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Illustration:
The Decider meets with his brain trust to shore up support with his neo-con base.
As we continue our slide down the razor blade of life[i] and continue to notice the absurd events surrounding the Decider, some bright incidents are worth noting.
Michael Moore appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer (who is an enigma in himself) and Moore sliced him up quite nicely, asking for an apology from him for his endorsement of the war in Iraq. He then appeared on Larry King and sliced up Dr. Sanjay Gupta to all accounts. Of course, he did make Mr. Blitzer look very incompetent, but I am not sure how much credit he should get for that as David Duke was able to do the same a few months ago.
I am posting an item by Keith Olbermann, one of the few people on mainstream media who is tolerable, but must offer a caveat. I was concerned at first as to whether it was copyrighted and whether MSNBC would allow this repost. I checked their legal statement line by line, but was unable to interpret it, although it did clearly prohibit one from distributing software from their site. I decided to post it in complete ignorance of their real concerns and, if they object, and simply post a note in the comments link at the bottom of this entry, I will remove it immediately. Those of you who know him or are familiar with him realize that Keith would not mind himself, but then he speaks English, not legalese. He also confirms a belief I have held for a long time. Journalists should be required have a background in sportscasting as they do not call foul balls home runs, although newscasters indulge in a similar practice daily as a matter of policy (it may be a part of their job description). I thank the reader who forwarded it to me as their site did not like my software configuration. (It is possible that Bill Gates has something to do with this as the site is a joint venture between General Electric and Microsoft.)
Also included as a transcript of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. She followed up on a story published this week by the Nation magazine. It contains interviews with our soldiers who were acting in our name, or God’s name (which amounts to the same thing), in Iraq. It clearly explains why we have gained so much gratitude from Bin Laden as we have contributed more to his recruitment efforts than any other single cause. A new video tape by his second in command seems to make this point, but only very brief snippets (how does one spell that word?) have appeared on our media or the BBC or Deutsche Welle.
Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign
‘I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.’
|
| MSNBC video |
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
Updated: 7:13 p.m. CT July 3, 2007
| |
“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
That—on this eve of the 4th of July—is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust—a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
Our generation’s willingness to state “we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job,” was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison—at the Constitutional Convention—said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish—the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens—the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing—or a permanent Democratic majority—is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate—instantaneously—became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting—in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one—and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org
The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of
Attacks on Iraqi Civilians
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/12/1335208
The Nation magazine has published a startling new expose of fifty
American combat veterans of the Iraq War who give vivid on-the-record
accounts of the US military occupation in Iraq and describe a brutal
side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in
newspaper accounts. The investigation marks the first time so many
on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been
assembled in one place to openly corroborate assertions of
indiscriminate killings and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq.
We speak with the article?s co-author, journalist Laila Al-Arian, and
four Iraq veterans who came forward with their stories of war. [includes
rush transcript]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As debate continues in Congress over the Iraq war, the Pentagon says it
is probing new allegations of wrongdoing during the US military assault
on Fallujah three years ago. U.S. Marines are said to have killed as
many as eight unarmed Iraqi prisoners when U.S. forces attacked Fallujah
in November of 2004. The Marine unit under investigation is the same
involved in the killing of twenty-four civilians in Haditha in 2005,
where after an IED exploded killing a marine, his unit rampaged through
several neighboring houses and killed twenty-four civilians.
This comes as The Nation magazine publishes a startling new *expose
paints a disturbing picture of the effects of the four-year-old
occupation on average Iraqi civilians. Over the course of several
months, The Nation magazine interviewed fifty American combat veterans
of the Iraq War. The soldiers gave vivid on-the-record accounts of the
US military occupation in Iraq and described a brutal side of the war
rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.
The Nation investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record,
named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in
one place to openly corroborate assertions of indiscriminate killings
and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq.
The cover story is titled *?The Other War: Military Veterans Speak on
the Record about Attacks on Iraqi Civilians.?
journalists Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian write: ?The war the vets
described is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a
powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and
occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war
on Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.?
Today we spend the hour with Iraq war veterans around the country who
tell their stories of war.
* * Laila Al-Arian*. Co-author of the Nation article, ?The Other
War: Military Veterans Speak on the Record about Attacks on Iraqi
Civilians.? She is a writer with the Nation Institute?s
Investigative Fund.
* * Sgt. John Bruhns*. Served in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib with the
Third Brigade, First Armor Division, First Battalion, for one year
beginning in April 2003.
* * Spc. Garett Reppenhagen*. Cavalry scout and sniper with the
263rd Armor Battalion, First Infantry Division, who was deployed
to Baquba for a year in February 2004.
* * Staff Sgt. Timothy John Westphal*. Served on the outskirts of
Tikrit for a yearlong tour with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade,
First Infantry Division, beginning in February 2004.
* * Sgt. Dustin Flatt*. Served with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade,
First Infantry Division, for one year beginning in February 2004.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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*JUAN GONZALEZ: *As debate continues in Congress over the Iraq war, the
Pentagon says it is probing new allegations of wrongdoing during the US
military assault on Fallujah three years ago. US Marines are said to
have killed as many as eight unarmed Iraqi prisoners when US forces
attacked Fallujah in November of 2004. The Marine unit under
investigation is the same involved in the killing of twenty-four
civilians in Haditha in 2005, where after an IED exploded killing a
marine, his unit rampaged through several neighboring houses and killed
twenty-four civilians.
This comes as /The Nation/ magazine publishes a startling new expose
that paints a disturbing picture of the effects of the four-year-old
occupation on average Iraqi civilians. Over the course of several
months, /The Nation/ magazine interviewed fifty American combat veterans
of the Iraq War. The soldiers gave vivid on-the-record accounts of the
US military occupation and described a brutal side of the war rarely
seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.
/The Nation/ investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record
named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in
one place to openly corroborate assertions of indiscriminate killings
and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq.
*AMY GOODMAN: *The cover story is titled "The Other War: Military
Veterans Speak on the Record about Attacks on Iraqi Civilians." In it,
journalists Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian write, "The war the vets
described is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a
powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and
occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war
on Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.?
Today, we spend the hour with Iraq war vets around the country who will
tell their stories of war. Sergeant John Bruhns served in Baghdad and
Abu Ghraib for one year, beginning in April 2003. Specialist Garett
Reppenhagen was a cavalry scout and sniper with the First Infantry
Division and was deployed to Baquba for a year in February 2004. They
both join us from Washington, D.C. And here in our firehouse studio
we?re joined by Laila Al-Arian, co-author of /The Nation/ article,
writer with the Nation Institute?s Investigative Fund.
Before we go to the soldiers around the country, Laila, talk about the
scope of this investigation. When did you begin it?
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *We began this instigation in July of 2006, so about a
year ago. And we conducted interviews over the course of seven months,
and we spoke with fifty combat vets about their experiences. And we
decided because the war is such a vast enterprise, as you mentioned, we
decided to really focus on just a few snapshots of the war, the
flashpoints of violence. So we looked at convoys, which run throughout
the country, checkpoints, which are also all over Iraq. We also looked
at home raids and detentions of Iraqis and also the overall perception
of Iraqis, the demonization of them in the military.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And how were you able to recruit the soldiers who would
talk to you and agree to be interviewed on the record?
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *We initially approached veterans organizations. We
approached Iraq Veterans Against the War and also Iraq and Afghanistan
Veterans of America. And through them, we were put in touch with many
veterans who were willing to speak about their experiences. And from
then on, it really became word-of-mouth. People would refer us to their
friends. And that's how we went about it. It wasn't an easy process.
*AMY GOODMAN: *And how many soldiers did you talk to? How did you
document what they said?
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *We spoke with forty soldiers, eight Marines and two
sailors. We tape-recorded every conversation, every interview we had,
and we transcribed them into thousands of pages of transcripts. And from
then on, we began the process of writing the piece. But, for us, it was
very important to have all of these interviews on the record.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *In your article, you mention that there was a recent
report by, I think it was, the Army Surgeon General talking about the
attitudes of -- general attitudes that they have found of American
soldiers toward Iraqi civilians. Could you talk about that?
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *Yes. Interestingly, that report came after we began
our own reporting. So, to us, it really confirmed what we saw through
our reporting. The report stated that 47% of soldiers and 38% of Marines
said that Iraqis should be treated with dignity, and only 55% of
soldiers and 40% of Marines said that they would turn in a friend in the
military who basically killed or injured an unarmed Iraqi combatant. And
that really confirmed what we found in our piece.
*AMY GOODMAN: *We?re going to go now to Washington, D.C. to speak with
two of the soldiers: Sergeant John Bruhns, again, serving in Baghdad and
Abu Ghraib with the Third Brigade, First Armored Division, First
Battalion, for one year beginning in April of 2003; and Specialist
Garett Reppenhagen, with the Cavalry, scout and sniper with the 263rd
Armor Battalion, First Infantry Division, deployed to Baquba.
Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, let's begin with you. Tell your story,
what you saw, what you experienced, what you participated in.
*SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: *Well, you know, I was a sniper, and I
operated in the Diyala province, which is a pretty active region right
now. And the thing about the article is, all those stories are very much
true. Those things happened. The situation is that most soldiers, most
Marines are professional soldiers, they?re professional Marines, and
they?re going to do their job to the best of their ability. And,
unfortunately, Iraq is a very complex, untraditional battlefield, and
it's very difficult to operate in that terrain and not have civilian
casualties and not have these, you know, these incidents occur, because
we?ve developed very brutal techniques to be able to operate safely and
conduct our missions in that theater, and ultimately the soldiers are
going to stick together. We feel very much like we?re out there and all
we have to look for, you know, to protect ourselves is each other. And
the bottom line is, you know, we want to come home alive, we want to
come home safe, and we?re going to conduct ourselves as the best of our
ability to do that, and sometimes that means that, you know, innocent
civilians, Iraqi people, are going to get in the way, and they're going
to get hurt.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Well, Specialist Reppenhagen, in reading the article
and the accounts, what most struck me was the massive number of searches
that were being conducted of individual homes in the middle of the night
and the enormous psychological impact this had on those people, who,
when a group of soldiers burst into their home in the middle of the
night, were not -- had nothing to do with the insurgency, obviously, and
the impact on them. Could you talk about that and the impact on you
being involved in those kinds of raids?
*SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: *The house raids were a very difficult piece
of my experience in Iraq. We conducted a lot of house searches. And, you
know, we felt we had to. We didn?t have the initiative in Iraq. The US
military, nine times out of ten, are on the defensive. We?re being
attacked, and combat is usually initiated by the enemy. So a lot of
times we?re just -- we?re searching homes. We?re going on whims, hoping
that we can catch the Iraqis, the ones who are trying to do the US
forces harm. And, you know, we search a lot of houses. We kick in the
doors, and we separate the people.
And, you know, we had a checklist where we went through -- did they have
contraband? Yes/no. If they did, we apprehended them, and we would put a
bag over their head and marked it with an ?A.? You know, did they have
an identification card? If they didn?t, we?d mark them with a ?B,? we
take them. If they didn?t belong in that house, if they didn?t live in
that house, we?d mark them with a ?C,? and we?d take them. So we take a
lot of these people out of their homes. And a lot of these people, we
push out through the chain of command, and they get interrogated, and
they get pushed up further. And a lot of these people never make it home
the following day or ever again.
So it?s very difficult. It?s hard to see the people, to go into their
homes, especially when you know that most of the time you have bad
intelligence and you?re raiding a house that usually the people inside
are innocent and have nothing to do with the insurgency or any harm to
US soldiers.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *About how many houses do you estimate, roughly, that
you participated in raids of during your tour there?
*SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: *Well, I can only guess. I?m thinking about
thirty -- probably around thirty houses are ones that I raided
personally. I was involved in cordons on the outer edges of a lot of
these raids, where I didn?t actually go into any of the houses, I just
pulled security on the outside. A lot of my sniper missions, I did
overwatch and just stayed in a heightened position and gave intelligence
to the people on the ground. So, you know, I saw a lot of them, but I
was only actually entered probably about thirty houses myself.
*AMY GOODMAN: *And the response of the families whose homes you raided?
Were they able to understand what you were saying? And your feelings
when you would go into someone's home?
*SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: *Most of the time we didn?t have interpreters
with us, so, no, there was a huge miscommunication, really problems with
the language barrier. A lot of times we found that once we started these
raids, we would get to the second or third house, and the family would
be awake, the lights would be on, the men and women would already be
separated. The men would have their shoes on. They would be dressed and
ready to go and be taken by the US military. So they got almost
accustomed to it. And it was constantly -- you could see the frustration
on their faces, the anger, the sadness, the worry, the fear. You know,
it was very hard to see the faces of the Iraqi people when you took
their family members away.
*AMY GOODMAN: *We're going to break, and we?re going to come back to
this discussion and also speak with Sergeant John Bruhns, who was at Abu
Ghraib and in Baghdad beginning in April of 2003.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *Our guest in studio in New York is Laila Al-Arian, who
together with Chris Hedges wrote the cover story of /The Nation/
magazine this week, interviewing scores of Army war veterans from Iraq
talking about their experiences. We are joined in Washington, D.C. by
Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, as well as John Bruhns, Sergeant John
Bruhns, who served in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib with the Third Brigade,
First Armored Division, First Battalion, beginning in April of 2003.
Sergeant Bruhns, talk about your experience. You participated in how
many raids?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *Well, Amy, thank you very much for having me on. I
just want to make one small correction. I invaded Iraq on day one, March
19th of 2003, so I just want to, you know, make sure I put that in the
record. So, having --
*AMY GOODMAN: *What was that first day like?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *It was very confusing. You know, we were -- in my
unit, along with 150,000 other soldiers, were massed on the border of
Kuwait and Iraq. And finally, our commander said, ?OK, go,? and we went
into Iraq. And we went into the southern Iraqi desert, and it took days
to find civilization.
And at that point in time I had a lot of reservations, because I was
looking around, and I saw 150,000 troops making their way to Baghdad in
the open desert, and here?s President Bush, and he?s accusing Saddam
Hussein of having a massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction,
possibly a nuclear weapon, saying that he?s a homicidal dictator
addicted to these weapons and we have to stop him now. And I was
thinking to myself, I said, you know, what would be a better time for
Saddam Hussein to use these weapons? He has 150,000 troops in the
southern Iraqi desert, and he could launch these weapons on us directly
and kill nobody but us.
So it was very frightening, especially because our military commanders
were telling us that he has these weapons, this is his last stand, we?re
coming to kill him, to take over his government, and he will use these
weapons. And we were anticipating at least 50,000 casualties that day.
That?s what we were being told. So it was very frightening.
But once I started to make it into populated areas and the weapons were
not used at a time that was ripe for Saddam Hussein to use them, I just
-- I totally came to the -- I was completely convinced that President
Bush either made a complete and total incompetent decision to go to war
or he deliberately misled us into war.
*AMY GOODMAN: *The number of raids you were involved with?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *The number of raids I was involved with, I estimate
probably about a thousand. What we would do -- how these raids would
occur and why we would go on the raids is this: let's say there?s a
roadside bomb, an IED goes off in our sector one day, and then the next
day there?s an RPG attack, and then the day after there are some
sporadic gunfire at US troops. Well, a battalion commander reasonably
would call a mission, and he would say, ?You know, let's go into the
sector. We?ll quarantine it, and we won?t let anybody in or out. And
we?ll send the infantry in, and we?ll do cordons and searches,? which
are raids, ?and we?ll go house to house, and we?ll look for weapons,
we?ll look for bomb-making material, we?ll look for anti-US propaganda,
any intelligence at all that would lead to the insurgency.?
So you go there in the middle of the night, and you want to catch them
-- you want to catch the Iraqis off guard. So you enter the house fast
and furious. You kick down the door, and you run upstairs, and you get
the man of the house and you get him out of bed, and his wife is laying
next to him. It?s Baghdad, it?s July, it?s August. His wife sometimes
may be exposed, because of her night garments in the middle of the
night, which is humiliating for that woman and for that man and for that
family. And you separate the man from his wife, and if he has children,
you put his family in a room, and, you know, you put two soldiers on the
door, outside the door, to make sure that his family stays in that room.
And then you get -- we had interpreters, so we would take interpreters
with us throughout the house. And we would have the man of the house,
and we would interrogate him over and over again. ?Who are the
insurgents? Do you know who they are? Are you with them?? And, you know,
basically we would tear his house apart. We would, you know, take his
bed, turn that upside-down, dump his closets, his drawers, if he had
them. I mean, just anything.
And I would say eight out of ten times we never really found any
intelligence at all within these homes that would lead us to believe
that these people were members of the insurgency. What they were was
just Iraqis in their own communities. And we came in there, and we came
in uninvited. And I believe -- and I don?t blame this on the US military
at all. I don?t. I blame this on George Bush. But when you?re involved
in a military operation like that, you enter these homes as if you?re
going after the enemy, as if you?re going after bin Laden himself, when,
for the most part, they're just families living in their homes, trying
to get a night's rest before they get up and go to work in the morning,
if there is work for them. And it?s just -- I believe that this created
a lot of resentment among the Iraqi people, causing them to join a
resistance movement against US and coalition forces in Iraq.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And the impact on you and your fellow soldiers of
having to conduct these constant raids and realizing that many of the
people that you were dealing with were perfectly innocent? Did you -- in
your times when you were off duty, did you talk about it among
yourselves? And what kind of conversations? And the impact that it had
on you psychologically?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *Well, it had a tremendous psychological impact on
me, because, you know, a lot of these raids and a lot of these cordon
and searches did not -- you know, they were not very productive. Now,
there were times when we did catch people that we would, you know, label
so-called terrorists. But like I said, for the most part they were just
Iraqis, Iraqi people, Iraqi families in their communities, you know,
carrying on their daily activities, their lives. And we would go in
there and disrupt their lives and make life difficult for them in our
hunt for an unidentifiable enemy. That?s the problem.
When you?re in Iraq, you do not know who the enemy is. They know who you
are. If you?re on a patrol in a market and somebody opens fire on you
and the US military, I mean, if we respond -- if we return fire in that
direction with overwhelming firepower and, let's say, a
thirteen-year-old girl gets killed, you?re just going to have to assume
right then and there that her father and her brother and her uncles --
they're not going to say, you know, Saddam was a bad guy and thank the
United States for coming in here and liberating us. They?re going to
say, ?If the United States never came here, my daughter would still be
alive.? And that?s going to cause them to join the resistance. And when
they do join the resistance, President Bush says, ?They?re al-Qaeda.
They?re al-Qaeda.? But they?re not. They?re just regular Iraqi people
who feel occupied, and they?re reacting to an occupation.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Sergeant Bruhns, talk about the day you were sent into a
house that you believed there were Syrian terrorists or insurgents inside?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *Yes, ma?am. Well, we were -- my squad leader called
a meeting and said that he had gotten word from the company commander
that there was a Syrian resistance movement within a home in our sector
and that there were Syrian terrorist fighters in the house and that what
we were going to do was that our squad was going to, you know, basically
kick in the front door and go in and apprehend these Syrians, who
supposedly were in there with weapons waiting to shoot at us. And that
just didn?t sound right to me.
And it was getting very close to the time that I was supposed to be
leaving Iraq. So I said to my -- I was the -- see, when you have an
infantry squad, you?ll have your squad leader, then you?ll have Alpha
Team, and you?ll have Bravo Team. I was Alpha Team leader, and my job
was to go in the front door, arrest the Syrians, while Bravo Team
conducted the cordon outside. So I said to my squad leader, I said,
?Hey, you know what?? I said, ?If you?re so sure and if our commander is
so sure that there is a Syrian resistance movement in this home, I?m
going to go in there, and I?m -- I mean, if you?re just going to send me
through the front door two or three weeks before I?m going to go home,
I?m going to shoot everybody in there. I mean, if you?re going to put me
in that situation, they?re not -- they?re probably not likely to --
they?re probably unlikely to be willing to turn themselves in.? And
they?re like, ?No, they're in there, and we have to get them.? So I
sarcastically said, ?Well, you know what? You might as well just pull a
Bradley up to the front of the house and fire a TOW missile through the
front window, if you?re that sure.? Like I said, I said that sarcastically.
And when the raid went down -- and I actually was selected to stay
outside that night, because my squad leader could tell that I really
wasn?t too happy about the intelligence report that we received -- they
sent in a different team. And when they went inside, it was just a
family. There was an old man inside, a few children and a woman. There
were no Syrians.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And, Garett, a final comment from you. I?d like to ask
you, this whole issue of an occupation force -- you have a situation
where United States soldiers obviously, from a religious standpoint,
racially, linguistically, have nothing in common with the Iraqis that
they are there supposedly to protect. Could you talk about that sense of
being totally a fish out of water in Iraq?
*SPC. GARETT REPPENHAGEN: *Well, I mean, it was obvious, you know, that
the majority of US soldiers do not fit in. I mean, the military, US
military, is made up of a lot of different people, and there are Iraqi
Americans in the US military, there?s Lebanese Americans, there?s a lot
of Middle Eastern Americans in the military, so some people do fit in.
But the majority of us, yeah, you know, we don?t speak the language. You
know, most of us are not Muslim. Most of us, you know, do not look Arabic.
So the contrast is very real, and the division, once you?re there and
you?re being told to give these people democracy and they?re shooting at
you and trying to kill you, it creates a lot of tension, and the
American soldiers begin to hate the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people hate
the American soldiers. And the bottom line is, we?re not seen as
peacekeepers. US forces in Iraq are no longer seen as peacekeepers by
the Iraqi people and most of the Muslim world. We?re seen as occupiers
and invaders, and that undermines our ability to keep the peace there,
it undermines our ability to do our jobs, and it undermines our national
security here at home. So right now it?s a very complex situation, and
the animosity is growing. And there?s no cure other than removing
ourselves from Iraq.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Final question to Sergeant John Bruhns: you were at the
news conference yesterday with Senator Harry Reid. What do you want to
happen right now? What do you want the US government to do, the Bush
administration, Congress?
*SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: *I would like Congress to draft binding bipartisan
legislation that requires President Bush to bring our troops out of
Iraq. This is a man that does not understand the meaning of the word
?bipartisanship.? We have to fight fire with fire when it comes to
President Bush. He?s stubborn. He refuses to acknowledge his mistakes.
And he?s in his own little world when it comes to Iraq.
So now, Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, has to do -- they
have to do their job. They have to carry out the will of the American
people. Over 70% of the American people want an end to this war. So my
message to Congress is: you can stand with Bush or you can stand with
the American people. Bring our troops home.
*AMY GOODMAN: *On that note, I want to thank you both very much for
being with us. We?re going to be heading to Denver next to speak with
some soldiers. Sergeant John Bruhns served in Baghdad with the Third
Brigade, First Armored Division, First Battalion; Specialist Garett
Reppenhagen, Cavalry scout and sniper with the 263rd Armor Battalion in
Iraq. This is /Democracy Now!/, democracynow.org, ?The War and Peace
Report.?
One of the soldiers quoted in /The Nation/ article is Sergeant Camilo
Mejia, a National Guardsmen from Miami who served in Iraq for six
months, beginning, yeah, April 2003. While on a two-week leave in the
US, Mejia refused to redeploy to Iraq. He was the first US soldier
court-martialed for desertion, was ultimately sentenced to a year in
jail. We interviewed him in March of 2005. Here, he describes a typical
US military raid on an Iraqi household.
*CAMILO MEJIA: *Well, you would get information on people setting
up improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs, and people
mortaring Army bases. And based on this intelligence, you would
set up -- you would come up with a plan and, depending on the size
of the target, you know, it could be down to a squad level all the
way up to a battalion level, and you would pretty much surround
the whole place and go in there, you know, set up a security
element, a casualty collection point, and then go in there with
your squad, depending on whatever mission you had, and just raid
the home. You go in there 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, put
everybody from the household in one room and then take the owner
of the house, who is usually a man, you know, all through the
house into every room, open every closet and everything and look
for weapons and look for, you know, literature against the
coalition. And then get your detainees and move out.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Could you read the literature?
*CAMILO MEJIA: *No. Because it was in Arabic. So it's really hard.
And the intel was really bad, too. Sometimes they would tell us,
you?re looking for a man, you know, who?s 5'7", dark skin, has a
beard, which is like about 90% of men in Iraq.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Sergeant Mejia also described the treatment of Iraqi
prisoners by the US military.
*CAMILO MEJIA: *[?] areas made by concertina wire, which is worse
than barbed wire, and they had military police units bringing in
detainees. And then you had what we call ?spooks? in the military,
which are people that no one knows who they are or where they come
from. They wear no unit patch or anything. And they pretty much
made an initial assessment, and they decided who was or who wasn't
an enemy combatant, and then we separated these people into
groups. And those who were deemed enemy combatants were kept on
sleep deprivation. And the way we did that was, when we arrived
there, we relieved another unit, and then they told us the easiest
way to do that is just by, you know, yelling at these people,
telling them to get up and to get down -- they were hooded
prisoners -- yell at them, tell them to get up and get down, let
them sleep for five seconds so they?ll get up disoriented, bang a
sledgehammer on a wall to make it sound like an explosion, scare
them, and if all of that fails then, you know, cock a 9mm gun next
to their ear, so as to make them believe that they?re going to be
executed. And then they will do anything you want them to do. And
in that manner, keep them up for periods of forty-eight to
seventy-two hours, in order to soften them up for interrogation.
And these were the kind of things that, you know, they were asking
the infantrymen to do.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Another soldier quoted in /The Nation/ article is Army
Reserve Specialist Aidan Delgado. He served in Iraq from April 2003 to
April 2004, where he was deployed in Nasiriyah and Abu Ghraib. Soon
after his arrival in Iraq, he sought conscientious objector status and
turned in his weapon. We interviewed him in December 2004. He described
witnessing US soldiers abusing in killing Iraqi detainees.
*AIDAN DELGADO: *I found some things that were just really
disturbing, like I discovered that the majority of prisoners at
Abu Ghraib weren't even insurgents. They weren't even there for
crimes against the coalition. They were there for petty crimes:
theft, public drunkenness. And they were here in this horrible,
extremely dangerous prison. That's when I began to feel, oh, my
God, I can't believe, you know, I'm participating in this. And
then there was sort of a series of demonstrations or prisoner
protests against the conditions, against the cold, against the
lack of food and the type of food. And the military's response to
these demonstrations was, I felt, extremely heavy-handed. I'm not
going to say it was illegal. I don't have the background to bring
a legalistic challenge, but I will say that it was immoral, the
amount of force they responded with. I mean, I think I shared some
images of prisoners beaten to within an inch of their life, or
dead, by the guards. And five prisoners that I know of were shot
dead during a demonstration for what amounted to throwing stones.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Aidan Delgado did get conscientious objector status.
Camilo Mejia served almost a year in jail. Before we go to break, Laila
Al-Arian, co-author of this almost full magazine piece in /The Nation/,
"The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness," your quick comment?
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *Following up on what Sergeant Mejia said about the
poor intelligence on which these raids were based, several of the
veterans told us that, in fact, on a number of occasions raids were
based on Iraqis trying to settle family feuds with each other. They
would approach the US soldiers and tell them that family members or
their neighbors were insurgents, and that would simply be enough to raid
a home. And in one case, a son told the soldiers that his father was an
insurgent, and they raided the middle-aged man?s home, and only to find
out that the son actually just wanted the father?s money that was buried
in the farm.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And you also -- some of the soldiers indicated that the
Army was paying for information -- right? -- so that there was also the
monetary incentive for people to give tips that may or may not be accurate.
*LAILA AL-ARIAN: *Definitely. That was something that also troubled some
of the soldiers.
*AMY GOODMAN: *We?re going to Denver after break to speak with two more
soldiers. This is /Democracy Now!/, democracynow.org, ?The War and Peace
Report.? Back in a minute.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *We turn now to two other soldiers, two other vets of the
Iraq war quoted in /The Nation/ article. Staff Sergeant Timothy John
Westphal served on the outskirts of Tikrit for a yearlong tour in Iraq.
Sergeant Dustin Flatt served with the 18th Infantry Brigade in Iraq also
for a year. They both served from February 2004 to February 2005,
joining us from Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver, Colorado. Juan?
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Yes. I?d like to begin with Sergeant Dustin Flatt.
We?ve been discussing a lot of the house raids that occurred by US
soldiers, but also many violent incidents occurred around convoys with
civilians. And in your interview, you talked about some very chilling
situations that you were involved in: deaths of innocent civilians as a
result of them coming into contact with US convoys. Could you talk about
that?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *Yes. The innocent deaths happened at different
times, different places and different occasions. Convoys were
commonplace. The only incident I have firsthand knowledge of was a
convoy that was actually not our convoy. It was a convoy had just driven
by us. And an Iraqi vehicle with a mother, three daughters and an older
teenage son who was driving the car were following a convoy too close.
It got too close, and they shot into the car. It was a warning shot, and
it ended up killing the mother. And they actually pulled the car over,
or the son pulled the car over right next to us, and we just happened to
be near a hospital in Mosul at the time. And the mother was obviously
dead, and the children were just crying and asking if they could
actually get into the hospital.
*AMY GOODMAN: *So the mother was dead. The three little girls, what
happened?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *Right. The three little girls, we just -- we took
them and just -- the last time I saw them they were on the side of the
road just crying. They had no idea what had just happened. And it was
funny -- it was with another unit -- it was a unit actually that we were
attached to in Mosul, and on the back of their last Humvee in the
convoy, they had a sign that read, "Stay back 100 meters." And after
that, we took our interpreter, our Iraqi interpreter, up to the sign to
see how far away he could read it, and he had to be within about thirty
or forty feet before he could read it.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *You also mentioned, I think, a checkpoint situation,
where an elderly couple was killed at a checkpoint, and then their
bodies were just left for several days, that you would drive back and
forth and you?d still see them there?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *Yes, depending on -- that happened in different
cities, too. Again, up in Mosul, there was an instance where one of our
platoons -- I think an elderly couple just stumbled upon one of our --
an area where some of our guys were, and they had gotten too close and
were driving, you know, just a little too fast, and that?s it.
You know, our rules of engagement -- we?ve got, you know, set rules that
you follow, you know, verbal commands, using signals, shooting warning
shots, and all of that happens very quickly when somebody?s coming at
you at fifty miles an hour, which I can see happening.
In any of these circumstances, I don?t necessarily fault the soldiers
who did it. I don?t think it?s -- they?ve been put in a place where they
have to make these split-second decisions on whether someone is a threat
or not. And in a place where you don?t understand anything and can?t
tell the difference between an enemy and just a regular civilian, I can
see where soldiers are making these decisions.
*AMY GOODMAN: *In both cases, Sergeant Dustin Flatt, in the case of the
mother being killed with her three little daughters in the car and the
case of this elderly couple, what was your response and the
conversations you were having with the other soldiers? How did this
affect you?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *I believe -- well, actually, we were part of a very
-- TJ and I were part of a very disciplined unit, or at least we believe
so. Our chain of command was fantastic. We very much admired them. We
talked about different things all the time and about our rules of
engagement and that sort of thing. And it got to a point -- at this
instance, actually, up in Mosul when we were attached to a different
unit that a different mentality, it was -- we didn?t come to blows, but
there were many times when it came close, when we were actually
screaming at each other, telling them to knock it off, that they were
just shooting indiscriminately at people. You know, I think that --
*AMY GOODMAN: *Like when?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *There were times when you were just driving down
the road, and another car -- just like we would in America -- would come
at an intersection, and they wouldn?t see you coming. You?d be in a
convoy of four Humvees. And, of course, everywhere you went you went at,
you know, at a pretty good clip. All of the sudden, a car would come up
on an intersection, and they would fire on a car just because they
approached the intersection. They would literally directly fire into the
vehicle.
There were times when we had to -- there was one specific time when the
Humvee in front of me from the other unit fired into this car, continued
to drive past it. We stopped right in front of it, jumped out to see if
the people inside were OK, because they were obviously of no threat. We
jumped out, looked. Windows were shattered by bullets. I grabbed the
guys inside and I grabbed our interpreter, and I?m screaming at him,
going, ?Ask them if they?re OK!? Somehow they lived through it. But the
fact that they just shot the car and continued to drive on was pretty
much a daily occurrence.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And when these accidents occur, and civilians are shot
or killed, what were the rules or the orders that you had, as to what
the responsibilities were of the soldiers who were involved with these
people who were shot or killed?
*SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: *I think with our specific company, we?d do whatever
it took to help the people in the first place. If there was any way that
we could evac them to a point to get medical attention, we would. It
depended on the circumstances at the time, too. If we had been in the
middle of battles or firefights at the time, I think it was a completely
different situation. You know, mission first, and then take care of the,
you know, collateral damage, I guess you could say, at that point. We
did our best to take care of the innocents. I don?t know about other
units. I had a completely different feeling about the unit we were
attached to in Mosul. Our other times in Tikrit or Samara or any other
place was usually with our unit, and our unit was very disciplined when
it came to that sort of thing.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I wanted to turn to Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal,
TJ Westphal, who served on the outskirts of Tikrit for a yearlong tour
with the 18th Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, beginning in
February of 2004. Talk about that summer night in 2004, the farmhouse
you raided.
*STAFF SGT. TIMOTHY JOHN WESTPHAL: *That summer night will stand out in
my mind for the rest of my life. That was really the turning point for
me, when I realized that our involvement in Iraq was something that I
wasn?t proud to be a part of. You know, you understand that as an
American soldier, we?re all volunteers. We love our jobs, we love our
country. We grew up watching John Wayne storm the beaches of Iwo Jima
and idolizing World War II heroes, and so forth. So there?s a tremendous
amount of pride that we all felt and that we all had in our jobs. And
for me, that eroded that summer night in Iraq.
I was the patrol group leader in charge of a raid, which we conducted on
an Iraqi farm. And it was the middle of the summer, very hot outside,
definitely over 100 degrees, had about forty or so guys. My particular
squad, our job was to jump the wall -- every Iraqi home has a wall -- my
job was to take our guys over the wall, infiltrate the compound. And
there were several houses within the farm compound. And we were told
that there were insurgents, bomb makers, living at this residence.
So my men and I jumped over the wall. There were fifteen or so other
guys outside pulling a cordon, or perimeter security. We went inside and
found a big -- basically a big cluster of people laying outside. And in
Iraq during the summer, many Iraqis sleep outside, because it?s just too
hot to sleep inside. We weren?t sure what to expect. We just saw a big
clump of bodies. It?s dark. There?s no exterior lighting in the
compound. So I told my guys to get their flashlights ready. All of our
flashlights are mounted on our weapons, so anywhere your flashlight is
pointed your weapon is pointed also. I had my guys surround the clump of
people who were sleeping outside and told them basically, ?On the count
of three, we?re going to light them up and see what we have under here.
Be prepared for anything. These guys could be armed. So just be on the
lookout.?
So I counted to three. I basically just kicked the clump of people there
to wake them up, turned on my flashlight, and all my guys did the same
thing. And my light happened to shine right on the face of an old man in
his mid-sixties. I found out later he was the patriarch of that family.
And as we scanned the cluster of people laying there, we saw two younger
military age men, probably in their early twenties. Everybody else --
I?d say there were about eight to ten other individuals -- were women
and children. We come to find out this was just a family. They were
sleeping outside.
The terror that I saw on the patriarch's face, like I said, that really
was the turning point for me. I imagined in my mind what he must have
been thinking, understanding that he had lived under Saddam's brutal
regime for many years, worried about -- you know, hearing stories about
Iraqis being carried away in the middle of the night by the Iraqi secret
service and so forth, to see all those lights, all those soldiers with
guns, all the uniform things that we wear, as far as the helmet, the
night vision goggles, very intimidating, very terrifying for the man. He
screamed a very guttural cry that I can still hear it every day. You
know, it was just the most awful, horrible sound I?ve ever heard in my
life. He was so terrified and so afraid for his family. And I thought of
my family at that time, and I thought to myself, boy, if I was the
patriarch of a family, if soldiers came from another country, came in
and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent, too.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And you say that that was a turning point for you. In
what way?
*STAFF SGT. TIMOTHY JOHN WESTPHAL: *It was a turning point for me in the
sense that -- you know, prior to going into Iraq, both Dustin and
myself, we talked about this many times in the days leading up to the
war. We came into Iraq after the initial invasion, so we had a chance to
see a little bit of the buildup to the war, as well as the actual
invasion piece. And several of us, including Dustin and myself, were
very much opposed to the Iraq war. However, we chose to go, number one,
out of a sense of loyalty to each other and our unit; second, because we
were hoping as leaders, as combat leaders, leaders of soldiers, we would
be able to influence those young men to make good decisions and not do
things like kill indiscriminately or let their emotions get into their
decision-making abilities. So that?s why we chose to go. And again,
because this is our profession, we were very proud of what we were
doing, even though we opposed the mission itself, are proud to serve
with our brothers and to be a part of something like that.
However, that night -- and that was about halfway through my yearlong
tour -- that night I really admitted to myself -- and it was a very hard
thing to do, but I admitted to myself that America is not the good guy
in this thing. And, you know, if you factor in that you have these young
men who most of them are high-school-educated -- some have a bit of
college, some do have college degrees -- but the education level, for
the most part, is high school graduates only.
*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And, Sergeant Westphal, we only have about thirty
seconds left. I?d like to ask you: you went in in February 2004. Did you
ever expect that we?d be in this situation now, more than three years
later?
*STAFF SGT. TIMOTHY JOHN WESTPHAL: *I never imagined that America would
ever get to this point. I never imagined that the American public would
be so apathetic as they have been, in my estimation. A lot of them don?t
listen to the stories we tell. There?s a reason that all these guys got
together for this article, because they have a commitment to the truth,
and we definitely want the truth to be out there, that America has
brought terror to the country of Iraq, and that?s something that we have
to deal with.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you think the US soldiers should be brought home now?
*STAFF SGT. TIMOTHY JOHN WESTPHAL: *Absolutely. You know, I support the
United States military. I?m a soldier. I always will be. I?m
tremendously proud of the men I served with. However, yes, I do believe
that we need to bring our troops home right now, because all we?re doing
is making more terrorists and more people who hate America.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I want to thank you both for being with us, Staff
Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, TJ Westphal, and Sergeant Dustin Flatt,
speaking to us from Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver Colorado. And that does
it for our broadcast. Also special thanks to Laila Al-Arian, who?s the
co-author with Chris Hedges of this magazine-long piece, ?The Other War:
Iraq Vets Bear Witness? in /The Nation/ magazine. Thank you for joining us.
www.democracynow.org
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