Don't believe what you read
Sure, it's an op-ed column and not a news article. Even still, you have to be surprised that the New York Times would publish something that sounds as far-fetched as this drivel. Bob Herbert writes about the accounts of one Aidan Delgado who was a mechanic in the Army Reserve and served in Iraq:
[Delgado] wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.Look, maybe Herbert is accurately portraying Delgado's personal accounts and/or maybe Delgado is telling the truth. Personally, I doubt the veracity of Delgado's stories, or at the very least the context of what Delgado says he saw. Baldilocks agrees:
"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."
The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."
...Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.
...Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.
Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "
I wonder about the veracity or the completeness of these incidents that Delgado is transmitting via columnist Bob Herbert—who has gotten things willfully wrong before. Oh, not merely because the incidents don’t sound like the behavior of the average American GI, but also because such widespread behavior would be impossible to keep secret and it's hard to believe that it would go unpunished. We have soldiers armed with digital cameras and email. We have imbedded journalists, some of whom would be only too eager to get a hold of the types of stories that Mr. Delgado tells; journalists with the same mindset as Mr. Herbert.Baldilocks also points out that Herbert has been pretty damn wrong on military opining before. Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit puts out the call for people to look into Delgado's claims. Blackfive wonders specifically about the Coke bottle claim:
...But let’s assume Mr. Delgado is telling the truth. He does not mention to Mr. Herbert whether such soldiers are punished or not. Perhaps he doesn’t know. Or perhaps he does, but chooses not to mention it.
About the Coke bottles (there's lots of speculation on the force needed to break one), I am not doubting that there are Coke bottles in Iraq. However, I find it hard to believe that soldiers are having multiple empty glass bottles rolling around in the back of a humvee during a patrol. Noise, distraction, possibility of glass shards in the back with the troops, etc. Plastic bottles, maybe. Glass bottles, doubt it.Those Coke bottles are nearly indestructible. I can't even imagine breaking one on a human skull. I think I would punch a hundred holes into my walls before it even cracked. A beer bottle? Sure, but not a Coke bottle.
Delgado was also demoralized by the racial epithets used by the soldiers around him. James Joyner at Outside the Beltway has a good take on that:
There's little doubt that slurs toward the enemy are a part of military culture; it may well be a necessary part of the dehumanization process required to be able to kill them without hesitation. During Desert Storm, it was not uncommon to term the Iraqis "ragheads" or "Abdul" or similar ethnically-based nicknames. Various racial terms were used in Vietnam and Korea. But it's not necessarily racial; the Germans were called names during the two World Wars and so were the Brits during the War for Independence. One doesn't worry about hurting the feelings of those one is engaged in trying to kill before they kill you.*Lastly we have Sgt. Ted of Been There, Done That who was actually at the prison riot that Delgado talks about:
I do not believe that American soldiers are routinely smashing random Iraqis over the head with bottles and kicking children. For one thing, there is enough press over there that we'd have heard about it by now. More importantly, though, it's just not part of the culture. It's not inconceivable that a poorly led Reserve unit consisting mostly of civilian prison guards would have more than its share of abusive miscreants, however.
*I meant to note in the original piece that, of course, the mission in Iraq is different now and sensitivity to such things is vital. One doesn't wish to dehumanize the local civilian population of a country one is trying to pacify and democratize. The fact that our soldiers have to be diplomats one instant and warriors the next is a unique characteristic of stabilization operations.
The compound where the riot took place, compound 8, was run by my Company, the 870th MP Co. The riot also was an escape attempt. It wasn't just a few stone throwers; the sky was black with throw debris, which effectively suppressed the compound towers from their overwatch duties. The stones being thrown represented a deadly force threat. Some of them were head size. It was only when the riot became a danger of a serious breakout attempt and less than lethal force(rubber shot from M203 and rubber point munitions from 12 GA shotguns) had been applied to no effect was the request for deadly force made. When permission was granted, two soldiers fired on the ring leaders. 3 were killed outright, ending the riot immediately. One more died later and 12 more were wounded. I know both of the soldiers who fired; they are good people and only did what they had to do to keep others from further harm. Given that one of the soldiers was using a M249, it could have been a bloodbath. Both soldiers showed remarkable restraint in picking their targets and only using necesarry force. There was a AR 15-6 investigation and CID also investigated. The shootings were found to be justified and both soldiers were decorated for their actions.Delgado applied for and won Conscientious Objector status. I have little problem with being a CO. But he seems less like a CO and more like a person with an agenda, a willingness to exaggerate or lie, and an immoral heart (if he supposedly saw all this bad stuff and said and did nothing about it).
This Delgado guy was a mechanic; he was no where near those compounds. I also highly doubt he "confronted" the SGT who fired; he wouldn't have even known who he was. Different unit, not working anywhere near the compounds.
posted by Q at 5/03/2005 07:53:00 PM
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