I killed innocent people for our government by paul rockwell

Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Bee
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004
"We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it."

- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"


For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.

When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.

Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?

A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.

Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?

A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.

Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.

Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

Q: He spoke English?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?

A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.

Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?

A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.

Q: Over what period did all this take place?

A: During the invasion of Baghdad.


'We lit him up pretty good'
Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?
A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.

Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?

A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.

Q: A demonstration? Where?

A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."

Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?

A: Both.

Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?

A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.

Q: What kind of firepower was employed?

A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.

Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?

A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.

Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?

A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.

Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.

A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.

Q: And the incident?

A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.


Depleted uranium and cluster bombs
Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?
A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.

Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium?

A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.

Q: Did you breath any dust?

A: Yeah.

Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.

A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.

Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?

A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!"

Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?

A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.

Q: What's an ICBM?

A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.

Q: What happened?

A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.

Q: What kind of training?

A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.

Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?

A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.

Q: Dropped from the air?

A: From the air as well as artillery.

Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?

A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.

Q: Including inside the towns and cities?

A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.

Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.

A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.


Embedded reporters
Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?
A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.

Q: Why?

A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.

Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?

A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"

Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?

A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.

Q: What changed you?

A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.

Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?

A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.


Showdown with superiors
Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?
A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."

He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.

Q: What happened then?

A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.

I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong."

It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.

 

His examination of the facts is a little lax.. DU has been extensively proven to be 'safe'.. and has had little or no long term effects on troops or civilians.. don't believe me ? look into it yourself.

This is one of the sources of info i read : http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/health.shtml

It just makes me wonder how much he is forgeting to inform us about [selective with the truth] or just not wishing to examine himself.. because of his relatively new found dislike on certain issues.. If he indeed has been honest with us and with himself fair enough..but the seeds of doubt are in my mind .

I would respect this person if he took some responsibility for his actions... not a hint of it.... lets blame somebody else. It just seems he has decieded to post rationalise

 

Exactly. Take this quote for instance:

Well if you are just passing on things you read in Rolling Stone, then what exactly is the big revelation? What exactly is the scoop?

The story is a year and a half old, and has already been through Hipforums a few times.

 

I guess i could continue to be crititical of the marine..but i think some responsibility should be given to Paul Rockwell for dishonesty and one sidedness .... I think the marine was used and his somewhat naivety used for the writers own agenda.. If i give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume he was also unaware about DU [unlikely] he still adds this to newer articles.. with no regard to the other evidence all around him... He is one of the most un-subtle anti war profesional writers i have read so far ..

 

My main problem with things like this...

A majority of people don't even write these... heck, this isn't a minority, its one person. I'm sure there are a few people who will say things like this, but why do the people who hate the war and hate Bush, etc. always instatly believe every word an individual like this says, yet they ignore what the majority says, slating that that is BS and lies?

 

AHAHAHAHA....

yeah, because the military always tells the truth.

 

So what do you say when our generals/soldiers say we dont murder civilians? Are they liars? Is this guy really telling the truth? What say you?

 

I think the article is a fake. A marine if anything should know what an ICBM is.

Anyways look it up, an ICBM is an:

Plus I know everyone is pissed because Americans are evil baby killing child rapists that suck the blood of the innocents, but so is everyone else who is participating in this war. American troops are not alone in this war.

Here are the other active participants in operation iraqi freedom

Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Uzbekistan

 

now that you've supplied that list how bout supplying us some troop numbers?

dual-purpose improved conventional
munitions (DPICM).

and I think this is what was meant, I can see a lot of people (cough reporters cough) hearing that as icbm,

ICM and CEM are also subcategories of clusterbombs, I can easily see 2 of these three being typo'd or misheard as ICBM


not saying that I think that this is a real article, I just have seen reporters make stupid mistakes like this and not catch it because they don't know enough about their subject....

 

Hey, its ok... when I hear responses like that I like to think that the only reason that they have the freedom to call America a terrorist country or a bunch of murderers is because of America. We gave them the rights to free speech and so they abuse it. Irony is delicious.

 

by george bush's definition of terrorism our military are terrorists.....


it's all a matter of perspective...

shock and awe, terrorism.....

all your angle of attack....

 

DU is harmeless . .. . thats why they use it for killing.

 

The article is real and he is real. His story? Well... that's another question. But the journalist took the blame for calling a CBU an ICBM. Massey went on to publish an autobiography, apparently only available in France. But if you've got fifty bucks you can buy his DVD: http://store.amagicmirror.com/usmajimawarv.html

Sure, go to Iraq Body Count. They claim 30,000. I thought Marla Ruzicka, founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, was doing a good count, at least until she was killed by a car bomb. I'm not sure if the group carried on without her. According to IBC the US was directly responsible for about 37% of deaths, and the majority of those were during the invasion. At the moment the resistance is responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualities, so the US % will keep falling.

We didn't change the subject. Maybe we are "off message" rather than "off subject"? I think our criticisms have been completely fair.

90% of the victims were adult males. I don't accept the characterisation that they were murdered.

Putting tell the truth in capital letters proves nothing. This story was not corroborated with others in his unit, his commanders, or other journalists embedded in his unit. It is his word, a lot of it looks suspect, and some of it is merely him repeating what he read in Rolling Stone.

Most DU studies I read focus on the toxicity of DU as a heavy metal, its the anti war sites that obsess about radation and cancer.

400 were killed, and it was a laser guided bomb, not a depleted uranium projectile.

This is straight from Saddam's Ministry of Information.

67% is, to be diplomatic, completely ridiculous. You will never find any data to back that up because it is total bullshit.

If you want to read some real science produced by real scientists, backed up by real data, read this. http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/BiH_DU_report.pdf

Its a UN Environmental Programme stody of DU in Bosnia. Its a 303 page report, and you're not going to bother reading it because it won't give you what you want to hear. But I want you to know it exists - the case against DU scaremongering is not being made by Fox news, it is being made by real scientists.

 

PB once again using the already debunked comparison between DU effects in Bsonia (a moist temperate climate) and those in Iraq (an arid, sandy, dessert climate).

Clinging to whatever delusional scrap he can to deny any atrocity on the part of his beloved war machine.

Applying legitimate critical scrutiny to the matter requires first examining the very methodology employed by many scientific deniers of causal links between DU and battlefield/bystander illnesses. An excellent examination addressing these premises can be found linked below.

http://www.iicph.org/docs/du_update_1_3.htm

Given the track record of denial from "official", most particularly MIC, sources (however credentialled they might have been) over the health effects of Agent Orange, such offhanded routine apologetics by nationalistic dupes like PB should not dissuade the more critically reasoned amongst us from pursuing scrutiny of this present-day Pentagon whitewash.

 

It wasn't debunked, in fact you tried and failed miserably to debunk it seven months ago. Anyone who wants to see how Lick recycles discredited arguments can read the same discussion in this old thread, which he ultimately abandoned.

http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87789&page=1&pp=10

For example, he claims that Iraq is a desert and therefore not comparable with Bosnia. But Kuwait is a desert, and a similar study there also found no hazard from DU use during the Gulf War. I showed Lick this last time and he had no answer other than a stream of the usual abuse; I presume that this time I'll also be subjected to a blizzard of Lickspeak but no actual response.

 

No youll either refer to the above linked examination of the questionable methodologies applied in the reports you so eagerly take at face value, else we'll have more of the same reptitive citations to which we've become accustomed from you lo these many months. A habit evidenced yet again with the same denials above that you displayed then and no indication that you've ever critically examined the limited scope of enquiry of the commonly cited studies.

As to why threads fizzle, those who have been here any length of time know all too well your predelection for continually dismissing anything that debunks your claims.

The previous thread in question was quite clear in pointing out that the disparate levels of DU used in Bosnia and Iraq (along with climatology considerations) were more than substantial.

But we'll leave it to those who care to read your whitewash and the more reasoned review of the supposed science behind denials of DU's serious health effects linked in my previous post.

Perhaps youll regale us with another googled, but entirely unauthenticated, video of suppose terrorist broadcasts supplied by MEMRI, one of the most well known hardline right-wing Zionist propaganda sites to be found on the internet.

Keep waving your flag and excusing our international criminality little war lover.

 

http://prorev.com/ROCKWELLSOLDIERINTV.htm

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Staff+Sergeant+Jimmy+Massey+&btnG=Search&meta=

If it is fake..then it's a good one.

I never commented about the civillians because i can believe he was a part of such actions. Shifting the blame around or saying 'it never happened like that' would be a little disingenuos of me [i could have just posted something like this http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/14/1447248 .. i chose not too though] . I could have just missed this thread, but it was posted with no comment for what ? everyone to just post 'typical reponses' we are all capable of that.. I was trying to be respectful and critical to the marine and the writer.. read some of his articles...mmmm they probably come across fairly moderate to yourself.. and full of truths no examination required .. everything just spot on ?. I bet you thought the same about this :

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html


I don't doubt there are truths within both writers words but like with Rockwell he throws in the DU arguement.. and like you blames america.. It was not just the american goverment saying it was no quantifiable risk.. it was .... well read the the link.

In the end i got pissed off with the writer [Rockwell-and for that matter Pinter] for 'sexing up' information 'fitting the facts around the agenda' 'being wrong' what a coincidence all the accusations thrown at the the Bush and Blair goverments ..hypocrites in my book.

I am not commenting [or trying to avoid] the civilian casualties of this persons actions.. or the casualties as a whole..apart from saying he puts the whole blame on his superiors... I did add he should take some responsibility for his actions.. If i posted this

Suicide bomber kills 30 on Iraq bus - Science Daily (press release) - 5 hours ago
30 dead after suicide bomb at Baghdad bus station - Scotsman - 5 hours ago
CHRONOLOGY-The deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq - Reuters AlertNet - 6 Dec 2005

What be YOUR response ... ''all caused by Bush Blairs foreign policys and LIES etc etc etc''..no real 'evidence' required from yourself... just shove the blame one way always/everytime/every situation..

If anything i was commenting on the lack of balance ... and bias of the writer.
I do support the troops..not all and not those trying to remove responsibility for their actions and shoving it the usual way and using the usual arguements [conveniantly] .

I care very much for the civillians who get caught up in this.. you talk about the casualties brought about by 'our action' what about those carried out by the insurgency .. We then get into a arguement about who's fault it is that they are dead.. is there any balance or fairness NO.. Its all BUSH BLAIR.. do we need to get into that within EVERY THREAD.

Just trying to add balance thats all...

 

I suspected as much. One last bombastic denunciation before slinking off to some other thread, hoping nobody notices that you didn't actually make a single point or substantiate anything.

Kuwait is not Bosnia. You pretended not to notice I brought this up last time, so its deja vu all over again.

You linked to a brief article by a small research outfit with not especially impressive credentials, which, as far as I can tall, carried out no original research of its own, but speculated about possible methodological problems with other reports (although not saying which reports or referring to the report I linked to, which was far more extensive, better documented, original research). I suppose you think that if one person, any person, raises questions, then mountains of science immediately becomes invalid and won't become valid again until there is global universal consensus among all scientists. You might be surprised to find that few look at it that way.

I'd like to know how MEMRI is a Zionist propaganda site. It produces no original material. It merely provides translations of media reports produced in other countries. As far as I know, nobody has ever challenged the authenticity of any of its re-broadcasts, and even its translations have got barely more than quibbles. It always includes the original audio so that anyone can check the fairness of their translations. Tell me how this qualifies as "hardline right-wing Zionist propaganda".