“We would shoot their tires out . . . put them on their knees like we’re about to execute them"

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Sat Nov-29-08 12:50 PM
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“We would shoot their tires out . . . put them on their knees like we’re about to execute them"

Iraq War vets testify before US Congress

‘Winter Soldier’ hearings give horrific eyewitness accounts of American injustices occurring in Iraq.

PACIFICA – War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill this month to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war, Democracy Now! reported Friday.

In a packed public hearing this month, the soldiers testified before a panel of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Former Marine sniper, Sergio Kochergin, gave a firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the initial days of the US invasion of Iraq.

SERGIO KOCHERGIN: As we cleared all the buildings and moved into the city, and we finally had a time to take a little break, we found a lot of left-behind vehicles, from pickup trucks all the way to luxury Toyota Avalons with leather and sunroofs, which we used for perimeter patrolling. The pickup trucks and the other vehicles were used for the car derby. We would either ram into each other or just ram into the walls, while Iraqi people watched us and were asking for vehicles. We knew they were going to loot the cars, so we just destroyed them, so that the people would not have a chance to take them, except for the scraps.

We also were exposed to a lot of dead Iraqi citizens, either enemy combatants or innocent civilians who were killed by initial air strikes or invasion. At one point, after approaching dead bodies of about four people, we began to take pictures and tried to move and flip them over to try and identify them as civilians or enemy combatants. A few days later, a family of the killed came by and asked if we found anyone who was killed nearby. Me and another Marine led the family to the dead corpses, and they were identified as their sons and uncles and nephews of the family. It was very hard to see the pain in the people’s eyes from their loss. They began to cry and point at us and at the sky and telling us that the planes killed them, and it was our fault also. But we tried to explain to them that it wasn’t us.

Imam Ali Mosque in al-Najaf, Iraq, an influential Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, was killed with another 122 innocent people on August 30th of 2003. A few of our Marines went to the hospital to provide security for all the relatives that were trying to contact their families. When they came back, they said they have never seen so much blood before. They said that they couldn’t even see the ground, so much blood and body parts were everywhere. The suicide bombing was placed by al-Hakim’s political and religious opponent, al-Sadr. Unknown number of attacks have been organized by al-Sadr’s militia against innocent people of Iraq and against the occupying forces.

One other responsibility we had in al-Najaf was to guard an ammunition supply point about thirty miles northeast from our base. Our job consisted of patrolling ASB, and when we came into contact with Iraqis stealing stuff, we would take a physical action and to make sure they would never come back. We would shoot their tires out or shoot their windows, putting them on their knees like we’re about to execute them and just shoot in the air and laugh and yell at them and tell them that the next time will be worse. Our orders directly from command was to roughen up all the guys up. They would always tell us that everybody is an enemy and that we can’t trust them and the only way to keep them in place is to put as much fear as possible and to let them know that we’re not playing around. During the deployment in al-Najaf, nothing was fixed or intended on being fixed at all, except keeping the city in the occupied hands and instill the fear into the people at every chance we got . . .

read more: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/28/winter_soldier_on_the_hill_war

listen/watch: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/28/stream