Discussie: De slag om Mosul
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Oud 17 oktober 2016, 21:42   #48
TV-verslaafde
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Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door dalibor Bekijk bericht
Dat is waar. En er kan wel degelijk een nefast gevolg aan vastzitten voor ons in Europa.

Maar ik vind het wel erg cynisch als mensen hier de ellende die gewone mensen daar meemaken menen te moeten wegwuiven.
Dat moet niet weggewuifd worden, maar wij zijn ook het OCMW van de wereld niet. De US multinationals hebben die oorlogen bevolen en aangestuurd. Kunnen we even realistisch blijven?


Citaat:
Q: The most disturbing lines in your book are those in which you describe yourself as a psychopathic murderer. Could you explain why you said that?

A: I was a psychopathic murderer because I was trained to kill. I was not born with that mentality. It was the Marines that trained me to be a gangster in the interest of US corporations, a criminal. They trained me to fulfill, without thinking, the orders of the President of the United States and bring him what he asked for, without any moral consideration. I was a psychopath because we were trained to shoot first and ask later, as an insane person would act, not a professional soldier that is to face another soldier. If we had to kill women and children, we would do it; therefore, we were not soldiers, we were mercenaries.

Q: What specific experience of yours made you reach that conclusion?

A: Well, there were some of them. Our mission was to go to different cities and guarantee security in the roads. There was an accident in particular—and many others as well—which really put me in a serious situation. It was about a car with Iraqi civilians. All intelligence reports said that those cars had bombs and explosives on board. That was the information that we received. When those cars approached our areas we made warning shots; when they did not slow down to the speed we indicated, we would shoot at them without ceremony.

Q: You shot at them with your machineguns?

A: Yes, We expected to see explosions every time we riddle the cars with bullets; but we never heard or see an explosion. Then we opened the car and all we found was people killed or wounded, not a single weapon, not a single Al Qaeda propaganda, nothing. We only found civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Q: In your book, you also described how your platoon machine-gunned peaceful demonstrators. Is that right?

A: Right. In the surroundings of the Rasheed Military Complex, South of Baghdad and near the Tigris River, there was a group of people staging a demonstration, right at the end of the street. They were youths; they had no weapons. So, when we advanced, we saw a tank parked on one side of the street, the driver told us that they were peaceful demonstrators. If those Iraqi people had had any violent intentions, they would have blown up the tank; but they did not. They were only staging a demonstration. That calmed us down because we thought that "if they were there to shoot at us, they had already had enough time to do so. " They were standing about 200 meters from our patrol.

Q: Who gave the order to shoot at the demonstrators?

A: We were told by the high command to keep watching those civilians, because many combatants with the Republican Forces had taken off their uniforms and were wearing civilian clothes to undertake terrorist attacks against US soldiers. The intelligence reports we received were known basically by every member in the commanding chain. All marines were well aware about the structure of the commanding chain that was set up in Iraq. I think that the order to shoot at the demonstrators came from high-rank US administration officers, which included both military intelligence agencies and governmental circles.

Q: And what did you do?

A: I returned to my vehicle, my Humvee (a highly equipped jeep) and I heard the sound of a shot over my head. My marines started shooting, so did I. We were not shot back, and I had already shot 12 times. I wanted to make sure that we had killed people according to combat requirements set by the Geneva Convention and the operational proceedings established in the rules. I tried not to look at their faces, I only looked for weapons, but I found none.

Q: How did your superior officers react at that?

A: They told me that "shit happens. "

Q: And when your marines found out that they had been deceived, what was their reaction?

A: I was second in command. My marines asked me why we were killing so many civilians. " Can you talk to the lieutenant? ", the answer was "No". But when they found out that it all was a lie, they were really mad.

Our first mission in Iraq was not aimed at offering humanitarian assistance, as the media said, but to secure oil fields in Bassora. In the city of Karbala, we used our artillery during 24 hours; it was the first city we attacked. I thought we were there to give the population food and medical assistance. Negative. We kept on advancing towards the oil fields.

Before arriving in Iraq we went to Kuwait. We got there in January 2003 with our vehicles loaded with food and medicines. I asked the lieutenant what we were going to do with all those supplies, since we had little room for us with so much stuff. He told me that his captain had ordered him to download everything in Kuwait. Shortly after that, we were ordered to burn everything, all the food and the medical supplies.

Q: You have also denounced the use of depleted uranium…

A: I am 35 years old and I only have 80 percent of my lung capacity left. I have been diagnosed a degenerative disease in my backbone, chronic fatigue and pains in my tendons. You know, I used to run 10 kilometers just because I liked to run, and now I can only walk between 5 and 6 kilometers every day. I am afraid of having children because of that. I got a swollen face. Look at this picture (He shows me the photo on his Book Fair credential). This photo was taken shortly after I returned from Iraq. I look like Frankenstein. I owe all that to depleted uranium, now you can imagine what is happening to the people in Iraq.

Q: And what happened when you returned to the United States?

A: They treated me as if I were crazy, as if I were a coward, a traitor.

Q: Your superior officers have said that all you have revealed is a lie.

A: There is overwhelming evidence against them. The US armed forces are finished. The longer the war, the bigger chance for my truth to be known.

Q: The book you have presented in Venezuela has been published in Spanish and French. Why haven't you published it in the United States?

A: The publishing houses have requested the elimination of real names of the people involved and the presentation of the war in Iraq in sort of a mist that makes it less crude, and I am not willing to do that. Publishing houses like New Press, an alleged left wing entity, refused to publish the book because they fear to be involved in a dispute raised by the people described in the story.

Q: Why some media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post never reproduced your testimony?

A: I never echoed the official version of the facts, which says that US troops were in Iraq to help the people; I never repeated their story that civilians there died in accidents. I refused to say that. I did not see any accidental shooting against the Iraqi and I refused to lie.

Q: Have you changed that stance?

A: No. What they have done is to add opinions and books by people with conscious objections: those who are against the war in general or those who participated in the war but who did not have this kind of experience. They are still reluctant to look straight to reality.

Q: Do you have any photos or documents that may prove what you have told us?

A: No, I don't. They stripped me of all my belongings when I was ordered to return to the United States. I returned home only with two weapons: my mind and a knife.
http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle19251.htm
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