N.C. ex-Marine's tales of atrocities false, paper says

[thedrifter]

Posted on Sun, Nov. 06, 2005
N.C. ex-Marine's tales of atrocities false, paper says
Claims that he, others killed innocent Iraqis untrue and exaggerated
RON HARRIS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON - For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey of Waynesville, about 124 miles west of Charlotte, told how he and other Marines recklessly and intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Among his claims:

• Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.

• Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.

• Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.

Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports.

News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.

He wasn't.

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated -- according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

Massey, 34, was with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, based out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit went to the Middle East in January 2003 and participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of that year.

Massey was discharged in December 2003, shortly after returning from Iraq because of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

He began turning up in the press and broadcast last spring with stories about military atrocities. Massey's primary thrust has been that Marines from his battalion -- some of whom, he told a Minneapolis audience were "psychopathic killers" -- recklessly shot and killed Iraqi civilians, sometimes, he said, upon orders from their commanders. During a hearing in Canada, Massey said, "we deliberately gunned down people who were civilians."

The Marine Corps investigated Massey's claims and said they were "unsubstantiated."

From the beginning, Massey misled reporters.

In early interviews, he told how he had lost his job at a furniture store because of his anti-war activities. But when asked about the incident in an Oct. 19 interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey said that he had quit his job, but never felt pressure to leave.

He also backtracked from allegations he made in a May 2004, radio interview and elsewhere that he had seen tractor-trailers filled with the bodies of Iraqi civilians when Marines entered an Iraqi military prison outside of Baghdad. He said the Iraqis had been killed by American artillery.

He told listeners the scene was so bad "that the plasma from the body and skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the tractor-trailer bed."

He repeated the story during the Post-Dispatch interview. But when told the newspaper's photographs and eyewitness reports identified the trailer contents as all men, mostly in uniform, he admitted he had never seen the bodies.

Instead, he said, he had received his information from "intelligence reports." When asked if those reports were official documents, he said, "No, that's what the other Marines told me."

The details of Massey's stories changed repeatedly.

For example, he almost always told his audiences and interviewers of an event he said he'd never forget: Marines in his unit shooting four civilian Iraqis in a red Kia automobile.

In some accounts, Massey said Marines fired at the vehicle after it failed to stop at a checkpoint. In another version, he said the Marines stormed the car.

Sometimes he said three of the men were killed immediately while the fourth was wounded and covered in blood; sometimes he said the fourth man was "miraculously unscathed."

Sometimes he said the Marines left the three men on the side of the road to die without medical treatment while the fourth man exclaimed: "Why did you shoot my brother?" In other versions, he said the man made the statement as medical personnel were attempting to treat the three other men, or as the survivor sat hear the car, or to Massey personally.

There is no evidence that any of the versions occurred.

The Marine Corps readily admits that some of its men shot civilians, but not intentionally. The Post-Dispatch reported on the second day of the war that Marines in one battalion had mistakenly shot and killed members of a British-based television network while shooting at Iraqi attackers.

When Marines moved into Baghdad a month later, the Post-Dispatch reported two separate automobile-related incidents in which Marines from Massey's battalion inadvertently shot and wounded 12 civilians. All of the passengers survived following treatment by medical personnel.

In a fourth incident, Maj. Dan Schmitt said, Marines shot "what we believe to be a non-combatant" because when they raised their arms in a signal to stop, the vehicle continued moving quickly at the Marines.

An Iraqi doctor who helped treat the wounded passengers told them that they needed to use another hand signal because the one they were using indicated solidarity, not stop.

But none of the five journalists who covered the battalion said they saw reckless or indiscriminate shooting of civilians by Marines, as Massey has claimed. Nor did any of the Marines or Navy corpsmen with Massey who was interviewed for this report.

One of the checkpoint shootings is apparently the basis for one of most poignant recollections claimed by Massey: The shooting of a 4-year-old girl in the head.

While touring with Cindy Sheehan in Montgomery, Ala., he told of seeing the girl's body. "You can't take it back," he said, according to the local newspaper.

But in the interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey admitted that he had never seen the girl.

"Lima Company was involved in a shooting at a checkpoint," he said. "My platoon was ordered to another area before the victims were removed from the car. The other Marines told me that a 4-year-old girl had been killed."

No 4-year-old was even wounded in the incident, said witnesses including a Post-Dispatch photographer whose photos of the incident were published in the newspaper.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

MARI: Confessions Of A Marine
Nov 05, 2005
By Jean-Paul Mari, Le Nouvel Observateur Via Truthout

Iraq: The Story No American Publisher Wanted.

In a just-published book, Master-Sergeant Jimmy Massey tells about his mission to recruit for, then fight in, the war in Iraq. He tells why he killed. And cracked.

Jimmy Massey is 34 years old. He's originally a Texas boy, raised as a good Southern Baptist who loves squirrel hunting with his air rifle. After 12 years in the Marines, Jim is a broken man, a veteran afflicted with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, a depressive hooked on his medications, haunted by the nightmare images in which he massacres innocent civilians, scenes experienced in Iraq when he was nothing but a killing machine. Jim has cracked, has withdrawn from the service for medical reasons, and has written a raw and brutal book. Telling the life of a Marine of today, revealing "how he talks, how he thinks, how he ****s, and how he kills." The army denies the facts and his former comrades have insulted, rejected, and threatened him. His testimony ulcerates Neo-Conservative America and shocks the politically correct. In the United States, no publishing house has dared to publish his manuscript. Extracts follow.

The Recruiter

When you're a recruiter, you have to learn fast. And I rapidly learned that if I wanted to keep my job, I couldn't allow myself to have any scruples.

I went to public schools every day where I was able to contact young people easily. I had already been given a list of all the students, with their phone numbers. So I really didn't need the 2002 law - the No Child Left Behind Act 1 - which stipulates that any high school receiving federal funds must furnish military recruitment officers with the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of its students. [...] As usual, I said to myself, "I'm going to get them, those ****heads," since, you must understand, a recruiter has only one thing in his head if he wants to pay his rent: landing contracts. [...]

One day in 2000, I was with my warrant officer in the cafeteria of a little local university. Chief Warrant Officer Dalhouse rushed over to me, saying "Hey! Chief-Sergeant, I'd like to introduce you to Timmy." I lifted my head towards Timmy to discover ... a retard! Two hundred and ten pounds of muscles, the features and the speech of a retard. Upset, I looked at my new boss and asked him: "Are you ****ting me?" He firmly replied: "No, Chief-Sergeant, you are going to interview this guy. He is seriously thinking about joining the Marines."

[...] Timmy was short and massive; he wore blue jeans, work boots, and a T-shirt in the Andrews High School football team colors. He reminded me of the Lenny character from Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." He seriously wanted to sign up with the Marines; it was obvious. [...] "Now, let's talk about your handicap. I know it's been harder for you than the average person and you've already shown a lot of self-confidence by overcoming your disability." Timmy lowered his eyes; I saw he was a little embarrassed. Then he raised his head, his eyes glistening with tears, and in a trembling voice, answered: "You're right, Sergeant, it's been really hard for me. Once, when I was new, the other guys locked me in a closet. They shoved me around and insulted me. I was so angry I knocked down the closet door." "- Timmy, no one will ever bother you again. The Corps will help you acquire all the self-confidence you'll need to overcome the obstacles you could encounter in the course of your life." He sent me a look full of gratitude. [...]

When a kid told me he had taken Ecstasy, here's the sort of conversation we'd have: "Listen, guy, are you sure it was really Ecstasy? Maybe it was Doliprane." When I said that, I'd nod my head up and down. "Yeah, I'm not sure, in fact." "So you think it was Doliprane?" still nodding my head. "Yeah, it was Doliprane." [...]

The War In Iraq

"You call that pacification? I've got a problem with it," I said in a nauseated voice. "My friend, you've gotta get a grip. If you keep making waves, they'll judge you as a war criminal."

We had reached the military site Al-Rashid on an overcast, dark and sinister day. [...] When we stopped, I saw ten Iraqis, about 150 yards away. They were under forty years old, clean and dressed in the traditional white garment. They stayed on the side of the road waving signs and screaming anti-American slogans. [...] That's when I heard a shot pass just over our heads, from right to left. I ran into the middle of the street to see what was happening. I had barely rejoined Schutz when my guys unloaded their weapons on the demonstrators. It only took me three seconds to take aim. I aimed my sights on the center of a demonstrator's body. I breathed in deeply and, as I exhaled, I gently opened my right eye and fired. I watched the bullets hit the demonstrator right in the middle of his chest. My Marines barked: "Come on, little girls! You wanna fight?"

I acquired a new target right away, a demonstrator on all fours who was trying to run away as fast as possible. I quickly aimed for the head; I breathed in deeply, breathed out, and I fired again. One head: boom! Another: boom! The center of a mass in the bull's eye: boom! Another: boom! I kept on until the moment when I saw no more movement from the demonstrators. There was no answering fire. I must have fired at least a dozen times. It all lasted no longer than two and a half minutes.

I know that they had also been shot in the back; some of them were crawling and their white clothes turned red. The M-16's 5.56 is a nasty bullet: it doesn't kill all at once. For example, it can enter the chest and come out at the knee, tearing all the internal organs on the way through. My guys were jumping around in every direction. Taylor and Gaumont hollered: "Come back, babies!" "They don't know how to fight, those **********s! ****ing cowards!" They slapped one another on the back, exchanging "Good job!," but they were frustrated because some demonstrators had succeeded in getting away. I wanted to keep on firing, I kept telling myself: "Good God, there must be more of them." It was like eating the first spoonful of your favorite ice cream. You want more. [...]

Those demonstrators were the first people I killed. [...] That had a hell of an effect on me. What an adrenaline, rush, ****! Fear becomes a motor. It pushes you. It had more of an impact on me than the best grass I ever smoked. It was as though all those I had ever hated, all the anger that was accumulated in me was there in that being; you feel like you're absorbing life like a cannibal. You're really happy with yourself; you feel really powerful and everything becomes clear. You reach nirvana, like a white luminous space. But after a few hours, you come down from nirvana and find yourself in dark waters; you swim in a pool of mud and the only way to go back to that other feeling is to kill again. [...]

After pulling out at dusk, we heard shots, at least a hundred. Lima Company had opened fire on a vehicle. I learned later that there were three women and a child inside. As far as I know, there was never any inquiry. [...]

Forty-five minutes later, a red Kia Spectra came towards us at around 35 mph. It penetrated the green zone; a few of my Marines let loose a warning round and the sniper fired on the engine, but the damage didn't keep the car from continuing into the red zone. The vehicles installed in the rear immediately opened fire with their 240 Gulfs; we joined in with our M-16s, targeting the car and firing at least 200 rounds at high speed. The KIA stopped in a grating around 25 yards from my Humvee, and my Marines pounced on the vehicle and began to extract the four wounded Iraqis. The occupants, young men tastefully dressed, were bleeding profusely. [...] Six stretcher bearers arrived with stretchers and took them away. The survivor came towards me groaning, a tortured expression covering his face. He looked in the air, his hands raised: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything to you. We're not terrorists."

I walked away without saying anything to him and sat down inside my vehicle, devastated. I got out when I heard the Marines and the stretcher-bearers bringing the Kia's occupants back to the car. "****, what are you bringing them back for?" "Chief-Sergeant, the chief Medical Officer said he couldn't do anything for them." I looked at the Iraqis, containing my anger with difficulty. They were twisting and groaning, dying by inches and in pain. [...] I couldn't speak. I looked inside the car. Obviously, there were neither weapons nor explosives there. I was more and more disgusted.

The Last Straw

[...] Captain Schmitt came towards me and asked me, very calmly: "Are you OK, Chief-Sergeant? [...]" "- No, Captain. I'm not OK." "- Why not?" I answered without hesitation: "It's a bad day. We killed a lot of innocent civilians." "- No. It's a good day," he retorted in an authoritarian tone. Before I had time to answer, he had already moved away from me with a confident tread.

Today, Jimmy Massey is no longer a Marine. He lives in a little village in North Carolina, spends his time making anti-recruitment visits to schools and militating against the war in the association he founded with five other soldiers: Veterans Against the War.

(*)Kill! Kill! Kill! by Jimmy Massey (with Natasha Saulnier), published by Editions du Panama, 390 p., 22 Euros. Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

Ellie