Marine says beatings urged in Iraq

Source: LA Times

A Marine corporal, testifying Saturday at the murder trial of a buddy, said that Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after being ordered by officers to "crank up the violence level."

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo said Marines in his platoon, including the defendant, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, were angry when officers criticized them as not being as tough as other Marine platoons.

"We're all hard-chargers, we're not there to mess around, so we took it as an insult," Lopezromo said.

Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-marines15jul15,0,7740534.story?coll=la-home-center

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Make sure you read the part on "dead-checking" that Marines are taught. No wounded prisoners. If you encounter a wounded enemy - shoot him again.

...and you can always claim they were killed by "al Queada" or insurgents...

It is better to be alive.

... before the surge became 'effective'.

Turning US troops into monsters should be a war crime.

MSM won't have much to comment on this particular policy shift for awhile - ever willing to go along with giving such methods time to work into the New Iraq psyche, because this is about fanatical Iraqis who require them, whether or not it was astated reason for invasion.

We're there to help them understand that we're there to help them.


Submit to the neocon agenda Iraq! Submit or suffer more!

Don't you want freedom?

Yup...sounds to me like exactly the thing you'd hear ordered by some non-serving chickenhawk on the sidelines...right outta BushCo's collective mouth.

A shame that people who really were serving "in harm's way" were being given such directives. Saddest of all that they did---and presumably still do---obey such a command.

:(

How many national disgraces can one country have? So what happened to "The few, the proud"? NO EXCUSES, please!

These are combat tactics, and that's what these guys are being trained for. They are not prepared for guerrilla warfare or to function in their role as police.

I'm not trying to mitigate these Marines responsibility in this murder, but I feel like the biggest share of blame falls on those who put people like this in such a situation. The US has repeated the same mistakes it did in Vietnam. The first mistake was deciding to be there.

I know what double tapping is which is to put two to the target immediately. Dead-checking is finding "the enemy" wounded and then instead of taking prisoner and treating to just shoot him again. I can understand the rational in a pure combat situation wherein the wounded are often booby-trapped or booby-trap themselves. However on breaking in to an Iraqi home and firing on someone then to find that you didn't kill them to then shoot them dead is nothing but an execution.

when I referred to this as a "murder"? But, do you feel the soldiers are solely responsible, or does our govt. share in that responsibility?

I am left with the notion that these soldiers were not following orders but acted independently in finding this suspected insurgent. I wonder if this same shit happens when soldiers are ordered to apprehend someone? I tend to believe it does in some cases. That's what happens when soldiers trained for combat are sent to do police work (serving an arrest warrant in such a case).

in Marine corp. That's the training they are getting. Woe be to the Marine who doesn't follow orders. And they really are putting these guys between Iraq and a hard place.

named FalconAir? In the run-up to the invasion, she vehemently protested any suggestion that "our troops" could ever do anything like this.

Many of us disagreed.

I guess we can say to the now-absent FalconAir, "We told you so?"

The funny thing is that I remember her so clearly, and so often, because I was sure then and I'm sure now that there are many many Americans who simply can't wrap their heads around this. They still think these are a few bad apples who did a few isolated bad things. They don't understand that this kind of violence, this vicious, sadistic violence is inherent in the military system the way it's been developed over the past 30 years.

When you have a professional military filled with only volunteers, you tend to get a lot of people who a.) like the idea of War and killing and violence and the uber-nationalism that turns "the other" into "the enemy; and b.) who have no other viable options for advancement in society. I'm not saying that the U.S. military consists of nothing but sociopathic killers and socio-economic losers, but as we've seen the standards for recruiting drop down, down, down to where less-desirable enlistees (lower education level, longer criminal records, etc.) are accepted, I think we have to understand that this sort of behavior is going to be more likely than when you have a military that contains a much broader spectrum of personalities and backgrounds.

But what do I know?


Tansy Gold

Her husband was a pilot,iirc.

also refuseniks. We need to support them, we need to take the risk and tell military people to refuse orders, to refuse the war.

Remember this guy? He went home, and is still dealing with his PTSD. He had plenty of second thoughts about the young people he had in his gun sites... people who were aiming their guns at them. after all, he thought... weren't they just protecting their country?



Read Blake Miller's story here.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/29/MNGMHGVCEV1.DTL&hw=miller+iraq+ptsd&sn=001&sc=1000

We also need to listen to all these stories, w/o judging the individuals involved. It's the war that is the Crime, not the warriors.

and all those clowns, safe in their air conditioned senate offices, that supported the Bush1/Clinton/Bush2 doctrine of attacking Iraq.

Yes, there are some of bad apples in the military. I saw some during my time as an officer in the Army from 1988-1999. But the army does not turn these people into psychos. They do that all by themselves, Tansy. 90% of US troops in Iraq are not like this.

And you know this... how?

that I served with in GW I and Kosovo were not. I find it hard to believe that only 5 years after leaving, the Army has turned into a bunch of psychos.

Edit: I see the article is about Marines. I take back what I said.

Most Marines I knew weren't really all there. They were definitely pretty psychotic because they were bred that way, like you would breed a dog. Very low on intelligence, very high on aggression. Grunts. So glad this article wasn't about the Army.

There's you 90%...

...that means the US military complex has unleashed 16,000 monsters on the citizens of Iraq. That's a whole damn lot.

i modified my reply to my original post in this thread though. look at my other post in the thread, #34. I edited it. I did not realize that it was jarheads we were discussing.

this kind of sadistic behavior will catch up with most people eventually.

This needs more attention what the neocons are doing to our troops is in fact criminal.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0447,wright,58644,1.html

"One of the great ironies of the Bush administration, obsessed as it is with Christian values and the attendant crusade to punish what it deems obscene and lewd in the media (from Janet Jackson's breast to Howard Stern's speech), is that it has given us a war in which the airing of snuff films on national TV has become routine. The conflict in Iraq, as seen through news coverage, has begun to resemble the macabre underground 1980s video series Faces of Death. Throw in the images produced by the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib, and the administration has put itself in the running to successfully compete with the BDSM side of the porn industry.

"Just as I thought I was adjusting to the video carnage, NBC correspondent Kevin Sites, embedded with U.S. forces in Falluja, gave us last week's shocker: the video of a Marine standing over a wounded, apparently unarmed Arab sprawled on the floor of a mosque and executing him with a gunshot to the head."


But, this is the nature of ALL WARS. War is always an utter failure.

Someday, if the human race doesn't make the Earth uninhabitable for all mammalian life first, we will evolve enough to cease this worthless activity...

it explains what is in the LA Times article and shows this has been happening since the initial invasion. I have some sympathy for the Marines - at times they face a helluva choice. But of course the big problem is this war has no front lines and no enemy in uniform. Too many innocents get killed and maimed by the weapons and the warriors.

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people in the back as they stood at their locker, or the balls as they sat in an assembly, or siimply walking up to a nice guy and punching him as hard as they could in the arm. These were the same guys that gravitated toward military service, notibly the Marines. I still remember their names from 25 years ago. They made high school in our small kansas town a real hell for some.

As I struggle with coming from a place of compassion toward these assholes I have to ask this, and I also ask those terrorists who would kill innocent Americans as well (they are all the same in my book)

What hurt you so bad that you feel that hurting others is your only means for restitution?

resistance, the people who were not drafted, many of them became the strongest resisters. and they basically made the war impossible to continue.

Courage to Resist
and dammit, everyone has to see this movie.
Sir, NO SIR!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/07/15/marines.iraq.ap/index.html

Marine testimony: All Iraqi men viewed as insurgents

* Story Highlights
* Asked what cranking up violence entailed, Marine responds, "We beat people"
* Corporal testifying for defense says Marines were looking for "prince of jihad"
* Defense: Trent Thomas suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injury
* Witness: Marines routinely killed injured Iraqis rather than administer first aid




This is getting traction.

the enemy. Remember the BS that we were there to "liberate" Iraqis from Saddam's brutal oppression? Now I guess we are there to liberate all Iraqi males from their lives.

And still we have politicians and RW idiots complaining that the Iraqis are not grateful enough for what we have done for them.

All Iraqi men are the ememy. God! That's what I've been saying.

Genocide.

destroying the village to "save" it.

:woohoo:

And safer, too!

Can we quit listening to the men lacking higher brain function, just for a little while? Please?

I feel bad for those decent soldiers who refuse such orders.

Sadly, I suppose there aren't many...

oooops, not yours, mine and your grandchildren's tax dollars at work...

The bushies and the Dems are putting this war on their credit card...