Iraq = Vietnam. Massacre the people.

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

Uh Oh](A Tiny Revolution: Uh Oh)

Seymour Hersh spoke at Berkeley last Friday, October 8th. He told a story about recently receiving a call from an American lieutenant in Iraq who’d just witnessed other American soldiers massacring Iraqis.
I typed up what he said from the Real Video file here. The story begins at about 41:45.

UPDATE: I’m told Hersh has said much the same at other events, including this October 1 appearance on the Diane Rehm Show. I haven’t listened to it myself, however.
HERSH: I got a call last week from a soldier – it’s different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He’s an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It’s a place where we claim we’ve done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy.

It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary… It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn’t explicit – we’re talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody…

They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he’s hysterical. He’s totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, “No, you don’t understand. That’s a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents.”

You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It’s shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts…

You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you’ve complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You’re going to get a bullet in the back. You don’t need that. And that’s where we are with this war.
Posted by Jonathan Schwarz at October 12, 2004 11:12 AM | TrackBack

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Damn.

2

In the 1990s American forced sanctions on Iraq deliberately starved one million people dead of which 600,000 were children and another 50,000 Iraqis were murdered mainly by the Americans in the invasion... I don't know why the Americans don't even have any shame!

3

I wonder about this myself at times, it's funny that Al-Jazeera or any arab news will say 50 or 100 or 300 innocent Iraqi's died, 20 insurgents captured or killed, while CNN, FOX,MSNBC (cant speak about BBC) mention only 20 insurgents captured or killed and no mention of innocent iraqis.
If Israelis take a palestinean life it is treated like an accident or not a big deal, but if an israeli is killed it is labeled as Murder, and palestineans are labeled thugs, terrorists, murderers. Now I fully understand the concept of suicide bombers and palestineans, and I am not arguing how a person dies, but the choice of words. For instance in news recently an israeli platoon emptied their magazines on a 13 or 14 yr old palestinean girl, but the choice of words used by the media was demeaning, compared to the words that would have been used if it were the other way around.

4

It's no use, whatever happens, some people will only listen to what they want to hear.

5

Dont despair br/Sis. Justice is only with Allah(swt).

6

Seymour Hersh is a terrorist

7

A Vietnam style quagmire is exactly what the US occupation of Iraq is leading to..

Iraq death toll ‘like Vietnam’: Allies](http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11300394%255E2703,00.html) The Australian, 06 Nov 04

**AS coalition forces last night continued the countdown to an attack on up to 5000 rebel fighters in the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, US officials warned the casualty toll would reach levels not seen since the Vietnam War.Marine surgeon Lach Noyes made the grim prediction yesterday as Britain mourned the deaths of three soldiers from the famed Black Watch regiment, the first casualties in the controversial redeployment of British troops to US-controlled combat zones. **

8

Check this out.
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6403689/)

Why can’t the U.S trained Iraqi fighters be called soldiers :soldier:? How low can you go. Is the soldiering now only limited to U.S,and any other country’s army is now called fighters, insurgents and terrorists. Hmmm keep up the good work and you will be the only ones left in the coalition.

9

Iraq is fast becoming a Vietnam style quagmire for the bush Administration.

US Greens Say Fallujah Risks Vietnam in Iraq! Scoop NZ, 15 Nov

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Greens warn that the Fallujah offensive, with heavy civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure, has completed the transformation of the Iraq invasion into the Vietnam War.

“The insistence that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein while killing between 10,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians has turned President Bush’s rationale for the invasion into a grotesque joke,” said Tony Gronowicz, a member of the International Committee of the Green Party of the United States and author.

Greens said that heavy civilian casualties in Fallujah will turn more Iraqis against the U.S., especially in other Sunni cities, leading to a longer occupation and destroying hopes for democracy in Iraq…

10

The unalloyed evil of the enemy is also a familiar refrain. Then, as now, they were painted as purveyors of atrocity – which they were, and are. It was inconvenient, however, to notice that the longer the war went on, the more like them we became. And so last week, with Abu Ghraib already burned into our collective memory, we watched videotape of a Marine shooting a wounded, unarmed insurgent in a Fallujah mosque.
Its the Vietnam War all over again](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/21/ING7Q9TMU61.DTL) San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Nov 04