The Boys: An All Professional (Mercenary) Military?

The Boys: An All Professional (Mercenary) Military?

Can anyone still doubt the danger of an All Professional (Mercenary) Military? Not until we end it will the Serial Wars that now threaten the world come to an end.

By C.E. Carlson

06/14/03: (WHTT) The destruction of Iraq is now complete. The cost in innocent human lives (never mind those who were guilty) will not be know for years. Some of the person will never be known, except to the loved ones who are left alone.

But the sprit of resentment toward American military, The Boys, that has been salted across the desert is and will be a smoldering inferno for all of us to bear. As the summer heat rises in the
waterless, un-refrigerated, foodless and powerless cities of the Arabian desert, "The Boys" are beginning to pay a price for our leaders' choices. Hardy a day goes by without an ambush of American service men. Eight were reported killed last week. They are now being subjected to true guerrilla warfare, as were the Russians in Afghanistan. The Warmakers' answer is reprisals in the name of justice, and if Palestine is a clue, the occupied people of Iraq will counter the response.

It is time we apply the same standard of examination to the second destruction of Iraq, the third destruction of Afghanistan, and the endless occupation of Palestine that has been applied to the war in Vietnam, both as to the conduct of the politicians who caused the wars, and to the conduct of the military. For never has there been more one sided slaughters than Iraq. We include the occupation of Palestine with the destruction of Iraq and Afghanastan, because the US financed it even if "the boys" have not yet dropped bombs or fired a shot there.

We are able to demonstrate what history proves; our all-professional military lacks conscience to judge its own acts and the courage to challenge its own leadership. This is as we would expect of mercenaries who do not represent citizens in conscripted service, the traditional military before 1975. Brutality is the nature of the beast, which our forefathers referred to as a "standing army." It is for us, the Americans, to eliminate it by education and political action.

Several rarely discussed abuses have been manifest during "Operation Iraqi Freedom." These abuses include use of dangerous chemical warfare weapons, principally depleted uranium on civilians and military targets; the deliberate killing of civilians; mistreatment and possible annihilation of prisoners of war; and mass recruitment of foreign citizens (aliens) into our USA military.

GROWING IRAQ CIVILIAN DEATH COUNT REVEALED

Americans have been given to believe the bombing of Iraq was all but free of civilian casualties, and that "The Boys" killed only military personnel in the heat of fierce conflict. Recent reports are trickling though the Internet from human rights activists determined to get to the truth about the untold loss of Iraqi civilians. The "embedded press" did not, or would tell about it sooner. It now seems likely that WHTT first estimate of 10,000 or more of unreported civilian deaths from bombing and shootings will eventually be exceeded.

A Los Angeles Times survey of Baghdad hospitals by Laura King, Los Angeles Times staff writer May 18, 2003 found that at least 1,700 civilians were killed and more than 8,000 hurt in the battle for the Iraqi capital alone. These are reported first hand by doctors at hospitals. The story goes on to explain why these numbers vastly understate total civilian deaths.

Associated Press on June 1l, 2003 announced it own study of civilian deaths, and as of the June 10, 2003, it has thus far found that over 3240 Iraqi civilians were killed, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation. NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer concludes: "the count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher."

Price state further: "The AP count was based on records from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals - including almost all of the large ones - and covers the period between March 20, when the war began, and April 20. AP journalists traveled to all of these hospitals, studying their logs, examining death certificates where available and interviewing officials about what they witnessed. Even if hospital records were complete, they would not tell the full story." Further: "Many of the dead were never taken to hospitals, either buried quickly by their families in accordance with Islamic custom, or lost under rubble."(1)

A private group called Iraq Victims Fund now claims to have 150 volunteers going door to door in Baghdad assessing the death cost. The truth will prevail. Our "embedded press" and our Professional military did not tell us all, but some are now telling more.

NO WONDER AMERICAN FIELD COMMANDERS WERE ORDERED NOT TO COUNT THE DEAD!

However some foreign reporters have told more after being "un-embedded." One of several such reports comes from Laurent Van der Stockt, a photographer working for the Gamma agency and under contract for the New York Times Magazine. Van de Stockt followed the advance of the 3/4 Marines (3rd battalion, 4th regiment) for three weeks, up to the taking of Baghdad on April 9 and reported as an "embedded photographer": "I SAW MARINES KILL CIVILIANS." Written for Le Monde by Michel Guerrin and translated for CounterPunch by Norman Madarasz, May 18, 2003: (2)

Here are Van der Stockt's words: "We were spending a lot of time then with the 1500 Marines of the 3/4, commanded by Colonel Bryan P. McCoy. His troops gave us water, gas and food. In exchange for their tolerance, we respected the rules to not pass the convoy and to camp at such and such a place. We were just barely tolerated. The colonel could see that the 'few jokers were behaving well.' He knew we had experienced more wars than his own troops."

"Their motto is 'Search and Kill'. The 'Kilo' unit is nicknamed 'Killer Kilo'. The words 'Carnivore' or 'Blind Killer' are painted on their tanks. McCoy could snap with a 'Shame on You' a smile flashing across his face to the sniper who had just finished telling him: 'I've got eight, Sir, but only five'. Literally meaning: I've shot eight, but only five of them are dead."

"On April 6, we were at the outskirts of Baghdad, facing a strategic bridge the Americans called 'the Baghdad Highway Bridge.' Residential zones were now much greater in number. American snipers got the order to kill anything coming in their direction. That night a teenager who was crossing the bridge was killed."

"The Marines were advancing and taking up position, hiding behind mounds of earth. They were still really tense. A small blue van was moving towards the convoy. Three not-very-accurate warning shots were fired. The shots were supposed to make the van stop. The van kept on driving, made a U-turn, took shelter and then returned slowly. The Marines opened fire. All hell broke loose. They were firing all over the place. You could hear 'Stop firing' being shouted. The silence that set in was overwhelming. TWO MEN AND A WOMAN HAD JUST BEEN RIDDLED WITH BULLETS. So this was the enemy, the threat."

"A second vehicle drove up. The same scenario was repeated. Its passengers were killed on the spot. A grandfather was walking slowly with a cane on the sidewalk. They killed him too (see photo in Le Monde). As with the old man, the Marines fired on a SUV driving along the river bank that was getting too close to them. Riddled with bullets, the vehicle rolled over. Two women and a child got out, miraculously still alive. THEY SOUGHT REFUGE IN THE WRECKAGE. A FEW SECONDS LATER, IT FLEW INTO BITS AS A TANK LOBBED A TERSE SHOT INTO IT."

"WITH MY OWN EYES I SAW ABOUT FIFTEEN CIVILIANS KILLED IN TWO DAYS. I'VE GONE THROUGH ENOUGH WARS TO KNOW THAT IT'S ALWAYS DIRTY, THAT CIVILIANS ARE ALWAYS THE FIRST VICTIMS. BUT THE WAY IT WAS HAPPENING HERE, IT WAS INSANE." -(end Le Monde by Michel Guerrin)

Military lack of conscience can only worsen by unnecessary acts of brutality. Perhaps even worse is the account of an 18 year old, British soldier on leave, caught in the act of developing photographs of his own unit torturing Iraqi POWs.

According to the May 30th, SUN story is about Gary Bartlam, 18, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who is "being questioned by the Army's top criminal investigator" about photos he took of his unit apparently torturing Iraqi prisoners. But sickening aspect of this story is the fact that the soldier who took the photos was apparently proud of what he was doing and wanted to bring home the evidence. The SUN story further stated, "The investigations into torturing Iraqi POWs come as British Defense Minister Adam Ingram admitted that the Anglo-American forces did use cluster bombs in densely populated areas during the Iraq invasion."

WHERE ARE THE MISSING PRISONERS OF WAR?

Serious questions are being raised about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war. Indeed, what has become of the thousands of prisoners the "embedded media" reported were surrendering as US forces advanced? It seems that what might be expected to be at least 25,000 prisoners have disappeared without a trace of US news coverage. Ask yourself, when is the last time you saw Iraqi prisoners of war on your newscast?

More ominously, there is a dearth of first hand sighting reported on world Internet sources. It seems no one is getting a look at the prisoners, so tight is US security.

An article in The Observer, "RED CROSS DENIED ACCESS TO POWS," By Ed Vulliamy, Sunday 25 May 2003, states: "The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organization believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or have been turned down."

He Observer story continued: "Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to the Baghdad airport. The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to the Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt. There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'DEALT WITH' by the Americans, according to a US military source."

What do our leaders mean by "DEALT WITH"? In Afghanistan prisoner involved in an uprising were executed. Among those who escaped was John Walker.

It appears the POW compounds in Iraq are unapproachable. We wonder why? According to The Observer story, a daring lone French photographer got "too close" and reported that he was detained, beaten, then released by US prison guards, but testified he did see a large number of hooded handcuffed men held in an open field in the sun. This would be a death sentence if protracted.

According to a complaint by Amnesty International, "The Pentagon announced on April 19, that American military tribunals were set up in Iraq to try Iraqi POWs, while the Central Command said at the time that 3600 Iraqis were taken as POWs."

Why are prisoners being hidden? If there are no prisoners, what happened to all those that the "embedded reporters" told us were surrendering? One might ask, where are "The Boys" in all this? Would they participate in abuse and mistreatment of prisoners? The answer is there can be no abuse without their participation, so let us dig further.

One French photographer was beaten and detained by American prison guards. He stated he was led past a fenced field with many handcuffed hooded prisoners kneeling in the sun. There seems to be no way to verify such a terrible story, for if it true, it is a death sentence to be held in the desert in such a manner.

THE USA PLANNED FOR THOUSAND OF POWs

We know that in early April camps were being built to house expected prisoners. A SPECIAL REPORT: Prisoner Camp Work Goes On, by Daily Titan war correspondent, Ronald Paul Larson, Special to www.nbc4.tv on April 8, 2003, stated: "Two camps are under construction, another two planned, and four more possible," said Maj. Karen Ward, the executive officer of the 46th Engineer Battalion. Each camp is designed to hold 8,000 prisoners but could hold an additional 2,000 to 4,000 if necessary, she said. The plan is to eventually hold all Iraqi prisoners at Um Qasr. That adds up to room for some 24,000 men, but they took only 3600.

The prisoner abuse report might be dismissed if it were not for the fact that we know just a little bit of the abuse and secret imprisonment that is going on in Guantanamo. The few scanty facts and photos from Cuba that seeped through the tight pores of the official releases and controlled press stories we would know just as little about what is happening there. Those who control the apparently inhuman existence of the prisoners have squeezed down the news flow to the point where the only photos one sees are retakes of the same year old pictures of handcuffed men in orange suits in dog kennel style, open air cages. We are told they do not even have access to families and attorneys, so why would we not be suspicious of what is being done to the Iraqis?

But as far as we can tell no one, no newsmen at least, have been allowed to see the Iraqi prisoners nor do we hear a word about them. It would seem they have ceased to exist, if they ever did exist. Have they all been executed, or did "The Boys" not take prisoners in the first place? We need to know. We also need to know what kind of prisoner care training "The Boys" are receiving. For instance, mom and dad would want to know it if their 18 year-old son (or daughter) is being trained to torture or even murder prisoners?

THE DEPLETED URANIUM BOMBING CONTROVERSY

The US military also dropped specially-made bombs to penetrate underground installations. What was not told was that these very heavy bombs used spent uranium "penetrators" for piercing concrete and steel before exploding. The reason these "bunker busters" are so heavy is that uranium is 1.7 times heavier than lead and is very hard. "Penetrators" as the Pentagon calls them, were used in populated areas without disclosing that fact to the public.

Retired Vietnam combat pilot Col. David Antoon provided an answer for those who say we must leave it to our leaders to decide what is a military target and what is civilian. He raised the question of the morality of creating bombs intended to penetrate a safe hiding place, such as an underground shelter, to "kill anything down there." The problem is that there is no way to know who or what is about to be killed. (Antoon, T-157, VIETNAM TO IRAQ: Weapons, Losses, Cost, and Conscience (www.whtt.org/bookstor).

This lesson should have been clear to our Warmakers from a prior "mistake" On February 13, 1991, at 4:30 a.m., when the U.S. military successfully penetrated the Amariyah civilian air shelter in Baghdad by guiding two huge bombs, one behind the other, into the same hole in the domed roof. The shelter held 1700 persons, and only a few of the hundreds of sleeping civilians, mostly women and children, survived in what turned out to be a 100% civilian shelter protected by what was considered impenetrable reinforced concrete. Only a lame excuse was offered by the Pentagon.

In Bush War II, the bomb makers figured out a more deadly way to penetrate shelters: by placing a uranium penetrator head on a giant bomb, it simply punches its way into the underground shelter and incinerates every unseen thing beneath.

Depleted uranium is dirt cheap since it is a storage problem with questionable use. Some scientist claim spent nuclear wastes could be used in breeder reactors to generate more electricity. It is a byproduct of the nuclear fuel industry and must be store and monitor it for about a billion years, it seems. How much nicer for the arms industry to dump it on the people of Iraq, and claim it's benign. It should not surprise you that people who swore Saddam Hussein defiantly held WMD also tell us that spent uranium bullets and bombs are harmless to the environment.

The risk of carefully monitored nuclear waste storage was a much-debated subject during the 1980s. Public fears were fanned, resulting in the shutdown of some public utility plants. Environmental advocates made impassioned and often-exaggerated pleas that the danger is near infinite and no one in America is safe from the danger of ongoing accumulation of old spent waste rods and byproduct materials from plants.

What we do know for sure is that we have been yin-yang'ed. For years our leaders in Washington, catering to the "War on the Environment craze" allowed us to believe spent nuclear fuel rods were an invention of the devil and a curse to public heath. Now the same power structure tells us DU penetrator heads are humane weapons of mass destructions, safe to rain down on civilians (so long as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Both Gulf War vets and volunteer doctors' groups who have visited Iraq claim that about a thousands of tons of waste were shot into the Iraqi landscape and has, according to numerous studies, resulted in massive increases in everything from testicular cancer to monstrous birth defects. There is truth in some of these claims. "Gulf War Syndrome," which seems to have some validity, may also be caused, at least in part, by the exposure to nuclear waste rained down on Iraq in 1991.

A recent story in The Handstand, an Irish Journal, entitled Remains Of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq by Scott Peterson. (www.thehandstand.org) contains the following quotes from The Christian Science Monitor:

"The Monitor visited four sites in the city - including two randomly chosen destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles, a clutch of burned American ammunition trucks, and the downtown planning ministry - and found significant levels of radioactive contamination. The Monitor saw only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. There, a 3-foot-long DU dart from a 120 mm tank shell, was found producing radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels. It made the instrument's staccato bursts turn into a steady whine."

Author Peterson goes on to quote a German scientist and a Pentagon official who have differing stories: "Minimizing the risk, fresh-from-the-factory DU tank shells are normally handled with gloves, to minimize the health risk, and shielded with a thin coating. The alpha particle radiation emitted by DU travels less than an inch and can be stopped by cloth or even tissue paper. But when the DU material burns (usually on impact; or as a dust, it can spontaneously ignite) the protective shields disappear, and dangerous radioactive oxides are created that can be inhaled or ingested.'"

According to The Handstand's Scott Peterson, The Pentagon has a different story:
"Pentagon officials say that DU is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare. They say that pre-Gulf War studies that indicated a risk of cancer and of causing harm to local populations through permanent contamination have been superseded by newer reports."

But the pentagon contradicts itself according to Peterson, "'If a [tank] was taken out by depleted uranium, there may be oxide that you don't want to inhale. We want to minimize any exposure, at least to the lowest level possible,' Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, a top Pentagon health official told journalists on March 14, just days before the war began."

Peterson continues: "During the latest Iraq conflict Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and A-10 Warthog aircraft, among other military platforms, all fired the DU bullets from desert war zones to the heart of Baghdad. No other armor-piercing round is as effective against enemy tanks. While the Pentagon says there's no risk to Baghdad residents, US soldiers are taking their own precautions in Iraq, and in some cases have handed out warning leaflets and put up signs." (www.thehandstand.org)

What are the dangers of nuclear plant waste when shot through steel and concrete and heated to white hot by exploding warheads? WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS has heard both sides and does not profess to know. We do know the Administration cannot be trusted to tell us, because we have its record of telling other lies. We are inclined to guess the DU exposure is just in its infancy.

CITIZENS OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES IN THE US MILITARY

Since the last issue was released it has become public knowledge that 37,000 of our soldiers are aliens, so called "green card soldiers" according to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting release on June 6, 2003. Our military is becoming less citizen and more mercinary.

Aliens service in our military is a matter of fact. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) states the number of aliens in uniform to be 3% of the total of about one million men. One of these killed was a Mexican alien with an Arizona address. But we know this will escalate because non-citizens are being recruited abroad, especially in Mexico. They will be paid by US taxpayers, and much of the money will, logically, be sent back to the native countries where the families reside.

Like bombs, foreign mercenaries do not create wealth the US economy, only debts and deficits. These "green card soldiers" can logically be expected to do exactly as they are told, even if it someday means guarding or firing upon American citizens! Put yourself in their shoes, would you consider the US Constitution?

Worse, our parasite Congress is planning to make citizenship for "green card soldiers" automatic, without qualification or cost after only one year in service. Citizenship is to be a bonus for taking what, to a third world citizen, is a high paying job. WITH THIS IN MIND HOW CAN ANYONE DENY WHTT'S CHARACTERIZATION OF THE US ARMED FORCES AS A "MERCENARY" MILITARY?

"The boys" are, as former Marine Chris White told us, are paid to kill. There is no room for loyalty to American culture or to its constitution in a military where the American boys must compete for rank and position with aliens from third world countries.

Today professional military recruiters are reported working in Mexico to fill the ranks, and if there, why not Columbia, Uganda, or Russia? Why shouldn't Israeli former gulag guards already trained and experienced in torture, be recruited to guard future gulags in Detroit and Los Angeles, or Guantanamo? Consider the pressure this puts on Americans who have signed the same papers the aliens do. A former Vietnam combat pilot of 100 plus missions told me of a commanding officer who told his group of American pilots, "if you won't fly this mission I will find someone who will." How easy to find that someone if foreign mercenaries are among the recruits?

Can anyone still doubt the danger of an All Professional (Mercenary) Military? Not until we end it will the Serial Wars that now threaten the world come to an end. -C.E. Carlson

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