Jimmy Massey

John Fury alerted me to the stories being spun by Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, who is apparently going all "Kerry" on us. Leftist blogs are repeating his story all over the place, yet even many Democrats find him completely unconvincing. There's just too many holes in it. His story is discussed here, and Alternet carries an interview here.

I have a few problems with it, so here's a Fisk of the Alternet interview. I'll get to his other story later, which has all sorts of fun things in it too.

What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?

The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.

We killed a lot of innocent people? It's was a massive war in a country of about 22 million people. By normal standards of North Vietnam or other wars we could've killed several million, yet IraqBodyCount says only 9356 to 11232 have been killed since the start of hostilities, and they also say

This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.

So they're counting all the car bombing victims too. Yet in the other blog post linked above it says he claims his platoon killed about 30 innocent civilians. Given about 30 people in a platoon that would be about a 1 to 1 soldier to dead civilian ratio, so why can't Iraq body count find the statistically anticipated 180,000 or so people shot to death at road blocks?

Killing Civilians

What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident – and there's many more – the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So, we lit them up.

In another story he said he was in charge of a sniper platoon during this time, but what the heck. Anyway, we all know that they successfully used some suicide car bomb attacks, also known as VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices). We have to take measures against them, and we have shot up vehicles that failed to slow down.

Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

Well if ammunition never went off then why was only one particular vehicle not "destroyed" completely? Why does he say "one particular incident" while implying "there's many more"? As he mentions later, this is a recovered memory, by the way.

Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?

Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.

You got to see the bodies and casualties?

Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.

Yet from all we've seen whenever there's an incident the people are either taken to a morgue (remember all those morgue photos and interviews, don't you?) by family members.

Over what period did all this take place?

During the invasion of Baghdad.

If it's during the invasion of Baghdad they just got into some wildly intense firefights for a day. Then the statue came down and the looting started. The place was crawling with anti-American journalists, including the French press, so why wasn't anyone reporting this?

How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?

Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.

And how did he know the van was stolen? And I challenge anyone to find a city named Rekha, Rekah, Rekkah or any other such spelling, on a map of Iraq. If it's there it's got to be tiny.

The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?

Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.

There were several such incidents, and they were immediately splattered across the world press, with our commanders desperately making amends. And generally explovies don't go off when you shoot them, either, unless you hit a detonator. The military likes to make sure you can't set off our own bombs with lucky rifle hits, so you wouldn't expect secondary explosions unless the car was rigged with a dead-man switch.

A demonstration? Where?

On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."

Ok, here's some problems. Everytime the Iraqis would hold a demonstration the Western press crawls all over it. Also, when you see RPG's lined up I doubt a sane reaction is relief.

Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?

Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers.

So those RPGs wouldn't have provided any psychological relief, now would they?

The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.

Oh, and every sergeant knows what's going on in the corridors of Washington when he's facing a crowd and someone says "shoot the demonstrators." That's slipping into the Freemason and Illuminati zone for sure, because why would senior government officials even get told about a small street demonstration in real time?

What kind of firepower was employed?

M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.

You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?

Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So, he was running with half of his foot cut off.

So what was the tank doing when all this was going on, or was the crew just hanging out in a donut shop? If all this shooting is going on, why didn't someone shoot back, since Iraqis have all sorts of weapons? I mean, every reported incident were a bunch of shooting starts the Iraqis always seem to fire back, or we wouldn't be taking any casualties in these widely reported incidents, now would we? And again, where are the reporters? After any such incident there are screams of outrage and protests and funerals.

After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?

Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.

Oh wonderful. The "suppressed memory" thing rears its head again. Remember how CNN got absolutely toasted over their "Operation Tailwind" coverage a few years back? That's where they claimed we used nerve gas in Vietnam, then had to completely retract it because not only was it ludicrous on all levels, but the guy who claimed it had "just" remembered it. The producers were fired and CNN had to issue a big apology to everyone. No wonder no reputable organization will touch this guy with a stick. I mean, he says he was involved in five incidents, located in different cities, yet now the incidents are coming a few hours apart.

Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.

That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.

What's he doing, quoting from Vietnam books written by fraudulent wackos? He couldn't have surpressed it for a long time because he's barely even out of the Corps, and the war didn't start till a little over a year ago. That's like having "surpressed memories" about Pearl Harbor over a year before D-Day. Yet many people defrauded the VA with such claims, making a fake DD-214, making up bizarre stories about running assassination missions in North Vietnam when they were 17. If you convince your anti-war shrink you get full disability benefits, which may be what this guy is after.

And the incident?

There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.

Bwuhahahah!!! "Man, I forgot about this." Truly a classic fraudster.

Depleted Uranium

What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?

Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.

DU doesn't affect your lungs, you nimrod, except that doctors do classify it as a potential choking hazard if you were to block your windpipe with it, and this is seriously mentioned. It's nothing like plutonium, an intensely poisonous element, any more than aluminum is like arsenic. Uranium is about the same toxicity as lead, which we've been shooting each other with for centuries. Further, if you're reading this know that you had uranium for breakfast, lunch, and dinner your entire life, because it's in everything. Your yard undoubtedly has several pounds of uranium just in the topsoil.

Were you in the vicinity of depleted uranium?

Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.

Did you breath any dust?

Yeah.

And how would he know, since he's in an infantry unit and the Iraqis didn't have many tanks left. We only fire DU at tanks and armored vehicles, but considering the expense of a DU anti-tank round, probably just skip the armored vehicles.

And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.

Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.

Bigger than you might think, since on average the top ten feet of soil contains about 22,000 kg of uranium per square mile and that Iraq has a land area of 168,754 square miles, so just the top ten feet of dirt already had 4,083,840 tons of uranium. To up this by a mere 4,000 tons using 120mm DU rounds fired from our tanks, at 10.34 lbs of uranium each, would take 770,000 rounds (requiring a tank to reload about 14,000 times) and cost $2.45 billion dollars. Yet we mostly fired HEAT and MPAT rounds, not APFSDS uranium rounds. We also didn't have very many targets to shoot at. It would also eat up about 30 years worth of ammunition production, and all just to up the amount of uranium in Iraq by 0.09 percent. I've already Fisked the heck out of many a moonbat DU story like this one.

Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?

Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s – -!"

Holy s--! He got some moonbat information from Rolling Stone, and can't quite put it together with the fact that if DU is so damn dangerous why would our tank crews be sitting in it.

Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?

I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an intermittent cluster bomb.

Want to know what an intermittent cluster bomb is? Just use Google. Of course all Google can tell you is that this here guy claims one of the Marines in his battalion lost his leg from one. I guess it's not the proper military term. Two hits, both his, so at least he uses some high precision phrasing.

What's an ICBM?

A multi-purpose cluster bomb.

Now for some of you maybe mistaking an ICBM for a cluster bomb is kind of a tip off that the guy is spouting nonsense. Oh, but maybe he just got his acronym wrong. Well sorry, but there is only one cluster bomb in our vast cluster bomb inventory that's called "multipurpose", the CBU-87/B CEM (Combined Effects Munition) "Multi-Purpose" Cluster Bomb. In fact, if you hunt for the phrase multipurpose cluster bomb all the rest of the hits are the 300+ references to this guy's story.

What happened?

He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.

What kind of training?

They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.

Well that sounds pretty smart to me, but I hope they told him not to step on all the other "single-purpose" and "dual-purpose" cluster bombs that aren't CBU-87/B's.

Were you in any areas where they were dropped?

Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.

Kind of like all that DU he's been wading through. This USA Today article has more.

Unexploded U.S. cluster bomblets remain a threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. They have killed or injured at least eight U.S. troops.

We used 1,500 air dropped cluster bombs, plus artillery delivered ones. Obviously an artillery shell can't hold nearly as many bomblets. 26 were dropped within 1,500 feet of an urban area.

Dropped from the air?

From the air as well as artillery.

Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?

They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.

Well he must not be the average grunt, because incidents where we did fire them into a city made the papers, like that USA Today article above, so I'll take "Marine Artillery Officer's Statements" for $1000, Alex.

Including inside the towns and cities?

Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be intermittent cluster bombs.

Incorrect, since we didn't even put forces near most cities during the invasion. There's no point in attack cities far from our route of advance.

Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over, right?

Wrong oh uninformed journalist. We have an extensive variety of them.
CBU-33/A 770 lb Anti-Tank Bomb Cluster
CBU-45/B 1000 lb Anti-Personnel/Anti-Materiel Cluster Bomb
CBU-52/B 770 lb Anti-Materiel Incendiary/Fragmentation Cluster Bomb
CBU-78/B "Gator" Anti-Personnel/Anti-Tank Cluster Bomb
CBU-90/B ACM (Anti-Armor Cluster Munition)
CBU-94/B "Blackout Bomb" 900 lb Anti Power Supply Cluster Bomb
CBU-100/B "Rockeye II" Anti-Tank Cluster Bomb

Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the wraps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.

The Iraqis heard about Fallujah? Say it ain't so! Who leaked that one to them? Is it possible that an Iraqi read one of the tens of thousand newspapers that wrote it all up? And given the way this guy is going all John Kerry on us, I really doubt he has any "Marine buddies" keeping him updated. I'd guess he's getting his information from ANSWER and NION these days.

Losing Faith

I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"

How could he possibly find out that was a typical day when he elsewhere mentions he was involved in only five incidents? Doesn't make a bit of sense, does it?

Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?

I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.

Oh, I just hope the interviewer realizes that the Marine isn't the only one buying into something, hook line and sinker.

What changed you?

The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.

That or when he realized he could get back home on full disability if he could act wacked out enough to claim PTSD.

Did the revelations that we didn't find any proof about Iraq's weapons affect the troops?

Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.

And I'm sure many Marines feel embarrassed and ashamed that he served with them before saying they all had fun shooting civilians and throwing their bodies into ditches.

I understand that all the incidents – killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally – weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?

There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan.

We'd already rolled through Karbala, and after Baghdad fell the Marines were unloading supplies at their pediatric hospital, as these photos document. Nasty thing about those camera thingies. They make "suppressed memories" seem, we'll, like the should be suppressed some more.

I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head – about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."

Well, I guess blurting that out beats running around a MASH unit in a dress, because the WMD hunt had just begun and we had no idea what we'd find.

He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.

Well when you sound off like an idiot who gets his information from Rolling Stone it is a real career killer, now isn't it.

What happened then?

After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.

He was "kind of scurried away"? What part of the UCMJ is that? It sounds to me like he might've done something more than just babble like an idiot.

I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong."

In the old days the sergeant major might have said

"You slimy little communist shit twinkle-toed cocksucker, you just signed your own death warrant! I will P.T. you until you fucking die! I'll P.T. you until your asshole is sucking buttermilk.

But nowadays I guess they just send such people over to Alternet to get interviewed.

It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.

It's all about blaming Bush. Well, what Bush said wasn't a lie, especially considering that we had a Sarin gas attack on a convoy completely by accident. That doesn't happen unless there's a whole lot of WMD somewhere.

But the more interesting aspect of this story is that the man says he's got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is expressing his "suppressed memories". So let's just call him crazy for now. Yet many left wing nutjobs are ignoring all the holes in his story and the fact that the press doesn't want to touch his accounts with a stick, especially since they would've been reporting these incidents and it would be odd if the same platoon keeps showing up everywhere there's a massacre. Yet the left wing nuts remain undeterred. The story must be true because it confirms their worldview. Yet the confirmation of their worldview is coming from a man who essentially says he's crazy, so what should that tell them? Well of course they can reach only one conclusion. The evilBushHaliburton controlled press is supressing the story! Help! Help!