Soldier: "I got yelled at by my platoon leader that I needed to stop trying to save these mf’n kids"

U.S. Soldier on 2007 Apache Attack: What I Saw

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* April 20, 2010 |
* 3:30 pm


Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/#ixzz0lkBD6zVV

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Wired.com: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. She had a stomach wound?

McCord: She had a stomach wound and she had glass in her eyes and in her hair. She was crying. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went to the van immediately, because I could hear her crying. It wasn’t like a cry of pain really. It was more of a child who was frightened out of her mind. And the next thing I saw was the boy…. He was kind of sitting on the floorboard of the van, but with his head laying on the bench seat in the front. And then the father, who I’m assuming was the father, in the driver’s seat slumped over on his side. Just from looking into the van, and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead.

So, the first thing I did was grab the girl. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. There’s houses behind where the van was. We took her in there and we’re checking to see if there were any other wounds. You can hear the medic saying on the video, “There’s nothing I can do here, she needs to be evac’d.” He runs the girl to the Bradley. I went back outside to the van, and that’s when the boy took, like, a labored, breath. That’s when I started screaming, “The boy’s alive! The boy’s alive!” And I picked him up and started running with him over to the Bradley. He opened his eyes when I was carrying him. I just kept telling him, “Don’t die; don’t die.” He looked at me, then his eyes rolled back into this head.

Then I got yelled at by my platoon leader that I needed to stop trying to save these mf’n kids and go pull security…. I was told to go pull security on a rooftop. When we were on that roof, we were still taking fire. There were some people taking pot shots, sniper shots, at us on the rooftop. We were probably there on the roof for another four to five hours.

Wired.com: How much sniper fire were you getting?

McCord: It was random sporadic spurts. I did see a guy … moving from a rooftop from one position to another with an AK-47, who was firing at us. He was shot and killed.

After the incident, we went back to the FOB forward operating base and that’s when I was in my room. I had blood all down the front of me from the children. I was trying to wash it off in my room. I was pretty distraught over the whole situation with the children. So I went to a sergeant and asked to see the mental health person, because I was having a hard time dealing with it. I was called a pussy and that I needed to suck it up and a lot of other horrible things. I was also told that there would be repercussions if I was to go to mental health.

Wired.com: What did you understand that to mean?

McCord: I would be smoked. Smoked is basically like you’re doing pushups a lot, you’re doing sit-ups … crunches and flutter kicks. They’re smoking you, they’re making you tired. I was told that I needed to get the sand out of my vagina…. So I just sucked it up and tried to move on with everything.

I’ve lived with seeing the children that way since the incident happened. I’ve had nightmares. I was diagnosed with chronic, severe PTSD. But I was actually starting to get kind of better. … I wasn’t thinking about it as much. Then I took my children to school one day and I came home and sat down on the couch and turned on the TV with my coffee, and on the news I’m running across the screen with a child. The flood of emotions came back. I know the scene by heart; it’s burned into my head. I know the van, I know the faces of everybody that was there that day.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/2007-iraq-apache-attack-as-seen-from-the-ground/#ixzz0lkAal3bN

Today's Army. Be All That You Can Be.

wanting him to do security, as there were snipers. Just a terrible situation, and not for me to judge. War is ugly.

and your friends and they don't care how they kill you, it doesn't matter whether the "war" is justified or not. You want to save your butt and the butts of those who "have your back".

When you are on the front lines, War is just as ugly whether it's justified or not.

Which is why we should be so careful when deciding to go to war. There is no glory in war - only horror. And Soldiers will be the first to tell you that.

I beg to differ.

There is you and your buddies and the enemy who is trying to kill you.

It is no longer "Bush's war" it is how do I accomplish the mission for the next 3 hours and prevent my buddies from going home in a box.

Anyone telling you different is full of shit.

Not for you to judge? War is ugly? So is war and warcrimes apologism.

at that point were the two wounded children. Sounds to me like his platoon leader has his priorities wrong.

Aren't we there to 'liberate' the Iraqi people, I mean after we found no WMDs and should have left at that point? Wasn't that the justification?

Or, have we simply accepted the fact that we are there for the oil and if innocent Iraqis die, too bad?

Why ARE we there btw?

to just this particular incident--just noting that it's hard to judge actions and priorities when I've never been in anything like that situation (and would never want to be).

I think the reaction of the soldier was the right one. Iraqi children needed immediate care and he saw that as a priority. There were other soldiers around to take care of other tasks. The platoon leader appeared not to value the lives of the people whose country that he is nothing more than an illegal invader of. Our very presence there has caused the deaths of over one million of their people. I don't think we get much sympathy around the world when we try to make claims that the security of an illegal invader is more important than the victims of that invasion, especially children.

I admire the soldier who, imo, did what was the humane and moral thing to do. Adults, especially those who were not injured, were more capable of taking care of themselves at that point. The children were helpless. People have to do what their conscience tells them to do.

The treatment of this soldier, and others who have the morality to do what is right in a situation where it is all too easy to lose that sense of right and wrong, was also despicable. There was no emergency then, so it is a very bad statement about the mentality of those we are asked to respect. HE deserves respect, imo, the others who treated him badly, seem to have lost their sense of humanity. Maye that is why they went after him. He was a reminder to them, that it is still possible to be humane, even in the worst of situations. They prefer to excuse their behavior by claiming 'security' issues. He blew that excuse so they had to try to diminish his efforts.

To stop Al-qaeda - or to fuel it so we can sell more war toys?

in which it is being abused by this WAR OF CHOICE and just, eventually, walk away from it without consolidating its own internal power structures so as to, hopefully, avoid being WASTED AGAIN at some point in the future.

If we're going to have a military at all it has to acquire somekind of power over being used this way and the only way it CAN acquire that power is internally and the main factor to acquiring that power internally IS combat.

and abuse is because our political process is almost completely alienated from the People.

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another example of why many parents will never encourage their child to enlist.

Once you're in, they own you and too often abuse you...what a deal, eh?

You know, somehow, my two older children ended up military. My daughter served in Afghanistan, and has been out of the army for four years, my son is deployed in Iraq right now. These kind of topics I tiptoe around with my son more than my daughter, since he's in active deployment. He told me that there are men in units that want to seek combat, are as ignorant as they can be in that way, they WANT a target. They WANT to shoot, they WANT an available enemy. Exploding IEDs and perimeter patrols isn't enough 'excitement' for these types. I don't think they are in the majority, but there are apparently many, many more than you would expect, (well than some people would expect, I can't say I'm surprised) who think that way.

And then I read things like this, disgusting, terrible situation, lives ruined or just..over and another soldier who will come back to this country to eventually be ignored, carrying that kind of baggage. War always starts a self proliferating damage, collateral or otherwise. It just spreads out it's ugliness and disease over generations.

As necessary as it was to do what the U.S. did in WWII, I think subsequent generations are enslaved by the inability of many in "The Great Generation" to just let their sacrifices simply justify themselves, without requiring subsequent generations to prop them up and convince themselves and TGG that what TGG did was good.

I was raised to believe that you do the right thing because it IS the right thing, not for glory, and then you let that stand without requiring others to bow down and sacrifice themselves to you/what you did by re-living the whole thing with their own lives.

And the more a behavior CAN stand on its own without social worship/sacrifice, the more integrity it has.

It's a damned shame that in our Militaristic culture, a culture verging on death cults in some of its subsets, it's a damned shame that the good some military did in the past is waaaaaaay too often used as a propagandistic tool to enslave the future.

We have not been at "war" in Iraq in over 2500 days according to the sublime wisdom of W.

Our troops deserve better. Their lives should not be endangered so callously and so capriciously. This is why we need an end to the all-volunteer military and a reinstatement of the draft - NOT so that more of our boys and girls will die in uniform, but so that FEWER will EVER be dispatched into such quagmires in the future and so that we can immediately see how easy it really would be to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

My heart cries for the soldiers and civilians that have had their lives shattered by the greed and lust for power of the so-called 'leaders' of America that got us into the mess in the first place and have now failed to get us out of it since then.

President Obama, I hope that you are hearing these stories...more than hearing them, FEELING them, viscerally and continually. You need something to force you to do what is right and just and to get our troops OUT OF THERE - not in 18 MORE months or weeks or even days! I hope the tears of the affected salt your drink and make you realize that of all the men and women on this planet, the ONE with the highest capacity to ease suffering and death on a worldwide scale is YOU.

Every day that you choose not to end these wars of choice is another day that people are affected JUST LIKE THIS STORY. Maybe instead of an Apache attack helicopter is an IED that gets triggered by a convoy or a car or just by some poor bastard walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Every day that you choose not to end these wars of choice is another day that a campaign promise, THE campaign promise for many of us, goes unfulfilled and another day that the spirit of the country is further tormented and left to twist in the buffeting winds of hate. Can you SEE Old Glory, Mr. President? Torn and wind whipped? Colors muddied and sullied by the innocent blood that drips from them? Can you FEEL it Mr. President? The agony and anguish of a father-less son or a motherless daughter, children who were conceived and born AFTER the criminal acts of your predecessor but who none the less must suffer the unknown and unknowable future without the benefit of the guidance of parents?

Can you muster the courage to stand up to the politics of this fractured, injured and dysfunctional nation sir? Can you reach the promise of your ability and the gravity of your moment? Can you become the leader we NEED and not the leader who COULD BE...if ONLY he would stop playing it so close to the vest, so cautiously, so Rham-esque?

PLEASE Mr. President, PLEASE spare the lives of the Iraqi parents who today are holding their new-born babies and tomorrow must drive the streets of their country uncertain that the next intersection could be their rendezvous with eternity and could mean that they never return to that newborn. We can too easily become detached from what is happening in our names sir - yours, a man of historical import and stature on the world stage AND mine, a man of no renown and relative obscurity for all the world - as Americans.

Stop the killing.
Stop the terror.
Stop the occupations.

Bring the troops home THIS year.
Let the Iraqi people and the Afghan people determine their own future.
We have need of our best and brightest to fix THIS nation.

To heal OUR wounds.
To rebuild OUR infrastructure.
To fulfill OUR promise.
To be parents to OUR children and the next generation of Americans, the ones who really WILL have to clean up our mess.

Do not do this for me or for yourself or even for history.
Do it because it is right.
Do it because it is just.
Do it because it will start to once again make us whole.

Unfortunately, I think "they" see it as "at least they're employed." Really, what would "they" do with the troops coming home to double digit unemployment. Would they take that money saved and start a national works program? That would be SOCIALISM. Not like the military, no socialism there..."they" outsourced......
It is pitiful. Our country only ranks in the top 20 "civilized nations" because we have the military might. We are not civilized and our citizens rank among the lowest in almost every type of evaluation.

Also, a belated welcome to DU! :hi:

the travesty of Iraq and Afghanistan would read it. But I wonder if any of them have the ability to care about the actual people whose lives they so carelessly use up in the interests of power and profit and ambition.

I wish that every soldier in the world would refuse to fight for the War Machine. If they want oil, let them go get it themselves. The Iraqi people and certainly those innocent children are not and never were our enemies. But we became theirs.

And one more who leaked the video of this atrocity. Decency - it's more than you can say for a lot people. For example it's more than you can say for people who apologize for mass murder. It's more than you can say for people who whitewash history.

He's a good man. He saved those kids' lives. He doesn't seem to realize that he did, either.

I had a feeling while watching the video, watching him run across the street with one of the kids, that he might take flak for what he was doing from others in his unit. He looked very alone, unsupported. He was inarguably justified in what he did, though, from all perspectives, moral and practical.

Look at me, arguing that saving the lives of two kids was "justified." That's what we've come to. That's why something has to be said.

The whole incident seemed reminiscent of Platoon, which is amazing because the themes in that movie are so exaggerated.

never made clear that the kids lives were actually saved but were turned over to Iraqi security forces and taken to a local hospital. Did I miss another part of this story?

:thumbsup:

Same sort of shit happened in Viet Nam. Of course then we did not have the "pipelines" to get the word out.

We were told alcohol or drugs really helped.

Yeah they did. Sarcasm card withheld on account of maybe being a quarter true.

up and down this wasn't a war crime...no where to be seen on this thread. :eyes:

I will say this, I'm glad the confessions and guilt are all coming out and in public.

+1 for the soldiers that tried to do the right thing that day, while everyone else was doing the wrong thing.

:hi:

So the guy pulling the kids out of the van was taking hostile fire at the same time? I missed that part in the Wikileaks video. Did you catch it?

He was yelled at and told to go pull guard duty, snipers were taking pot shots at him for hours.

Weird how he describes this incident just like I described it, huh?

Keep trying.

Please provide links.

Next...

Goodbye.

As you said, goodbye.

I still see the half dozen kids hit by an American Claymore, a couple dead and the rest bleeding and screaming. That was 43 years ago.

6 years ago.

SGT PASTO

How utterly shameful.

to think about this for a moment before you start roasting the platoon leader for making him go set up security. Would you feel better if no one had set up security and a rocket fired by an Iraqi had hit the area where the Americans were and had killed them and the children?

The platoon leader's job is to protect his platoon FIRST, then after security is established, get the casualties taken care of. Apparently that's what he was doing. That's called good soldiering.

As far as the stuff about "there being repercussions" and he would be "smoked", that is just absolutely messed up from every perspective. Shameful in fact. That kind of crap needs to stop.

The way we treat our psychologically-wounded military personnel is a national disgrace.

courtmartialed. JMHO. But then, female soldiers don't count.

comment, Saracat, I thought I had missed the fact that McCord was a woman, so I went back and re-read the article.

I think johnaries explained it pretty well. It's the callous attitude toward the psychological trauma that bothers me.

words connoting female sexuality are used to illustrate a or equate to cowardice. We have female soldiers and they are every bit as courageous and honorable as the males. Would it be acceptable if the phrase"Cowardly N word"was used? Funny how that would be am issues but ingrained insults to female soldiers are excused as just part of society.

surely do not equate it with using the N word. My view is that it was not intended to be an insult to female soldiers at all. It was typical army macho shit talk being thrown around by someone who wanted to make a point. Not my choice of words for that situation, for sure, but not a slur.

I guess perhaps because you are not a female it doesn't bother you. I find talk like that whether to a womens face , about a women, or female anatomy used to denigrate are demeaning and ought not to be permitted. The excuse that it is "typical macho army shit talk being used by someone who wanted to make a point" is not acceptable. A civilian working for a corporation could be sued for such talk and justifiably so.

People say things about other people when they are not around. People use nasty references to other people and groups when they are in a group that they feel will not condemn them for doing so. It's human nature. Often it's pretty damn funny. It's funny because it's not in the context of calling the individual that to his/her face.

It was the context of the situation that made the comment unacceptable, not the comment itself.

Maybe you're one of those people who never says anything about anyone or anything that is not "politically correct". If so, more power to you. I'm not in that group and have no desire to be. That doesn't mean that I would say something hurtful to someone in a situation where it would be embarrassing to her/him. Far from it. The same is true of most of the people I know. It's called smart-ass humor or caustic wit.

comments ever acceptable no matter what the conditions.And I really disagree that any of those comments fit the nature of caustic humor. If someone has to descend to that level, it really isn't wit.We will have to agree to disagree. The comment itself is unacceptable to me no matter who it was said to. No matter who one tries to dress it up it indicated the speaker was a sexist.

is sexist and misogynistic and perpetuates the stereotypes. I'm not sure it is so much human nature as it is a cultural norm and one we should work to change. If it is, indeed, human nature it is one of those parts of our nature we might do well to work against.

I believe it does show a lack of respect for women no matter who it is said to.

have been sexist? Is that the kind of statement that would qualify as sexism or grounds for a lawsuit?

That is the kind of comment that gets slung around when men are cracking on men. It's certainly not intended for mixed company and it does have a negative connotation in that it implies that the man in question isn't man enough to "get it up", but it's not as if the guy actually means that the other person is sexually impotent or that his mother is a female dog.

Humor almost always shows a lack of respect for someone or something. It's that tension that makes it "funny" or ironic and causes people to laugh. In the case of McCord being chewed out by his supervisor, I'm sure it wasn't intended as humor or a slam on women or women soldiers, but as a way of telling McCord to toughen up. And, as I've said repeatedly, it was the wrong approach IMO.

I find it interesting that you think this would qualify as disrespect for women. Some of the most sarcastic, hateful, and nasty remarks I have ever heard made about women were made by women when I was at parties with my lesbian friends and their friends after they get loosened up with a few drinks. The first time I heard them I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They, on the other hand, guffawed as if they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. After the initial shock and embarrassment I realized that they were just doing what everyone else does. Funny, but it didn't even occur to me that they were being sexist or perpetuating stereotypes--even though they probably were in the most technical and far-reaching sense.

The unfortunate thing here is not the choice of words, but the fact that our society has such ingrained sexism that such a sexist statement would be chosen.

Let me put it into another perspective. The soldier had just experienced a serious traumatic experience that would mess with anyone's head. But, despite what he had just seen or experience, he had to be "shaken out of it" and be made to focus on the immediate problem at hand, or else he could put himself and the rest of his team in danger.

The words used were meant to have the most emotional impact available to mentally "slap" the soldier to continue to do "what is necessary" to protect both himself and his team.

The fact that the words or phrase was sexist is a reflection of our society, not of the soldier himself.

This is a sad story. The soldier involved must be allowed to forgive himself and his teammates, or else he will never be able to resolve his internal issues. The fact that he is able to talk about them is the first step.

That certainly wasn't made clear in the Wikileaks video.

ETA: A couple of other things Ethan says:

"However, when I did come up on the scene, there was an RPG as well as AK-47s there…. You just don’t walk around with an RPG in Iraq, especially three blocks away from a firefight."

Wow, exactly what I said.

"There were plenty of times in the past where other insurgents would come by and pick up the bodies, and then we’d have no evidence or anything to what happened, so in looking at it from the Apache’s point of view, they were thinking that picking up the weapons and bodies..."

Wow, exactly what I said.

I guess I shouldn't expect apologies...

And he may have seen weapons on the ground but that isn't evidence all or any of the people shot had them. He wasn't there to see that part. Still doesn't give cause to shot unarmed people. Finally, he even says the van should not have been shot at.

So, no apology. I know you want to put the US military is the bestest possible light, but were in a country we shouldn't be killing people who did us no wrong.

The weapons he saw are visible in the Wikileaks video. The group had armed men in it.

The chopper pilots killed some innocent people, but that doesn't matter to some people so save your breath.

Where the fuck do you get off doing that? If you think I'm a disruptor, alert the moderators. Otherwise, your actions will be regarded as harassment.

Combat and non-combat is a very big deal to your future in the military.

One can imagine how the "bosses" are consolidating their influence in the number of combat experienced personnel who they have under them.

As he was walking his platoon through a field he asked a farmer if he had seen any foreign fighters the farmer replied "Only you!"

had the presence of mind to try and fix the situation...so he tried to save those inside and got yelled at. Because you are supposed to slaughter people without question in the military, fuck it if you get it wrong. That is fucked up, but we've all known what goes on over there for years now.

Bring our troops home.

treating his platoon leader to a horizontal butt stroke and kept on moving.

k+r

all the way around.

I get so sick of hearing how war is so honorable...:cry: