'I just pulled the trigger

[Robbien]

At first glance they appear to be the archetypal Band Of Brothers of Hollywood myth, brave and honest men united in common purpose.

But a closer look at these American GIs, sweltering in the heat of an unwelcoming Iraq, reveals the glazed eyes and limp expressions of those who have witnessed a war they do not understand and have begun to resent. By their own admission these American soldiers have killed civilians without hesitation, shot wounded fighters and left others to die in agony.

What they told me, in a series of extraordinary interviews, will make uncomfortable reading for US and British politicians and senior military staff desperate to prevent the liberation of Iraq turning into a quagmire of Vietnam proportions, where the behaviour of troops feeds the hatred of an occupied people.

Sergeant First Class John Meadows revealed the mindset that has led to hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians being killed alongside fighters deliberately dressed in civilian clothes. "You can't distinguish between who's trying to kill you and who's not," he said. "Like, the only way to get through s*** like that was to concentrate on getting through it by killing as many people as you can, people you know are trying to kill you. Killing them first and getting home."

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=1059

interesting article which tells why our troops keeps shooting civilians

[slinkerwink]

1. I read to the end of the article---the guy kept a photo of 9/11 WTC towers

and thinks that the Iraqis were responsible----how fucking wrong he was!

[maddezmom]

2. beat me to it....

"There's a picture of the World Trade Center hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my Kevlar . Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, 'They hit us at home and, now, it's our turn.' I don't want to say payback but, you know, it's pretty much payback."

[LittleApple81]

4. Is there any way they can be INFORMED Iraq DID NOT DO 9/11?n/t

[lostnfound]

28. Instead of saying "there is no proof Saddam was behind it"..

they ought to say "it's clear that Saddam had nothing to do with it".
WE may read "there is NO proof Saddam was behind it"; but half the country reads it as "there is no PROOF Saddam was behind it"..but just because there's no PROOF doesn't mean he wasn't behind it..

It's like saying "there is no proof that the Canadians were behind it" or even saying "there is no proof that Israel was behind it" ...now THAT would cause an uproar.

[The Stranger]

44. The connection between Iraq and 9/11 isn't factual, it is racist.

It doesn't matter if you prove to them that neither the State of Iraq that existed nor individual Iraqis had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. It is not a question of real facts on the ground.

The connection is based on the race of the people who attacked and how Americans view that race of people. Brown-skinned, Muslim "Other" attacked, and that same brown-skinned, Muslim "Other" is being now shocked, awed, murdered, raped, occupied and tortured.

The war has its fundamental basis now in unstated but clear racism.

[Webster Green]

7. Bush is responsible for the brainwashing....

and the unfortunate results. He continues to link Iraq to 9/11, and to call the Iraqis terrorists.

He should be removed from office for what he has done.

[leftchick]

27. he and some in the media also keep refering to the Iraq quagmire ...

as "The War on Terra"... :puke:

[lapfog_1]

19. Some of them thar soljers

are good 'Muricans... and all them thar ragheads are just the same
to them.

Unfortunately, this is all to true. We all mouth platitudes about
the "best and brightest" serving in our armed forces, but the truth
be known, I'd be willing to bet that the average IQ is well under
100. This is how you get guys like Miller to be two star generals.

He don't speak none too good neither.

Not to mention our CinC.

[saigon68]

25. There are a lot of THUGS, BUMS and BULLIES in the military

Not all of them --- but a sizeable minority. They will kill with out remorse.

Like the Nut case that brings the 9-11 photos along and kills children. Wait til they come back and become police officers!!!

Oh I forgot a lot of them are prison guards and police officers already.

[ptsmknhipy]

36. Thugs and Bums

Well at least thats who we like to focus on. We all work real hard not to notice all the good guys in the military. Lets overlook that the avg Marine is a B student, joined to see what he was made of. Will eventually attend college and 50% will graduate. Was top 1/3 of his HS class, lettered in two sports, and believes what he is doing is the right thing. He feeds a hell of a lot more people than he kills, most will never pull a trigger. Oh, and that BS about joining for college, you can join the Coast Guard or the Air Force and have it real easy and get the same college funds.

Also knows that any time one person in uniform screws up, the easy livin armchair quarterbacks back home will smear his name to the nth degree. And will never give any credit for good deeds done.

"Oh its Tommy this an Tommy that, and chuck him out the brute,
But its savior of his country when the guns begin to shoot".

Kippling

[TahitiNut]

41. Indeed. Nobody ever talks about all the nice things Ted Bundy did, either

And besides ... he was so good looking. What a shame! It's really so unfair. Jeffrey Dahlmer was nice to a lot of people, too. Do we ever hear about that? Noooo. All we ever hear about is the bad things ... things that they spent only a small minority of their time doing.

:eyes: :eyes:

</sarcasm> (in case anyone was incapable of detecting it)

[Columbia]

22. Well, stuff like this doesn't help

[ewagner]

5. Saw that too

I tend to think that these guys know there wasn't a link...it wasn't Iraq involved in the WTC but they are grasping at straws to make sense out of what they're doing in Iraq.

[janx]

33. It is unfortunate, but it's how he has been programmed to think.

If he knew the truth, he just might lose his mind.

[mike_c]

3. devastating article....

Those guys are going to be f*cked up for a long time.

[Robbien]

6. That was my first thought

So many people came back from Nam all messed up and are still not right in their minds today. This kind of thing does not go away from one's thoughts.

[FormerOstrich]

17. I was visiting with...

a friend of mine last night. He is 87. He was the Chief of Counseling at a regional VA center for about 15 years, a Ph.d and a veteran himself. He is predicting there is going to be more mental illness than in any previous war. He feels the VA centers are ill prepared for what is going to hit them. He thinks it will overwhelm the system.

He is apparently involved in some discussions with others like himself that are trying to contribute.

Actually, he is a very interesting person and I could listen to him for hours. I believe he is exactly right.

[burrowowl]

20. Frightening isn't it

And will there be a VA to help them?

[ptsmknhipy]

38. Thoughts

Neither does the death of your mother and father, but you move on. Right?

Doc

[saigon68]

26. A lot of them will kill the Black Man

Ever wonder why a lot of Black Men end up dead after being thrown in jail for petty Crimes???

I DON'T !!!!!!!!!!!!

[NNN0LHI]

8. I have seen the glazed eyes (dead eyes) before

Many of the soldiers returning from Vietnam had the same look. Some of them still do to this day. Fucking chimpanzee Bush.

Don

[Jackpine Radical]

9. We used to call it

the thousand-yard stare.

[enough]

10. And someday, this war will be coming home.

snip>

The men have been traumatised by their experiences. Cpl Richardson-said: "At night time you think about all the people you killed. It just never gets off your head, none of this stuff does. There's no chance to forget it, we're still here, we've been here so long. Most people leave after combat but we haven't."

Sgt Meadows said men under his command had been seeking help for severe depression: "They've already seen psychiatrists and the chain of command has got letters back saying 'these men need to be taken out of this situation'. But nothing's happened." Cpl Richardson added: "Some soldiers don't even f****** sleep at night. They sit up all f****** night long doing s*** to keep themselves busy - to keep their minds off this f****** stuff. It's the only way they can handle it. It's not so far from being crazy but it's their way of coping. There's one guy trying to build a little pool out the back, pointless stuff but it keeps him busy."

Sgt Meadows said: "For me, it's like snap-shot photos. Like pictures of maggots on tongues, babies with their heads on the ground, men with their heads halfway off and their eyes wide open and mouths wide open. I see it every day, every single day. The smells and the torsos burning, the entire route up to Baghdad, from 20 March to 7 April, nothing but burned bodies."

Specialist Bryan Barnhart, 21, joined in: "I also got the images like snapshots in my head. There are bodies that we saw when we went back to secure a place we'd taken. The bodies were still there and they'd been baking in the sun. Their bodies were bloated three times the size."

snip>

[keithyboy]

12. Our jails are full of former Viet Nam Vets, mostly minorities...

Here comes another round. We seem to forget that we train these people to be killers and then when they return home we wonder why they kill, maime, lie, cheat, and kill. It's called 'survival' for them

[burrowowl]

21. Not only jails

but a high percentage are homeless. No real support or real GI Bill like after WWII.
Damn sad :cry: :(

[ptsmknhipy]

37. vets

Man, you people gotta let that cliche go. Most of us "crazy vets", and thanks for the stigma John Kerry, got over it. We went on to live successful lives (even if we can't spell). I don't get you peoples logic, we made it through hell, so we come back to easy livin and can't handle it? Shit man, every day someone doesn't drop a mortar on me is just gravy.

Its the stigma, as soon as one of us fucks up the whole world says "uh huh, crazy vet, they are all that way." When in reality the guy was probably a piece of shit when he went in the military.

Doc
Rockpile 68

[belle]

32. yup. it's happening already. decades to come.

some of them will come home to parent their young children, some to tension-filled workplaces near gun stores, some will take it out on their wives and S.O.'s...

[Jacobin]

11. To those who have said Iraq is not like Vietnam, I say:

You were fucking wrong.

This is Vietnam on steroids.

[Massacure]

13. Not quite

In Vietnam, 800 soldiers died a week. I think Vietnam is Iraq on steroids. :p

[NNN0LHI]

14. Nice try

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_War_Dead_111403.htm

Published on Friday, November 14, 2003 by Reuters

US War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years

by David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.


By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.

The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.

more

[Massacure]

15. Bah

I remember my history teacher mentioning 800 a week. It wasn't very long ago either.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions that my teacher is stupid though. :p

[Robbien]

16. Hearts and minds. In Nam our troops never had to win hearts of the enemy

This has to be devastating for their morale.

In Vietnam, the enemy was the enemy. In Iraq, our troops are told to kill one day and win their hearts and minds the next.

For troop morale, this is worse.

[burrowowl]

24. No, the same cr*p

was going on in VN. Pacification (i.e. blowing up a village to save it or corraling people in a 'safe' area), not knowing if a Vietnamese was 'friendly' or going to blow you up, etc. Noam Chomsky wrote a book in the late 60's or early 70's about the modus operendi and it doesn't seem to have changed.

[Fovea]

18. I do not say this to minimize the impact of the losses of viet nam

or of Iraq.

But merely to make note of the cultural trance.

Americans dead in Vietnam ~48K
Americans dead on the highway *each year* ~40K

Those 40K per year are also victims of the
American oil obsession, like the suffering Iraqis.
The cyclist killed in a car chase, the college student ran down
at a crosswalk by a driver cutting past the driver who stopped for her and the folks who were recently run down by a confused octogenarian behind the wheel.

Like monoculture agriculture, we are seeing the consequences of our lack of diversity in transportation. So are the Iraqis, and the citizens of Saudi Arabia, all victims of living in the oil patch. And we all are part of a chain of misery forged from oil and our creation of a society where driving is essential.

[Zhade]

23. Ironic, isn't it?

Our violent dependence on an energy supply created through one mass extinction may wind up causing our own extinction.

[Fovea]

31. It is ironic indeed

That is why I have reservations with all the
miracle oil theories that say that oil will never run out.
At what point will we recognize that we have already changed the climate.

It isn't just the resource, it is our wasteful and damaging use of it.

How far do we go till we come to our senses?

[ptsmknhipy]

40. Death toll

Thats because between 62 and 65 there were only a couple of thousand advisors in vietnam. US soldiers were not supposed to take part in direct ops. This is a chickenshit manipulation of facts. It capitalizes on the average American knowing nothing about their own history.

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Nihil]

42. Iraq

> These douchbags we are fighting in Iraq are total amateurs

Tell that to the recipients of the 801 bodybags or the x000 injured.
By the way, how many of the ex-Republican Guard do you think would be
classed as "total amateurs"? Better trained than your old enemy ...

> They (VC) came at you a division at a time.

Well, the problem was that they didn't come at you a division at a
time - the US was used to nice open warfare like that - but in a more
unsporting fashion, just when you didn't expect it. Rather like the
Iraqi Resistance now you come to mention it ...

> ... as long as we don't turn tail, their numbers will thin.

Some people may indeed need to learn some history but you need to
learn some maths. Clue: How many US troops over there compared to
how many Iraqis?

You would also benefit from a little history yourself: Stalingrad
would be a good place to start but there are plenty of examples in
your own country.

> Iraq is a buglight for extremists. Its the same bunch of thugs that
> took our hostages, hit our barracs, Pan Am etc ad nausium. Good god,
> they have been hitting us for 30 years.

Er, no ... 30 years ago "we" were selling arms to Iraq. Shit, we were
still doing that 14 years ago. Ditto to Al Qaeda (not that they're in
Iraq of course).

"Took our hostages"? Were you meaning IraN rather than IraQ? Or is
this another Vietnam flashback?

"Hit our barracs (sic)"? Ah, Lebanon? Or Pearl Harbour?

"Pan Am"? That would be ... well, Libya took the bullet for it anyway.

> How much ya gonna take?

From whom?

[omnos]

29. Why haven't we seen other accounts like this?

This article gave a powerful description of the brutalized attitudes of front line American troops in Iraq. I can't recall seeing anything like this in the main line media. Is there an unspoken agreement among them not to report it?

[kimchi]

30. Yup, pretty much, omnos.

I've seen more of these stories lately, but they are rarely in the major news sources.

Yes, the media has been hiding all the sins of this administration. Don't be surprised. You will see much more if you stay here very long. Welcome to DU.

[newyawker99]

34. Hi omnos!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[TahitiNut]

43. "Point of no return."

At some point, the perspectives of troops in a combat zone become so disjointed from the comprehension of any stateside audience that the troops shut down. There becomes no common point of reference. At some point, the surrealism of life in a combat zone takes its toll. Most Viet Nam combat vets came back and shut up. There was no way to communicate. None.

[PopSixSquish]

35. When is Madness Going to End?

The fallout from Iraq will be felt for years. The soldiers, their families, Iraqis, their families, it's going to be a nightmare.

God help us all.

[zanana]

45. The link isn't working for me

I keep getting Microsoft instructions.