# Sawing off heads worse than pushing buttons? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 20, 2007, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757 "2007-03-20T19:51:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/61 "2007-03-26T17:54:59Z")
[QUOTE=GomiBoy] Login required - would you be able to post more from this source please? [/QUOTE] Sorry for that, didn’t notice. If you use Firefox, add this handy little extension [BugMeNot](http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/02/07/bugmenot/) and you won’t have any problems in the future. A bit more – not sure how much the mods will allow for due to copyright issues, thus I leave it up to their discretion. I guesstimate this is about a third of the article/interview: > [@](#): > > For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp. > > The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C. > > When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved. > > Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq? > > A:\*\* I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.\*\* > > Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine? > > A: **The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn’t see any humanitarian support.** > > Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines? > > A: **I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there’s many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That’s the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn’t slow down. So we lit them up.** > > Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns? > > A: **Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn’t destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: “Why did you kill my brother? We didn’t do anything wrong.” That hit me like a ton of bricks.** > > Q: He spoke English? > > A:\ Oh, yeah.\ > > Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right? > > A: **Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, “Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons.” That’s what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren’t in uniform. We never found any weapons.** > > Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties? > > A: **Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.** > > Q: Over what period did all this take place? > > A: **During the invasion of Baghdad.** > > ‘We lit him up pretty good’ > > Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint “light-ups”? > > A: **Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn’t stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn’t really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.** > > Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case? > > A: **Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.** > > Q: A demonstration? Where? > > A: O**n the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn’t. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: “Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it.”** > > Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic? > > A: **Both**. > > Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out? > > A: **Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.** > > Q: What kind of firepower was employed? > > A: **M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.** > > Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out? > > A: **Oh, yeah. Well, I had a “mercy” on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, “Don’t shoot.” Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.** See any “heros” here? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/62 "2007-03-26T19:24:51Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Much more at source. And that folks, is reality in Iraq and not what your star-spangled glasses allow you to see/read. [/QUOTE] Maybe you ought to check your sources more closely: [How We Came to Publish a Story We Shouldn’t Have - by David Holwerk, Bee Newspapers Editorial Pages Editor.](http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/13849284p-14689150c.html) > [@](#): > > …So far, so good. The problem is that we didn’t go far enough. Before we published the story, we should have called the Marine Corps for response. We also could have attempted to speak to other members of Massey’s Marine unit and to check whether any reporters were embedded with Massey’s company. But we didn’t. > > …That’s when reporter Harris called. He told me he was working on a story about Massey and identified himself as having been embedded with Massey’s unit in Iraq. He told me that neither he nor other embedded journalists had seen any evidence of the atrocities Massey alleged and that other members of Massey’s unit had told him the incidents never occurred. He also told me the Marine Corps had investigated Massey’s allegations and had concluded they were baseless. > > He said a number of news organizations had published some version of Massey’s accounts. (Among the ones he named are the Associated Press, USA Today and the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, along with smaller newspapers around the country.) And he asked how The Bee had decided to publish the interview with Massey with no other sources, no response from the Marine Corps and no independent corroboration. > > After I looked up the story, I told him the truth: It was clear in retrospect that we hadn’t done due diligence with the Jimmy Massey interview. > > Since then, things have been busy on the Jimmy Massey/Ron Harris front. Last Sunday, Harris’ story appeared in the Post-Dispatch and Harris appeared on CNN to talk about his story. A number of conservative commentators picked up the story and began taking to task newspapers that had published versions of Massey’s story. > > Massey has responded with an article posted on the Web and sent to the Post-Dispatch. In it, Massey sticks by his accounts of atrocities in Iraq. He accuses the reporter of retaliating against him for calling attention to what he says was Harris’ inaccurate reporting while embedded in Iraq. Anti-war Web sites have joined the fray, which shows signs of becoming a skirmish - if not a full-fledged battle - waged across the domestic schism over the war in Iraq. > > I’d like to be able to tell you who’s telling the truth in all this, but I can’t. Is it Jimmy Massey, a decorated Marine veteran with an honorable discharge? Or is it Ron Harris, an experienced reporter who lived alongside Marines in Iraq? > > What I can do is to direct you to Web sites where the various pieces of this controversy appear. A list of pertinent Web addresses appears with this column. > > And I can say this much: I should have insisted that we do more to check out Massey’s account before it ran in The Bee. Without such checking, we should not have published the story. > > Our editing and fact-checking processes are better than they were 17 months ago, and I’m confident we wouldn’t make the same error in judgment now. But I made one in May 2004, and there’s no disputing the truth of that. The article you quote is poorly and incompletely sourced. Given that the newspaper you quote can’t stand behind it, I don’t think you want to use it either, at least not here. ---
**Author:** ![GomiBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/63 "2007-03-26T20:00:28Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] The article you quote is poorly and incompletely sourced. Given that the newspaper you quote can’t stand behind it, I don’t think you want to use it either, at least not here. [/QUOTE] Thanks for debunking that - seemed a bit to crazy to be true considering the number of huge stories this would have brought in UK press especially if it were only true. Any other evidence of massive war crimes by our troops on a regular basis without any response and punishment from Higher Command? Turns out my ‘star spangled glasses’ maybe aren’t so wrong after all. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/64 "2007-03-26T20:13:29Z")
'tis true, I wasn’t aware of the controversy surrounding Jim Massey. He did, however, write the following essay where he pretty much stands by what he said: [Smear Job Is Ron Harris Telling the Truth?]([http://www.counterpunch.org/massey11102005.html](http://www.counterpunch.org/massey11102005.html)) ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2007, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/65 "2007-03-26T20:35:55Z")
[QUOTE=GomiBoy] Thanks for debunking that - seemed a bit to crazy to be true considering the number of huge stories this would have brought in UK press especially if it were only true. Any other evidence of massive war crimes by our troops on a regular basis without any response and punishment from Higher Command? Turns out my ‘star spangled glasses’ maybe aren’t so wrong after all. [/QUOTE] Well, if you took the spectacles off you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss [Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse) for instance. I’d call that pretty “massive,” wouldn’t you? Beyond that, plenty of other examples come up on a [Google](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2RNFA_enDO204DO204&q=war+crimes+%2B+US+troops+%2B+Iraq) search. Nope, I’m just not seeing how invading soldiers in an unjust and immoral war can be called the “good guys.” Never mind the fact that war is an atrocity in at of itself, your leaders actually chose to unleash the dogs of war under demonstrably false pretenses. Read-up on [wars of aggression](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression). Turns out it is “one of the four most serious crimes of concern to the international community.” So, really, no matter how you look at it, you’re standing on very shaky ground when it comes to defending your actions in Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![GomiBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2007, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757/66 "2007-03-27T11:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Well, if you took the spectacles off you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss [Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse) for instance. I’d call that pretty “massive,” wouldn’t you? Beyond that, plenty of other examples come up on a [Google](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2RNFA_enDO204DO204&q=war+crimes+%2B+US+troops+%2B+Iraq) search. Nope, I’m just not seeing how invading soldiers in an unjust and immoral war can be called the “good guys.” Never mind the fact that war is an atrocity in at of itself, your leaders actually chose to unleash the dogs of war under demonstrably false pretenses. Read-up on [wars of aggression](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression). Turns out it is “one of the four most serious crimes of concern to the international community.” So, really, no matter how you look at it, you’re standing on very shaky ground when it comes to defending your actions in Iraq. [/QUOTE] I’m not dismissing anything. You don’t have to quote the litany of mistakes. What I’d ask is evidence that these sorts of things are endemic rather than exceptional. My point, and my only point, is I don’t blame the guys and girls at the sharp end. If they fuck up, in the case of Abu Ghraib, or go too far, in the case of the Marines shooting civilians in retaliation for a roadside bomb that killed a popoular fellow soldier, or Fallujah where tactical and strategic decisions were made that resulted in unecessary civilian casualties, then it was an exception, not the rule. As a whole, this war has been executed by our soldiers on the ground in the most humane way possible in such a horrific situation. Has the leadership done bad things? Yep. Should they be punished? Yep. But the guys and girls on the ground are really just following orders and trying to be as humane and restrained as they can be in the circumstances. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sawing-off-heads-worse-than-pushing-buttons/396757.md?page=3)