... and this is your life? The losers who took glee in their actions are quickly becoming celebrities and no doubt they will have book deals and such... meanwhile, the guy who blew the whistle is hunkered down. A sad commentary on our culture and values... _______________ When Joseph Comes Marching Home In a Western Maryland Town, Ambivalence About the Son Who Blew the Whistle at Abu Ghraib By Hanna Rosin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 17, 2004; Page C01 CORRIGANVILLE, Md. On TV, Spec. Joseph Darby's neighbors here in the Allegheny Mountains have heard him called a hero, a brave soldier who tipped off superiors to the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. And given the way small towns usually honor their soldiers, you might expect preparations for a proper homecoming, maybe even an impromptu parade. But at the bar in the community center just down the road from Darby's house, near the trailer where his mother and younger brother live, none of the handful of patrons is in a parade kind of mood. "If I were [Darby], I'd be sneaking in through the back door at midnight," says Janette Jones, who lives just across the border in Pennsylvania and stopped here at midday with her daughter for a Pepsi and a smoke. What captures their attention this day is not Darby but the ubiquitous photo of another young man, Nicholas Berg, handcuffed and stooped in his orange jumpsuit, moments before he is beheaded by Islamic militants who claimed to be avenging the humiliations suffered by Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. "Maybe if [Darby] hadn't turned them in, that boy would still be alive," Jones says. "Come on, Mom, you can't blame him," says her daughter Janice, giving a friendly shove. "They'd hate us no matter what." Janette Jones's husband was in the service, and so was her son-in-law. The Joneses live not far from Spec. Jeremy Sivits, a military police officer involved in the prison scandal who will face a special court-martial Wednesday. They knew Sivits, 24, growing up: He was a "nice guy, a quiet guy," says the elder Jones. She remembers he once helped her with the barbecue when the coals wouldn't light. "Who knows what those boys were going through out there," she says. "The Iraqis did to us worse than we did to them." In this mountain range where three states meet -- Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- everyone seems to have a brother or uncle or grandfather in the armed services, especially since the coal and steel industries collapsed. Every small town has a war memorial honoring local fallen soldiers. Veterans Day is a serious affair. Wives used to trade stories about finding someone to talk to in Korea or the right chocolate bars in Germany. Lately they talk about the latest funeral. The shame brought on by the prison scandal centered on the 372nd Military Police Company, based one town over in Cresaptown, has only made them cling to each other more. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised Darby for his "honorable actions." But Washington is a universe away. "They can call him what they want," says Mike Simico, a veteran visiting relatives in Cresaptown. "I call him a rat." The sentiment is so deeply felt that even those who praise him do so only anonymously, or with many reservations. "That boy's got a lot of courage," says Alan St. Clair, who lives down the road from Darby's high school home. "But when you go against your fellow man like that, I don't know. Some people won't like it." The feeling is starting to bubble up elsewhere, too, among people who feel that what Darby did was unpatriotic, un-American, even faintly treasonous. "Hero A Two-Timing Rat," reads a headline from last week's New York Post. The story is about his personal life, but the metaphor lingers. The Army says it's considering giving Darby a medal, although Army spokesman Dov Schwartz said it can't say when. It took the Army 30 years and the intervention of a dogged professor to give a medal to Hugh Thompson, who reported to his commanders what came to be known as the My Lai massacre. In the meantime, members of Darby's family find themselves in a situation not unlike the Sivitses' -- refusing interviews, hiding from neighbors and strangers alike. Events have shoved them into history but not yet sorted out their individual fates. Darby's mother, Margaret Blank, has had cancer and diabetes, and lost one eye. Her husband died a few years back. She now lives in a cramped trailer steps from a railroad track, at the edge of a line of trim clapboard houses. "I'm proud of -- " Blank yells out her car window at a reporter as she pulls onto the grass by her trailer, having just picked up Montana, her younger son, from school. Then abruptly she changes her mind "Get the [expletive] off my property. Now. Before I call the police." "He said that he could not stand the atrocities that he had stumbled upon," Blank told ABC News on May 6. "He said he kept thinking, what if it was my mom, my grandmother, my brother or my wife." For the family, however, pride is tainted with fear. His sister-in-law, Maxine Carroll, who's served as the family spokeswoman for the last couple of weeks, told reporters she's "worried about his safety," about "repercussions." "It scares you a little," she told the Associated Press, when asked if some might consider him a traitor. On May 8, she and her husband slipped away from their housing complex in Windber, Pa., to an undisclosed location. An Army spokesman confirmed that Darby is on leave in the United States but wouldn't disclose where he is. At his home in Corriganville, the shutters are closed, a day's worth of mail sits outside the front door. A man ambles down the street to the tiny post office. Two houses down an older couple rock the afternoon away. The white church across the street seems empty. Nobody answered knocks on the door or phone calls. There are three cars parked outside, each with a flag decal and one with a sticker saying "Support Our Troops," the only sign that a soldier might live there. 'Passionate and Committed' At least two other soldiers complained to superiors about conditions at the prison, but Darby's act was the most cinematic. After looking at some of the graphic images, Darby slipped an anonymous note under a division officer's door, according to an account in the New Yorker magazine. At a court hearing for another soldier, Darby testified that he felt "very bad" about what was going on in the prison and he "thought it was very wrong." Darby, 24, joined the Army Reserve about three years ago, after a brief stint working as a mechanic in Falls Church. That decision brought him back to Corriganville, yet another spot in a region he'd bounced around most of his life. His family had lived in a white duplex in the small town of Jenners, Pa., long enough for him to graduate from North Star High School. Back then he passed the school's hallway inspirationals: "You are responsible for your own actions," reads a sign at the entrance. "When you believe in yourself anything is possible." In 12th-grade history, "Problems of Democracy," teacher Robert Ewing introduced his students to war. Ewing is a Vietnam vet, earnest and thoughtful, spends his afternoons cutting grass at the church. He coached Darby in football and wrestling, and sometimes drove him home after practice. Lately he's been thinking about the lessons he gave the class on Vietnam. Ewing tried to convey to the class "what combat is really like" and how "no one knows how they'll really react once they experience it." He told them he'd been raised on John Wayne, "but the first time I shot at people I peed myself." He recalls how "Darby quizzed me" after that lesson. Darby was an average B or C student, and he was not the eager-to-please type. "If Joe believed in something, he had no problems challenging me." Ewing admits that perhaps his memory is tainted by current events, but he definitely recalls Darby as "passionate and committed," he says. "When he believed in something, he defended it." Ewing talked to the class about My Lai, and he was of two minds about it: "I said what they did was wrong, but that I'd been there and I understood why My Lai happened. Nineteen-, 20-year-old boys aren't ready to handle combat," he said. "I was 20 and I certainly wasn't ready to handle that." Such are his instincts about what happened at Abu Ghraib. "Being a vet I can understand why young men and women who aren't properly trained do what they did, but that doesn't justify it," he says. "Joe did the right thing." Like the handful of people who've spoken publicly about Darby, Ewing has been inundated with media requests for comment: ABC News's Peter Jennings called, a filmmaker wants him to consult. Most he turns down. He accepted one from Swiss TV because the producer said talking about Darby would help Europeans understand that the typical American soldier was not like those guards, that some acted heroically. The sentiment is not universal among his colleagues. Often the school will find ways to honor former students who've served. But one teacher has a husband in the National Guard, one ex-teacher is in Iraq, "and they feel what Joe did might jeopardize them," says Ewing. Last week Ewing's students discussed Darby in a current events section. They, too, expressed ambivalence. "They feel what he did might endanger their families," Ewing recalls. "Some people are upset with what he did -- ratting them out -- and also because of what happened to those contractors, the beheading. They might say what the guards did pales in comparison," says Ewing. "But . . . if we as a country, as a culture, believe certain values then you can't excuse that behavior. If I ever do see him again, I'll tell him I'm very proud. And as time goes on, most Americans are going to realize that, too." Ewing brings up the name of a universally accepted local hero, Cpl. Clark R. Kaltenbaugh, grandfather of a senior currently at the school. But Kaltenbaugh's story is in most ways the opposite of Darby's. It's recalled in "The 100 Best True Stories of World War II" -- a book long out of print. After his Marine detachment was ambushed by the Japanese in the battle for Guadalcanal, Kaltenbaugh dedicated himself to killing an equal number of the enemy: "I swore to God I'd kill seventeen of them with my own hands," and then, with giddy abandon, he does. Friends who knew Darby before he enlisted in the Army all agree on one thing: "I'll give him this, he had a temper on him," said Norm Manges, a friend from high school. "He got in a lot of fights." Manges remembers Darby once bragging that he would do better than Manges on a test. Manges tapped him on the head with a pencil, "and he got up and punched me twice, right in this cheek. He had a flash temper." Darby was one of the handful of new kids in a school where everyone had known each other since kindergarten. And something about him provoked others. For most boys on the football team, hazing stopped after their sophomore year. But with Darby, the boys kept it up well into his junior year. "He was arrogant," recalls Manges. "He seemed to want to fight you for some reason. We had to bring him down a notch." When the news broke, Manges' girlfriend called and told him to look in the paper. "And it was strange, because he's the one who used to get picked on in football. I didn't think about it being courageous, it was just strange. I couldn't imagine the guy I knew was the guy who did this." What Makes a Hero In his book "On Killing," Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a military psychologist, reports on a classified Air Force study conducted after World War II. The study looked for factors common to ace fliers who weren't reluctant to shoot and found one: Those who got into a lot of fights as kids made better fighters, because they weren't timid about confronting other people. Standard Air Force heroes, says Grossman, are not the bullies but the people who were picked on by bullies and fought back. "Most of us would be paralyzed by what other people think, but they wouldn't care. This gives them a certain freedom to stand up for something." Manges theorizes that Darby's action had something to do with the bullying. "Maybe he felt sorry for them, because he got picked on, too." Manges is talking from the Ford body shop where he works as a mechanic. He's 25, about to get married, and in some ways high school seems fresh to him. There he and Darby were linked by a singular fierce competition, two of the poorest kids in the class fighting for a future. Now his friend is a million miles away, out there in history, and Manges is still trying to make sense of it. "I would say it's not really a good thing or a bad thing," he says. "It's kind of bad because we're still over there and now Iraqis are revolting and that guy in Philly got his head chopped off, but it's kind of good because people should not be doing stuff like that. "It all depends," he says, "how you look at it."
The man compromised the security of our forces abroad and did more to change world opinion of the war than perhaps any other human. The man helped to set the progress of the war back significantly. The pictures never should have been released and this process should have been tried through the court marshalling process, not through the media.
Jorge, why don't you tone it down a notch? Gleefully using this torture stuff to be a deliberate ******* is in poor taste even for you, and you've been doing it for two weeks now. I know you delight in needling people but seriously, grow the f-ck up for 10 seconds.
Uh.... how was anything I just said 'gleeful'? I was complaining about the situation, not rejoicing over it. There were no exclamation points, happy faces, nothing. Please explain. While you're at it, please attempt to control your vulgarity and emotions.
If the acts weren't committed to begin with there would have been nothing to leak to the press. Darby was a hero, and the torturers not only compromised security they compromised our values and honor.
Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government' By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Bee Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004 "We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it." - Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp. The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C. When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved. Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq? A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion. Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine? A: 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. Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines? A: 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. Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns? A: 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. Q: He spoke English? A: Oh, yeah. Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right? A: 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. Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties? A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch. Q: Over what period did all this take place? A: During the invasion of Baghdad. 'We lit him up pretty good' Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"? A: 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. Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case? A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot. Q: A demonstration? Where? A: 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." Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic? A: Both. Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out? A: 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. 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. Q: What kind of firepower was employed? A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns. Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out? A: 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. Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident? A: 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. Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details. A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time. Q: And the incident? A: 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. Depleted uranium and cluster bombs Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium? A: 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. Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium? A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust. Q: Did you breath any dust? A: Yeah. Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians. A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem. Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU? A: 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---!" Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs? A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM. Q: What's an ICBM? A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb. Q: What happened? A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left. Q: What kind of training? A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them. Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped? A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere. Q: Dropped from the air? A: From the air as well as artillery. Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities? A: 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. Q: Including inside the towns and cities? A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs. Q: 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. A: 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 raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies. Embedded reporters Q: How are the embedded reporters responding? A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home. Q: Why? A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties. Q: 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? A: 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?" Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion? A: 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. Q: What changed you? A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed. Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops? A: 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. Showdown with superiors Q: 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? A: 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. 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." 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. Q: What happened then? A: 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. 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." 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.
Rimrocker you must check out Cursor.org. I go by there daily. I think it's one of the best news compendium sites out there.
I think Jorge is bringing up the question, do we have the right to know everything? I.e. does the government have the right to classify information from us? I would argue that they do. Sort of an X-files, the truth is out there but do we need the truth? In this case, I would say the pictures were important and I think they kept them under wraps long enough to do what they needed to do, prudentially, to start a good investigation and that showing us the pictures, while maybe swaying opinion against the war, was probably a good idea.
No, actually he's not. Jorge launched an ad hominem attack against a soldier who did his duty and helped bring a stop to serial human rights violations committed by his fellow soldiers in contravention of US and international law by reporting them up the chain of command. Jorge (and you, I guess) are either ignorant or confused in that you equate the publicization of the photos with Darby performing the duties that he is legally, and morally bound to do; Two separate events, performed by separate actors. I imagine this ignorance was purposeful in Jorge's case to bring himself to climax via a lenghty exchange of outrageous statements designed to push peoples buttons. I would think you would recognize that by now.
for security purposes the govt. has the right to not release things like troop position, number of troops, types of artillery, etc. But covering up crimes, treaty violations, human rights violations, and things that will make them look bad, isn't valid.
That soldier was duty bound to report the violations of the Geneva Convention. To not do so would be to betray his oath of service. Is this what you advocate?
The purpotraiters are being sentenced to jail now. So why is the whistle blower anti-American? Ah yes, breaking the law is patriotic. I guess that is why Enron flourished and was embraced by our president. Right TJ? The Enron whistle-blower was also left-wing lunatic fringe whacko that was trying to paint our country in a negative image...since clearly liberals want to destroy the country. Yea, the Abu whistle blower was a democrat.
I was visting my best friend tonight. He is an Army Veteran and was in Bosnia for 2 years. He showed me his Rules of Engagment Card that everyone recieved there. One of the responsibilities listed is that a soldier will treat all captured persons "humanly". I would guess that everyone that steps foot in Iraq would recieve a simmular card. It always directed each person to report any violations of military rules..
Actually, krosfyah, you have this backwards. Enron flourished under the Clinton Administration, and was prosecuted under the Bush Administration. Sorry about that krosfyah. krosfyah, it is important that you know your limits. I don't think you want to be asking me questions krosfyah. I advise you not to go bear hunting with a stick krosfyah. May I recommend the Hangout Forum to you krosfyah?
That's the thing though, prudentially, it makes sense to hold off on the release so that Taguba and friends could start a lengthy and fair investigation. I don't think we had the *right* necessarilly to see these pictures when they first came out.
Why would the press releasing the photos hamper the investigation? The press has the right under the 1st amendment to release the news.
