Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: "Kill every motherfucker on the street"

La conquista dei cuori e delle menti ha evidentemente le sue ragioni, che la 
ragione non conosce...
Namib
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/emcc-a28.shtml
[...]
Could you describe the events of that day and what your platoon was doing?
It was much like many of the days in Iraq. The neighborhood we were in was 
pretty volatile; at least it was on the rise, with IED emplacements and with 
our platoons being shot at with RPGs and sniper fire. We didn't know who was 
attacking us. It was never actually really clear, at least in my eyes, who 
the supposed "enemy" was.
We were conducting what were called knock-and-searches, where we would knock 
on the doors of the homes and search for documents pertaining to militias or 
any weapons they weren't supposed to have or any bomb-making materials. We 
didn't really find anything at all.
We were getting ready to wrap up at about one o'clock in the afternoon. We 
started to funnel into an alleyway and started to take small arms fire from 
rooftops from AK-47s. We didn't know what was happening with the Apache 
helicopters. They were attached to us from another unit to watch over us for 
this mission, which was called "Ranger Dominance."
We could hear them open fire, but those of us who were on the ground, 
outside of the vehicles, had no idea what was taking place. We couldn't hear 
the radio chatter and we were pretty caught up in our own situation.
When that situation was neutralized, we were told to walk up onto the scene. 
I was one of about six soldiers who were dismounted to first arrive on the 
scene.
What did you see when you got there?
It was pretty much absolute carnage. I had never seen anybody shot by a 
30-millimeter round before, and frankly don't ever want to see that again. 
It almost seemed unreal, like something out of a bad B-horror movie. When 
these rounds hit you they kind of explode-people with their heads half-off, 
their insides hanging out of their bodies, limbs missing. I did see two RPGs 
on the scene as well as a few AK-47s.
But then I heard the cries of a child. They weren't necessarily cries of 
agony, but more like the cries of a small child who was scared out of her 
mind. So I ran up to the van where the cries were coming from. You can 
actually see in the scenes from the video where another soldier and I come 
up to the driver and the passenger sides of the van.
The soldier I was with, as soon as he saw the children, turned around, 
started vomiting and ran. He didn't want any part of that scene with the 
children anymore.
What I saw when I looked inside the van was a small girl, about three or 
four years old. She had a belly wound and glass in her hair and eyes. Next 
to her was a boy about seven or eight years old who had a wound to the right 
side of the head. He was laying half on the floorboard and half on the 
bench. I presumed he was dead; he wasn't moving.
Next to him was who I presumed was the father. He was hunched over sideways, 
almost in a protective way, trying to protect his children. And you could 
tell that he had taken a 30-millimeter round to the chest. I pretty much 
knew that he was deceased.
I grabbed the little girl and yelled for a medic. Me and the medic ran into 
the houses behind where the van crashed to check whether there were any 
other wounds. I was trying to take as much glass out of her eyes as I could. 
We dressed the wound and then the medic ran the girl to the Bradley. You can 
hear in the video where he says, "there's nothing else I can do here; we 
need to evacuate the child."
I then went back outside and went to the van. I don't know why. I thought 
both of them were dead, but something told me to go back. That's when I saw 
the boy move with what appeared to be a labored breath. So I stated 
screaming, "The boy's alive." I grabbed him and cradled him in my arms and 
kept telling him, "Don't die, don't die." He opened his eyes, looked up at 
me. I told him, "It's OK, I have you." His eyes rolled back into his head, 
and I kept telling him, "It's OK, I've got you." I ran up to the Bradley and 
placed him inside.
My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for 
doing what I did. He told me to "stop worrying about these motherfucking 
kids and start worrying about pulling security." So after that I went up and 
pulled security on a rooftop.
Did you face further repercussions for what you did that day?
After coming back to the FOB [forward operating base], nobody really talked 
about what had happened that day. Everybody went to their rooms; they were 
tired. Some of them went to make phone calls. And I was in my room because I 
had to clean the blood off of my IBA [body armor] and my uniform-the blood 
from these children. And I was having a flood of emotions and having a real 
hard time dealing with having seen children this way, as I'm sure most 
caring human beings would.
So I went to see a staff sergeant who was in my chain of command and told 
him I needed to see mental health about what was going on in my head. He 
told me to "quit being a pussy" and to "suck it up and be a soldier." He 
told me that if I wanted to go to mental health, there would be 
repercussions, one of them being labeled a "malingerer," which is actually a 
crime in the US Army.
For fear of that happening to me, I in turn went back to my room and tried 
to bottle up as much emotion as I could and pretty much just suck it up and 
drive on.
You had another nine months or more still to go in your tour then?
That's right. It was a pretty long time with having to deal with the 
emotions, not only of that, but of many other days. What happened then was 
not an isolated incident. Stuff like that happens on a daily basis in Iraq.
Are there other incidents that took place in the following months of your 
tour that bear this out?
Yes. Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we 
had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit 
by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating 
procedure].
He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. 
You kill every motherfucker on the street." Myself and Josh and a lot of 
other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you 
kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?"
And you couldn't just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make 
your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof 
of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I've seen 
it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes 
off and the troops open fire and kill them.
[...] 

 ragione non conosce...
Storia orrificante.  Ringraziamo a dio che noi non siamo lì.