Good afternoon. My name is John Michael Turner. I currently currently reside in Wellington from on. I served with Keelah Company Thurbatayan eighth Marines as an automatic machine gunner. There's a term once in a while, one's in Marine, but there's also the term, eat the apple, f the core. I don't work for you no more. That was John Michael Turner stripping his medals and ribbons from his chest and throwing them into the audience to the applause of attendees at Winter Soldier. Turner then went on to describe some of his time in Iraq. On April 18th, 2006, I had my first confirmed kill. This man was innocent. I don't know his name. I called him the fat man. He was walking back to his house and I should have been front of his friend and his father. The first round didn't kill him after I hit him up here in his neck area and afterwards he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend who I was on post with and I said, well I can't let that happen. So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body away. We were all congratulate it after we had our first kills and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq. There's one incident where we got into a firefight just south of the government center about 2,000 meters. We had no idea where the fire was coming from and the way our rules of engagement were pinpoint where the fire is coming from and throw a rocket at it. So at that being said we still didn't know where the fire was coming from and an 84-millimeter rocket was shot into a house. I do not know if there was anyone in it. We do not know if that's where the fire was coming from but that's what was done. Please go to the next image. This man right here was my third confirmed kill. As you can see he was riding his bicycle. Later on in the day we went ahead and we had CBS, Laura Logan with us but she was with the other squad and so she wasn't with us so myself and two other people went ahead and took out some individuals because we were excited about the fire fight. We had just gone into and we didn't have a cameraman or woman with us. With that being said any time we did have embedded reporters with us our actions would change drastically. We never acted the same. We are always on key with everything played, did everything by the books. The man on the bicycle he was left in the street for about 10 minutes until we realized that we needed to leave where we were and his body was dragged about 10 feet to the right of him where his body was thrown behind a rock wall and his bicycle was thrown on top of him. Another thing that we used to do a lot was recon by fire where we would go ahead and try to start a firefight if we felt threatened in any way, shape or form. There's one particular incident where we were working with the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Special Forces in downtown Ramadi and with our squad and the Iraqi Army there was also Lieutenant Colonel's majors, first sergeants and sergeant majors. Sorry sergeants major. With that being said the Iraqi Army would go into the house, kick in the doors and then go ahead and shoot and there were loud bursts of machine gun fire. We thought we were taking fire but then we later found out that it was them. House raids because we were a grunt battalion we were responsible for going on several patrols. A lot of the raids and patrols we did were at the night around 3 o'clock in the morning around there and what we would do is just kick in the doors and terrorize the families. That was an image taken around 3 o'clock in the morning through night vision goggles and that is the segregation of the women and children and the men. If the men of the household were giving us problems we'd go ahead and take care of them anyway we felt necessary whether it be choking them or slamming their head against the walls. If you go back to that one picture that was one man that wasn't taking that was taken care of in a very bad way because of all the wiring that he had it would be considered ID making material. On my wrist there's Arabic for a few. I got that put on my wrist just two weeks before I went to Iraq because that was my choking hand and any time I felt the need to take out aggression I would go ahead and use it. Please go to the next picture next. There's an instance of detainees and how they were treated in a nice manner next. That is the Fatima mosque minaret as you can see it is written with bullet holes and holes in the top of it those were from mortars and the next video that I'm going to show you is a tank round that went into that minaret where we weren't sure if we were taken fire or not. I'll actually talk about this one. This is after one of one of the guys in our weapons company had gunshot this isn't a way that we would take out our aggression. For those of you who don't know it is illegal to shoot into a mosque unless you were taken fire. There was no fire that was taken from that mosque it was shot into because we were angry. Please do the next video. We are on ice cream trying to suppress the blue noise and the red noise. Next image. With that being said there's many more stories and incidents for me to talk about although we don't have the time to but this just goes to show you that that was the after effect of the tank round. This just goes to show you that everyone sitting up here has these stories and there's been over a million troops that have gone in and out of Iraq so the possibilities are endless. Next image please. The reason I am doing this today is not only for myself and for the rest of society to hear but it's for all those who can't be here to talk about the things that we went through. Talk about the things that we did. Next image. Those four crosses and this memorial service were for the five guys in Kiela company, Theravita and Aithmarins that we lost. Throughout our unit we had 18 of our soldiers in Kiela. With that being said that is my testimony. I just want to say that I am sorry for the hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people, and I am sorry for the hate and destruction that others haven't inflicted on innocent people. At one point it was okay but reality has shown that it is not and that this is happening and that until people hear about what is going on with this war, it will continue to happen and people will continue to die. I'm sorry for the things that I did. I am no longer the monster that I once was. Thank you. Former Marine John Michael Turner, fought with the third battalion, Eighth Marines. The videos and photos the soldiers showed can be seen at our website, democracynow.org.