THAT'S ME, A MARINE, A MURDERER OF CIVILIANS

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That's me, a marine, a murderer of civilians'

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`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

 

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.

 

http://www.sfbayview.com/030905/amarine030905.shtml

 

posted Friday, 11 March 2005