Conscientious Objector Witnessed Abuse, Killing of Iraqi Detainees

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Exclusive: Conscientious Objector Witnessed Abuse, Killing of Iraqi Detainees at Abu Ghraib
We speak with former Army Reserve Specialist Aidan Delgado. At Abu Ghraib, he witnessed U.S. soldiers abuse and killing of Iraqi detainees.





RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AIDAN DELGADO: Yeah, I had given in my weapon long ago. So, but everyone else in my unit went out there, because there was a prisoner demonstration that had become out of control. They were throwing tent stakes and pieces of stone and debris. And they had struck one of the soldiers with a rock. He wasn't seriously injured, but he was annoyed. And so in response, they had asked for the permission to use lethal force. It was still unclear afterwards, in the military's very cursory investigation, whether they actually got the order to use lethal force-- it was obscure. So, they opened fire with a heavy machine gun and they killed five prisoners-- several of whom took several days to die. This is something that I learned about from the horse's mouth when they came back and told me, “Oh, here is a photo of the guys we killed. I killed three, I killed two. My guy took three days to die, I shot him in the groin with a machine gun.” And the command had even posted these photographs in our headquarters, and they had been very ghoulishly circulating them. It was very much a trophy-taking thing. And I remember just sort of questioning the guy, saying, “Do you really feel proud of having shot an unarmed man who threw a stone?” He was like, “Well, I'm doing my job.” It was a very machismo thing, to have killed someone. I felt this immense loathing and this immense disgust for the whole incident.

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the pictures that you sent, extremely bloody. People in their own blood, people shot up. Where are they from?

AIDAN DELGADO: The ones from the initial assault come from the Third Infantry division. They had gone ahead of us, and we were attached to them, served as their support. Any of the photos taken that are extremely sharp, with a telephoto lens--those come from the Third Infantry division; I was not the photographer. The grainy photos are, are myself. The prisoners who were killed, those photographs come from the people who were there. I received them from a friend of mine who-- from one of the participants.



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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7508.htm

That's war for ya.

It seems strange to me that anyone becomes aghast when they discover the attitudes those in battle have to adopt in order to maintain some semblance of sanity or functionality. Or that bad shit happens in war. War is a Bad Thing.

So naturally, the people who were so gung-ho to get into Iraq don't get this kind of information, whether through overlooking it, not seeking it out, or failing to exercise any kind of critical thinking. Thus next time--and I do believe there will be a next time soon--they'll be gung-ho to go into the next target country.

And more bad things will happen. And more Americans will either cope by essentially developing what would be a mental health disorder outside of war, escape somehow, or get wounded or die. And more brown-skinned people will be tortured and killed.

If all the people knew and really understood what really, really happens in a war--if they were confronted daily by pictures of burnt babies and soldiers with their thighbones poking jaggedly through what's left of their leg flesh and special ops guys kicking prisoners in the head until dead--I would hope to God that war would be over. Period.