Medic Describes Scene of Rape/Murder-So Horrific Made Him Sick For 2 Wks

[kpete]

Iraqi Medic Describes Carnage
Testimony Begins in Hearing for U.S. Soldiers Accused of Rape

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 7, 2006; Page A12

BAGHDAD, Aug. 6 -- An Iraqi medic who responded to a home where U.S. soldiers allegedly raped and killed a teenage Iraqi girl and murdered her sister and parents described on Sunday a display of carnage so horrific he said it made him sick for two weeks.

In the opening day of testimony in a military hearing in Baghdad to determine whether there is enough evidence to hold a court-martial for five U.S. soldiers, the medic, whose name was withheld for security reasons, testified that he saw smoke when he arrived at the family's home in Mahmudiyah on the afternoon of March 12. Inside, on the floor of the living room by the window, a teenage girl lay dead on her back, her legs spread, her clothes torn off, her body burned from her waist to her head, a single bullet hole under her left eye, he said.

Her mother also lay dead on the floor with bullet wounds in her chest and abdomen, he said.

In another room, the medic found what remained of the girl's father in a pool of blood. "The brain was on the floor and parts of the head were all over the place," the medic said. Next to him was his other daughter, who was about 6years old. It appeared to him as if a bullet had "entered the front of her face and out the back of her head," he said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600803.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Military Training and Atrocities

Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree
Military Training and Atrocities

By Sgt. MARTIN SMITH, USMC (Ret.)

SNIP

Some of the Bushies and the Pentagon war planners attempt to camouflage the mounting war crimes and the staggering count of Iraqi dead by painting a rosy picture of how troops are giving candy to Iraqi children or rebuilding schools and hospitals in Afghanistan-even though the infrastructures of these countries were destroyed by U.S. bombs and firepower in the first place. Yet despite the deceptions and manipulations, the realities of the war are coming home. With almost 2,600 U.S. troops now dead and thousands more maimed and crippled, one thing is for certain. In this "dirty war," troops cannot tell friend from foe, leading to war crimes against a civilian population. It is also certain that, with our government promoting a campaign of lies and deception to justify its illegal actions (with the complicity of both parties in Washington), and with U.S. troops fighting to support a regime that lacks popular support and legitimacy, the war in Iraq will increasingly resemble another immoral and unjust war from a not so distant past.

The atrocities of Al-Mahmudiyah, Haditha, and Ishaqi resemble the war crimes committed by U.S. troops in the American War, the Vietnamese name for the conflict known in this country as the war in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968, members of Charlie Company murdered 347 unarmed men, women, and children in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Lt. William "Rusty" Calley became infamous as details emerged of how he herded some 100 Vietnamese into a ditch and machine-gunned them to death. When he saw a baby crawling away from the dead, he grapped the child by the leg and threw it back in the pit and opened fire. Vietnam is now infamous in the public memory as the "bad war," largely because a vocal anti-war movement opened a public space that allowed the exposure of war crimes, such as My Lai. The Winter Soldier Investigation, held in Detroit in 1971 by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, included the testimony of over one hundred veterans who testified about war crimes they had either witnessed or committed, including rape and torture.

Yet the comparisons to Vietnam extend beyond the massacre at My Lai. In fact, the dehumanization of the enemy and the callous disregard for human life exhibited in both Vietnam and Iraq travels in multiple directions. Atrocities were not only committed "in country" to Vietnam but were also exported to the U.S. from overseas. Recently, the finally released report by a special prosecutor on systematic police torture exposed what African American victims long knew, that Chicago police detectives during the seventies and eighties tortured nearly two hundred African Americans to gain coerced confessions. John Burge, the Joseph Goebbels of Chicago, practiced torture techniques on African Americans in the west side of Chicago for more than ten years and is now retired in Florida where he receives his full pension. He was also a Vietnam Veteran who served in the Ninth Military Police Company. Burge's instruments of torture included mock executions with pistols, a cow prod targeting the victim's genitals, and a black box that generated an electric shock when a crank was turned. In fact, this black box technique was the same device utilized by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, a field telephone that was jimmied into a torture method known by soldiers as "the Bell telephone hour." It is likely that Burge first honed his skills as master-torturer in the fields of Vietnam.

SNIP

Thus, given the massive scale of abuse committed by the U.S. from Vietnam to the Middle East and even within the criminal injustice system; and realizing the similarities between the inhumane conduct of the Steven Greens, the Lt. Calleys, and the Jon Burges-all military veterans, it is far time that we look far beyond the "bad apple" thesis. Because rather than a few bad apples, it is clear that the contents of the entire wretched barrel are, in fact, rotten. If the military is capable of producing "personalities" that kill babies, rape women, and torture the innocent, then what is responsible for the degradation and dissolution of these military personnel? How and why do U.S. soldiers lose their humanity? A closer examination of military recruit training may shed some light on these questions.

http://counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html

[snappyturtle]

2. I can't help but think that......

something "fed" to our soldiers turns some of them into monsters....what have we created? This is an OMG happening.....another good reason to bring our troops home.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. It's what they're fed mentally

From Sgt. Martin Smith's article linked above "Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree":

Training recruits to be "disciplined" and not a "mob" is based on removing civilian emotions of compassion so that troops accept their role of killing during combat. John R. Fabian, who served in the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam from 1969-1970, explains how drill instructors taught recruits to quash their feelings of compassion:

The day I went into the Army-I'll never forget that-I got to basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the senior drill instructor said, "You are not human being. You are animals." That stays with me. Everything they taught you was not to be a human being, to have compassion, to have feelings. If you had feelings and compassion, you are a shit soldier. As soon as you got rid of those things, the better off you were, those emotions.

The process of basic training is part of a structured environment so that troops replaced their civilian identity, which allowed a limited degree of emotional feelings, with an idealized military masculinity based on the denial of attachment and compassion.

http://counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. It is basic training

it is going into a situation where everybody wants to kill you and making situation normal out of this (which is war defined)... and it is also bad, as in very bad, leadership

When DOD says, it is a few bad apples, I have concluded it is projection... yes indeed it is a few bad apples who are at the top tier of the Pentagon and wear either stars or fancy titles. Troops misbehave badly when they are led badly... and they have been led very poorly since 9.11....

[me b zola]

4. Abeer

The teenage girl's name is Abeer. I feel compelled to say her name so that we will not forget.

Somehow it comforts me to know that the medic was ill for 2 weeks. It lets me know that the medic has kept his humanity through all of the madness that is Iraq. I feel horrible for knowing that he will carry those images with him always, but damn.



:cry:

[uppityperson]

5. Abeer, Hadeel, Fakhriya and Qassim

her little sister, mother and father too.

[me b zola]

15. Thank you, uppityperson

We should remember them all. :hug:

[derby378]

8. Thank you

Message to the troops: Her name was Abeer. Ignore her legacy at your own peril.

[ninkasi]

10. Thank you for speaking her name

Her name was Abeer, and she did not deserve her fate. She was blameless in starting this horrible war, and blameless in trying to simply living her life. For our troops to be acting in this barbaric manner is a shame and a disgrace.

I can not help but believe, though that the attitude of our illegal president, and his willing enablers in the Congress, have given a certain legitimacy to these soldier's actions. If the most powerful, and the most wealthy among us can feed lives into the destruction and death that is happening, why are we surprised when the least powerful troops feel bold enough to act out their sick fantasies?

[cali]

11. You don't seem to realize

that the medic is an Iraqi, with the Iraqi army, not an American.

[snappyturtle]

12. And...your point is??????????

I would hope that an American medic would feel the same.

[Toots]

13. So does that mean his word is not credible?

:shrug: Americans are very brutal people. They are fed a non-stop diet of violence and titilation on TV and Movies. A lot actually thrive on this type of behavior.

[cali]

14. WTF kind of idiotic question is that?

Of course not. It means that an Iraqi would naturally find the scene even more horrifying than an American or someone of a nationality other than Iraqi, though anyone of any fucking nationality should be utterly horrified by such a scene.

[Straight Shooter]

6. I would be sick, too.

Those images will never leave his mind. Never.

[BeHereNow]

7. And just think, soon they'll be living in your city...maybe next door

These soldiers will come home, eventually-
deranged and traumatized by this illegal and immoral
war, which means you might want to keep an eye
on your teenage daughters.

I am seriously considering a move to
the middle of no where with a friend who
has such a place.
Off the grid and lots of guns.
We are not safer, not by a long shot,
and now not only do we face the threat of
blowback from the neocon escapades in the ME,
I am seriously afraid of the likes of these soldiers
returning to roam the streets of America.

This country has gone bad; like a
fish in the sun for three days.
Stinking, putrid and covered in maggots.
What else could produce people who would
do something like this?

I am so ashamed to be an American right now.

BHN

[Hekate]

16. Tom Jefferson: I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just...

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Where is the honor in this fubar created by Bushco? :cry:

Hekate