my head.

"Miraculously, he had saved himself from a massacre of passengers in his
car. He was shouting at me and asking: 'Why did you kill my brother.' He
became an obsession. I physically lost control of my equilibrium and
couldn't move or talk. I stayed in one place and looked all the time at
the wall. I was really scared, and lost."

"What measures did your superiors take?"

"For three weeks in Iraq, they filled me with anti-depressives and
psychotropic drugs. That's the emergency treatment for these cases of
'traumatic stress,' when the idea of refusing to kill takes over a
soldier's life."

"Didn't their training in the United States put them at the disposal of
the Pentagon into units that were really violent and aggressive?"

"Yes, in the part called 'boot camp' each one of us is subjected to
techniques of 'dehumanization' and 'desensitization to violence.' But they
never told me that this meant killing innocent civilians."

"So, three weeks with antidepressants in Iraq -- and after that?"

"They didn't know what to do and sent me back. Now I am out of the
military, incapacitated and disabled, with an honorable discharge."

"Are there others in conditions like yours?"

"Many. And they are still at the front. They stuff them with
anti-depressants, and after that they go back and are sent into combat
again. It's a problem that has become quite worrisome for them. One must
not say anything about it there in the military.

"In 2004, 31 marines took their own lives, and 85 made suicide attempts.
Most of those who wanted to die rather than keep on killing are less than
25 years old, and 16 percent of them are under 20 years."

This interview with Jimmy Massey appeared March 3 in Il Manifesto. The
next day, it was carried on the Spanish website, www.rebelion.org, and is
translated here by Tom Whitney from the Spanish. Email Whitney at
atwhit at megalink.net.