If Soldiers Came From Another Country And Did This To My Family, I Would Be An Insurgent Too”

[TexasLawyer]

Thursday, July 12th, 2007
If Soldiers Came From Another Country And Did This To My Family, I Would Be An Insurgent Too” – War Vet Describes Iraq House Raid

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Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, who served in Iraq for one year, recalls raiding a sprawling farm on the outskirts of Tikrit in 2004 and the screams he can still hear of the man he woke up inside. Sgt. Westphal says, "He was so terrified and so afraid for his family. I thought of my family at the time and thought 'If I was the patriarch of the family, if soldiers came from another country and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent too.'" We also speak with Sgt. Dustin Flatt who describes unarmed civilians being shot or run over by U.S. military convoys.

Staff Sgt. Timothy John Westphal. Served on the outskirts of Tikrit for a yearlong tour with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, beginning in February 2004.

Sgt. Dustin Flatt. Served with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, for one year beginning in February 2004.

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

<snip>

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/12/1726248

[bdamomma]

1. exactly but I wouldn't consider myself as insurgent

just a person who is trying to defend my country and my family from intruders (illegal).

[madokie]

2. the Iraqi is doing exactly as we would do if the cards were turned

[Libby2]

20. You betcha!

I've said this from the beginning of this fiasco.

[TexasLawyer]

3. shocking and tragic

This country has so much to answer for!

<snip>

SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: Yes. The innocent deaths happened at different times, different places and different occasions. Convoys were commonplace. The only incident I have firsthand knowledge of was a convoy that was actually not our convoy. It was a convoy had just driven by us. And an Iraqi vehicle with a mother, three daughters and an older teenage son who was driving the car were following a convoy too close. It got too close, and they shot into the car. It was a warning shot, and it ended up killing the mother. And they actually pulled the car over, or the son pulled the car over right next to us, and we just happened to be near a hospital in Mosul at the time. And the mother was obviously dead, and the children were just crying and asking if they could actually get into the hospital.

AMY GOODMAN: So the mother was dead. The three little girls, what happened?

SGT. DUSTIN FLATT: Right. The three little girls, we just -- we took them and just -- the last time I saw them they were on the side of the road just crying. They had no idea what had just happened. And it was funny -- it was with another unit -- it was a unit actually that we were attached to in Mosul, and on the back of their last Humvee in the convoy, they had a sign that read, "Stay back 100 meters." And after that, we took our interpreter, our Iraqi interpreter, up to the sign to see how far away he could read it, and he had to be within about thirty or forty feet before he could read it.

<snip>

[bdamomma]

8. OMG, we are no better than the Nazis, sorry for the comparsion

but this country and its people did not do anything to us. shameful what we are doing to these people.

[proffate]

12. We are better then them, or the insurgents

This is the way the insurgents deal with those that defy them.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

[Tulum_Moon]

16. Nice

And who did all those killings? Can you prove who exactly shot them?

[proffate]

18. Well lets see

On one side we have creatures that drive car bombs into crowded marketplaces.

and on the other side.

We have force that has such overwhelming firepower that it could end the war in a month, if it chose to, but does not.

Which is more likely to have liquidated a village.

[TexasLawyer]

17. Dunno if this makes us better than them

I do know that invasion unleashed something very terrible. Civil war and mayhem in Iraq were foreseeable results of taking out Saddam, and were among the major arguments for not going in.

[proffate]

19. Yes it has.

and if one thinks that this will stop with our departure, that person is a fool.

[TomInTib]

4. When will we learn that you can't win in someone else's back yard?

I spent a great deal of my early adult years in just that sort of ill-conceived situation.

We killed a few million of them and they still kicked our collective ass.

As Giap told MacNamara, "Because it was our country".

[Atman]

5. Absolutely. Even if they came here to "save us" from Bush the Tyrant...

I'd still take up arms and fight like hell against anyone trying to occupy our country and install their own government. What the bloody hell did people expect the Iraqis to do, shower us with flowers? Oh, wait...

.

[Bobbieo]

6. How true!!! I've thought of this scenario, often as it may happen, here

[Marrak]

7. You nailed it...

it's analogous to you and yours all tucked in bed and an armed intruder blasts open your front door...

Does your "fight or flight" response kick-in? Are you alarmed by the noise? The destruction? Both?
:nuke:

[TexasLawyer]

13. even Bush himself acknowledged something similar

early on in the US invasion of Iraq.

[eridani]

21. And anyone who told you you were doing it for Bush would be the first to get it, right?

Me too.

[formercia]

9. Junior and Darth knew

The candy and flowers was just bullshit.

[RufusTFirefly]

10. C'mon! Don't let empathy screw up a perfectly good invasion.

That's the beauty of Bush and his henchmen. They seem to be utterly devoid of empathy.

I've suggested to a right-wing friend of mine that as much as I deplore Bush, if some foreign country invaded us for the purpose of ousting Bush from office, that he and I would be fighting side by side to oppose the invasion.

Then again, if the foreign country invaded us, killed my friends and family, detained my neighbors without due process, destroyed our cities, and then insisted on privatizing a sizeable portion of our resources, it would clearly be our fault* if we refused to let them.

---

^*"The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government that has failed."

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. We used to call them patriots,

now we call them insurgents.

[MasonJar]

14. We all would! n/t

[niyad]

15. not insurgents, they are resistance fighters.