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"We are committing genocide" says Iraq vets
- Thread starter Zebo
- Start date
TheGameIs21
Golden Member
Ok.. lets look at this...
1. You have a group of armed men standing around signs that read STOP in your native language.
2. The group of armed men standing around signs that read STOP in your native language have been known to shoot people for not stoping.
3. Your native contry is known to have people in that country that use car bombs as a way to kill people.
4. You are an idiot for not stoping.
We aren't just standing over there around a camp fire and jumping up when a car approaches. We are at marked locations with signs that clearly state what needs to be done. This isn't Genocide, it is a handfull of military members who need to come back stateside and be evaluated for PTSD.
Just like if you were a civilian used to driving your car around town and then you drive onto a military base (lets say the Naval Weapons Station in VA) and you read the signs that state you will be shot if you continue down certain roads. You go down the road and see a group of Marines with their hands up waving arms. normally that is a friendly gesture in town but in this environment with the signs you've read while driving... You decide they aren't just saying "hi" so you stop. Good move. Because it takes less than 2 seconds to go from a "Hi" to being ready to engage with weapon in hand.
1. You have a group of armed men standing around signs that read STOP in your native language.
2. The group of armed men standing around signs that read STOP in your native language have been known to shoot people for not stoping.
3. Your native contry is known to have people in that country that use car bombs as a way to kill people.
4. You are an idiot for not stoping.
We aren't just standing over there around a camp fire and jumping up when a car approaches. We are at marked locations with signs that clearly state what needs to be done. This isn't Genocide, it is a handfull of military members who need to come back stateside and be evaluated for PTSD.
Just like if you were a civilian used to driving your car around town and then you drive onto a military base (lets say the Naval Weapons Station in VA) and you read the signs that state you will be shot if you continue down certain roads. You go down the road and see a group of Marines with their hands up waving arms. normally that is a friendly gesture in town but in this environment with the signs you've read while driving... You decide they aren't just saying "hi" so you stop. Good move. Because it takes less than 2 seconds to go from a "Hi" to being ready to engage with weapon in hand.
Zebo
Elite Member
There's like 6 stories in that link TheGameIs21, I'm sure you'll find justification for mowing people down in all of them. Like the video of an F-16 annihalating a group of civilians walking down the street unarmed, or the wedding, or the blowing the APC up wih childen climbing on it like a jungle gym, or the hundreds of other stories out there. Bottom line it's a mess we did'nt have to have.. What's it Kerry says wrong war wrong time wrong place etc... I'm starting to agree... and the shoot first conduct seems pretty focked up too. Time to get out and stop the bleeding.
lozina
Lifer
I find this part interesting...
So the city is being showered with pamphlets prior to these civilians rushing out of the city in a panic. I wonder what these pamphlets looked like... Perhaps it did say 'Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons.' in english but had pictures of planes dropping bombs or something.
So the city is being showered with pamphlets prior to these civilians rushing out of the city in a panic. I wonder what these pamphlets looked like... Perhaps it did say 'Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons.' in english but had pictures of planes dropping bombs or something.
DashRiprock
Member
Would Nazi Germany and the Japanese have been defeated in WWII with that attitude? How then do you fight a war against an enemy that's ruthless ("death is my reward"). Sounds familiar, the Waffen SS and the Imperial Japanese army had the same attitude.
Whitecloak
Diamond Member
I salute him for listening to his conscience
packmule
Senior member
If you are a soldier in a foreign country where people are trying to kill you and you tell someone to stop by raising your hands and yelling stop woah or halt and they keep coming at you, well you only have one option... SHOOT and keep SHOOTING until you feel you are no longer in harms way.
What this solider has done was his job and he feels bad for doing that, but lets say this little KIA was full of malitia with guns and bombs and he let them in and this allowed others to be killed how would he explain that he felt bad about shooting.
The Genocide reference is pretty much on target for the KrAzY Muslims that feel all Americans should be killed by cutting off their heads while video taping it..
I say shoot first and shoot often.
What this solider has done was his job and he feels bad for doing that, but lets say this little KIA was full of malitia with guns and bombs and he let them in and this allowed others to be killed how would he explain that he felt bad about shooting.
The Genocide reference is pretty much on target for the KrAzY Muslims that feel all Americans should be killed by cutting off their heads while video taping it..
I say shoot first and shoot often.
Another interview with Massey:
**************************
Now another US soldier who participated in the Iraq invasion and occupation has begun speaking out. Twelve year Marine veteran Jimmy Massey joins us on the line from North Carolina.
Marine Staff Segt. Jimmy Massey (Ret.), former Marine staff sergeant who was honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, most recently in Iraq. He is speaking to us from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina in the Smokey Mountains.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Good morning. How you are doing?
AMY GOODMAN: Very good. Can you talk about when you were in Iraq?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yeah. I was part of the initial invading force. I was part of first marine division categorized into RCP-7. The battalion that I was with was third battalion seventh marines, weapons company cap 1. I was basically in the main invasion all the way up into Baghdad, and then once Baghdad fell, my battalion headed south towards the city of Karbala.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your experience there?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Really, what led up to my disgust with the war was the civilian casualties that we were inflicting. We were given intelligence reports -- the civilian casualties really started taking place after we left the town of Anu Mannia on the drive north towards Baghdad. We were getting intelligence reports from higher command saying that the Fedayeen and Republican Guards were trading in their uniforms for civilian clothes, and they were mounting terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers and marines using guerrilla-style tactics, suicide bombings. They were using civilians as human shields. They were loading down stolen ambulances and police cars with explosives. So, as we progressed on towards Baghdad, our fears and anxieties were heightened, and also due to the lack of sleep, some of us had less than 48 hours of sleep getting into Baghdad. So, whenever we were placed into these situations where civilian vehicles were coming up to our checkpoints, and not heeding our warning shot, we were lighting them up. What I mean by lighting them up, we were discharging our weapons, 50 cals and M-16's into the civilian vehicles. When we would do this, we were expecting secondary explosions, ammunition to be cooking off or actually have the occupants in the vehicle fire back at us. However, none of this ever happened. When we would go to search the vehicles, we would find no weapons, and nothing to link these individuals with -- these individuals with terrorists acts. And this happened continuously through the fall of Baghdad. I would say my platoon alone killed 30-plus innocent civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you realize what you had done? Can you give us a specific example?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Sure. Sure. A car would roll up to our checkpoint. And prior while we were still in Kuwait, we had actually made up Arabic road signs to place out in front of our checkpoint area warning the Iraqis to slow down. That didn't help. We would verbally tell them stop and we would fire a warning shot. When we would light the cars up, you know, we would go through and search the dead occupants as well as the vehicles, and we would find nothing that directly linked them to any type of terrorists. They were just average civilians that were trying to flee out of Iraq -- or excuse me -- out of Baghdad, out of the city limits because of the invading American force. They were scared. But with the intelligence reports that we were given, it was very hard for us to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. We ultimately started looking at everybody in Iraq as a potential suicide bomber or terrorist from women to children to old men. We didn't know who the enemy was.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jimmy Massey former marine staff sergeant, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, most recently in Iraq. He was in charge of a platoon that consisted of machine gunners and missile men describing, quote, lighting up cars, opening fire on Iraqi cars. When you would go up to the cars and see who was dead inside, what would you do with the bodies?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: We would take the bodies and search them to try to find any type of identification or anything like that. Generally, we found large quantities of cash, and that's what led us to believe that the people were just fleeing out of Baghdad. They were trying to secure what valuables that they had. Some of them had their valuables in the car, but you know, there was basically nothing that we could do with the bodies other than toss them in the ditch and off the road. So, that's what we would do, and then hopefully wait for the Iraqi medics, civilian medics to come in and take care of the bodies.
AMY GOODMAN: How many children would you estimate you killed?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: With unknown gunfire, the potential is unlimited, and what I mean by unknown gunfire, whenever you fire a machine gun especially a 50 caliber and any type of lightweight machine gun, you don't know where the bullets are going to go. So bullets could indiscriminately hit a child. The architecture Ð some of these villages that we went into were very shady construction. Our weapons could easily punch through. The reason I say that or use that as an example. I had a young child die in my arms. The father came up to us at the checkpoint with a child, and began to say, the bombs -- the bombs killed his child. I called the corpsman. The corpsman came over to assist the child and said the child probably had internal damage from the concussion, from the bombs. So, as his child died in my arms you know, I began to think, you know, wow, here's an innocent child that was just sleeping or doing things that children do, and the -- the response that I got from my command was, well, better them than us, and, you know, it's -- he's just a casualty of war. Sorry. However, that father that was standing there as his child was dying in my arms, and, you know, the doc was resuscitating, doing CPR, this father was looking at me like, why did you do this? You know, and -- you know, why does my son have to die? Almost just like a hatred look towards me. He knew I was obviously in command. Another incident it was on the outskirts of Baghdad near the Baghdad stadium, we had pulled into an area, and shortly after we had pulled in, it was on a major highway like a superhighway going in towards Baghdad. We had just lit up a vehicle, a red KIA, the Korean-made passenger vehicle, and we had just lit it up. They failed to stop at our checkpoint. Three of the men were fatally wounded that were in the vehicle and one -- the driver, had survived without any damage. As we were pulling the bodies out of the vehicle, of course, we're searching and we find nothing, and these were young -- these were young men. They were in their mid 20's. The one that was unscathed, he looked up at me and he goes, you know, why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything to you. We're not terrorists. So, I have three dying men with bullet holes from our weapons, and this gentleman asking me why I killed his brother. That's a tough pill to swallow, and that continuously happened the entire time that we were in Iraq. After we left the city of Anu Mannia, it just became utter chaos. It sickened me so that I had actually brought it up to my lieutenant, and I told him, I said, you know, sir, we're not going to have to worry about the Iraq -- you know, we're basically committing genocide over here, mass extermination of thousands of Iraqis, and with the depleted uranium that we're leaving around on the battlefield, we're setting up genocide for future generations within Iraq. He didn't like that. He immediately went to my commanding officer, Captain Schmitt and proceeded to tell him about how I felt about Iraq. Word spread pretty quickly and I knew that my Marine Corps career was over. I knew that the statement that I had just made was going to bring about the blackball pretty quickly. So, I was scurried out of Iraq quickly, and ordered to report back stateside to receive psychological therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. When I got back stateside, that's when things really became ugly. I felt like the staff sergeant that just received the prison sentence for a year. I had to hire a lawyer because they were trying to pin me with conscientious objector, and basically, they were doing everything in their power to threaten me and to intimidate me so that I would go U.A. Unfortunately, with the staff sergeant, he fell into their trap, and he went U.A.
AMY GOODMAN: What does U.A. mean?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Unauthorized absence. That means that he left without authorization. That's basically -- you know, that's what they charged him with. Then they later on pinned on the conscientious objector. However, the Marine Corps told me they were going to bring legal repercussions against me and I decided to hire a lawyer. The lawyer that I hired was actually -- he was involved with the My Lai trials. I got really lucky, a man by the name of Gary Myers in Washington D.C. Their main concern was whether or not I was a conscientious objector. I told them that I believed in war and some wars in our history have been helpful for humanity and society as a whole, however, I do not believe in killing innocent civilians. So, I told them if they wanted to label me as a conscientious objector for disagreeing with, you know, killing innocent civilians, then I'll see them in court.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jimmy Massey former staff sergeant Marine, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years. We're speaking to him from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains. We'll come back to him if a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. Democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue with Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, honorably discharged in December, talking about his experiences in Iraq. You talk about opening fire on a group of protesters.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe it?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Sure, we had just rolled up -- it was probably about 20 miles north of the Saddam International Airport. We had rolled up into this military compound area, and to try to give you -- it's a little bit important that you understand the architecture. This military compound was heavily fortified with about 13-foot-tall concrete fences going all the way around the compound. This particular road that we went into, these walls were on the left and right, and the road itself was about 1,000 meters long. So, it made a very difficult -- it was a prime area for an ambush. When we pulled up, there was already an Abrams tank that was parked into one of the entrances at the military compound. At the end of the street about 200 meters a way from the tank there was a group of demonstrators. They were holding a peaceful demonstration. They were holding up signs that looked like a Muslim cleric as well as Saddam Hussein. The intelligence that we had received was these demonstrators -- there was about four of them and there was ten in the background. They were standing next to a highway overpass. The intelligence that we had gotten, these people were probably members of the Iraqi military that had slipped back into the community, and they were going to be waging all of these terrorist attacks against us. We rolled up, and about two minutes later, we had heard a stray gunfire. My men were already on the edge, you know, with anxiety, and the lack of sleep, and with the constant reports that we were given. When the gunshot was fired, my marines opened up on the demonstrators. I turned around just in time because I was walking the lines inspecting my marines to make sure that they had food and water and they were in the right position in case of an ambush. I turned around to the front of the convoy, and I saw the -- I saw my marines opening up. I swung my rifle around. I didn't know what was going on, and I started discharging my weapon as well into the demonstrators. After that, the lieutenant decided to go on a reconnaissance up onto the overpass area. We -- as we were driving towards the demonstrator, I didn't see any weapons. It just horrified me at the thought that we just opened up on a group of peaceful demonstrators, however, we heard gunshots coming from that direction towards us. So, as we rolled up onto the highway overpass, I looked down and below the highway it looked like the Iraqis had set up some sort of makeshift military compound, but it had been abandoned. I saw some R.P.G.'s lining up against the wall underneath this highway, and it was about -- they were about 200 meters away from the Iraqi demonstrators. This really disturbed me, because the demonstrators if they wanted to fire on us, they had the ability. They had the ability before we even got there to destroy this tank, because the way that we were jammed into this area, it was almost impossible for us to turn around quickly. Nearly -- or double almost impossible for this tank to fire or use its main battle gun. It left this tank defenseless. These Iraqis had a clear shot of the tank before we even got there, but they didn't. I just quickly- put two and two together and said, oh, my God - we just opened up on a group of peaceful demonstrators.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to former marine staff sergeant Jimmy Massey, what about the use of cluster bombs?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: I had a staff sergeant at the very beginning of the war. He was our supply staff sergeant. He lost his leg because of cluster bombs. Cluster bombs were everywhere, and I believe that he was the first marine to be awarded the Purple Heart in "Operation Iraq." because it happened in Safwan, the town of Safwan, the first city as your heading into Iraq from Kuwait. They were everywhere. The long-term casualties of these cluster bombs with children and -- you know, older people working in the fields is going to go on for years.
AMY GOODMAN: Where were they from?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: From Marine Artillery and from air.
AMY GOODMAN: In the case of the protests, when you realized that you had open fire on defenseless civilians, what was the he reaction of your troops? How many people felt the way you did?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: The reaction of the troops was they were joyous. You know it's not their job to play politics. That's the job of the staff sergeant and the lieutenant, to make determinations on whether or not we were in the right or we were in the wrong. I didn't tell my troops. My job was to keep them motivated so they go home alive, and in one piece, and left with some sort of sanity after the war. However, I did have several of my younger troops come up to me in private and say, you know, staff sergeant, can I talk you to? And then they would go on to tell me, you know, that some of the incidents were affecting them. So, I told them, I said, listen double dog, we're here to do a job and provide democracy for the Iraqis, and you questioning and you playing politician is not helping them. So, I want you to get back out there on the gun line and do your job as a marine, and let the politicians do their job. But deep down, it was seriously affecting me, because it was so evident. Marines are trained from day one that you go in -- when you go in to boot camp you learn what the Geneva Convention is, what the rules of the Geneva Convention are, what the rules of engagement. However, Iraq violated every rule of engagement that I have ever been taught - violated every rule of the Geneva Convention that I have been taught. If you have young marines coming up you to and asking you, staff sergeant, what's going on? You know, we have got a problem.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you doing right now? How are you living with yourself? How are you dealing with what happened in Iraq with you and what you and your soldiers did in Iraq?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: I'll be honest with you, there isn't a waking moment of the day that I don't think about it and think about what we have done over there. A lot of people ask me, you know why you are speaking out? Why are you -- you know, are you just trying to do this for money fame, fortune. What are you doing? I have been called a traitor, a disloyal s.o.b. You name it. The reason that I'm doing this is to heal myself. To possibly heal other marines that are not in the position for them to come out and say something from fear of retaliation from the marine corps. I'm doing this not only to heal myself about to help other marines that feel the same way that I do.
AMY GOODMAN: Are others talking to you now here?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: No. Let me explain you to -- I was also a recruiter for three years in the Marine Corps. Whenever you sign up for the military, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, have a four-year commitment. At the end of that four-year commitment, you still have another four-year commitment in what's called an I.R.R., Individual Ready Reserve. That means in the time of national emergency or crisis, the president of the United States can call these members back to active duty. So, these marines that have been discharged, you know, after the fall of Iraq, they're living back in their civilian community but they're still fearful to come out and say anything because the Marine Corps can call them back to active duty. And then they're worried about what happened to the staff sergeant. The staff sergeant is being used as a patsy. He's being used as: see, this is what will happen to you to if you speak out. However, I spent 12 years in. There's nothing that they can do to me as far as calling me back to active duty. So, I feel it's my responsibility to let the civilian public know. You know, the boards that we put into those -- the bullets that we put into the civilians were paid for by the U.S. Tax dollar. I believe that the U.S. Taxpayers have a rate to know what's going on over there. When we pulled into that military compound, they had makeshift morgues. They had tractor-trailer beds full of bodies. It was so bad -- this is because of the bombing that we did -- some of them had Iraqi flags on them, representing that they were a soldier, but 80% of them didn't. We would find tractor-trailers literally full of stocked bodies. It was so bad that the plasma from the body and the skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the tractor-trailer bed. We asked -- we asked some of the Iraqis that -- the locals that were basically homeless and they were living in the compound, we asked them, like, what is this? How come, you know, the bodies are in there, and he told us it was from the bombing, and when they lost the power, they didn't have any other place to put them. So, they put them in there to bury them later on.
AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former marine Staff Sergeant, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, speaking to us from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the smoky mountains. Any last thoughts?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yeah. I'd just like to say to the Marines, you did a great job. You did what your country asked you to do. Unfortunately, the rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention weren't used. But it's up to you to look within your heart and do the right thing. You know who you are. Don't be scared. Come out. The American public, they need to know. You're not the only one. There are other people out there that can help you to heal. There are other people out there that can help you to get on with your life. Don't feel ashamed. Don't feel embarrassed. Did you a great job, however, you know, the Command -- they didn't give you the right tools for you to carry on with your mission. Just do the right thing, marines.
AMY GOODMAN: Who do you hold most responsible for this?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: The president of the United States. He's the win that authorized it. He's the one that said there were weapons of mass destruction. He's the one that gave the case to us for going to war. We went to war backing him, however, the intelligence reports that we were getting hindered our ability to make Iraq a free democracy. You know, it's hard to tell a middle aged or middle -- you know, young man in his 20's -- say 20 to 28 years old that just watched his brother die by the hands of Americans. It's hard to tell him, you know, what, hey, we're sorry. All right. He's just a casualty of war. Now, this young man has taken revenge or is acting in revenge against the United States in Fallujah, in Karbala. He's picking up that R.P.G. because he's mad. He's mad at the Americans. We were supposed to go in there and set up a democracy. All we did was cause chaos and have a genocidal mindset. So, they're mad. They have every right to be mad. I know if somebody killed my brother, you know, indiscriminately and laughed about it and said, well, sorry, wrong place, wrong time, I would be mad, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, thank you for being with us, former Marine staff sergeant, speaking to us from North Carolina.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Thank you
**************************
Now another US soldier who participated in the Iraq invasion and occupation has begun speaking out. Twelve year Marine veteran Jimmy Massey joins us on the line from North Carolina.
Marine Staff Segt. Jimmy Massey (Ret.), former Marine staff sergeant who was honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, most recently in Iraq. He is speaking to us from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina in the Smokey Mountains.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Good morning. How you are doing?
AMY GOODMAN: Very good. Can you talk about when you were in Iraq?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yeah. I was part of the initial invading force. I was part of first marine division categorized into RCP-7. The battalion that I was with was third battalion seventh marines, weapons company cap 1. I was basically in the main invasion all the way up into Baghdad, and then once Baghdad fell, my battalion headed south towards the city of Karbala.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your experience there?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Really, what led up to my disgust with the war was the civilian casualties that we were inflicting. We were given intelligence reports -- the civilian casualties really started taking place after we left the town of Anu Mannia on the drive north towards Baghdad. We were getting intelligence reports from higher command saying that the Fedayeen and Republican Guards were trading in their uniforms for civilian clothes, and they were mounting terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers and marines using guerrilla-style tactics, suicide bombings. They were using civilians as human shields. They were loading down stolen ambulances and police cars with explosives. So, as we progressed on towards Baghdad, our fears and anxieties were heightened, and also due to the lack of sleep, some of us had less than 48 hours of sleep getting into Baghdad. So, whenever we were placed into these situations where civilian vehicles were coming up to our checkpoints, and not heeding our warning shot, we were lighting them up. What I mean by lighting them up, we were discharging our weapons, 50 cals and M-16's into the civilian vehicles. When we would do this, we were expecting secondary explosions, ammunition to be cooking off or actually have the occupants in the vehicle fire back at us. However, none of this ever happened. When we would go to search the vehicles, we would find no weapons, and nothing to link these individuals with -- these individuals with terrorists acts. And this happened continuously through the fall of Baghdad. I would say my platoon alone killed 30-plus innocent civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you realize what you had done? Can you give us a specific example?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Sure. Sure. A car would roll up to our checkpoint. And prior while we were still in Kuwait, we had actually made up Arabic road signs to place out in front of our checkpoint area warning the Iraqis to slow down. That didn't help. We would verbally tell them stop and we would fire a warning shot. When we would light the cars up, you know, we would go through and search the dead occupants as well as the vehicles, and we would find nothing that directly linked them to any type of terrorists. They were just average civilians that were trying to flee out of Iraq -- or excuse me -- out of Baghdad, out of the city limits because of the invading American force. They were scared. But with the intelligence reports that we were given, it was very hard for us to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. We ultimately started looking at everybody in Iraq as a potential suicide bomber or terrorist from women to children to old men. We didn't know who the enemy was.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jimmy Massey former marine staff sergeant, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, most recently in Iraq. He was in charge of a platoon that consisted of machine gunners and missile men describing, quote, lighting up cars, opening fire on Iraqi cars. When you would go up to the cars and see who was dead inside, what would you do with the bodies?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: We would take the bodies and search them to try to find any type of identification or anything like that. Generally, we found large quantities of cash, and that's what led us to believe that the people were just fleeing out of Baghdad. They were trying to secure what valuables that they had. Some of them had their valuables in the car, but you know, there was basically nothing that we could do with the bodies other than toss them in the ditch and off the road. So, that's what we would do, and then hopefully wait for the Iraqi medics, civilian medics to come in and take care of the bodies.
AMY GOODMAN: How many children would you estimate you killed?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: With unknown gunfire, the potential is unlimited, and what I mean by unknown gunfire, whenever you fire a machine gun especially a 50 caliber and any type of lightweight machine gun, you don't know where the bullets are going to go. So bullets could indiscriminately hit a child. The architecture Ð some of these villages that we went into were very shady construction. Our weapons could easily punch through. The reason I say that or use that as an example. I had a young child die in my arms. The father came up to us at the checkpoint with a child, and began to say, the bombs -- the bombs killed his child. I called the corpsman. The corpsman came over to assist the child and said the child probably had internal damage from the concussion, from the bombs. So, as his child died in my arms you know, I began to think, you know, wow, here's an innocent child that was just sleeping or doing things that children do, and the -- the response that I got from my command was, well, better them than us, and, you know, it's -- he's just a casualty of war. Sorry. However, that father that was standing there as his child was dying in my arms, and, you know, the doc was resuscitating, doing CPR, this father was looking at me like, why did you do this? You know, and -- you know, why does my son have to die? Almost just like a hatred look towards me. He knew I was obviously in command. Another incident it was on the outskirts of Baghdad near the Baghdad stadium, we had pulled into an area, and shortly after we had pulled in, it was on a major highway like a superhighway going in towards Baghdad. We had just lit up a vehicle, a red KIA, the Korean-made passenger vehicle, and we had just lit it up. They failed to stop at our checkpoint. Three of the men were fatally wounded that were in the vehicle and one -- the driver, had survived without any damage. As we were pulling the bodies out of the vehicle, of course, we're searching and we find nothing, and these were young -- these were young men. They were in their mid 20's. The one that was unscathed, he looked up at me and he goes, you know, why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything to you. We're not terrorists. So, I have three dying men with bullet holes from our weapons, and this gentleman asking me why I killed his brother. That's a tough pill to swallow, and that continuously happened the entire time that we were in Iraq. After we left the city of Anu Mannia, it just became utter chaos. It sickened me so that I had actually brought it up to my lieutenant, and I told him, I said, you know, sir, we're not going to have to worry about the Iraq -- you know, we're basically committing genocide over here, mass extermination of thousands of Iraqis, and with the depleted uranium that we're leaving around on the battlefield, we're setting up genocide for future generations within Iraq. He didn't like that. He immediately went to my commanding officer, Captain Schmitt and proceeded to tell him about how I felt about Iraq. Word spread pretty quickly and I knew that my Marine Corps career was over. I knew that the statement that I had just made was going to bring about the blackball pretty quickly. So, I was scurried out of Iraq quickly, and ordered to report back stateside to receive psychological therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. When I got back stateside, that's when things really became ugly. I felt like the staff sergeant that just received the prison sentence for a year. I had to hire a lawyer because they were trying to pin me with conscientious objector, and basically, they were doing everything in their power to threaten me and to intimidate me so that I would go U.A. Unfortunately, with the staff sergeant, he fell into their trap, and he went U.A.
AMY GOODMAN: What does U.A. mean?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Unauthorized absence. That means that he left without authorization. That's basically -- you know, that's what they charged him with. Then they later on pinned on the conscientious objector. However, the Marine Corps told me they were going to bring legal repercussions against me and I decided to hire a lawyer. The lawyer that I hired was actually -- he was involved with the My Lai trials. I got really lucky, a man by the name of Gary Myers in Washington D.C. Their main concern was whether or not I was a conscientious objector. I told them that I believed in war and some wars in our history have been helpful for humanity and society as a whole, however, I do not believe in killing innocent civilians. So, I told them if they wanted to label me as a conscientious objector for disagreeing with, you know, killing innocent civilians, then I'll see them in court.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Jimmy Massey former staff sergeant Marine, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years. We're speaking to him from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains. We'll come back to him if a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. Democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue with Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, honorably discharged in December, talking about his experiences in Iraq. You talk about opening fire on a group of protesters.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe it?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Sure, we had just rolled up -- it was probably about 20 miles north of the Saddam International Airport. We had rolled up into this military compound area, and to try to give you -- it's a little bit important that you understand the architecture. This military compound was heavily fortified with about 13-foot-tall concrete fences going all the way around the compound. This particular road that we went into, these walls were on the left and right, and the road itself was about 1,000 meters long. So, it made a very difficult -- it was a prime area for an ambush. When we pulled up, there was already an Abrams tank that was parked into one of the entrances at the military compound. At the end of the street about 200 meters a way from the tank there was a group of demonstrators. They were holding a peaceful demonstration. They were holding up signs that looked like a Muslim cleric as well as Saddam Hussein. The intelligence that we had received was these demonstrators -- there was about four of them and there was ten in the background. They were standing next to a highway overpass. The intelligence that we had gotten, these people were probably members of the Iraqi military that had slipped back into the community, and they were going to be waging all of these terrorist attacks against us. We rolled up, and about two minutes later, we had heard a stray gunfire. My men were already on the edge, you know, with anxiety, and the lack of sleep, and with the constant reports that we were given. When the gunshot was fired, my marines opened up on the demonstrators. I turned around just in time because I was walking the lines inspecting my marines to make sure that they had food and water and they were in the right position in case of an ambush. I turned around to the front of the convoy, and I saw the -- I saw my marines opening up. I swung my rifle around. I didn't know what was going on, and I started discharging my weapon as well into the demonstrators. After that, the lieutenant decided to go on a reconnaissance up onto the overpass area. We -- as we were driving towards the demonstrator, I didn't see any weapons. It just horrified me at the thought that we just opened up on a group of peaceful demonstrators, however, we heard gunshots coming from that direction towards us. So, as we rolled up onto the highway overpass, I looked down and below the highway it looked like the Iraqis had set up some sort of makeshift military compound, but it had been abandoned. I saw some R.P.G.'s lining up against the wall underneath this highway, and it was about -- they were about 200 meters away from the Iraqi demonstrators. This really disturbed me, because the demonstrators if they wanted to fire on us, they had the ability. They had the ability before we even got there to destroy this tank, because the way that we were jammed into this area, it was almost impossible for us to turn around quickly. Nearly -- or double almost impossible for this tank to fire or use its main battle gun. It left this tank defenseless. These Iraqis had a clear shot of the tank before we even got there, but they didn't. I just quickly- put two and two together and said, oh, my God - we just opened up on a group of peaceful demonstrators.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to former marine staff sergeant Jimmy Massey, what about the use of cluster bombs?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: I had a staff sergeant at the very beginning of the war. He was our supply staff sergeant. He lost his leg because of cluster bombs. Cluster bombs were everywhere, and I believe that he was the first marine to be awarded the Purple Heart in "Operation Iraq." because it happened in Safwan, the town of Safwan, the first city as your heading into Iraq from Kuwait. They were everywhere. The long-term casualties of these cluster bombs with children and -- you know, older people working in the fields is going to go on for years.
AMY GOODMAN: Where were they from?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: From Marine Artillery and from air.
AMY GOODMAN: In the case of the protests, when you realized that you had open fire on defenseless civilians, what was the he reaction of your troops? How many people felt the way you did?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: The reaction of the troops was they were joyous. You know it's not their job to play politics. That's the job of the staff sergeant and the lieutenant, to make determinations on whether or not we were in the right or we were in the wrong. I didn't tell my troops. My job was to keep them motivated so they go home alive, and in one piece, and left with some sort of sanity after the war. However, I did have several of my younger troops come up to me in private and say, you know, staff sergeant, can I talk you to? And then they would go on to tell me, you know, that some of the incidents were affecting them. So, I told them, I said, listen double dog, we're here to do a job and provide democracy for the Iraqis, and you questioning and you playing politician is not helping them. So, I want you to get back out there on the gun line and do your job as a marine, and let the politicians do their job. But deep down, it was seriously affecting me, because it was so evident. Marines are trained from day one that you go in -- when you go in to boot camp you learn what the Geneva Convention is, what the rules of the Geneva Convention are, what the rules of engagement. However, Iraq violated every rule of engagement that I have ever been taught - violated every rule of the Geneva Convention that I have been taught. If you have young marines coming up you to and asking you, staff sergeant, what's going on? You know, we have got a problem.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you doing right now? How are you living with yourself? How are you dealing with what happened in Iraq with you and what you and your soldiers did in Iraq?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: I'll be honest with you, there isn't a waking moment of the day that I don't think about it and think about what we have done over there. A lot of people ask me, you know why you are speaking out? Why are you -- you know, are you just trying to do this for money fame, fortune. What are you doing? I have been called a traitor, a disloyal s.o.b. You name it. The reason that I'm doing this is to heal myself. To possibly heal other marines that are not in the position for them to come out and say something from fear of retaliation from the marine corps. I'm doing this not only to heal myself about to help other marines that feel the same way that I do.
AMY GOODMAN: Are others talking to you now here?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: No. Let me explain you to -- I was also a recruiter for three years in the Marine Corps. Whenever you sign up for the military, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, have a four-year commitment. At the end of that four-year commitment, you still have another four-year commitment in what's called an I.R.R., Individual Ready Reserve. That means in the time of national emergency or crisis, the president of the United States can call these members back to active duty. So, these marines that have been discharged, you know, after the fall of Iraq, they're living back in their civilian community but they're still fearful to come out and say anything because the Marine Corps can call them back to active duty. And then they're worried about what happened to the staff sergeant. The staff sergeant is being used as a patsy. He's being used as: see, this is what will happen to you to if you speak out. However, I spent 12 years in. There's nothing that they can do to me as far as calling me back to active duty. So, I feel it's my responsibility to let the civilian public know. You know, the boards that we put into those -- the bullets that we put into the civilians were paid for by the U.S. Tax dollar. I believe that the U.S. Taxpayers have a rate to know what's going on over there. When we pulled into that military compound, they had makeshift morgues. They had tractor-trailer beds full of bodies. It was so bad -- this is because of the bombing that we did -- some of them had Iraqi flags on them, representing that they were a soldier, but 80% of them didn't. We would find tractor-trailers literally full of stocked bodies. It was so bad that the plasma from the body and the skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the tractor-trailer bed. We asked -- we asked some of the Iraqis that -- the locals that were basically homeless and they were living in the compound, we asked them, like, what is this? How come, you know, the bodies are in there, and he told us it was from the bombing, and when they lost the power, they didn't have any other place to put them. So, they put them in there to bury them later on.
AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former marine Staff Sergeant, honorably discharged in December after serving 12 years, speaking to us from his home in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the smoky mountains. Any last thoughts?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Yeah. I'd just like to say to the Marines, you did a great job. You did what your country asked you to do. Unfortunately, the rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention weren't used. But it's up to you to look within your heart and do the right thing. You know who you are. Don't be scared. Come out. The American public, they need to know. You're not the only one. There are other people out there that can help you to heal. There are other people out there that can help you to get on with your life. Don't feel ashamed. Don't feel embarrassed. Did you a great job, however, you know, the Command -- they didn't give you the right tools for you to carry on with your mission. Just do the right thing, marines.
AMY GOODMAN: Who do you hold most responsible for this?
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: The president of the United States. He's the win that authorized it. He's the one that said there were weapons of mass destruction. He's the one that gave the case to us for going to war. We went to war backing him, however, the intelligence reports that we were getting hindered our ability to make Iraq a free democracy. You know, it's hard to tell a middle aged or middle -- you know, young man in his 20's -- say 20 to 28 years old that just watched his brother die by the hands of Americans. It's hard to tell him, you know, what, hey, we're sorry. All right. He's just a casualty of war. Now, this young man has taken revenge or is acting in revenge against the United States in Fallujah, in Karbala. He's picking up that R.P.G. because he's mad. He's mad at the Americans. We were supposed to go in there and set up a democracy. All we did was cause chaos and have a genocidal mindset. So, they're mad. They have every right to be mad. I know if somebody killed my brother, you know, indiscriminately and laughed about it and said, well, sorry, wrong place, wrong time, I would be mad, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, thank you for being with us, former Marine staff sergeant, speaking to us from North Carolina.
STAFF SERGEANT JIMMY MASSEY: Thank you
Another interview with Massey given to Smoky Mountain News:
*************************************
Former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was honorably discharged from the Corps in December 2003 after 12 years of active duty. Diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, he came home to live in Waynesville. His military tours included training infantry soldiers at boot camp in Parris Island, S.C., acting as a Marine recruiter in Waynesville and Sylva, and participating in the invasion of Baghdad during April and May of 2003.
Massey?s discharge proceedings began when he questioned the killing of civilians in Iraq. During the U.S.-led invasion in the spring of 2003 Massey suddenly came to doubt his mission. He says the killing of innocent civilians in which he took part changed him. He also believes America?s ability to complete its mission in Iraq has been compromised from the beginning ? since those first days when troops rolled into Baghdad more than a year ago? because of faulty intelligence that led to civilian deaths, said Massey.
Now he?s telling his story to reporters around the world. He estimates he?s given 35 interviews over the last few months, both in the local newspapers, papers like the Sacramento Bee in California, and to international media outlets such as the BBC. He?s currently working on a book with a French journalist from New York. We interviewed him in Waynesville at the public library.
Q: Tell me about the story of the civilian deaths that is recounted in the Sacramento Bee article.
A: I had actually forgotten about this. I had it repressed in my mind. I am writing a book. A French journalist is helping me with the structure of it. She drove down here after the story in The Mountaineer. She investigated and found out it was true. ...
I am waiting to get into VA so I can start my therapy, but process takes a long time with the VA and everything. That was an incident I remembered, the shooting of the civilians. It?s been a healing process for me, trying to heal myself talking about it and putting it in a memoir text.
The straw that broke the camel?s back was an incident right outside of Baghdad. We had just taken a security position, we had actually just taken out some bad guys, so the platoon was in high morale because we had shot some bad guys. In doing that, we saved a battalion from an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) attack. The men were pretty stoked and were trying to forget about yesterday?s scenario with the civilian casualties and everything.
... This red Kia came into our area, and we fired a warning shot. They didn?t stop. I won?t say the Marine Corps did not take adequate steps. We did all within our power. I don?t fault the Marine Corps. It?s the intelligence reports that led to the kind of mass hysteria that led to the genocidal type of atmosphere that was prevalent. And that?s what it felt like, like we were just mass exterminating Iraqis.
The Kia came into our area, and they went past our signs in Arabic saying ?stop, halt.? We fired warning shots, they didn?t stop. We opened up on them with 50-caliber and M-16s and 240s.
There were four people in the car, and the vehicle came to a stop about 50 meters in front of my Humvee. Somehow the driver managed to escape the bullets, to this day I don?t know how, whether Allah, or Buddah or God was looking after him. We went up and started pulling bodies out, they were shot up pretty bad, still alive but expiring pretty fast.
The one gentleman who survived came out, wailing and flailing his arms, sitting on the curb covering his face and crying. He got up, by that time the corpsmen was there doing CPR, and he looked up at me. ?Why did you kill my brother? He did not do anything to you.?
It just hit me like a ton of bricks. What in the hell are we doing, what are we doing, what are we accomplishing? Not more than five minutes ago we were taking out bad guys, and we?re now killing civilians.
Q: So from the time the U.S. military started going into Baghdad, you immediately saw some actions that turned a lot of Iraqi people against us?
A: Yes, I hate to say it, but it was like turning a bunch of pit bulls loose on a cage full of rabbits. You got Marines hyped up by 9-11 propaganda, by Saddam saying he was going to use chemical weapons against us, that the streets were gonna run red. You know, there?s no match for a squad of Marines. A squad of Marines are devastating with the amount of firepower and destructions that?s available.
You know, Marines are dehumanized from boot camp, desensitized to the killing. The Marine Corps says their job is to instill intangible traits into their recruits, such as self-discipline, self-confidence, honor, courage and commitment. What they fail to realize is that once you train a person with a warrior mentality, once you desensitize them to death, violence and destruction, and then place them in an environment such as Iraq, it also becomes a Jekyl and Hyde mentality. One minute you?re passing out candy to a little kid, 10 minutes later you?re opening fire on a vehicle with women and children. And the Iraqis saw that, they saw the evil side to Americans. And we set ourselves up for failure from the beginning.
Q: Were there any gratifying aspects to what you did while over there?
A: Oh yeah, there were. We killed lots of bad guys.
Once, and I still have the note, there was this little girl in Baghdad, near the university. We pulled into what looked like a women?s homeless shelter. We parked our Humvee and got out, and these people were so loving. They were giving us flowers. This little girl kept staring at me, and she was waving and smiling. She picked up a piece of paper and she came running downstairs and wrote, ?Hi, I love you, God bless America.? It was so powerful.
And then, after reading something like that, we were probably killing some of her innocent relatives. Maybe that?s why she?s in a shelter.
Q: With Memorial Day coming up, how do you feel about the holiday, our country, the soldiers still there and this war?
A: I fear for their lives and for my life. America is in a dark time. The country is divided. I do keep in contact with one Marine who is in Iraq right now, but I don?t tell him anything about what is going on here. I don?t tell him about the mindset. His job while he?s over there is to support the president of the United States. The men and women who are over there need all the mental and physical courage they can muster, to do the job they have to do.
I used to tell my Marines our job is not to be over here playing politician, our job is to secure Iraq for a free market democracy, and that?s what we?ll do. However, I felt what I saw, I didn?t see any way for America to accomplish that. When I became vocal about that, the Marine Corps did not like what I had to say.
Q: How?d you get out of the Marines after these incidents?
A: I went to regimental sergeant major. He?s in charge of about 3,500 marines, and he called me into his office. He said, ?I understand the situation and your feelings about Iraq, but we?re going to go ahead and move you into a different job. We?re going to give you a cushy job. You?ve only got seven more years to retire and you?ve got a lot built up in your career.?
... I told him, ?Thank you sergeant major, I don?t want your money anymore. I don?t want your benefits. You killed some civilians, and you?re gonna have to live with it partner, and I?m gonna tell the truth.? He didn?t like that. He said, ?Well, there might be some judicial proceedings that follow.? I said I accept that, and he didn?t need me for anything else I?d like to be dismissed.
I went straight down to the PX and bought copy a of the Marine Corps Times, and in the back they have advertisements for military lawyers. I put my finger on the name of Mr. Gary Myers in Washington, D.C. ... I gave him the number to the sergeant major and to the psychiatrist I was seeing. He called me and said ?I think they see crystal clear what you are trying to achieve, and I don?t think there will be any problem.? If I didn?t hire a lawyer, I wouldn?t be sitting here talking to you. I?d be in a brig.
Q: As time has gone on, more questions are being raised about whether the Iraqis will ever support what Americans are trying to do. How difficult is that going to be?
A: I mean, well, I?m not a politician, I?m just a good-old boy. But you?re asking an Iraqi that probably just lost an innocent loved one to the American military, and now you?re asking them to submit to this democracy that is being imposed on them, and a lot of them are resentful. They are bitter about their loved ones being killed. They had makeshift morgues over there, and bodies were piled upon bodies on the truck beds, just packed, and the civilians in the area said it was from the airstrikes. It was so bad that the body tissue was just oozing out of the crevices of the truck.
I understand there are loopholes in the Geneva Conventions and loopholes in the rules of engagement. However, I?m not going to kill innocent civilians for no government. If you want to go head to head in battle with men in uniform, I?m all for it. I would still be in the Marines. However, I was taught and raised by parents and relatives that there are certain moral things you don?t do, and killing innocent civilians is one of them.
Q: Will we be able to succeed in Iraq?
A: I?m not going to sit here and play armchair quarterback. I don?t have all the answers. I spent 12 years in an organization and I feel I did my best. I have different ways of looking at things because of my worldly travels. I?m not going to play armchair quarterback to the government. I?m just saying how I feel. People can take it with grain of salt, or hear it, or apply it to themselves and make them a better person. There was no need for what we did over there, there was no need.
As I?ve been telling this story, I?ve gotten lots of positive response. I?ve also gotten hate mail, people telling me ?You?re destroying America, violating the code of silence.? People like that need to turn off the idiot box.
*************************************
Former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was honorably discharged from the Corps in December 2003 after 12 years of active duty. Diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, he came home to live in Waynesville. His military tours included training infantry soldiers at boot camp in Parris Island, S.C., acting as a Marine recruiter in Waynesville and Sylva, and participating in the invasion of Baghdad during April and May of 2003.
Massey?s discharge proceedings began when he questioned the killing of civilians in Iraq. During the U.S.-led invasion in the spring of 2003 Massey suddenly came to doubt his mission. He says the killing of innocent civilians in which he took part changed him. He also believes America?s ability to complete its mission in Iraq has been compromised from the beginning ? since those first days when troops rolled into Baghdad more than a year ago? because of faulty intelligence that led to civilian deaths, said Massey.
Now he?s telling his story to reporters around the world. He estimates he?s given 35 interviews over the last few months, both in the local newspapers, papers like the Sacramento Bee in California, and to international media outlets such as the BBC. He?s currently working on a book with a French journalist from New York. We interviewed him in Waynesville at the public library.
Q: Tell me about the story of the civilian deaths that is recounted in the Sacramento Bee article.
A: I had actually forgotten about this. I had it repressed in my mind. I am writing a book. A French journalist is helping me with the structure of it. She drove down here after the story in The Mountaineer. She investigated and found out it was true. ...
I am waiting to get into VA so I can start my therapy, but process takes a long time with the VA and everything. That was an incident I remembered, the shooting of the civilians. It?s been a healing process for me, trying to heal myself talking about it and putting it in a memoir text.
The straw that broke the camel?s back was an incident right outside of Baghdad. We had just taken a security position, we had actually just taken out some bad guys, so the platoon was in high morale because we had shot some bad guys. In doing that, we saved a battalion from an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) attack. The men were pretty stoked and were trying to forget about yesterday?s scenario with the civilian casualties and everything.
... This red Kia came into our area, and we fired a warning shot. They didn?t stop. I won?t say the Marine Corps did not take adequate steps. We did all within our power. I don?t fault the Marine Corps. It?s the intelligence reports that led to the kind of mass hysteria that led to the genocidal type of atmosphere that was prevalent. And that?s what it felt like, like we were just mass exterminating Iraqis.
The Kia came into our area, and they went past our signs in Arabic saying ?stop, halt.? We fired warning shots, they didn?t stop. We opened up on them with 50-caliber and M-16s and 240s.
There were four people in the car, and the vehicle came to a stop about 50 meters in front of my Humvee. Somehow the driver managed to escape the bullets, to this day I don?t know how, whether Allah, or Buddah or God was looking after him. We went up and started pulling bodies out, they were shot up pretty bad, still alive but expiring pretty fast.
The one gentleman who survived came out, wailing and flailing his arms, sitting on the curb covering his face and crying. He got up, by that time the corpsmen was there doing CPR, and he looked up at me. ?Why did you kill my brother? He did not do anything to you.?
It just hit me like a ton of bricks. What in the hell are we doing, what are we doing, what are we accomplishing? Not more than five minutes ago we were taking out bad guys, and we?re now killing civilians.
Q: So from the time the U.S. military started going into Baghdad, you immediately saw some actions that turned a lot of Iraqi people against us?
A: Yes, I hate to say it, but it was like turning a bunch of pit bulls loose on a cage full of rabbits. You got Marines hyped up by 9-11 propaganda, by Saddam saying he was going to use chemical weapons against us, that the streets were gonna run red. You know, there?s no match for a squad of Marines. A squad of Marines are devastating with the amount of firepower and destructions that?s available.
You know, Marines are dehumanized from boot camp, desensitized to the killing. The Marine Corps says their job is to instill intangible traits into their recruits, such as self-discipline, self-confidence, honor, courage and commitment. What they fail to realize is that once you train a person with a warrior mentality, once you desensitize them to death, violence and destruction, and then place them in an environment such as Iraq, it also becomes a Jekyl and Hyde mentality. One minute you?re passing out candy to a little kid, 10 minutes later you?re opening fire on a vehicle with women and children. And the Iraqis saw that, they saw the evil side to Americans. And we set ourselves up for failure from the beginning.
Q: Were there any gratifying aspects to what you did while over there?
A: Oh yeah, there were. We killed lots of bad guys.
Once, and I still have the note, there was this little girl in Baghdad, near the university. We pulled into what looked like a women?s homeless shelter. We parked our Humvee and got out, and these people were so loving. They were giving us flowers. This little girl kept staring at me, and she was waving and smiling. She picked up a piece of paper and she came running downstairs and wrote, ?Hi, I love you, God bless America.? It was so powerful.
And then, after reading something like that, we were probably killing some of her innocent relatives. Maybe that?s why she?s in a shelter.
Q: With Memorial Day coming up, how do you feel about the holiday, our country, the soldiers still there and this war?
A: I fear for their lives and for my life. America is in a dark time. The country is divided. I do keep in contact with one Marine who is in Iraq right now, but I don?t tell him anything about what is going on here. I don?t tell him about the mindset. His job while he?s over there is to support the president of the United States. The men and women who are over there need all the mental and physical courage they can muster, to do the job they have to do.
I used to tell my Marines our job is not to be over here playing politician, our job is to secure Iraq for a free market democracy, and that?s what we?ll do. However, I felt what I saw, I didn?t see any way for America to accomplish that. When I became vocal about that, the Marine Corps did not like what I had to say.
Q: How?d you get out of the Marines after these incidents?
A: I went to regimental sergeant major. He?s in charge of about 3,500 marines, and he called me into his office. He said, ?I understand the situation and your feelings about Iraq, but we?re going to go ahead and move you into a different job. We?re going to give you a cushy job. You?ve only got seven more years to retire and you?ve got a lot built up in your career.?
... I told him, ?Thank you sergeant major, I don?t want your money anymore. I don?t want your benefits. You killed some civilians, and you?re gonna have to live with it partner, and I?m gonna tell the truth.? He didn?t like that. He said, ?Well, there might be some judicial proceedings that follow.? I said I accept that, and he didn?t need me for anything else I?d like to be dismissed.
I went straight down to the PX and bought copy a of the Marine Corps Times, and in the back they have advertisements for military lawyers. I put my finger on the name of Mr. Gary Myers in Washington, D.C. ... I gave him the number to the sergeant major and to the psychiatrist I was seeing. He called me and said ?I think they see crystal clear what you are trying to achieve, and I don?t think there will be any problem.? If I didn?t hire a lawyer, I wouldn?t be sitting here talking to you. I?d be in a brig.
Q: As time has gone on, more questions are being raised about whether the Iraqis will ever support what Americans are trying to do. How difficult is that going to be?
A: I mean, well, I?m not a politician, I?m just a good-old boy. But you?re asking an Iraqi that probably just lost an innocent loved one to the American military, and now you?re asking them to submit to this democracy that is being imposed on them, and a lot of them are resentful. They are bitter about their loved ones being killed. They had makeshift morgues over there, and bodies were piled upon bodies on the truck beds, just packed, and the civilians in the area said it was from the airstrikes. It was so bad that the body tissue was just oozing out of the crevices of the truck.
I understand there are loopholes in the Geneva Conventions and loopholes in the rules of engagement. However, I?m not going to kill innocent civilians for no government. If you want to go head to head in battle with men in uniform, I?m all for it. I would still be in the Marines. However, I was taught and raised by parents and relatives that there are certain moral things you don?t do, and killing innocent civilians is one of them.
Q: Will we be able to succeed in Iraq?
A: I?m not going to sit here and play armchair quarterback. I don?t have all the answers. I spent 12 years in an organization and I feel I did my best. I have different ways of looking at things because of my worldly travels. I?m not going to play armchair quarterback to the government. I?m just saying how I feel. People can take it with grain of salt, or hear it, or apply it to themselves and make them a better person. There was no need for what we did over there, there was no need.
As I?ve been telling this story, I?ve gotten lots of positive response. I?ve also gotten hate mail, people telling me ?You?re destroying America, violating the code of silence.? People like that need to turn off the idiot box.
Whitecloak
Diamond Member
Bush should burn in hell for this along with osama and saddam.
Another article in the Mountaineer:
*********************************
The high price of war leaves one man broken
by JEFF SCHMERKER
Staff writer
When Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey joined the Marines, he thought he had found his niche. Trained as a sharpshooter, Massey admits he became ?the ultimate war machine ? all blood and guts.?
One day, that came to an abrupt halt. Stationed in Kuwait several months before the attack in Iraq occurred, Massey saw events unfold in Operation Iraqi Freedom from day one.
Massey did his part to secure the country and faced the minimal opposition he said U.S. forces encountered during the early days.
But, after just a few weeks in combat, Massey said he came to the realization he could no longer be an effective Marine. He was haunted by the knowledge that U.S. forces, himself included, were killing civilians, not terrorists.
On the border
Massey flew from California to Kuwait the day before President George Bush gave his 2002 State of the Union address. Massey landed in Kuwait City and was shipped to LSA-7, a Marine base set in Kuwait?s stark brown desert 50 miles shy of the Iraqi border.
The night of the address, Massey stayed up late, his ears tuned to the BBC channel as Bush made the case for war.
A few days later, on patrol, Massey and his company drove up to the border itself, a 50-foot high berm of dirt running as far as the eye could see.
Massey scrambled up the hill and looked into Iraq. Staring into a country he was set to invade, Massey saw nothing ? not a car, not a palm tree, not a person, not even an errant donkey. Just flat, brown desert.
When orders came to invade in the third week in March, Massey stayed up all night packing his gear and readying the troops. When the sun came up and reveille was called, Massey said he remembered thinking: ?Today would be a good day to die.?
Massey spent the first night of the ground war sleeping soundly in a foxhole near the border with his company?s Humvees drawn around the soldiers like wagons rallied on the prairie and heavy artillery humming toward Iraq overhead.
Early the next morning, Massey and his 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Weapons Company, drove over that berm and into war. A 50-mile long convoy of soldiers drove though the first border town, Safwan, that morning and were met by friendly though cautious locals. A nearby hill reputed to be a stronghold of Saddam Hussein?s troops was easily overcome.
Massey?s company leapfrogged across Iraq, always headed north. Occasionally they encountered light small-arms fire and mortar attacks, but little to pause over.
From enlistment to recruiting
Seated on a plush orange couch in a Waynesville coffee house, Massey relaxes a bit telling his story of war. He sips his coffee and pulls out a Nicorette gum square. After 12 years of dipping, Massey wants to loose himself of his bad habits. As he drew farther into Iraq, he says, the scene became less rosy.
?My whole mental thought,? he says, ?is it?s just a good day to die. I did not want to die, but it?s an honor amongst Marines if they die in combat.?
Massey, 30, was born in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He spent his summers with his grandfather, who owned a dairy farm in Hendersonville.
When he was 6, his father picked him up in Hendersonville and drove him to Florida. Police were on the lookout for him and caught up with him in Florida, pulling his 18-wheeler over.
Jimmy lay in the sleeping cab of the truck, unaware of what was going on and unaware of what was about to happen. As a police officer would later tell him, as his dad jumped down from the truck, he reached for a weapon. Police shot him dead.
Out of high school, Massey spent a few months in community college but dropped out. He joined the Marines, he said, because they were the toughest soldiers in the world.
He was on his way to a career in the armed forces. After nine years, he became a recruiter and was stationed in Waynesville. His job was to sign up three young men and women a month; sometimes that meant he had to court 500.
On April 15, 2002, Massey was handed orders saying when his duty as a recruiter ended in October he was to report to Twentynine Palms, Calif. He knew he?d be going to war ? either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Iraq it was. Massey was given a month personal leave and then reported back to Twentynine Palms. He was in charge of a combined anti-armor team comprising machine gunners, missile men and scout snipers.
He learned basic infantry skills, rifle skills, hand-to-hand combat and land navigation. Massey remained fatalistic about this. Dying in combat, he emphasized, was an honor. But today, unexpectedly retired from service, Massey says he did not know just how much his deployment to Iraq would change his life.
?Why did you kill my brother??
Massey is a sniper platoon sergeant, and his job in Iraq, he said, was to erect roadblocks and search locals for guns and munitions. It was a difficult task, he said: Go into a town, guns blazing one day, then turn around and play policeman, handing out candy to kids the next. The transition, he said, that?s what was tough.
There were some close calls, especially as the convoy made its way toward Baghdad. In one skirmish, Massey heard a bullet fly by just a few feet from his head. In another, he could see bullets scuff up dirt right in front of his feet, just like in the movies. One day, he found bullet holes in his truck.
Incorrect intelligence once led Massey to a river island called Enuminea, supposedly home to a terrorist training camp. The camp was abandoned, but Massey spent the night in a jasmine-scented children?s park.
?We were led to believe they were going to put up a tremendous fight,? said Massey, ?but we basically walked into the country and took over. It was like lambs to the slaughter.?
The march to Baghdad took just two weeks. One day, on the outskirts of town, Massey was ordered to set up a roadblock. His company?s six Humvees were staggered in parallel lines along each side of the road, splayed out slightly to face oncoming traffic. Soldiers aimed at oncoming cars, but also toward civilian buildings alongside the road.
Sharpshooters hid back a ways. Vehicles approached the roadblock and were searched. Too often, vehicles approached the roadblock but didn?t stop. Soldiers fired warning shots toward the vehicles. If that didn?t work, said Massey, ?then we lit it up.? Some vehicles didn?t stop, said Massey, because the drivers might have fashioned themselves kamikazes, though none of the vehicles Massey searched were ever found to have explosives in them the way suicide bombers will often pack their cars. Other vehicles were stolen, their drivers running from the law. Other no-stops were pure mystery.
In one suburban roadblock, Massey and company were set up when a red Kia Spectra sped toward them at about 45 mph. Soldiers sighted the car and fired a warning volley above it, but still the car came. Soldiers aimed at the car and fired with their full force, said Massey.
The car made it past the first two Humvees. Massey was in the second row. For just an instant, he said, he made eye contact with the driver. The Kia had four men in it. Massey fired and Marines around him joined in. The Kia came to a rest right in front of him, three of the four men shot dead.
It?s that sight of the driver which has haunted Massey all these months.
Marines pulled the three bodies out of the car and threw them alongside the road for Iraqi medical crews to retrieve. The survivor, the front seat passenger, was wailing and screaming. His brother had been the driver. He was injured but taken to the curb to await medical attention.
?He looked up at me and said, ?Why did you kill my brother? We didn?t do anything.??
In war, who dies?
Massey came to believe that most of the time when he shot to kill, he was killing civilians. What he saw disturbed him. On April 15, in Karbala, Massey went to his commanding officer. He was depressed, he told the officer. He was not an effective leader anymore, he said.
?I?m having issues,? he told his commanding officer. ?I?m having a hard time.? The commanding officer sent him to a Navy psychiatrist. The drive to the doctor took him three hours. The session, 30 minutes. Massey was feeling normal feelings, the doctor said.
?You have every right to feel the way you feel,? the doctor told him.
But did he, Massey wondered? Civilians might be sickened by the killing, but a Marine is not supposed to be. ?I was the ultimate war machine, all blood and guts. I was embarrassed. I was supposed to be able to handle it.?
The psychiatrist asked Massey if he wanted to kill himself. He didn?t.
The psychiatrist asked Massey if he wanted to hurt himself or other individuals. He didn?t. The psychiatrist diagnosed Massey as depressed and suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He recommended Massey leave the battlefield immediately. He wrote his report and sealed it in a manila envelope.
Massey returned to his base and handed the envelope to his commanding officer, then went to bed.
In the morning Massey was called into the commanding officer?s room. He was not cut out to be an officer in the Marines, the superior told him.
?He told me, ?You?re a poor leader,? ?You?re faking it,? ?You?re a conscientious objector,? ?You?re a wimp,?? said Massey. ?You don?t respond to that. You just stand there and take it. But my sanity was not worth the U.S. Marine Corps.?
Massey went back to his bunk and packed up. He handed in his documents and his papers. All weapons were taken from him even though the psychiatrists said he was not a threat to himself or other Marines.
He was sent to an abandoned school in Karbala and told to wait there. Two days later, a car came and picked him up.
The trip south, back to LSA-7, took three days and routed him through every town the Americans had destroyed on their way north. Massey spent two weeks at LSA-7, ?sleeping the whole time,? he said, before he was taken to Kuwait and later to California.
?I can?t blame the military for sending me home,? he said.
What he does blame them for is taking his weapons even though he was being sent on a dangerous trip across southern Iraq. Before he left, an officer told him there was a 90-percent chance his convoy would be attacked.
?It?s like,? he said, ?they were trying to punish me.?
A soldier discharged
In California, Massey?s medical history was put before a review board. Two camps argued over his future. One group thought Massey should be given a medical retirement. Another thought he could continue to serve in a limited capacity. Massey told a doctor he was sick and the only way to cure his sickness was to be released from duty.
Massey drove to Palm Springs and paid $200 for a half-hour session with a private psychiatrist, who reconfirmed what the original doctor had said.
He then went to see a respected civilian pastor who was a World War II veteran and a former clinical psychologist and told him what happened.
?Am I a conscientious objector?? asked Massey. No, said the pastor.
Had Massey been termed an objector, he could have gone to jail, he said. There arose questions about disability and retirement payments, so Massey hired a lawyer, the same one who defended American soldiers after the Mai Lai attack in Vietnam. On Nov. 14, orders came that he was discharged on a medical retirement. Within 24 hours, Massey was on the road home.
Back when he was waiting to leave Kuwait, Massey phoned a friend in Waynesville, Jackie Grooms. A few days later, waylaid at an airport in Germany, he called her again to say he was on his way home.
Upon his release from the armed forces, he drove straight from California to Haywood County. He asked Grooms to marry him, rented an apartment at Lake Junaluska and was hired as a sales manager at Rent-A-Center in Clyde.
He quit dipping tobacco ? in fact he quit almost every habit he picked up after 12 years in the military. He?s started a new life now ? one without the Marines.
Why war?
?With the events that happened over in Iraq,? says Massey now, ?it is a constant struggle, day by day, just remembering the events. It never leaves you. You never forget about it.? The image of that driver, and his brother wailing alongside the road, he said, is burned into his mind.
?Some of the civilians that were killed,? he said, ?you just never forget about it.?
While Massey does not question the duty of the Marine Corps, he does question the very foundation of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
?Marines are trained to do one thing, and that is to meet the enemy on the battlefield,? he said. ?When you don?t know who the enemy is, you don?t know whether that person you just shot was actually the enemy. All of them.?
Massey thinks his platoon could have been responsible for as many as 30 civilian deaths. ?What you can ask is, were they combatants or non-combatants,? he said. ?That is a way to phrase it so people don?t get a squeamish feeling. I would say 75 percent of all the individuals we came in contact with were non-combatants.?
In California, before he even left for Kuwait, Massey?s company was trained to shut down oil fields. Why, he wonders. What kind of premeditated war would train soldiers to secure oil fields?
?The people in Iraq were definitely suffering,? he said. ?And there is no question in my mind Saddam was a dictator. But the way we did it, just going in there and invading, it raises questions. Was it for oil? Or was it for humanitarian reasons??
The British spent decades trying to rule the country and failed, said Massey. Why do Americans think they can do in two years what the Brits could never do?
?It just leaves a question in my mind: Were we there to help them or were we there to take over a country for our own personal gain? i.e., oil.?
*********************************
The high price of war leaves one man broken
by JEFF SCHMERKER
Staff writer
When Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey joined the Marines, he thought he had found his niche. Trained as a sharpshooter, Massey admits he became ?the ultimate war machine ? all blood and guts.?
One day, that came to an abrupt halt. Stationed in Kuwait several months before the attack in Iraq occurred, Massey saw events unfold in Operation Iraqi Freedom from day one.
Massey did his part to secure the country and faced the minimal opposition he said U.S. forces encountered during the early days.
But, after just a few weeks in combat, Massey said he came to the realization he could no longer be an effective Marine. He was haunted by the knowledge that U.S. forces, himself included, were killing civilians, not terrorists.
On the border
Massey flew from California to Kuwait the day before President George Bush gave his 2002 State of the Union address. Massey landed in Kuwait City and was shipped to LSA-7, a Marine base set in Kuwait?s stark brown desert 50 miles shy of the Iraqi border.
The night of the address, Massey stayed up late, his ears tuned to the BBC channel as Bush made the case for war.
A few days later, on patrol, Massey and his company drove up to the border itself, a 50-foot high berm of dirt running as far as the eye could see.
Massey scrambled up the hill and looked into Iraq. Staring into a country he was set to invade, Massey saw nothing ? not a car, not a palm tree, not a person, not even an errant donkey. Just flat, brown desert.
When orders came to invade in the third week in March, Massey stayed up all night packing his gear and readying the troops. When the sun came up and reveille was called, Massey said he remembered thinking: ?Today would be a good day to die.?
Massey spent the first night of the ground war sleeping soundly in a foxhole near the border with his company?s Humvees drawn around the soldiers like wagons rallied on the prairie and heavy artillery humming toward Iraq overhead.
Early the next morning, Massey and his 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Weapons Company, drove over that berm and into war. A 50-mile long convoy of soldiers drove though the first border town, Safwan, that morning and were met by friendly though cautious locals. A nearby hill reputed to be a stronghold of Saddam Hussein?s troops was easily overcome.
Massey?s company leapfrogged across Iraq, always headed north. Occasionally they encountered light small-arms fire and mortar attacks, but little to pause over.
From enlistment to recruiting
Seated on a plush orange couch in a Waynesville coffee house, Massey relaxes a bit telling his story of war. He sips his coffee and pulls out a Nicorette gum square. After 12 years of dipping, Massey wants to loose himself of his bad habits. As he drew farther into Iraq, he says, the scene became less rosy.
?My whole mental thought,? he says, ?is it?s just a good day to die. I did not want to die, but it?s an honor amongst Marines if they die in combat.?
Massey, 30, was born in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He spent his summers with his grandfather, who owned a dairy farm in Hendersonville.
When he was 6, his father picked him up in Hendersonville and drove him to Florida. Police were on the lookout for him and caught up with him in Florida, pulling his 18-wheeler over.
Jimmy lay in the sleeping cab of the truck, unaware of what was going on and unaware of what was about to happen. As a police officer would later tell him, as his dad jumped down from the truck, he reached for a weapon. Police shot him dead.
Out of high school, Massey spent a few months in community college but dropped out. He joined the Marines, he said, because they were the toughest soldiers in the world.
He was on his way to a career in the armed forces. After nine years, he became a recruiter and was stationed in Waynesville. His job was to sign up three young men and women a month; sometimes that meant he had to court 500.
On April 15, 2002, Massey was handed orders saying when his duty as a recruiter ended in October he was to report to Twentynine Palms, Calif. He knew he?d be going to war ? either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Iraq it was. Massey was given a month personal leave and then reported back to Twentynine Palms. He was in charge of a combined anti-armor team comprising machine gunners, missile men and scout snipers.
He learned basic infantry skills, rifle skills, hand-to-hand combat and land navigation. Massey remained fatalistic about this. Dying in combat, he emphasized, was an honor. But today, unexpectedly retired from service, Massey says he did not know just how much his deployment to Iraq would change his life.
?Why did you kill my brother??
Massey is a sniper platoon sergeant, and his job in Iraq, he said, was to erect roadblocks and search locals for guns and munitions. It was a difficult task, he said: Go into a town, guns blazing one day, then turn around and play policeman, handing out candy to kids the next. The transition, he said, that?s what was tough.
There were some close calls, especially as the convoy made its way toward Baghdad. In one skirmish, Massey heard a bullet fly by just a few feet from his head. In another, he could see bullets scuff up dirt right in front of his feet, just like in the movies. One day, he found bullet holes in his truck.
Incorrect intelligence once led Massey to a river island called Enuminea, supposedly home to a terrorist training camp. The camp was abandoned, but Massey spent the night in a jasmine-scented children?s park.
?We were led to believe they were going to put up a tremendous fight,? said Massey, ?but we basically walked into the country and took over. It was like lambs to the slaughter.?
The march to Baghdad took just two weeks. One day, on the outskirts of town, Massey was ordered to set up a roadblock. His company?s six Humvees were staggered in parallel lines along each side of the road, splayed out slightly to face oncoming traffic. Soldiers aimed at oncoming cars, but also toward civilian buildings alongside the road.
Sharpshooters hid back a ways. Vehicles approached the roadblock and were searched. Too often, vehicles approached the roadblock but didn?t stop. Soldiers fired warning shots toward the vehicles. If that didn?t work, said Massey, ?then we lit it up.? Some vehicles didn?t stop, said Massey, because the drivers might have fashioned themselves kamikazes, though none of the vehicles Massey searched were ever found to have explosives in them the way suicide bombers will often pack their cars. Other vehicles were stolen, their drivers running from the law. Other no-stops were pure mystery.
In one suburban roadblock, Massey and company were set up when a red Kia Spectra sped toward them at about 45 mph. Soldiers sighted the car and fired a warning volley above it, but still the car came. Soldiers aimed at the car and fired with their full force, said Massey.
The car made it past the first two Humvees. Massey was in the second row. For just an instant, he said, he made eye contact with the driver. The Kia had four men in it. Massey fired and Marines around him joined in. The Kia came to a rest right in front of him, three of the four men shot dead.
It?s that sight of the driver which has haunted Massey all these months.
Marines pulled the three bodies out of the car and threw them alongside the road for Iraqi medical crews to retrieve. The survivor, the front seat passenger, was wailing and screaming. His brother had been the driver. He was injured but taken to the curb to await medical attention.
?He looked up at me and said, ?Why did you kill my brother? We didn?t do anything.??
In war, who dies?
Massey came to believe that most of the time when he shot to kill, he was killing civilians. What he saw disturbed him. On April 15, in Karbala, Massey went to his commanding officer. He was depressed, he told the officer. He was not an effective leader anymore, he said.
?I?m having issues,? he told his commanding officer. ?I?m having a hard time.? The commanding officer sent him to a Navy psychiatrist. The drive to the doctor took him three hours. The session, 30 minutes. Massey was feeling normal feelings, the doctor said.
?You have every right to feel the way you feel,? the doctor told him.
But did he, Massey wondered? Civilians might be sickened by the killing, but a Marine is not supposed to be. ?I was the ultimate war machine, all blood and guts. I was embarrassed. I was supposed to be able to handle it.?
The psychiatrist asked Massey if he wanted to kill himself. He didn?t.
The psychiatrist asked Massey if he wanted to hurt himself or other individuals. He didn?t. The psychiatrist diagnosed Massey as depressed and suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He recommended Massey leave the battlefield immediately. He wrote his report and sealed it in a manila envelope.
Massey returned to his base and handed the envelope to his commanding officer, then went to bed.
In the morning Massey was called into the commanding officer?s room. He was not cut out to be an officer in the Marines, the superior told him.
?He told me, ?You?re a poor leader,? ?You?re faking it,? ?You?re a conscientious objector,? ?You?re a wimp,?? said Massey. ?You don?t respond to that. You just stand there and take it. But my sanity was not worth the U.S. Marine Corps.?
Massey went back to his bunk and packed up. He handed in his documents and his papers. All weapons were taken from him even though the psychiatrists said he was not a threat to himself or other Marines.
He was sent to an abandoned school in Karbala and told to wait there. Two days later, a car came and picked him up.
The trip south, back to LSA-7, took three days and routed him through every town the Americans had destroyed on their way north. Massey spent two weeks at LSA-7, ?sleeping the whole time,? he said, before he was taken to Kuwait and later to California.
?I can?t blame the military for sending me home,? he said.
What he does blame them for is taking his weapons even though he was being sent on a dangerous trip across southern Iraq. Before he left, an officer told him there was a 90-percent chance his convoy would be attacked.
?It?s like,? he said, ?they were trying to punish me.?
A soldier discharged
In California, Massey?s medical history was put before a review board. Two camps argued over his future. One group thought Massey should be given a medical retirement. Another thought he could continue to serve in a limited capacity. Massey told a doctor he was sick and the only way to cure his sickness was to be released from duty.
Massey drove to Palm Springs and paid $200 for a half-hour session with a private psychiatrist, who reconfirmed what the original doctor had said.
He then went to see a respected civilian pastor who was a World War II veteran and a former clinical psychologist and told him what happened.
?Am I a conscientious objector?? asked Massey. No, said the pastor.
Had Massey been termed an objector, he could have gone to jail, he said. There arose questions about disability and retirement payments, so Massey hired a lawyer, the same one who defended American soldiers after the Mai Lai attack in Vietnam. On Nov. 14, orders came that he was discharged on a medical retirement. Within 24 hours, Massey was on the road home.
Back when he was waiting to leave Kuwait, Massey phoned a friend in Waynesville, Jackie Grooms. A few days later, waylaid at an airport in Germany, he called her again to say he was on his way home.
Upon his release from the armed forces, he drove straight from California to Haywood County. He asked Grooms to marry him, rented an apartment at Lake Junaluska and was hired as a sales manager at Rent-A-Center in Clyde.
He quit dipping tobacco ? in fact he quit almost every habit he picked up after 12 years in the military. He?s started a new life now ? one without the Marines.
Why war?
?With the events that happened over in Iraq,? says Massey now, ?it is a constant struggle, day by day, just remembering the events. It never leaves you. You never forget about it.? The image of that driver, and his brother wailing alongside the road, he said, is burned into his mind.
?Some of the civilians that were killed,? he said, ?you just never forget about it.?
While Massey does not question the duty of the Marine Corps, he does question the very foundation of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
?Marines are trained to do one thing, and that is to meet the enemy on the battlefield,? he said. ?When you don?t know who the enemy is, you don?t know whether that person you just shot was actually the enemy. All of them.?
Massey thinks his platoon could have been responsible for as many as 30 civilian deaths. ?What you can ask is, were they combatants or non-combatants,? he said. ?That is a way to phrase it so people don?t get a squeamish feeling. I would say 75 percent of all the individuals we came in contact with were non-combatants.?
In California, before he even left for Kuwait, Massey?s company was trained to shut down oil fields. Why, he wonders. What kind of premeditated war would train soldiers to secure oil fields?
?The people in Iraq were definitely suffering,? he said. ?And there is no question in my mind Saddam was a dictator. But the way we did it, just going in there and invading, it raises questions. Was it for oil? Or was it for humanitarian reasons??
The British spent decades trying to rule the country and failed, said Massey. Why do Americans think they can do in two years what the Brits could never do?
?It just leaves a question in my mind: Were we there to help them or were we there to take over a country for our own personal gain? i.e., oil.?
Zebo
Elite Member
Either you are a troll or a compete fool.
Have you forgotten the latest reason(s) president Bush gave for the invasion? To free and bring democracy to the iraqi people? Not blowing them to smitherins for comminication breakdowns.
Before we were just fighting a few insurgents but with meat headed people like you who want to fill all with lead we probably soon be fighting them all, if were not already. Have you ever seen a full riot? A full population of 30+ million working against you? Plotting against you? That's exactly what's going to happen with "tactics" like this.
Well it worked for Saddam did'nt it...mass graves..hard core indiscriminate killing of towns... but what's the point of this whole excercise then?
TastesLikeChicken
Lifer
Yeah:
http://armor.typepad.com/basta...4/06/jimmy_massey.html
Apparently another goon turned to loon.
DashRiprock
Member
OT - How many here citing genocide and outrage are Pro-Abortion? Killing is killing, in the womb or out! Where's the outrage?
TheGameIs21
Golden Member
This is a war. You obviously don't understand what it's like to be in this situation. They don't drive up with a sign on the car/van/truck saying HEY!!! "SHOOT ME, I'M LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES!!!" These people are driving up and setting off the explosives with no warning to anyone in the area.
The people driving have many opportunities to see what needs to be done. This isn't Genocide and it isn't abunch of mindless killing. This is Military People standing in a checkpoint with plenty of signs around telling drivers what they need to do. It's a shame but it is also war. Get over your "holier than thou" attitude.
In regards to your other examples... I am not saying that we were right... I am saying that we only know a small part of the story. The wedding party has been proven to be very suspicious at best. I hate that innocent people have died in this conflict but that is unavoidable and the US has done MUCH to try to prevent innocent deaths.
Wow, I have 3 family members that have been in Iraq. All 3 support Bush in his efforts. There are always going to be these "Kerry's" (remember when he came back from Vietnam?) during war.
I personally believe this guy is lying...
Raising your hand here also means "Hello". But there is a distinct difference in stopping vehicles and waiving at someone.
In Israel, they are doing these same things. My brother, and parents were in Israel this past Summer. There were numerous times where armed men were stopping the vehicles and then were briefly searching the car.
Before you went into every restraunt, store, hotel, etc, purses and bags were checked and you were patted down.
There is no doubt in my mind that had they rushed passed those 'stops' the same thing would have happened to them. And undoubtedly, anyone with a little common sense would be aware of what the situation was about. Safety of our soldiers comes first and foremost in my opinion. It is unfortunate soem civilians have been killed in the process.
I personally believe this guy is lying...
Raising your hand here also means "Hello". But there is a distinct difference in stopping vehicles and waiving at someone.
In Israel, they are doing these same things. My brother, and parents were in Israel this past Summer. There were numerous times where armed men were stopping the vehicles and then were briefly searching the car.
Before you went into every restraunt, store, hotel, etc, purses and bags were checked and you were patted down.
There is no doubt in my mind that had they rushed passed those 'stops' the same thing would have happened to them. And undoubtedly, anyone with a little common sense would be aware of what the situation was about. Safety of our soldiers comes first and foremost in my opinion. It is unfortunate soem civilians have been killed in the process.
packmule
Senior member
I never mentioned Bush or why we were in Iraq (My feelings there might surprise you)
1) please remember that once our troops were put in Iraq they were in a war zone.
2) holding your hands up and yelling stop, halt or woah while holding a rifle does not mean hello in any language.
3) I dont drink the Koolaid from the conservatives or the liberals, I choose to have my own opinions
So I say to you... Put the koolaid down and step away from the keyboard.
Have a good day.
[/quote]
Either you are a troll or a compete fool.
Have you forgotten the latest reason(s) president Bush gave for the invasion? To free and bring democracy to the iraqi people? Not blowing them to smitherins for comminication breakdowns.
Before we were just fighting a few insurgents but with meat headed people like you who want to fill all with lead we probably soon be fighting them all, if were not already. Have you ever seen a full riot? A full population of 30+ million working against you? Plotting against you? That's exactly what's going to happen with "tactics" like this.
Well it worked for Saddam did'nt it...mass graves..hard core indiscriminate killing of towns... but what's the point of this whole excercise then?
[/quote]
1) please remember that once our troops were put in Iraq they were in a war zone.
2) holding your hands up and yelling stop, halt or woah while holding a rifle does not mean hello in any language.
3) I dont drink the Koolaid from the conservatives or the liberals, I choose to have my own opinions
So I say to you... Put the koolaid down and step away from the keyboard.
Have a good day.
[/quote]
Either you are a troll or a compete fool.
Have you forgotten the latest reason(s) president Bush gave for the invasion? To free and bring democracy to the iraqi people? Not blowing them to smitherins for comminication breakdowns.
Before we were just fighting a few insurgents but with meat headed people like you who want to fill all with lead we probably soon be fighting them all, if were not already. Have you ever seen a full riot? A full population of 30+ million working against you? Plotting against you? That's exactly what's going to happen with "tactics" like this.
Well it worked for Saddam did'nt it...mass graves..hard core indiscriminate killing of towns... but what's the point of this whole excercise then?
[/quote]
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