we're in soooo much trouble in Iraq and the Middle East. Read the whole thing...here's an excerpt.
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
...
"It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie."
There's this part of me that wants the soldier's identity and story verified before I get too outraged. It's the Jack Kelly thing. We know that some reporters make things up. It is also interestingly like the testimony Kerry gave when he returned from Viet Nam.
I believe it is plausible. I believe it is possible. And you all know I oppose the Iraq fiasco for a variety of reasons. This one, because it means believing things about our own troops and their actions, and the orders they were given and followed, that are beyond the pale, well, I do not WANT to believe it, so I need verification before I make that commitment. I can understand how they shot at civilians because they were instructed that the civilians were armed with bombs and intended to kill them. Shooting people with their hands in the air, that's different.
And I find the effects of the depleted uranium and its presence to be very believable and pretty damning. Maybe this is the real reason the Bush administration is pushing caps on liability lawsuits so hard.
posted by: dean on 05.18.04 at 02:43 PM [permalink]
Back at the very beginning of the occupation, there was a story from an embedded reporter iirc the WaPo on how trigger-happy soldiers machine-gunned a fleeing family in their car - killed little kids and the grandmother - then gave the survivors a few hundred bucks. The first story was full of discrediting information - the soldiers admittig in person by name they hadn't fired warning shots, etc etc.
Very shortly the story morphed into one obviously massaged by Pentagon PR people about how it was an unfortunate accident but that the soldiers had done everything correctly by the books to protect themselves against a potential threat.
Somewhere in backups I have both versions, I'm trying to dredge up all my stuff from the past two years - similar things in Afghanistan, where we were shooting up weddings and such on the say so of rival warlords, then denying it, then doing quick payoffs, no apologies.
There are *lots* of stories like this all down the last two years if you dig in NPR and the BBC and the Guardian, which all corroborate the interview. But I agree that we should check to make sure this is real, not a composite, simply because if it isn't it will make things harder to get the bad guys out of office.
--
Jo, I was so impressed by your "War on Terra" slogan - because that is *so* what it is - that I'm making a web-graphic of it for my protest e-posters page.
Right. "Hi. I'm Dean and I read blogs and contribute to the comments sections. I saw your name in an article and want to know if you are the same Jim Massey who claims to be a war criminal? You are? Oh, that's swell. So, did you really kill all those innocent people and shoot people with their hands up? You did? How about the guy with the half foot hanging off as he ran away. Was that his left foot or his right foot? Well, try to remember. The details are important. Just sort of picture it in your mind and see which way the blood is trailing. Left, I gotcha. Now is this story true or made up? I mean, can you corroborate it? Any names you can give me of other war criminals so I can find out if you're just pullin' our legs here? I need to report back to the blog, you see."
posted by: dean on 05.19.04 at 08:37 AM [permalink]
Well there should be a full length inquiry. There were 2 A-10 bozos that starfed our soldiers on SEVERAL RUNS and killed like seven marines in one day, and wounded many more.Same guys perhaps?
There's no excuse, our rides don't look like thiers. They ride Toyatas and Fords and what not. Or old jeeps. Nothing like our humvess and Trucks. They should be in APC anyways.
Cheap fucking Bush league, where is the money for these guys going????
posted by: Mr.Murder on 05.25.04 at 02:59 AM [permalink]
