[Peace-discuss] Obama sends Nazis and thugs to dominate the Mideast

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

	US military in Iraq needed “hardcore” troops with warlike mentality
	Published 30 May, 2010, 02:59
	Edited 31 May, 2010, 03:55

[An interview with investigative journalist Matt Kennard by RT, a global news 
channel from Russia broadcasting in English, Arabic and Spanish. He reveals the 
sort of person being recruited into America's imperial expeditionary force - 
thugs, racists, and criminals - presided over by the bland and inoffensive Mr. 
Obama and defended by American liberals, horrified by 'racist' critics of 
Obama's murderous regime.]

RT: A question about the series of essays you wrote, “The regular army.” When 
you were working on this, which one of these topics was the most shocking for you?

Matt Kennard: The neo-Nazis was obviously the most shocking, because these 
people hate everything to do with the Middle East and their goal is to kill what 
they call “hedgies” [HAJJIS?] So that’s the shocking result of the war of 
terror, as the mainstream narrative is that the West is taking democracy to Iraq 
and Afghanistan, and yet we are sending these neo-Nazi troops there. Gangbangers 
is another one, which is gang members from all over the west coast have been in 
the military since 2002.

RT: This whole issue of neo-Nazis in the army, how did you come across this? 
When did you realize it is actually a much bigger issue than people might think?

MK: I knew when I went to graduate school that there was a problem in the U.S. 
military in that they couldn’t get enough recruits. They were explicit about 
allowing felons in and people with low IQs and they changed the regulations so 
they could get more people into the U.S. military. But with neo-Nazism it’s 
obviously not going to play as well in society, so they had kept that low.

So I decided to investigate via FOIA request and by interviewing neo-Nazi 
soldiers that had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. What I uncovered basically 
after a six-month investigation was that this was a military-wide phenomenon 
that had been allowed to happen under the Bush administration, under the cover 
of the press. No one was actually covering it, they were covering other sections 
of the military, but not this specific phenomenon, so I spent the next year 
looking into it and eventually published it. Even after publication the U.S. 
military made no comment on it, so they have done nothing about it.

RT: Do you have any numbers as to how many people see themselves as neo-Nazis?

MK: It’s difficult because the U.S. military don’t keep specific data on 
neo-Nazis. They couple them together with gang members, so it’s impossible to 
say. There have been FBI reports saying they’ve uncovered 203 neo-Nazi veterans, 
but in terms of hard numbers there’s nothing, really.

RT: When a person like that leaves the military, do they go out and train other 
people?

MK: A part of the mission is to go and kill brown people in the Middle East, but 
also to bring the training back to the U.S. to start what they call a “race 
war,” which they envision as a war between all the races in America and 
eventually the white nationalists will take power. It’s a crazy idea, but these 
people really believe it and there are enough of them to make this a very 
worrying phenomenon, coupled together with the fact that gang members are 
bringing back a lot of expertise in military training to the U.S.

RT: Could U.S. officials be interested in this? If they have someone that 
aggressive in the military, don’t they have to worry about the more emotional 
sides like post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.?

I think neo-Nazis can still get post-traumatic stress disorder, but having 
talked to some of the neo-Nazi troops that went to Iraq, they said that their 
superiors were quite aware of their opinions and often sent them on missions 
that were seen as the more dangerous ones because they were what they called 
“hardcore.”

There is a military interest in having “hardcore” troops with a warlike 
mentality. But I actually don’t think the U.S. military did this consciously. 
This is something they had to do because they couldn’t get enough troops. It’s 
not an ideological preference for neo-Nazis. They couldn’t get enough troops so 
they quietly got rid of the regulations.

RT: The US military started hiring people when they kicked off the war on terror 
without checking their backgrounds. What about now?

MK: The occupation in Iraq is not winding down. Plus the fact that the financial 
crisis has put a lot of people out of work, which has made the military more 
attractive. At this stage it’s not critical, but the regulations that were 
changed during the war on terror at its height were not ever changed back. They 
have the same legal framework and the same recruitment framework.

RT: What about some of the other topics that you cover in the set of essays, 
like drug use in the army, and post traumatic stress disorders not being treated 
well enough.

MK: Right, post traumatic stress is a really interesting one, obviously because 
these are young Americans that are coming back here and are often committing 
suicide or committing crimes against other people. And the U.S. military 
recruits have been so often sent to second or third terms of duty. Drug users… 
again, I've got information from the U.S. military which looked at the 
discharges for different reasons.

And if you look at the discharges because of drugs and alcoholism they go right 
down. Unless the troops have really cleaned out their acts for one or another 
reason, it means that the military is refusing to kick out people who are on 
drugs and alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, that's again worrying for the 
U.S. military, again really worrying for the occupied population, because they 
are under a military that is populated with alcoholics and drug abusers.

RT: When the soldiers actually leave the army, do you have a kind of larger 
picture painted in terms of how well they are being taken care of, these veterans?

MK: Well, under Bush it was terrible – he cut a lot of money going to veteran 
healthcare. Obama's being slightly better, but the volume is just huge. In 
September 2008, I think, 1.6 million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan – 
that's the population of Philadelphia, or a country like Estonia. So, that's a 
hell of a lot of people. So, these people are not being looked after as they 
should be. And they are often being sent back into combat after doctors have 
said that they have some sort of syndrome or PTS-related syndrome.

RT: How do you see the way the U.S. mainstream media covers these wars?

MK: Across the mainstream spectrum of the United States, the wars are being 
supported by liberals and conservatives. I mean there's been a lot of anger with 
the Bush administration. They say the war has been prosecuted badly and that the 
idea that we wanted to take democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan was never 
questioned. So I think that this is a massive failure of the U.S. media.

RT: What do you think are the tougher questions that the U.S. media should be 
asking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

MK: That's quite simple – the question is whether we are there to spread 
democracy, or to secure the resources.

RT: Do you think these wars could have been avoided altogether, both in Iraq and 
Afghanistan?

MK: Iraq was an illegal war. I mean that senior military officials say that it 
has killed a million people by some estimates. In Iraq there are two million 
refugees, the country has been basically devastated. So, I can't see how 
anything could be a justification for that kind of devastation of a country, 
especially under a false excuse – if you remember we went there for weapons of 
mass destruction that were never found.

Afghanistan, essentially there was some tenuous basis for the war: the Taliban 
sheltering Al Qaeda. So you can make an argument for it. But having occupied it 
now for 8 years, we haven't done the lives of Afghanis any better.


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