Ain’t it odd now…. if the bunker speculates that there is any sort of supression of information and/or debate regarding the Iraq war there is usually a bevy of “it ain’t so” comments crop up. When a post like this backing that sort of speculation is made we hear the sound of silence.

How about if we add something like this into the mix?

*Confessions of a Marine*
By Jean-Paul Mari
Le Nouvel Observateur

Thursday 27 October 2005 edition

/*Iraq: The story no American publisher wanted.

In a just-published book, Master-Sergeant Jimmy Massey tells about
his mission to recruit for, then fight in, the war in Iraq. He tells
why he killed. And cracked.*/

Jimmy Massey is 34 years old. He’s originally a Texas boy, raised as
a good Southern Baptist who loves squirrel hunting with his air rifle.
After 12 years in the Marines, Jim is a broken man, a veteran afflicted
with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a depressive hooked on his
medications, haunted by the nightmare images in which he massacres
innocent civilians, scenes experienced in Iraq when he was nothing but a
killing machine. Jim has cracked, has withdrawn from the service for
medical reasons, and has written a raw and brutal book. Telling the life
of a Marine of today, revealing “how he talks, how he thinks, how he
fucks, and how he kills.” The army denies the facts and his former
comrades have insulted, rejected, and threatened him. His testimony
ulcerates Neo-Conservative America and shocks the politically correct.
In the United States, no publishing house has dared to publish his
manuscript. Extracts follow.

*The Recruiter*

When you’re a recruiter, you have to learn fast. And I rapidly
learned that if I wanted to keep my job, I couldn’t allow myself to have
any scruples.

I went to public schools every day where I was able to contact young
people easily. I had already been given a list of all the students, with
their phone numbers. So I really didn’t need the 2002 law - the No Child
Left Behind Act 1 - which stipulates that any high school receiving
federal funds must furnish military recruitment officers with the names,
addresses, and telephone numbers of its students. […] As usual, I said
to myself, “I’m going to get them, those fuckheads,” since, you must
understand, a recruiter has only one thing in his head if he wants to
pay his rent: landing contracts. […]

One day in 2000, I was with my warrant officer in the cafeteria of a
little local university. Chief Warrant Officer Dalhouse rushed over to
me, saying “Hey! Chief-Sergeant, I’d like to introduce you to Timmy.” I
lifted my head towards Timmy to discover … a retard! Two hundred and
ten pounds of muscles, the features and the speech of a retard. Upset, I
looked at my new boss and asked him: “Are you shitting me?” He firmly
replied: “No, Chief-Sergeant, you are going to interview this guy. He is
seriously thinking about joining the Marines.”

[…] Timmy was short and massive; he wore blue jeans, work boots,
and a T-shirt in the Andrews High School football team colors. He
reminded me of the Lenny character from Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”
He seriously wanted to sign up with the Marines; it was obvious. […]
“Now, let’s talk about your handicap. I know it’s been harder for you
than the average person and you’ve already shown a lot of
self-confidence by overcoming your disability.” Timmy lowered his eyes;
I saw he was a little embarrassed. Then he raised his head, his eyes
glistening with tears, and in a trembling voice, answered: “You’re
right, Sergeant, it’s been really hard for me. Once, when I was new, the
other guys locked me in a closet. They shoved me around and insulted me.
I was so angry I knocked down the closet door.” “- Timmy, no one will
ever bother you again. The Corps will help you acquire all the
self-confidence you’ll need to overcome the obstacles you could
encounter in the course of your life.” He sent me a look full of
gratitude. […]

When a kid told me he had taken Ecstasy, here’s the sort of
conversation we’d have: “Listen, guy, are you sure it was really
Ecstasy? Maybe it was Doliprane.” When I said that, I’d nod my head up
and down. “Yeah, I’m not sure, in fact.” “So you think it was
Doliprane?” still nodding my head. “Yeah, it was Doliprane.” […]

*The War in Iraq*

“You call that pacification? I’ve got a problem with it,” I said in
a nauseated voice. “My friend, you’ve gotta get a grip. If you keep
making waves, they’ll judge you as a war criminal.”

We had reached the military site Al-Rashid on an overcast, dark and
sinister day. […] When we stopped, I saw ten Iraqis, about 150 yards
away. They were under forty years old, clean and dressed in the
traditional white garment. They stayed on the side of the road waving
signs and screaming anti-American slogans. […] That’s when I heard a
shot pass just over our heads, from right to left. I ran into the middle
of the street to see what was happening. I had barely rejoined Schutz
when my guys unloaded their weapons on the demonstrators. It only took
me three seconds to take aim. I aimed my sights on the center of a
demonstrator’s body. I breathed in deeply and, as I exhaled, I gently
opened my right eye and fired. I watched the bullets hit the
demonstrator right in the middle of his chest. My Marines barked: “Come
on, little girls! You wanna fight?”

I acquired a new target right away, a demonstrator on all fours who
was trying to run away as fast as possible. I quickly aimed for the
head; I breathed in deeply, breathed out, and I fired again. One head:
boom! Another: boom! The center of a mass in the bull’s eye: boom!
Another: boom! I kept on until the moment when I saw no more movement
from the demonstrators. There was no answering fire. I must have fired
at least a dozen times. It all lasted no longer than two and a half minutes.

I know that they had also been shot in the back; some of them were
crawling and their white clothes turned red. The M-16’s 5.56 is a nasty
bullet: it doesn’t kill all at once. For example, it can enter the chest
and come out at the knee, tearing all the internal organs on the way
through. My guys were jumping around in every direction. Taylor and
Gaumont hollered: “Come back, babies!” “They don’t know how to fight,
those cocksuckers! Fucking cowards!” They slapped one another on the
back, exchanging “Good job!,” but they were frustrated because some
demonstrators had succeeded in getting away. I wanted to keep on firing,
I kept telling myself: “Good God, there must be more of them.” It was
like eating the first spoonful of your favorite ice cream. You want
more. […]

Those demonstrators were the first people I killed. […] That had a
hell of an effect on me. What an adrenaline, rush, fuck! Fear becomes a
motor. It pushes you. It had more of an impact on me than the best grass
I ever smoked. It was as though all those I had ever hated, all the
anger that was accumulated in me was there in that being; you feel like
you’re absorbing life like a cannibal. You’re really happy with
yourself; you feel really powerful and everything becomes clear. You
reach nirvana, like a white luminous space. But after a few hours, you
come down from nirvana and find yourself in dark waters; you swim in a
pool of mud and the only way to go back to that other feeling is to kill
again. […]

After pulling out at dusk, we heard shots, at least a hundred. Lima
Company had opened fire on a vehicle. I learned later that there were
three women and a child inside. As far as I know, there was never any
inquiry. […]

Forty-five minutes later, a red Kia Spectra came towards us at
around 35 mph. It penetrated the green zone; a few of my Marines let
loose a warning round and the sniper fired on the engine, but the damage
didn’t keep the car from continuing into the red zone. The vehicles
installed in the rear immediately opened fire with their 240 Gulfs; we
joined in with our M-16s, targeting the car and firing at least 200
rounds at high speed. The KIA stopped in a grating around 25 yards from
my Humvee, and my Marines pounced on the vehicle and began to extract
the four wounded Iraqis. The occupants, young men tastefully dressed,
were bleeding profusely. […] Six stretcher bearers arrived with
stretchers and took them away. The survivor came towards me groaning, a
tortured expression covering his face. He looked in the air, his hands
raised: “Why did you kill my brother? We didn’t do anything to you.
We’re not terrorists.”

I walked away without saying anything to him and sat down inside my
vehicle, devastated. I got out when I heard the Marines and the
stretcher-bearers bringing the Kia’s occupants back to the car. “Fuck,
what are you bringing them back for?” “Chief-Sergeant, the chief Medical
Officer said he couldn’t do anything for them.” I looked at the Iraqis,
containing my anger with difficulty. They were twisting and groaning,
dying by inches and in pain. […] I couldn’t speak. I looked inside the
car. Obviously, there were neither weapons nor explosives there. I was
more and more disgusted.

*The Last Straw*

[…] Captain Schmitt came towards me and asked me, very calmly:
“Are you OK, Chief-Sergeant? […]” “- No, Captain. I’m not OK.” “- Why
not?” I answered without hesitation: “It’s a bad day. We killed a lot of
innocent civilians.” “- No. It’s a good day,” he retorted in an
authoritarian tone. Before I had time to answer, he had already moved
away from me with a confident tread.

Today, Jimmy Massey is no longer a Marine. He lives in a little
village in North Carolina, spends his time making anti-recruitment
visits to schools and militating against the war in the association he
founded with five other soldiers: Veterans Against the War.

—-

(*)Kill! Kill! Kill!/ by Jimmy Massey (with Natasha Saulnier),
published by Editions du Panama, 390 p., 22 Euros./

————————————————————————
/Translation: *t r u t h o u t* French language correspondent Leslie
Thatcher ./