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Human beings in war zones inevitably become less human. U.S. troops are human beings.
Yet another reason we should have had a plan in the first place. (sighs)
I'm gonna catch for this thread...
MSNBCIn December, NEWSWEEK interviewed some Army soldiers going home as conscientious objectors. To fight boredom and disgust, said Clif Hicks, who had left a tank squadron at Camp Slayer in Baghdad, soldiers popped Benzhexol, five pills at time. Normally used to treat Parkinson's disease, the drug is a strong hallucinogenic when abused. "People were taking steroids, Valium, hooked on painkillers, drinking. They'd go on raids and patrols totally stoned." Hicks, who volunteered at the age of 17, said, "We're killing the wrong people all the time, and mostly by accident. One guy in my squadron ran over a family with his tank."
Hicks's own revulsion peaked while he was on patrol in January 2004. He came upon a bloody scene in a Baghdad housing project, where some soldiers had mistaken celebratory shots fired at a wedding for an attack, returning heavy fire and killing a young girl. "I looked in the door and she was dead, shot through the neck, Mom there, Grandma there, all losing it. Then I started thinking, this is really f---ed up, this is horribly wrong." Hicks stopped taking his malaria pills, hoping he'd get sick and shipped out. He says that infantry soldiers sometimes stick their legs out of the Humvee under sniper fire, hoping to get a nonlethal wound.
Hicks claims that "there's a lot of guys who steal from the Iraqis. Money, family heirlooms, and then they brag about it. Guys would crap into MRE bags and throw them to old men begging for food."
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Though no one is talking openly at Camp Pendleton, Marines and their families are buzzing about what might have gone wrong inside Kilo Company. The wife of a staff sergeant in the 3/1 battalion, who declined to be identified because she doesn't want to get her husband in trouble, told NEWSWEEK that there was "a total breakdown" in discipline and morale after Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani took over as battalion commander when the unit returned from Fallujah at the start of 2005. (Chessani's friends in his Colorado hometown defended him as a dedicated, patriotic, religious Marine.) "There were problems in Kilo Company with drugs, alcohol, hazing, you name it," said the woman. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."
But Lucian Read, a freelance photographer who spent seven months with Kilo Company, both in Fallujah and Haditha, did not see warning signs. "Their morale wasn't bad, it was more fatalistic; this is the grunts-get-screwed-every-time," he said. "They were not happy, not pleased, but not angry, either," Read said. "Nothing they ever did or said even hinted at this kind of event. I never saw it coming. No one saw it coming."
I've heard rumors from solid sources that some troops home on leave, or those who think their unit is going to be shipped out again to Iraq, are using illegal drugs hoping that they won't be shipped out.
Human beings in war zones inevitably become less human. U.S. troops are human beings.
Yet another reason we should have had a plan in the first place. (sighs)
Could you please stop highlighting the points that you only agree with. It’s annoying and paints a false picture. The acts of a few do not reflect the Marine Corps as a whole. There's always a bad apple in the bunch. I'm sure there's someone at your job tweaking right now. Also don't get excited with hearsay or what a wife heard. Geez why does everyone believe what the media or the government says. They all have their own agendas…
What a dumb statement.
Sucks.
Highly moronic of you to insist that if any war was planned, there wouldnt be ups.
The Troops made an individual error, it could of happened in the first persian gulf, bosnia, etc. It probably happened in WW2.
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