Former Marine David Airhart speaks on the killing of Civilians in Iraq

Transcript - David Airhart speaking in Chicago, November 5, 2005 on the killing of civilians in Iraq and abuse of detainees at Guantanamo


First of all I want to thank everyone for their support; that means a lot to me. The more support the better. What I’d like to talk about are things that are occurring in the military that are sort of unknown by the majority of the American public, mostly because the media deprives them of this information.

I spent 4 months in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and 6 months in Iraq and 7 months in Afghanistan, so I have a pretty well rounded perspective of everything that’s going on in this war on terror.

When I was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba my unit’s job was to transport the detainee’s coming from Afghanistan to Cuba. We’d transport them on a school bus where we removed all of the seats and all the prisoners would be shoved in there like sardines. We were encouraged to kick them in different sensitive areas like their ribs and parts of their legs if they made the slightest movement like maybe a movement of their finger or they took too deep of a breath. We were encouraged to use severe physical punishment to prevent them from moving. But after a while it became sort of a form of entertainment for a lot of marines to sporadically kick some of these detainees for entertainment purposes. And I started to realize I think then that there are things go on in the military aren’t quite as noble as our government tries to portray. We did that for 4 months. There wasn’t a day I was there there wasn’t some sort of prisoner beating festivity going on.

From there I went to Iraq. I guess I really wasn’t ready for what was in store for me and my unit in Iraq. My unit - I was in the First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Charley Company. We were the unit that went in during the whole Jessica Lynch thing in An Nasiriyah.

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Cheers

Alito on the scotus....

I hope he meets some Quakers; they can help him work for Peace, maybe that will help lift his sadness.

do the right thing and speak out against
these war crimes & inhumanity.

and start doing this to the domestic political opposition

A belated Welcome to DU Flabbergasted!

and it doesn't help that it goes right up to the Commander in Chief.
The prez is a dyed-in-the-wool sadist & closet racist IMO.

<snip>

We are in a war that shows no inclination of ever ending. Yes, there’s a lot of rhetoric in congress now about ‘let’s create new benchmarks that need to be fulfilled in Iraq so that we can have a time table of bringing the troops home.’ But, ladies and gentlemen, that’s just political rhetoric because the benchmarks they talk about putting in place are unrealistic. Therefore, there will never be a time line. And let’s keep in mind that this is a congress that voted for the war, Republican and Democrat alike, and they are trapped by that vote to the extent that they cannot meaningfully interfere with the Bush administration’s plans on Iraq, and the plans of the Bush administration regarding Iraq was most recently articulated by Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, when she told the congress of the United States that we will be in Iraq for at least ten years. All right, this is the reality. See, I told you that it wasn’t going to be very uplifting. This is the reality, and we have to deal with the reality, because if we don’t deal with the reality, if we don’t have a true grasp of what is happening as we speak, there cannot be a solution.

It is long but omg, intense.

K&R!