Sgt. Massey.

[Wilse]

Wow!

http://www.chronogram.com/chronogram/roomforaview/index_2.html

Staff Sergeant jimmy Massey, 31, breaks his silence.

[KennyR]

It's coming up for the anniversary of D-Day. How do American troops of then compare with now? In the space of sixty years, they turn from liberators of the free world to evil invaders who massacre civilians and mutilate the bodies of their enemies.

[cecilia]

The 23-year-old Marine quoted earlier agrees with Massey. ?One day, I watched as the Marine Corps pushed the bodies of 47 Iraqis into a mass grave with a bulldozer.when i was in High School, we watched a film of bodies being bulldozed into a big pit. this was from the concentration camps.

as the french would say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

how sad that some people don't realize that war encourages this sort of behavior. and that old men send boys to be horrified and forever changed by this scene.
:-(

shame on them.

[Wilse]

@cecilia:

Couldn't agree more - mass graves were one of the things this sham
was supposed to be putting a stop to.

He also goes on to say:
I don't know if they were civilians but they looked like it
because some of them were wearing dress shoes like loafers.
Our sergeant was looking for bombs with metal detectors.
Then he went out on the bodies and picked them for jewels and
money. He also took their IDs and sold them to Marines for
trophies to show off when they'd come back to the US."

Sickening.


Apart from the part you quoted, the following bits really got me:

A 12-year Marine veteran, recruiter, and trainer, Massey
was in charge of a platoon of 30 snipers. "In a month and a half,
my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians. We would take over
villages and control checkpoints. My men and I would fire warning
shots at oncoming vehicles. But if they didn't stop, we didn't
have any qualms about loading them up," he says.

What happened to "we will doeverything possible to avoid civilian
casualties"?


When I read about the mutilated, charred bodies of the
[lackwater mercenaries in the news, all I thought was that we did
the same thing to them. They would see us debase their dead all the
time. We would be messing around with charred bodies, kicking them out
of the vehicles and sticking cigarettes in their mouths."


hmmm - don't often get to hear about this, do we?

"We would defecate on and run over dead Iraqi bodies."

Charming.



"We searched the car and found no weapon. We called the medics.
They arrived 20 minutes later and dumped the bodies on the side of the
road. After the shooting, a team of reporters came up. We were told to
'get them out of here quickly.' A little later, the same scenario was
repeated with two more vehicles. We killed three more civilians. It
was a real bad day." Repeatedly, Massey watched as badly injured
Iraqis were "tossed on the side of the road without calling medics."



"We were told that Iraqis were loading ambulances up with
explosives and that soldiers were dressed as civilians. But when we
realized we were hearing no explosions, we started to wonder.


@Fade:

Still think 'we' only shoot at ambulances when they shoot at 'us'?


Iraqi military compounds had nothing in them, except for dismantled tanks,
equipment that was barely functioning, and barracks that looked like
ghost towns."

Probably why both Colon Powell and Sleazy Rice said Iraq was
incapable of harming it's neighbours, before conveniently
changing their story to the obvious lie that Iraq was an
immediate threat to America.

Powell was on telly on Sunday, admitting that some of the
evidence presented to the UN was deliberately misleading.

When, oh when, is this house of cards going to fall?


For a while, as several of his platoon members expressed
their concern to him about the high number of civilian casualties,
Massey repeatedly told them, "Suck it up, we've got a job to do." --
on the 7th of April, Massey himself voiced doubts to his commanding
officer. "I told him I felt like we were committing genocide in Iraq,
that we were doing harm to a culture...[that] we were killing lots of
civilians. He said nothing and walked away. I knew my career was
over." Later, says Massey, his superior unleashed a downpour of
insults: "You're a poor leader. You're faking it. You're a
conscien-tious objector, you're a wimp." Massey kept a cool face. Then
the naval psychiatrist diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress
disorder and depression, and the Marines offered him a desk job. "I
had seven more years until retirement from the Marine Corps, but I
told them I didn't want their money anymore."

Wimp? Someone with the bollox to eventually stand up and say:
"This is wrong", gets called a wimp.


"I'm often asked about rules of engagement. We, the Americans,
are the ones who make the rules of engagement. When it's
convenient, you can write new rules and delete old rules,"
says Massey.

Indeed. Shane it'll come back and bite you on the ar5e.


chants that rise from the field:
"Throw some candy in the school yard
watch the children gather round
Load a belt in your M-50
mow them little b*stards down!"

Words fail me.

[Glaucus]

how sad that some people don't realize that war encourages this sort of behavior. and that old men send boys to be horrified and forever changed by this scene.Exactly. I think the real danger is when people start to believe that war can be clean or quick or simple. The American people were sold on a quick, clean and easy war in Iraq, but reality is teaching them otherwise. War is a dirty business, and you know someone is lieing when they try to convince you that it's not.

- Mike

[Wilse]

@Mike:

I agree. This fiasco has really brought home the horror of war.

(Unless you watch Fox, where last night they were on about which
weapons the 'bad guys' :roll: use *again*.)

"we will only go to war as a last resort" - yeah, sure...

[Wilse]

I thought I recognised this guys name.

I remeber wondering if he really existed.
Apparently so:

http://www.ivaw.net/contact.htm

Jimmy was a platoon sergeant in 7th Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After witnessing first hand the horror of war he refused to continue this pointless war. After a hard fight he was discharged and has since been telling people the truth about the war in Iraq. Jimmy lives with his wife in North Carolina.