The Horror: War vets 'can't turn it off'

This is the best journalistic exposee I have read this year: it is chilling to the bone. Although it deals with the effects of war on the young people sent off to Iraq, one can only imagine the damage caused to those who were victims of this war, and others. My husband was a Viet Nam vet and the things that happened to him there were so terrible he refused to tell anyone. Yet these secrets smoldered inside him and ruined any chance he had for happiness in his life.

He enlisted, patriotic, loving his country and its ideals and returned a broken and permanently damaged human being. And it has happened all over again to hundreds of thousands of young people sent to Iraq. The worst thing, is that they are all alone in the interior torment they carry from their war experiences - because civilians simply cannot understand the effects of the hell of war.

Read and weep if you can. Better yet, get angry even furious. For truly we are ruled by madmen.

The Horror: War vets 'can't turn it off'
as they search and destroy Stateside

© Mr Fish (Caption: Brad wondering why his PSTD
doesn't feel as heroic as country keeps telling him it is)
Click to enlarge

David Walsh
Wed, 29 Jul 2009
Source
The atrocities US troops are committing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inevitable product of neo-colonial war and occupation, are transforming a section of returning veterans into a genuine menace to society.

Recent reports, for example, reveal that 10 members of one unit alone, based at the US Army's Fort Carson - near Colorado Springs, Colorado - have been charged with murder, attempted murder or manslaughter since 2006.

The murder rate among the 3,500 members of what is now the 4th Infantry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008 was 114 times the average for Colorado Springs.

The Associated Press notes, "Some brigade soldiers also have been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, DUIs [driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs], drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides."

The victims of Iraq war veterans from Fort Carson include a 19-year-old woman, raped and killed; an 18-year-old woman and her 19-year-old boyfriend, riddled with bullets, for no reason, as they were putting up signs advertising a yard sale; two fellow soldiers shot to death, one in a robbery, the other in a fight over a perceived insult; a taxi driver murdered in Pueblo, Colorado; a small-time drug dealer, first assaulted with a stun gun and then shot and killed; an infant killed by his father; a friend of a veteran murdered by the latter with a poker; the wife of another veteran, who then killed himself.

A genuinely damaged, even psychopathic layer, taught by the military to kill and abuse, has been let loose in American society, with untold consequences. If the Persian Gulf War, a skirmish by comparison, helped produce mass murderer Timothy McVeigh, what kind of havoc will the current unending wars create? All the official lies about the "wonderful" work "our men and women in uniform" are doing, and doing in the name of "the American people," can't conceal the ugly and quite horrifying truth.

One social worker in Colorado Springs, Sister Kateri Koverman, who has counseled people in war zones for almost four decades, comments, "We have a public disaster here, and no one really knows how to deal with it."

The US Army issued a report on the homicides associated with Fort Carson in mid-July, which - while refusing to recognize the obvious, that deployment in Iraq generated the wave of crimes - acknowledged "a possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes." The investigation indicated that "combat intensity/exposure...may have increased the risk for violent behaviors."

Army officials seized on the study's inconclusiveness to argue, in the words of its surgeon general, Eric Schoomaker, "We don't know direct causation yet."

Published interviews with a number of those charged about their experiences in Iraq and subsequently, however, leave no doubt. Brutal imperialist war, which involves the suppression of an entire population, creates the conditions in which young men and women commit horrendous acts. As the Denver Post notes, "More than half of the charged or convicted soldiers said they had seen war crimes during their deployments that included the killings of civilians."

The responsibility for those war crimes lies with the military high command, the White House and the American ruling elite in general. Were there the slightest democratic inclination within the mass media or the political establishment, demands for trials on crimes against humanity would dominate US political life. As it is, there is essentially silence.

The Gazette of Colorado Springs has published a lengthy two-part series, by Dave Philipps (see parts one and two), based on interviews with soldiers and their families, that is very valuable. It documents the horrors of the US occupation of Iraq, along with the callousness and indifference of the Pentagon to those they toss into the hell of combat.

Of the 10 charged with murder, attempted murder or manslaughter, Philipps writes: "Almost all those soldiers were kids, too young to buy a beer, when they volunteered for one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Almost none had serious criminal backgrounds. Many were awarded medals for good conduct.

"But in the vicious confusion of battle in Iraq and with no clear enemy, many said training went out the window. Slaughter became a part of life.... Soldiers say the torture and killing of Iraqi civilians lurked in the ranks. And when these soldiers came home to Colorado Springs suffering the emotional wounds of combat, soldiers say, some were ignored, some were neglected, some were thrown away and some were punished."

The newspaper interviewed Kenneth Eastridge, Audio Vet interview after murders, now serving 10 years for accessory to murder. Eastridge noted that the Army "trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, 'What makes the grass grow?' and we would yell, 'Blood! Blood! Blood!' as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off."

Eastridge refers, of course, to the same notorious sound-off that Timothy McVeigh participated in during his military training in 1988. (See "Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh: the making of a mass murderer," 19 April 2001.)

The members of the Fort Carson unit landed in Ramadi, a center of the insurgency, in 2004. As one soldier told Philipps, "There was a massive amount of hate for us in the city."

One of the unit's jobs each day was to bag the bodies of Iraqi victims of sectarian violence, which had been encouraged and unleashed by the US invasion.

Daniel Freeman, a member of unit, told the Gazette, "Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated.... You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley." The newspaper continues: "If soldiers were hit by an IED [improvised explosive device], they would aim machine guns and grenade launchers in every direction, [one of the convicted soldiers, Anthony] Marquez said, and 'just light the whole area up. If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em.'

Other soldiers said they shot random cars, killing civilians."

Another unit member explains, "Taxi drivers got shot for no reason. Guys got kidnapped and taken to the bridge and interrogated and dropped off."

Eastridge told the Gazette about one incident in 2007 in which he was ordered to guard a street while the rest of his platoon searched a house. Philipps writes: "Families were out playing soccer and barbecuing. Eastridge said he just started shooting. He pumped a long burst of rounds into a big palm tree where a few old men had gathered in the shade.


"People started running. They piled into their cars and sped away. There was a no-driving rule in effect in the neighborhood, so, Eastridge said, he put his cross hairs on every car that moved.... Orders came over the radio to cease fire, he said, but he kept yelling, 'Negative! Negative!' Eastridge said he shot more than 1,700 rounds. When asked how many people he killed, he said, 'Not that many. Maybe a dozen.' "

Eastridge told the journalist that he was eventually court-martialed for "sex and drugs," but not for "Things that can never be told, but that everybody knew about and approved of - basically war crimes." Of his crimes committed back in the US, he explained, "I had no job training.... All I know how to do is kill people."

Some of the most gruesome episodes are described in a December 2007 letter from PFC John Needham, addressed to Army officials at Fort Carson. Its subject line reads: "Formal Notification of War Atrocities and Crimes Committed by Personnel, B Company, 2-12, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division."

The name of the individual cited as responsible for some of the worst crimes has been blacked out by the Gazette, but he seems to be a staff sergeant. Needham says that the latter, in June 2007, "caused an Iraqi male to be stopped, questioned, detained, and killed. We had no evidence that the Iraqi was an insurgent or terrorist.... I observed X dismembering the body and parading of it [sic] while it was tied to the hood of a Humvee around the Muhalla neighborhood while the interpreter blared out warnings in Arabic over the loud speaker. I have a photo that shows X removing the victim's brains."

Needham recounts another incident in which "an Iraqi male...was detained and questioned then with his hands tied behind his back, X skinned his face."

And: "X shot a young Iraqi teenager who was about 16 years old. The shooting was unprovoked and the Iraqi posed no threat to the unit. He was merely riding his bicycle past an ambush site. When I arrived on the scene I observed X along with Y dismember the boy's body."

Needham explained in his desperate letter: "I suffer from PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] and depression. I had no way to stop the ugly actions of my unit. When I refused to participate they began to abuse and harass me."

Needham had already attempted suicide, in September 2007. His family "basically kidnapped" the young man late that same year when the Army attempted to send him back to Iraq, and had him committed to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. He was discharged from the military in July 2007, suffering from serious mental disorders.

In September 2008, authorities allege, Needham beat an ex-girl-friend to death. He is awaiting trial on suspicion of murder.

His father, Michael Needham, told the Colorado Springs newspaper, "I know the Army would like to say it is not responsible for this, that it didn't train them to do this. But that is bullshit.... They trained them to kill, then when they didn't have enough men for the surge, they pushed these guys until they broke, then threw them away."

The unit Needham and the others belonged to is now deployed in Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass.

Comment: The orchestrators of America's unwinnable wars of attrition in far-flung countries know that the ultimate prize is not the capture of foreign resources, but the conquest of the American population. The ranks of returning war veterans, rife with severe cases of PTSD and psychopathies, are central to the Pathocrats' internal war game of seeding chaos and destruction.

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be".

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions?

What would happen if a state of affairs ensued which conferred internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation?

The overwhelming majority of the country's population -being normal - would make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities. Thanks to their higher numbers, there would be a higher birth rate of their kind, and their power would increase. This majority would be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the psychopathic genes. The pathocracy's dominance would weaken steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people take back the power. To the pathocrats, this is a known and nightmarish vision.

Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a "biological" necessity to the pathocrats. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will thereupon be decreed heroes to be revered, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.

Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external. The internal front is more important for the leaders and the governing elite, and the internal threat is the deciding factor where unleashing war is concerned.

Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

Related: these links provide research background for anyone who can stomach more of the reality that young soldiers faced in Iraq, a reality we simply cannot understand from our TVs.

Casualties of War, Part I: War crimes of the Iraqi "Band of Brothers"

Casualties of War, Part II: Warning signs



War is a Racket - 1935 by Smedley Butler

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

Documenting death

Wounded warrior project

Haditha massacre

Haditha massacre - Truthout

Lynndie England on torture - Interview

It's pretty easy to feel superior, morally and in other ways, to Lynndie England; and the interviewer in the following article makes that quite clear. Yes, everyone can judge her acts of indecency; and maybe feel a little bit better about themselves eh?

Lynndie England's story reminds me of the case of LT. William Calley and the My Lai massacre. Everyone felt good that at least somone paid, even if it wasn't the right someone (Henry Kissinger). Yet we are still dealing with the same problem: accountability of the master perpetrators of torture (and it looks as though they may get away now also).

But what about the accountability of ordinary people - those who knew after 2004 that horrible torture was inflicted on others by US troups and still did nothing - the great silent majority? To our credit, many people are waking up and now are quite active in not letting Torture accountability slip away, again. Torture is not an Iraq problem - it's an American one, well evidenced in the videos of police men tasering grandmas and shooting small dogs.

A better outcome would have been for Lynndie to have felt some compassion for her victims, instead of assuming a victim's stance. Perhaps a few days of being pulled around naked in a jail at the end of a leash would have nourished a moral epiphany for her? Maybe the rest of us could do with a little close up taste of what torture feels like, or what waterboarding feel like, (as Erich Muller experienced)?

What does it take for us to feel authentic remorse for the intentional harming of another? I would very much like to know. Compare this story: Soldier's crime met with clemency. He admits to executing Iraqis who were bound, and his family fought for leniency

Five years on: Lynndie England with her authorised biography

Why the hell should I feel sorry,
says girl soldier who abused Iraqi prisoners
at Abu Ghraib prison

By David Jones
13th June 2009
Source

In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House

Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice.

Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local 'celebrity' - as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her - is signing first editions of her new biography.

Arriving at Main Street Books to find a young woman - considerably heavier now, but still grimly familiar - loitering self-consciously beside a pile of unsold manuscripts, it becomes clear that the fiddle players have won hands-down.

When the shop closes, two hours later, Lynndie England has autographed barely two dozen copies, mostly for acquaintances such as her old schoolteacher.

For even on her home territory, few people are willing to line the pockets of this fallen girl soldier; who posed for a stomach-churning series of 'souvenir' photographs that cost countless American lives and brought shame on the nation.

Five years have passed since a U.S. TV station first broadcast those pictures, staged to humiliate and dehumanise Iraqi prisoners - and provide warped amusement for their U.S. Army guards - at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad.

They caused universal outrage, ending any lingering pretence that President George W. Bush was on some moral crusade in Iraq, and sparking a wave of retaliatory beheadings; many of which were videoed to reciprocate the horror and degradation meted out to the Muslim detainees.

Such was their impact that they are still said to be used as recruitment propaganda for Islamic terror groups.

After all, what better way to incite a young fanatic than by showing him a photo of a female American soldier nonchalantly holding a leash, tightened around the neck of a naked and hooded Iraqi prisoner, as he squirms on the floor of his cell?

In another photograph, the waif-like Military Police private casually inspects a line of terrified Iraqi prisoners - again stripped and wearing sandbags over their heads - as they are forced to masturbate.

Grinning broadly with a cigarette clamped in her mouth, England, then just 21 and weighing less than seven stone, added to their humiliation by pointing mockingly at their genitals and giving the thumbs-up sign; a gesture now known as the 'Lynndie salute'.

One of seven U.S. Army reserves jailed for mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib - including her former lover Corporal Charles Graner, a sadistic, camera-obsessed bully who orchestrated the photo sessions - she has served three years in detention and is now on parole.

With a new book to peddle and her appeal against the conviction due to be heard next month, one might have expected the 26-year-old England to express some remorse.

Following Barack Obama's release of CIA torture files which lend credence to her claim that the ritual humiliation of prisoners was a White House sanctioned tactic during the Bush regime, she even consulted her local senator about petitioning for a Presidential pardon

But 'sorry', it becomes clear, is not in Lynndie England's vocabulary.

When we speak, three things strike me: her breathtaking lack of contrition; her unsuitability to have been a serving soldier and her utter indifference towards the horrifically abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, 90 per cent of whom were later released without charge.

Since no established biographer would touch her life story (it was even dropped by the literary agent who handled O.J. Simpson's widely reviled book, If I Did It) her biography has been penned by a greenhorn local author, Gary Winkler.

For a man whose two previous works were lilting chronicles of Appalachian life, it has proved a chastening experience. Not only has he fallen out bitterly with his subject and her agent-cum-lawyer and confidant, Roy T. Hardy, but he has patently struggled to get the characteristically withdrawn England to open up.

'I just don't think she's a very deep person,' Winkler, a white-bearded former musician in his late 50s, concludes miserably.

'Lynndie only has two moods: bored and p****d off.'

During our first meeting, when she yawns through my questions, I see what he means.

Two days later, however, perhaps enlivened by the anti-depressant tablets upon which she relies, England is more animated and opens up to describe the background to the photographs in more detail than ever before.

They were taken on three separate nights in late October and early November 2003. At the time, her job was to process the detainees' admission and release forms.

As a clerical support worker, she had no business in the so-called Hard Site at Abu Ghraib, a block of some 40 cells where the supposedly most dangerous inmates were held.

But she routinely sneaked in late at night to sleep with Graner, a hulking 6ft 3in ex-Marine in charge of the night patrol.

After their arrest, she discovered he had also been having sex with another female soldier who worked on the block, Megan Ambuhl, whom he has married while in prison.

At the time of their affair, England was also married, to childhood sweetheart James Fike, so their relationship was against U.S. military rules.

Even after being repeatedly warned, she refused to break off with Graner and was eventually demoted.

She says she was mesmerised by Graner, who worked in civilian life as a prison corrections officer and had an appalling record for abusing prisoners - one claimed he hid razor blades in the prison food.

'I was blinded by a fool's love,' England says in her cigarette-coarsened south-country drawl, as if this explains and excuses her participation in the pictures.

'I know now that Graner was manipulating me, but at that point I would have done anything he told me.'

I ask her about one of the most chilling pictures, in which seven naked detainees, brought to the block after allegedly taking part in a riot elsewhere in the prison, were forced to form a 'human pyramid'.

After instructing the men to pile up on top of one another, Graner proudly draped his arm around England, and the smiling couple posed beside the grotesque tangle of human flesh.

Looking at the image now, it appears that the detainees could not have remained in this painful position for very long; yet England says quite matter-of-factly that they were forced to stay fixed in position for '20 minutes or something'.

When I suggest that this must have been excruciatingly painful, she shrugs and replies: 'Probably.'

So why hadn't she asked Graner to call a halt? A grin and another shrug: 'I'm pretty sure he'd have said "No".

'There were only three of us and seven of them, and he wanted to contain them by keeping them connected and concentrating on not falling - so they wouldn't overpower us. That's how he explained it.'

But surely she must have felt some pity for them? As often, she takes an eternity to reply, then says: 'In my eyes they were the enemy; the other side. What happens in war happens. They would have done 20 times worse to us.'

Five years on: Lynndie England with her authorised biography

We move on to another hideous image, in which the same group of prisoners - one of whom Graner had punched full in the face - were lined up and ordered to masturbate.

How long had this sick charade continued? 'You are going to find this ridiculous,' says England, half suppressing a snigger. 'One guy did 45 minutes! Freddie [Graner's fellow prison guard, Ivan Frederick] just wanted to see if they would do it - and all seven of them lined up doing this.

'Well, six stopped after a few minutes, but the seventh carried on.'

Hearing this account for the first time, even Roy T. Hardy, her lawyer, who had thought himself beyond shock after representing England for five years, is clearly taken aback.

'But you were there the whole time?' gasps bespectacled, roly-poly Hardy. 'I've never heard this stuff before.'

'Yes I was - unfortunately,' England says, fixing him with her strange, lop-sided smile. 'I was standing there, like, watching. I was there the whole four hours.'

Hardy, who doubles as a local assistant county prosecutor, clears his throat, as if about to address the bench. 'Don't mistake Lynndie's grin for amusement,' he implores me. 'That's just a nervous mannerism.'

Maybe so, I say, but she caused so much harm. What people want to hear is an apology.

'Sorry? For what I did?' she interjects, incredulous. 'All I did was stand in the pictures. Saying sorry is admitting I was guilty and I'm not. I was just doing my duty.'

She recites her often-rehearsed argument: that the Abu Ghraib guards were tacitly encouraged to 'soften up' the prisoners before they were interrogated by military intelligence officers.

Given all we know now, this sounds plausible. It is also easy to see how this gullible backwoods girl became the sociopathic Graner's stooge; as Gary Winkler says: 'She was his prop; all she was guilty of is stupidity.'

For all this, however, it is impossible to empathise with her, for she is such an unsympathetic character.

The daughter of a railway worker, Ken England, and his wife Terrie, she was two years old when her family moved from Kentucky to a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia.

There she grew into a tomboy and loner, never happier than when shooting squirrels in the woods. Until her wedding day, she had never owned a dress.

Teachers recall her for saying almost nothing during her school years, and her defence psychologist diagnosed her with speech-related learning difficulty called selective mutism.

However, she was bright enough to graduate from high school with good grades, and set her heart on becoming a meteorologist.

This ambition began, she says, after she saw the film Twister and became fascinated by tornadoes.

To pay her way through college, she took menial jobs, including processing chickens and serving in a supermarket, where she fell for the mild-mannered Fike.

They were divorced after she admitted her affair with Graner, although England insists she still loves Fike, and would like to get back together with him.

'But I wouldn't blame him if he hates me.'

They wed as teenagers, but soon afterwards she joined the local reserve regiment, the 372nd Military Police Company - partly because she needed the money, but mainly because she 'always wanted to serve', she says.

Never having travelled beyond the nearby states, and not even owning a passport, she hadn't expected to be sent overseas.

But as operations in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched U.S. services to breaking point, the 'weekend warriors' were marched off to war.

By then her affair with Graner had already begun. Having pursued her for weeks at their U.S. base, Fort Lee, the 34-year-old divorce 14 years her senior, checked them into a seedy motel where the liaison was consummated.

She first discovered that Graner got a kick out of taking - and showing his friends - perverted photographs of her soon afterwards, when they holidayed in Virginia Beach.

This was in March 2003, more than six months before the Abu Ghraib pictures were taken.

While she performed a sex act on him, he reached for his Sony and started clicking away, she says.

'Whoa! Hey, what are you doing? I don't want pictures taken,' England says she protested.

But when Graner insisted they were for his eyes only and just 'harmless fun', she relented.

She claims she had no idea he was emailing compromising pictures of her to fellow soldiers until after her arrest; hence her lack of caution when he asked her to pose with the prisoners.

However, as her boyfriend had maliciously shown the Virginia Beach photos to her mortified parents during a visit to her family in April 2003 - by 'accidentally' slipping them in among some other innocent snaps they were viewing - surely alarm bells should have rung?

Graner and England were deployed to Abu Ghraib in October 2003, and although nothing can excuse their subsequent behaviour, it is possible to see how things happened.

A few months earlier, the prison had held just 700 detainees, but when they arrived the numbers had swollen to 7,000.

Understaffed, undertrained and poorly led, the guards struggled to control this sweltering bedlam.

Though she insists that 'everyone' knew about the detainee photographs, a criminal investigation began only some three months after they were taken, when a soldier with a conscience, Sergeant Joseph Darby, handed in two CDs of photographs which Graner had boastfully shown to him.

Hastily airlifted out of Iraq for his own safety, Darby has lived in hiding ever since. Just as well, for England says she would 'definitely beat the hell out of him if I saw him', adding: 'In war, you don't rat on your buddies.'

Intriguingly, she claims to possess about 800 more unseen photographs from her time in Iraq, depicting scenes which would be highly damaging to the U.S. Army and the White House, if they were ever released.

Roy T. Hardy claims they include pictures of an Iraqi woman bearing her breasts and graphic images of wounded enemy combatants, but declines to go into more detail because, until her dishonorable discharge is finalised, England remains a serving soldier.

It is not clear whether these photographs, which are locked away in a vault, are among the hundreds which Obama is withholding - having reneged last month on his promise to release them when he came to power.

But their very existence constitutes a ticking time-bomb for the U.S. authorities, and biographer Gary Winkler believes she and Hardy will try to sell them to the highest bidder.

The author claims England is being manipulated by her lawyer-agent, and describes Hardy as 'the new Charles Graner'.

Understandably, Hardy, 39, is incensed by this - though the happily married father-of-two hardly helps himself by constantly joking that he and England are having a secret fling.

Winkler is embittered, the lawyer says, because Hardy and England have criticised his book, which was supposed to have been her first-person story but has ended up an error-strewn exercise in vanity publishing. But she needs the money.

She has applied for countless jobs, she complains, but no one dares to employ her, and so, two years after her release she remains unemployed and has given up hope of working.

Reliant on food stamps and the charity of her family and friends, she lives with her parents and four-year-old Carter, the child she had with Graner, in the same cramped trailer where she was raised.

Her hatred for Graner, who is midway through his ten-year sentence, was compounded when he demanded a DNA test to prove Carter is really his child.

England was pregnant by the time she stood trial and maintains that only Graner could be the father.

The result is not back yet, but one look at the boy would be enough for Graner to realise he is wasting his time.

England, now 26 and without a boyfriend - though she receives marriage proposals from twisted internet admirers - says she is depressed because she feels trapped and has lost her independence.

'I can't even hunt squirrels no more, because I'm not permitted to own a firearm,' she moans.

As a result of post-traumatic stress, she says, she also suffers flashbacks and horribly vivid nightmares.

Do they reawaken memories of those chilling photograph sessions at Abu Ghraib?

'It's a whole variety of stuff. You can't hear somebody screaming their heads off and not dream about it,' she drawls sardonically.

'I'll be watching a movie, or TV, and then something triggers it and, bam! I'm back there.'

This hardly sounds like contrition, but is probably as close as Private First Class Lynndie England will ever come to expressing regret for becoming the unacceptable face of the U.S. Army.

Jimmy Carter: U.S. Tortures Prisoners

Friday, October 12th, 2007
Source

The U.S. tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday, adding that President Bush makes up his own definition of torture. “Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights,” Carter said on CNN. “We’ve said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we’ve said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime.” Bush, responding to an Oct. 4 report by The New York Times on secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of “harsh interrogation techniques,” defended the techniques Friday by proclaiming: “This government does not torture people.”

Carter said the interrogation methods cited by the Times, including “head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures,” constitute torture “if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored — certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. “But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don’t violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don’t violate them,” Carter said. In an interview that aired Wednesday on BBC, Carter ripped Vice President Dick Cheney as “a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military.”

Carter went on to say Cheney has been “a disaster for our country. I think he’s been overly persuasive on President George Bush.” Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell declined to speak to Carter’s allegations. “We’re not going to engage in this kind of rhetoric,” she said. In the CNN interview, the Democratic former president disparaged the field of Republican presidential candidates. “They all seem to be outdoing each other in who wants to go to war first with Iran, who wants to keep Guantanamo open longer and expand its capacity — things of that kind,” Carter said.

He said he also disagreed with positions taken by Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have declined to promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq over the following four years if elected president next year.

Rape Pix Obama won't release

I have posted these pictures before. They are some of those Obama does not want released. Many more can be found on the porn sites of the web - if you care to look. I recommend you search this blog for 'aafia' and read her story too. There is little doubt these horrors occurred - are we going to let them get away with it so they can be repeated again and again?

"A released Iraqi POW has come forward and stated to the internationl media that that he was sodomized at the Abu Ghraib prison while a female US soldier cheered and the entire incident filmed."

Read entire article and view pictures here.

Los Angeles, Alta California - May 2, 2004 - (ACN) The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW's at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison has opened a Pandora's box for the Bush regime. Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW's and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.

An Iraqi woman's message to America

America - I HATE YOU.

May 11, 2009
Source

I hate everything you represent, everything you stand for, everything about you...EVERYTHING. I fucking hate you.

You completely destroyed my country, my home, my family, my relatives, my friends, you have completely ruined our lives with your greed, your apathy, your criminality, your hypocrisy, your evilness ..........I fucking hate you.

I FUCKING HATE YOU. HATE YOU with every fiber in my body, with every beat of my heart, with every breath I take....

Iraq's riches are being privatized...so your companies and those of the smelly once a month bathing Brits can enjoy their leisurely lives.

I still am not sure who is worse - the Jews of Israel or the Kurds of Iraq. Which Zionism is more lethal ?

Over 100'000 barrels of crude Iraqi oil are being given away by the Kurds to American, Norwegian and British companies. That amounts to a revenue of 5 Million dollars a day.

The Federal government of Baghdad, because this is what Al-Jazeera called it today, the Baghdad government as oppposed to the Kurdish government has agreed but the only thing it disagrees with - the names of the companies. It wanted a say in those hand picked companies, to please its Iranian masters.

Stealing our riches, stealing our lives, stealing our blood and living off it like some worm, like some parasite...I HATE YOU AMERICA.

The Kurdish Peshmergas, the ones you cried about being so oppressed, including your fucked up liberals and progressives of my ass...are waging a brutal war in Kirkuk and in Mosul, displacing hundreds of families....

The South is under total Iranian control, and deals are being made with your monsters of companies via the central Shiite government.

The Iraqi population is living in misery, fear, loss, destruction, neglect, poverty...while you are sucking on our blood, through the kurds and the shiites shits you have put into power...

I HATE YOU AMERICA. I HATE YOU.

Our families are torn apart, our lovers are torn apart, our neighborhoods are torn apart, we have become beggars, living off merciful handouts...

Merciful handouts that your so called "good will" people come to the rescue and try to help...assuaging the bit of conscience you have left. But you have no fucking conscience. You are just ego, you have embellished your acts with such denial, you are evil itself.

You ripped us of our dignity, us the proud Iraqis who would not bow to any human...for we carry history our shoulders, like a cross, like a burden, like a message...

I HATE YOU AMERICA.

Rows and rows of burned flesh, from your smart technology, your technology of death, fill hospitals...Fallujah, Mosul, Baghdad, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine...

Rows of flesh, for your cannibalistic eyes and teeth...so you can dig your ugly teeth in more flesh...and orgasm at the sight...

I FUCKING HATE YOU.

Humanity ? What fucking Humanity ? You have no humanity, you have no soul, you have no fucking conscience...You are DEAD. A DEAD PEOPLE.

There is worse than physical death. There is a soul, moral death and you are fucking dead. You are nothing but armed skeletons on this earth...skeletons with tons of grease, flab, pulling your weight and your bellies that are never full, your barrels of bellies that look like endless holes that nothing can fill up...

You think you are so fucking sophisticated don't you ? You are fucking idiots with guns...even your so called intellectuals, I don't buy them for one cent...

Including your left, your anti-war shits, your liberals and the wanking Arabs that suck up to you like house niggers, I buy none of you for one cent...

Go ahead, kill as much as you want, burn, maim, tear down, build walls, displace as much as you want...

You are a worthless people and a worthless nation.

Posted by Layla Anwar at 11.5.09
arabwomanblues


Eyewitness and testimony

Testimony on War Crimes and the Recent Situation in Iraq

State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq

Nam and Now - Same shite, different war?'

Torture is not - an abberration of American military: it has been the norm for half a century. A pity the Americans of today are not as informed as the students of the 1960s (tho admittedly, if torture would have been halted by this generation, it would not be an issue today) - there seems to be an entire new crop of the populace that remains clueless as to what history says about USA military operations in Viet Nam.

This week, I posted another story on torture, of Alyssa Peterson who 'killed' herself rather than be part of torturing Iraqis. Below David Kenneth Tuck testifies to the war crimes he witnessed in Viet Nam at the Russell-Sartre Tribunal.

Photo from the War Remnants Museum, Saigon, Vietnam. The caption on the photo in the museum states that this is water torture being used by USA personnel in the Vietnam war.On the 4th of July 2008 I had an email from a Jolyon Stephenson who stated that this picture is "actually a victim of a burn wound being nursed back to health with water, I know, I am the man in the background on the left. I remember the picture being taken." This seems an odd sort of nursing. I leave it to the reader to decide the truth. Source

So maybe Bush and Cheney were just continuing an American tradition?

Torture will never stop until we refuse to tolerate it. Will our children be lamenting over the same issue 40 years from now because we did not stop it? To stop it, we must acknowledge it has been sanctioned normatively in US aggressions against other nations. David tells the story so matter of factly. In 1967.

In 2006 - Compare Tuck's words with the testimony from Iraq veterans against the war (Videos).

"If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

-US Supreme Court Judge Robert Jackson,
speaking at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal

A look at the testimony in the following International War Crimes Tribunal - 1967, forward by Noam Chomsky, commentary by Jean Paul Sartre.


DAVID KENNETH TUCK

Testimony and Questioning
Source

Vladimir Dedijer: And you were in the US Army in Vietnam? In which unit were you?

I was part of the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division. My smaller unit was A Company, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment.

Dedijer: And when did you go to Vietnam?

I was in Vietnam from 8 January 1966 to 9 February 1967.

Gisele Halimi: I would like you to tell me about your having witnessed, one day in the month of October 1966, how American soldiers killed South Vietnamese prisoners with machetes. Is it possible that you can confirm this to me before the Tribunal?

Yes, I can confirm this. But the only thing inaccurate as to this question that you asked me was the date. This did not happen in October of 1966. It happened 2 March 1966 at a place about fifty miles north of Ban Me Thuot, near a Special Forces camp - Ham Brain.

On this date, in the 3rd Brigade of the 25th we had our first casualties. We lost eleven men that day and the enemy lost 100 men. After the battle was over there were several wounded North Vietnamese, you know, laying around on the ground, see, so everyone was angry because this was our first battle and we had lost a lot of our friends, see.

So one Japanese-American, his name was Sergeant Takahatchi, I believe he was a staff sergeant, he took his machete and beheaded this wounded soldier. The soldier was wounded in the chest but he was still alive. So after he beheaded the man, he threw his head down the hill to serve as warning to other NVA elements, if they were still in the area, that we meant business. And I was standing near by when this occurred.

Halimi: Can you witness about other cases that are analogous about war prisoners or civilians that were killed by the American forces or by the South Vietnamese in the presence of American forces?

Yes, I could also testify to other incidents of mistreatment of {236} prisoners by US and South Vietnamese forces. Shortly afterwards, after we got over there in February 1966, I happened to be on a work detail to a place called Camp Hollaway which is right outside the town of Pleiku, and while I was there I saw a VC being tortured by the South Vietnamese under the direction of US forces. When I got there they had the man tied on the ground; he was spreadeagled. They were using a knife to sort of pry under his toenails and the soles of his feet. When this got no results they went on to other more sensitive parts of the body.

Well, this still got no results, because evidently this man was, as we say in America, a tough nut to crack. So then after that they put the knife under his eyeball in another endeavour to make him talk, and he still would not talk. So then what they did, they put him in a barbed-wire cage in which he was on his hands and knees. And if he made any moves the barbs of the barbed wire would press into his flesh, so they kept him there for two days. And I had to go back on another detail, and when I got back the man was gone. I assume that they had turned him over to the South Vietnamese to execute him.

Now all of this torturing was done by the South Vietnamese, because there were very few US forces who were able to speak Vietnamese, so a US officer, I believe it was a captain at that time, he was giving orders to the Vietnamese interpreter and he was relaying them on to the man who was doing the actual torturing. It is common procedure over there to turn over all prisoners to the South Vietnamese for later disposal and I believe invariably they execute them after they get the information that they receive.

Other acts of mistreatment of prisoners that I saw was in November 1966. We were operating in an area near Plei Jrirang Special Forces camp. Now it was the practice of our outfit to rotate men back and forth to base camp to give them a few days’ rest. So on that day, I believe it was about at 1400 hours, on that day I boarded a ‘Huey’ helicopter. On this helicopter there was the pilot, the co-pilot, the machine-gunner, myself. There were also two dead American soldiers and two North Vietnamese prisoners. Well, while we were on there, one of the North Vietnamese pointed to one of the US dead and started to laugh about it, see.

So the shotgunner, he saw this, and he told the pilot about that, and the pilot said: ‘Throw that SOB out.’ So he picked up the man, the man was tied anyway, bound, and threw him out of the {237} helicopter. Well, immediately after, the other North Vietnamese soldier kept quiet.

So then when we got back to base camp, you know, such a thing is an everyday thing. You know, we did not think too much about it. Another time was near the Cambodian border. It was called Duc Co. We had surrounded this village and we noticed that there was this one woman that had not lined up with the others, see.

So, this officer who was with me said that this woman looked suspicious. So he went up to the woman and said something to her, and she reached into a pile of wood. We did not know what she was reaching for, so then he ordered me to shoot her, which I did. I am very sorry that I had to do this, but I was acting under orders.

Halimi: I would like to return to your testimony about the helicopter... I would like to know if the officer responsible had to make a report on the missing prisoner?

Well, yes, it is true that he would have to write a report saying that one of the prisoners had disappeared. But, you could always get around this by saying that the man attempted to escape and we had to shoot him or the man was suicidal and he jumped out of the helicopter. Even if one prisoner was missing, it would not have mattered all that much because, unless the prisoner was an officer or something like this, no one would really have cared anyway. It was standard policy in my outfit not to take any prisoners. We were told by the officers that we had better not take any prisoners unless it was a North Vietnamese officer.

Halimi: Can you specify for the Tribunal the orders that you had? Did you have orders to shoot prisoners when they became obnoxious?

No! We were ordered to shoot, to take no prisoners just as a matter of standard operating policy, especially wounded prisoners anyway, because a lot of our officers were sort of fanatical on this. They believed that the only good Vietnamese was a dead Vietnamese, and so forth. And a wounded man stood very little chance of being evacuated to medical aid anyway.

Halimi: I would like to inform the Tribunal that in the testimony of the witness Campbell, whose deposition you have, he speaks of similar actions - that is, the ejection of prisoners from his helicopters. I hope you will be able to hear Mr Campbell’s deposition on these actions, if you follow up these questions.{238}

The ears of Vietnamese, for certain Montagnard tribes, are reputed to be valuable. Can you confirm instances of American bounties paid for Vietnamese ears?

Well, ah, as far as the cutting off of the ears, when I was over there it was a practice for a while of the 173rd Airborne Brigade to, after the battle was over, to cut the ears off of dead Vietnamese and to use them as a souvenir. Also this was a practice of the 1st and 14th of the 3rd Brigade of 25th. This was more or less a passing fad. The person who had the most ears was considered the number one VC killer, and also when we would get back to base camp the one who had the most ears would get all the free beer and whisky that they could drink. But it was more or less the passing fad, but they did cut the ears off of dead VC to show as souvenirs.

Halimi: Mr Tuck, you have told me of seeing refugee camps. Can you specify for the Tribunal the conditions of life inside them?

Most of the refugee camps that I saw were invariably near a Special Forces camp. From what I could see from these people they looked just like they were starving; they were in rags. Shortly after we got over there I was on a work detail to dump some garbage into a sump, which is a hole dug in the ground for that purpose. As soon as we had dumped this these refugees - a whole lot, a horde of children, it seemed - literally jumped into this sump and fought like animals for the garbage. The refugees - I got the impression from what I saw - were left to eke out their own living. They also had to be in their refugee camps at a certain time, because if they showed up outside our perimeter or outside the South Vietnamese perimeter they were liable to be shot as VC. A lot of the women in the refugee camp had to turn to prostitution to earn a living.

Halimi: Mr Tuck, do you know how they separated the population? That is, how did you decide who was Viet Cong, who was a civilian, and so on, and what did you do after you had distinguished them?

It was standard operating policy when in what we call VC country, that is, areas which were under control of the VC, to surround a village and to go in and assemble the inhabitants in a bunch in the centre of the village. All young men who looked like {239} they were able to bear arms we sent them away in helicopters to be interrogated by the South Vietnamese. The women and the children we sent to a refugee camp. Also it was common practice that if we received any shots from a village to have what we call a ‘mad minute’. This means that for one minute everybody would cut loose tanks, machine guns and everything that they had into this village, because the way we had assumed that until proven otherwise every Vietnamese was a VC.

Halimi: Mr Tuck, you have spoken of helping American troops spray gas into tunnels. Can you specify what you mean?

It was frequently when we were on an operation we would find a whole lot of tunnels, and a lot of times we did not know whether there were VC in there or not. My outfit did not have such men as they have farther south as they call the ‘tunnel rats’. So what we would have to do, we would have to use tear gas to bring them out. A lot of times it would be women and children besides the VC in there. But most but then again a lot of times it would only be women and children. The tear gas does not kill anyone as long as they can get out to the fresh air, it just irritates them. Uh - as far as I know, tear gas was the only chemical agent being used to bring these people out of the tunnels.

Halimi: You are black, and I would like you to tell the Tribunal if you sensed, during operations, a segregation - a discrimination between yourself and the white soldiers in the American army.

I would say that while there was not any segregation, if anything it was overintegrated. What a lot of people do not realize is that most of the soldiers fighting in the infantry over there are black soldiers. In my particular outfit it was 117 out of 156 were black soldiers. It is a common practice to put the people whom they consider expendable in the infantry. This is the black soldier, the Puerto Ricans and the hillbillies.

The reasoning behind this I believe is that if these people are killed no one is going to miss them, because after all black people are always complaining, so if they complain about being used in the infantry, no one in the US is going to listen to them. The war is very popular in the United States and if the Johnson administration use the middle-class white people, then the parents of these people when they sustain casualties would be complaining about this and would demand that the war be over with.

So, therefore, they put the expendables, {240} the black people, the Puerto Ricans and our poor rural whites that we call ‘hillbillies’. They put the expendables in the infantry, but I noticed that when I came back from the war and saw on TV, I saw very few black soldiers. It always seems to be mostly white, but I know with my own eyes this is not true.

But other than that, there was not any segregation. There was discrimination as far as lining up men to be the point man. The point man is the man who always goes some yards ahead of everyone else. He leads the way and is always on the look-out. He is usually the man who first gets killed. And invariably it seems like the soul brothers - or the Negroes - were the ones who were on the point. And so that is one way in which they discriminate.

Halimi: Can you say if, before battle, your officers’ words indicated that they wished you to fight a purely defensive war, or that they wished you to exterminate the Vietnamese people?

My outfit was stationed in Hawaii before we went to Vietnam. Shortly after we heard we were going to Vietnam, we were given orientation - little pamphlets saying that we were fighting to save the Vietnamese from Communism. We should always treat the Vietnamese as our equals. When it came time to giving them the right of way we should always give the Vietnamese the right of way. Everyone went along with this, but then when we got to Vietnam it was a different story.

All at once the officers referred to the Vietnamese as ‘gooks’. When we got there, we were told not to associate with the Vietnamese, whereas before we got over there we were told to make friends because unless we win the hearts and minds of the people we will lose the war. But, once we got over there our officers told us otherwise: that the only good Vietnamese was a dead Vietnamese, that they were not good, that they would not fight. So, on 23 March, when we first went into our first really combat operation, the commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Saul A. Jackson, gave us what he considered an inspiring speech. He said, ‘I want you to keep these Vietnamese on the run so much, so hard that I want to see Vietnamese blood flowing upon the earth.’

Everyone was surprised because before then we thought we should distinguish between Vietnamese and Viet Cong. After all, we were supposed to be saving the Vietnamese people from the Viet Cong. So, everyone remarked on how bloodthirsty that man was. The officers referred to them as {241} ‘gooks’, and we were told to consider all of them no good, and the only good one was a dead one.

I was very shocked because I had assumed we were fighting to save these people from Communism, and now all at once it came to me that perhaps these people were going to practise genocide after all, because here we are lumping all Vietnamese together. I thought we were only to fight the Viet Cong, who were supposedly preventing the South Vietnamese from having their freedom.

Dave Dellinger: You spoke about a ‘mad minute’, that is, after there were shots from a Vietnamese village, everybody would let loose with everything that they had. I wondered if, for example, how many shots it took to provoke such a ‘mad minute’. I mean, if there was an isolated shot from a village, could this happen?

Well, no. It would have to be more than one shot. If we got a series of rounds fired at us and if the bullets came close to someone or they hit somebody, we would do this more or less as an act of revenge. Then, after the ‘mad minute’ we would move into the village and see how much damage we had done and whether we had gotten anybody. But usually in most cases the VC was gone anyway. So we never caught them.

Dellinger: Was there any attempt to find out if there were women or children?

We knew there were civilians in the village, but as I say, we did not give a damn. We just intended to show them that we were not playing.

Peter Weiss: Mr Tuck, referring to the incident when the prisoner was thrown out of the helicopter. You say this was an ‘everyday incident’, and it could happen often, and nobody was really seriously concerned about that. And the person who threw this prisoner out of the plane would not be punished and perhaps he would not even be asked about what happened. Could you from your experience tell the Tribunal an approximate figure of incidents of the same kind that you have witnessed? Other cases where prisoners were just sort of killed, or left to a certain death, with nobody caring for them?

Well, in the first place I would like to say that the enemy prisoners were never left to die by themselves, they were always executed, but they were never left to die of their wounds. I have {242} also seen other cases in which a wounded prisoner was laying there supposedly waiting for an evacuation helicopter, and I have seen several GIs just go over and shoot him in the head just to be done with it.

Weiss: Without any special order?

No, well, in some cases they had orders, and in other cases, since it was the standard policy in my outfit not to take any prisoners, that is what we did. Occasionally, if we had a wounded officer and there was an American officer around, then he would tell us, do not kill the man, but to send him on a Medevac, to be later interrogated. But if the man was not an officer and he was wounded, we just got rid of him.

Weiss: And this happened several times?

This happened all the time in Vietnam, it is a common thing.

Weiss: Is it a rule?

Yes.

Weiss: Mr Tuck, you were speaking about the villages. When it was lust a wild shooting, afterwards what happened to the villages? Were they torn down by bulldozers, or what happened to the villages when you landed, when the troops landed in the village, the population was sent away? Could you tell us a bit more specifically what happened around this event?

Immediately after a ‘mad minute’ we would surround a village and then we would send a party in. We would always have a Vietnamese interpreter with us. He was assigned to our outfit. And then we would line the villagers up and interrogate them, and depending on the battalion commander, we would have to radio back in for instructions whether to turn in all the villagers, whether to destroy or just warn the villagers about such activities. In some cases we would send for helicopters to evacuate these people and send them to a refugee camp and we would burn the village.

Weiss: Have you seen people from a village being sent to a refugee camp?

Yes, I have.

Weiss: Could you describe the refugee camps?

Well, the refugee camp as I said before is usually located near a Special Forces camp. You have a lot of wooden and tin huts, you know, just built together haphazardly. Usually the ground is {243} bare: no vegetation or anything, no trees. So there is also a barbed-wire fence surrounding them, and only one entrance. And as I said before, at night they have to be in before dark, you know, before about 1800 hours anyway. And they eke out their living as best as they can.

Weiss: They lie on the ground, they have no beds?

No, no, I am not saying that. They have beds, but what I mean is, the ground around, in the little village, is usually the poorest type of ground. It is just mud; in other words, all the grass and vegetation has been worn away. In other words, the soil is not fit for farming and so forth.

Weiss: How do they get their food?

Well, like I said, they have to beg from the US troops. In other words, they have to eat a lot of the food that we throw away: our garbage and so forth.

Weiss: So there are not immediately afterwards coming special troops with supplies, with food, to help the people who are being driven away from their villages?

Not that I know of. If they get any food, they certainly do not show it, because all the ones that I have seen they looked like they were starving, and they were dressed in rags.

Weiss: So it is the American soldiers who might give them food if they want to, but it is not necessarily done?

No, it is not necessarily done.

Weiss: May I ask one more question?

Dedijer: Yes, please.

Weiss: Mr Tuck, you spoke about the speech which a General Jackson - a fiery speech - which he gave to the troops before entering into the battle. Have you witnessed other speeches like that by other officers?

Right, I would like to say that these speeches ... usually we were getting them when we were going on a combat operation. And after a while, such things sink into the minds of the men, because then I noticed that a lot of my fellow GIs started referring to the Vietnamese people as ‘gooks’. This a derogatory term.

Laurent Schwartz: Mr Tuck, you have said that you had the order to shoot prisoners and that you could not oppose it. Now, the American soldiers who are sent to Vietnam - do they know about the judgements of the Nuremberg Trials; that is, that they {244} have the right - or even the duty - to resist inhuman orders? Do you know of any soldiers who have been punished for committing war crimes?

Well, I would like to say I have never heard of any GIs who were punished because they committed acts of war. Most of us had heard of the Geneva Convention of war. We knew that we were not supposed to do certain things. On the other hand, we realized that we had to be realistic, because if you disobey an order, sooner or later they will get rid of you. I mean, what I am saying is, like for instance if I had decided to refuse to fight the Viet Cong, my friends, my own friends, and the officers would get rid of me. I mean, they would have killed me - there is no doubt about that. Therefore you go along with the programme.

Schwartz: You have told us about eating conditions in the refugee camps. Have you seen people who died of starvation in these camps? Have you seen sick people who were refused medical care? What were the medical and sanitary conditions in these camps?

I would say that the medical and sanitary conditions are very primitive. I mean by anyone’s standards. I could not say that I ever saw anyone die of starvation, but I saw people who looked as though they were about to die of starvation. People who looked like they were on their last legs, and every now and then the US forces were sent, the S-5 section, this is the section which is involved in civil affairs. We would send a medic to give out pills and shots and so forth. But this only occurred about once a month anyway. Most of the time our S-5 section was in the field anyway.

Schwartz: There could have been regular medical visits, but there were not?

As far as I know, no.

Schwartz: You just told us that most of the time, or quite often, that you gave prisoners to the South Vietnamese for interrogation. But on the other hand, Mr Martinsen told us yesterday that there was usually an American interrogator along with a South Vietnamese [interpreter]. In your opinion, did the Americans do most of the torturing, or the South Vietnamese?

Well, I cannot dispute what Mr Martinsen says, I am only going on what I saw. In the case that I saw it was an American who gave {245} the orders, who asked the questions. He passed it on to a South Vietnamese interpreter and then he was the one who interrogated the man, but the actual torture that I saw was being done by people in the South Vietnamese army.

Gunther Anders: Repeatedly you quoted the sentence, ‘the only good Vietnamese is a dead Vietnamese’. Did you vary the famous words, ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’, or was this sentence generally known, was it like an order given to you by the officers?

Well, I mean, this was a statement which the order, which the officers gave to us, and a lot of the men, as I said before, this indoctrination sank in. They also believed this because after all most Americans have heard that saying, you know, ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’.

Anders: Yes. The same applies to, ‘Don’t take prisoners’. Was this an order or was it an anonymous custom everybody knew, that this had to be applied, or did you ever hear the command, the order, ‘Never take prisoners’?

Well, I would like to say this. The order was ‘Never take prisoners’ as well as ‘Don’t take prisoners’, because there had to be exceptions if there was an enemy officer - because we considered the officers more important than the enlisted men. Therefore there had to be exceptions. This was not a written order. This was an order, but it was a spoken order; it was not a written order.

Anders: Yes, that is just what I wanted to know. And I have a third question. You spoke about this terrible collection of ears, and there I would like to know if you would say that this is a crime which everybody would recognize as a crime. Was there anyone among the American soldiers who objected to this crime or who refused to cooperate in this sad sport to collect ears?

Well, I am quite sure that there were individuals who did not go along with it. If they did not want to take any ears they were not under any pressure to do so. This was something dreamed up by the brass to inspire the men, to help the morale.

Mahmud Ali Kasuri: You have referred to a distinct change in indoctrination while you were in Hawaii and after you reached Vietnam. Would you say that its object was that people in the USA should not know what the American forces in Vietnam were {246} doing, and that is why in Hawaii the ordinary practice was being taught and in Vietnam the actualities were being brought before the troops?

I would say that this was precisely the case.

Kasuri: Now, you referred to this ‘mad minute’. In how many cases while you were present in Vietnam was this practice indulged in? Three, four, five, twenty?

Well, I would like to say that this practice was indulged in so many times that you might say it’s numerous, you know. This is a common practice. You know, everyone starts firing for one minute - approximately one minute.

Kasuri: So it is not an unusual thing to which you are referring, this is the ordinary thing?

Yes, this is an ordinary thing.

Kasuri: This is the ordinary thing. Now you said many times that ‘the good Vietnamese were the dead Vietnamese’, and on another occasion you said this sentiment had evolved out of a sentiment that the Vietnamese were not good soldiers. Then do I take it that, in killing, some discrimination was made between men and women or children and adults?

Well, I would like to put it this way: a lot of times when you have to assault a village you shoot at the first thing that moves. In some cases, inevitably, it was women and children that got killed...

Kasuri: Would it then be right to assume that in the US casualties the majority would be black?

That is correct to assume.

Kasuri: Now, would it be right to assume that the things you are referring to: namely, that the Vietnamese should be shot, that the only good Vietnamese was a dead Vietnamese, or that it was common to cut the ears off the killed Vietnamese or that the practice of the ‘mad minute’ existed - is within the knowledge of the higher military officers of the US Army?

There is no doubt that it is within the knowledge of the higher US authorities.

Kasuri: Thank you.

Carl Oglesby: On the question of the executing of prisoners I’d just like to follow a little more Anders’s line of questioning on the way in which you knew that it was standard practice to execute {247} prisoners. Did you find out that that was standard practice to execute prisoners? Did you find out that that was standard practice from speeches made to your unit by your superior officers, or was it more of a matter of word-of-mouth circulation among the soldiers?

Well, it was circulated among the soldiers but it was also what our company commander told us, you know. He didn’t put it in writing, of course, but he told us this. He said, ‘You better not take prisoners.’ You see, that’s the way he said it, in that spirit.

Oglesby: What would happen if an American officer, a veteran of Vietnam, would come and testify to this Tribunal that he knew nothing about this? Would there be any way to settle an argument between ...?

Well, it depended upon what type of outfit the officer’s was, what his experiences were. You know, I couldn’t say yes or no. If he was in an infantry outfit I would say and he denied it - I would say the man was lying.

Oglesby: How did you first find out that it was standard practice to take no prisoners?

Well, you see, shortly after we got over there we heard from these other outfits, the 1st Air Cavalry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne, they told us the same thing and then our officers, they told us that would be our policy. That we weren’t going to take any prisoners unless we happened to capture an officer and then there was an American officer there to decide that he should be saved: otherwise we were to get rid of him.

Kinju Morikawa: I have information from a press correspondent that if there happens to be an explosion of a mine, the American soldiers usually kill almost all villagers that could be seen near by. Is that true or not?

Yes, yes, this a common practice, but I would like to say that all the time they wouldn’t kill all the people, but they would go into the village shooting, better say this, and if any innocent people got killed, well, the attitude was, ‘That’s war.’

Weiss: Mr Tuck, you said that if you disobeyed an order they will get rid of you. You mean, have you seen any cases where American soldiers were shot because they disobeyed orders?

Well, you would be surprised at the number of people who are killed by their own troops. Now, I know two sergeants who happened {248} to get drunk while they were out in the field, see, so they set these men farther out with the artillery outfit that had just been hard hit, see, hoping that they would get knocked off. And when they came back alive the brass were unhappy about it, see.

Weiss: This was deliberately done?

Right, and also in my own case I was sent to a line outfit for punishment anyway. When I first came to Vietnam I was the battalion mail clerk, but myself and a sergeant-major did not get along so they sent me out with the infantry as an RTO, hoping that I would get killed of course. That is the way they punish you in a lot of cases.