Out of the mind-numbing blizzard of horrific stories emerging from the Iraq fiasco, one particular story has haunted me over the past few months. It is a stomach-churning Associated Press story from November:
"One of four U.S. soldiers accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl last spring and killing her and her family pleaded guilty (Nov. 15) and agreed to testify against the others. Spc. James P. Barker agreed to the plea deal to avoid the death penalty, said his civilian attorney, David Sheldon."
The military judge presiding over the case asked Barker why he participated in the attack in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad.
"I hated Iraqis, your honor," Barker is quoted as saying in the courtroom.
And what, exactly, might have motivated this hatred for the Iraqi people?
To get the answer to this question, you need look no further than the lies that George W. Bush has been steadily feeding our troops over the years.
As Mark Crispin Miller notes in his 2004 book, Cruel and Unusual:
"Bush sent a very different message to our troops....by harping on Iraq's alleged complicity in 9/11, and by hyping the fictitious 'terrorist threat' posed by that nation. Because of such inflammatory propaganda, our troops were motivated mainly by a craving for revenge, as after the destruction of Pearl Harbor. Throughout the march to war, and through the first year of the war itself, payback was on everybody's mind. 'The only thing that motivates all the soldiers fighting in Iraq is payback for Sept. 11, 2001,' reported Reuters."
Miller continues: "That lust for righteous vengeance has helped push our troops toward barbarism---which is often frightening even to themselves."
In the aftermath of the horrific atrocities committed by our troops against the Iraqi people, the U.S. media can be counted upon to do a great deal of soul-searching, hand-wringing "how could this happen?" type stories. We've seen this happen over and over again in Iraq.
But for anyone wondering how our troops could be so savage and barbaric at times, I think the finger of blame should be pointed at the Bush White House for the steady diet of lies and misinformation it has fed to our troops.
The fact is, the Bush White House has deliberately lied to our soldiers in Iraq. By feeding them a constant stream of bullsh*t about Iraq's "ties" to 9/11, the Bush team has created a situation in which our troops are filled with rage and hell-bent on vengeance: a situation that has been directly responsible for the barbaric acts that we've seen committed by U.S. troops in Iraq.
The creator of the progressive site, BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, Marc McDonald is an award-winning journalist who worked for 15 years for several Texas newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including OpEdNews.com, BuzzFlash.com, Crooks and Liars, Salon.com, Progressive Daily Beacon, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, the Washington Post, USA Today and many more.
I agree with you 110%. In fact, I've been seeing it first hand for the past several months.
The Soldiers have a hatred for the Iraqi people. Why? Because they think they are at war with Iraq and their people. They think they are all terrorists because THAT IS WHAT THEY WERE MADE TO BELIEVE.
As false as the perceptions that were pushed onto them were, they still hang on to them, because no one tells them the truth. Nobody in the military leadership sat down with the troops and said 'Hey guys, we're fighting an insurgency. We're not trying to kill and piss off as many Iraqi's as possible because that just FUELS the war'
So that is what they continue to do. I hear about convoys were they just have fun driving around running people off roads into ditches and throwing huge rocks into civilian drivers windshields to 'defend' themselves from the 'threat' of people driving around them. That definitely isn't going to quell an insurgency.
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ChuckyB (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2 comments)
on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 8:08:37 AM
I'm sorry but even the most horrid hatemonger knows a 14 year old girl can not be held responsible for something like 9/11. Perhaps if they had gone in and just killed the men, I would be more inclined to believe it, although I would not condone it. It seems like an excuse to justify their behavior- they knew very well what they were doing was wrong. Raping a 14 year old girl cannot be excused in any context.
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Arouet (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 11:00:57 PM
Our troops know now if they didn't before that if they break the rules, justice just may catch up with them.
As a psychotic, it's unfair to extend this soldier's actions to anyone past the handful of murderers/rapists we know of for sure. By and large, our troops have performed admirably under impossible conditions and in spite of the lies perpetrated Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell. Pvt. Greene is going to jail for life, just escaping the death penalty.
Bush did not instruct this kid personally, though his Iraq/911 manipulation was still widely believed by the military and general population during the 2004 election. What is essential is exactly what this rapists immediate instructors told him about straying from the Code of Conduct.
For instance, Rumsfeld and his Under Secretary Stephen Cambone were reported to have authorized a secret program whereby certain soldiers were given clearance to go further then the Code allows in order to extract information. This Seymour Hersh article click here details how Cambone's initiative, codenamed Copper Green directly led to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal that has forever marred the USA in the eyes of the world.
But for the one scandal that was exposed by pure accident, you can imagine how many American gulags we will never know about.
Though Hersh's sources tie Cambone closely to ordering in privatized torture specialists and provided specific techniques on how to emasculate and humiliate the Arab male, Rumsfeld remained one layer removed, with Bush and Cheney yet another layer above. Rumsfeld didn't go public when he learned of the photos, he'd seen them long before the press aired them - only then did he act. This suggests Bush condoned Rumsfeld's folly - in truth he should have been fired then, as his top aide was the architect. But Cambone only just exited in December, even after Rummy, under allegations of even more sinister plots such as formation of secret military sabotage teams.
When a GI is given "black" operative clearance, he is told to never, ever blow the cover of the operation, even if arrested and asked to testify. This is why we need objective, ethical prosecutors both in the military and DOJ - if we can not go up the chain of command, we will never root out curruption.
So, a lot depends on what each soldier's instructions are out in the field. This rapist, Steven Green probably was not given any official clearance to exceed the CoC but could have witnessed acts going over the line and been emboldened to copy.
Most likely it was simply his fragile mind - soldiers with PTSD, battle fatigue or suicidal tendencies are simply herded back into action because of troop shortages.
We know in fact that Pvt. Green had admitted to his own problem in counseling three months before the murders, as a stress team then recorded he had "homicidal ideations". Instead of removing him, they sent him back out - on meds - Seroquil in this case.
As Robert Redford noted at the kick off of the Sundance film festival this year, America is owed an apology. Iraq is as well.
We owe it to innocent Iraqis like the murdered and raped 14 year old girl to fix this problem. We owe it to our soldiers to get them out of danger before they are pushed too far. I don't believe we should be prescribing medications for soldiers while they are in combat, sending them out to "see if it works" or not.
I don't believe we should be pushing them to the limits either - more repeat tours then ever and less down time then ever before does not lead to sharper, more disciplined soldiers.
Finally, we need to understand and counter manipulation. Our soldiers are mistreated today - they are agressively recruited (one recruiter in Detroit told youngsters they have as much chance of getting killed at home as in Iraq), they are lured in with enormous signing bonuses. $40,000 is a blinding sum for a 17 year old to be able to expect to manage responsibly.
In more ethical times, GIs were lured into service with educational incentives, a subsidized college education or home loans for example.
This is the difference between yesterday and todays corporatist, manipulative government that treats soldiers as customers.
As government institutes, the Armed Forces should be teaching the young, the underpriviliged, and the undereducated all about discipline, honor and the values of delayed gratification (waiting longer for more meaningful rewards).
We are doing the opposite. We are not only now doing their laundry for them, cooking for them (including junk food choices on base), we are keeping them active longer, reducing their health benefits, underarmoring them and doing little to no advance planning for their later well being (Brooklyn already has over 100 homeless Iraq war vets in shelters).
Oh...and I forgot one more thing, we're sending them in to a civil war be killed and injured in a country we had no actual Constitutional grounds to invade.
Sorry for the length of this, but I am strongly committed to unmasking manipulation. For more on the origins of mass manipulation in America, click here click here
by
Gustav Wynn (50 articles, 33 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 231 comments)
on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 12:51:08 AM
