[Mb-hair] FW: forward...

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From: Arlene Johnson [mailto:mollybloom.yes at comcast.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 3:53 PM
To: sherwin at aceross.com
Subject: forward...


Sherwin -

This is horrible to read, but this helps to form my opinion of the mess in
Iraq. It is a transcription of a speech Hersch gave in Berkeley last week.

FYI -- Seymour Hersh is the pulitzer prize winning journalist who uncovered
the Mai Lai Massacre way back in the viet nam war.

He also broke the Abu Ghraib prison story.

Hope you don't mind me passing this along. Bush has got to go!





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. 

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