GI SPECIAL 4H12:
[Thanks to
Mark Shapiro][peacevigils.com]
People Are Wondering, "Why Am I Here? I
Mean, I Was Sent Here For A Reason"
And People Still, Soldiers In
Particular, They Definitely Feel This
Question Of "What Is Really Going On?"
[Thanks to
D and Phil G, who sent this in.]
August
11th, 2006 Democracy Now! [Excerpts]
Today, we
are joined by an Army sergeant, who
chose to serve in Iraq as an army
interrogator with the 82nd Airborne
Division out of Fort Bragg. But he
became a war resister after witnessing
how the war was being fought.
His name
is Sgt. Ricky Clousing. He is a
24-year-old from Sumner, Washington. He
served in Iraq from December 2004 until
April 2005. Within months after
returning home, he went AWOL.
He left behind a quote from Martin
Luther King. It read, "Cowardice asks
the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency
asks the question, "Is it politic?"
But conscience asks the question, "Is it
right?" And there comes a time when one
must take a position that is neither
safe, nor politic, nor popular but
because conscience tells one it is
right."
Today Sgt. Ricky Clousing plans to go to
Fort Lewis to turn himself in to
military officials. But first he joins
us live from Seattle.
**************************************************************
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you
with us. Why did you go AWOL?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: I chose to leave after
experiencing the brutalities of war in
this war in Iraq, and it was a process
that I considered long and hard upon my
return to Fort Bragg.
Those
two-and-a-half months of my integration
back into the military and back into
society really questioned and really
forced me to reevaluate my beliefs and
my own personal feelings and
convictions, politically and
spiritually, about my involvement in the
war in Iraq and also the organization of
the military in general.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you talk to us
about some of your specific experiences
while you were there? My understanding
is you actually witnessed some killings
of innocent civilians that really
affected you deeply?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: Yes, I was assigned to a
tactical infantry unit, which meant
basically that I was out on patrols with
infantry units.
The
particular incident you’re referring to,
I was in Mosul on a convoy en route, and
we stopped to assist another convoy that
had been struck by an IED. And during
that time, I was ordered to pull rear
security on the convoy, where I
proceeded to go behind the rear Humvee
and guard the road, basically to ensure
that nobody turned down and posed a
threat to U.S. forces assisting soldiers
in their personal crisis, what was going
on with the IED.
As I was
doing that, I had seen a vehicle turn
down our road going approximately 15
miles an hour. I saw directly in the
window. It was a young boy, or a young
man, I should say, and as soon as he saw
U.S. troops, he was terrified, took his
hands off the wheel. It was evident
that he was scared that U.S. troops were
there, weapons drawn. He didn't know
what was going on.
He was
making an effort to brake the vehicle
and to turn around immediately, when a
soldier in the turret of the Humvee
behind me proceeded to open up fire and
fired four to five rounds inside of the
vehicle.
I went
over to the vehicle with a medic and
broke the window out and dragged the
civilian into the road, which is common
to provide first aid upon injured
civilians, and even insurgents, but I
look downed at him as the medic was
performing first aid.
And the
situation, obviously, was really -- I
was in shock. I didn't know what was
going on. It was really fast. But as I
looked down in the eyes of the boy, I
could tell that he was just scared. He
was frightened. And I don't speak
Arabic, and obviously there was no words
exchanged, but I could look into his
eyes and see that he was confused and
hurt and didn't know what was going on.
You know, I could sense that from the
soul he was crying out, you know, "Why
is this happening to me? What’s going
on? What did I do? I was turning my
car around."
I spoke
with the leaders afterwards and told
them that basically they needed to
instruct their soldiers to assess and
analyze a situation properly, as the
proper procedures were neglected.
The
escalation of force by waving of the
arms and firing a warning shot and then
proceeding to try to disengage the
vehicle by shooting the tires, and then
actually if the vehicle doesn't stop and
it poses a threat still, you're
authorized to engage into the vehicle
and engage the civilian.
All of those procedures were ignored,
and it was directly -- basically the
civilian was fired on immediately.
And I
thought that this Iraqi died innocently,
and I was really disturbed by it, really
shook my foundation of why I thought we
were there. And I had skepticism
before, but that particular incident,
along with some other ones, really just
made me second guess what we were doing
there and what really is happening.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you raise it with your
superiors?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: I did raise it to the
superiors that were in charge of the
convoy. I did.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did they say?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: I brought it up to them. And
it was hard for me to do that, because I
was never deployed before, because I
wasn't an infantry soldier. I was a
military intelligence soldier attached
to these infantry guys.
But when I
did, I spoke what I felt I needed to say
and bring up issues that needed to be
questioned and concern.
And when I did, I was really shot down
by the superiors, basically that I
didn't know how convoy operations
worked, and I had never been deployed
before and I didn’t understand that this
happens and that that’s just something
that’s a reality of war, and that I
apparently didn't know what I was
talking about.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And how prevalent, in
your experience, were these kinds of
incidents of innocent civilians being
needlessly killed?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: I, myself, only witnessed this
particular incident where an innocent
civilian was killed, although because I
was an interrogator, my security
clearance granted me access to the S-2
room, which is the intelligence briefing
room. It’s where they have all the
intelligence updates.
There is a
board called the daily intelligence
summary, and that holds information on
how many times in our area of operation
that soldiers have received small arms
fire, how many IEDs have gone off and
also the number of local nationals or
noncombatant Iraqi civilians that are
killed.
And as I
said, I only saw this personally one
time, but the number of innocent Iraqis
killed on the bleeder board, or on the
intelligence board, definitely climbed
the whole time I was in Iraq.
The number
never -- it gradually increased day by
day that we were there in the sector.
It’s an intelligence summary board,
basically of all the updates in the area
of operation that we conduct in, all of
the significant events.
AMY GOODMAN: Sgt. Ricky Clousing, can
you go back to the beginning and tell us
when and why you joined the military,
the Army?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: I joined in 2002. I was
actually taking some time off school,
and I was doing some mission work in
Thailand in an orphanage. And I ended
up coming back from that trip and not
knowing whether to pursue school or not.
So I moved to Europe to live with my
father for a little while, and I was
there for about four months, backpacking
around. I was traveling, and I
encountered soldiers coming back from
Afghanistan, which was fairly after
9/11, fairly short after that.
And I
really just started considering the
possibility of serving in the military
in this new era of these all new ideas
that had been thrown out there. So I
started contemplating. I went and spoke
with a recruiter, and the job title that
seemed appealing to me was an
interrogator, partly because of the
nature of the job and also because of
the possibility to learn a foreign
language and just the new experiences
that I would have.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you decided to
go AWOL, could you take us through some
of your thoughts then, and why you
decided you had to do this?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: Well, as I said, the
particular incident that I saw
definitely disturbed me. There’s a
number of other incidents that happened
that really added to my confusion and my
conflict of conscience, you could say.
And it
really -- although some might call these
incidents isolated, and even in the
media, you watch on the news the events
that happened in Haditha, you read about
the 14-year-old girl that was raped and
killed by soldiers or even the abuses of
Abu Ghraib. Every month or every couple
months, there is always a headline
issue, it seems to be, that there’s some
sort of abuse of power that’s going on
in Iraq.
But what’s
not really covered by the media and what
really isn’t spoken about are the daily
injustices that happened.
And my experiences over there were daily
injustices, which included that innocent
civilian that was killed, but as I said,
there was also a number of other
incidents where I -- to sum it up, I
really saw the physical, psychological
and emotional harassment of civilians.
The abuse of power that goes on in
Iraq each day really was just not -- I
believe should not be tolerated. And
these events aren’t covered by the
media.
So those
events that I witnessed and I was
exposed to really forced me to second
guess my ability to perform daily
functions as a soldier, to train my
soldiers that I was in charge of and to
be trained. I was basically kind of --
I felt stuck in my situation, where I
really felt like -- as I got home, I
really dug into information leading up
to the war in Iraq and also through
foreign policy in general, and I just
really was -- I felt stuck, that I’m in
an organization right now that I’m
discovering, based on my experiences and
the knowledge that I’m reading, that I
really do not believe that I can
honorably serve and be a part of at this
time, so --
AMY GOODMAN: Ricky Clousing, what did
you do the night you left Fort Bragg,
and did others there know that you were
leaving, placing that quote of Dr.
Martin Luther King, leaving it behind
you and walking out of the base?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: Well, I didn't actually plan a
day that I was going to depart from my
unit. Like I mentioned a little bit
before, it was a process of when I
integrated back home of my feelings
really intensifying over time, and it
intensified to the point in June, where
I really felt like the only decision
that I had in obeying my conscience and
living honorably was to separate myself
from the military in that way.
So nobody
else in my unit knew that I was going to
be leaving. It wasn't -- I didn't talk
to anybody about it. I basically -- I
knew this was a time I had to move and I
had to separate myself.
So, as you
mentioned, I left a note on my door
explaining my feelings, which my unit
was well aware of. My superiors already
understood my conflict, and I left a
quote by Martin Luther King, which you
read earlier, which I feel kind of
explained in a summary of how I felt in
the whole matter.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What about your fellow
soldiers? Did any of them share your
frustration and your disillusionment
with what was going on there, or were
you pretty much a loner on this issue?
SGT. RICKY CLOUSING: When I was in Iraq,
I was primarily attached to infantry
units, so I was around a different
mentality of soldiers. When I returned
home and spoke to some of the people
that I had trained with and stuff in my
intelligence unit, there's definitely,
even among the infantry soldiers, there
was absolutely a feeling of confusion, a
feeling of questioning whether or not
we're actually in Iraq for the reasons
we were told, because men and women are
dying each day, you know.
Even these infantry guys are losing
their friends each day in roadside
bombs, losing their friends in gunfire
attacks, and absolutely, the -- I mean,
people are wondering, "Why am I here? I
mean, I was sent here for a reason."
And people still, soldiers in
particular, they definitely feel this
question of "What is really going on?"
It’s not
so much spoken about on a big platform,
because it’s kind of like this inner
question that I had before I went to
Iraq, as well. It’s just that the
experiences that I had really kind of
forced me to deal with these questions
on the forefront, kind of like compelled
me to answer them.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sergeant, next Thursday
U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada
is going to face a pretrial hearing for
refusing to deploy to Iraq. Two months
ago, he became the first commissioned
officer to publicly refuse deployment.
SGT. RICKY CLOUSING: I think that there
is definitely a wide amount of people
that feel the same feelings I have, the
same questions that Lieutenant Watada
had, as many -- just like a lot of other
war resisters that are standing up.
Going
public is something that is basically an
individual choice that has to be made
that -- I know other soldiers who have
left AWOL and other soldiers who even
would like to leave AWOL.
But I
would definitely say that there is a
progressive idea of involvement and of
collective consciousness here about
questioning politics and questioning
what’s going on in Iraq, which really
needs to involve our whole society. I
think that that's the kind of the lack
of civil responsibility, I maybe could
say, that people in this nation have
kind of stepped back from and not
understood that not only are soldiers
really responsible for, you know,
certain situations they find themselves
in in Iraq, I think as a whole our
society really needs to step back and
realize what's going on in Iraq and that
we are directly and indirectly
responsible for the injustices happening
over there, whether you're military or
not.
If you're
a civilian and you don't speak out
against what’s going on and don't make
an attempt to understand it and then do
something about it, I think we all share
that same responsibility. So, like I
say, going public is one way I chose
that I felt like I wanted to share my
experiences in Iraq and shed light on a
window of reality that I think has kind
of been absent from the media, which is,
like I said, the daily abuse of power
that goes without accountability.
I’ve been
very grateful that my family has been
very supportive of me. They've loved on
me this whole time I've been gone.
They've been really supportive of me.
My friends, as well. I’ve had friends
in different parts of the country that
are standing by me. Even friends that
don't necessarily agree with my politics
of my decision, they still know that I’m
a person of conviction and they still
support my decision.
The last
year has been obviously an interesting
year, where I was really trying to piece
together a lot of ideas, where as a 24
year-old man trying to recalculate my
world view and my perception of not only
the military, but of our government and
my association in it and my involvement
and my responsibilities -- these are all
questions that I've pondered and thought
about the last year -- I spent a lot of
the year in reflection and a lot of it
really trying to just be centered and,
yeah, like I said, come to grips with a
lot of these questions and answers.
AMY GOODMAN: Sgt. Clousing, today you're
going to hold a news conference. And
then, well, tell us how the day will
proceed. You're turning yourself in
after a year. And what will happen to
you then?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: It’s basically dependent upon
the military's reaction of what will
happen. I can't -- I don't know what to
expect, or I can't make speculations at
this time. I have no idea.
AMY GOODMAN: Haditha, Mahmoudiya, did
these surprise you?
SGT. RICKY
CLOUSING: They actually didn't.
I mean, my
experience, especially working with
infantry soldiers and seeing their
reaction in circumstances that they're
put in, it didn't surprise me, because I
think that these events that you're
talking about and the experiences that I
saw are basically a larger picture of
the daily devastation in Iraq and a
symptom of the dehumanization of the
Iraqi people and the dehumanization that
happens as a soldier, naturally, of
being able to take another person's life
for whatever reason.
It's just
these are just symptoms of the larger
problem that really America has
neglected to face in the last three
years and that need to be talked about.
They need
to be brought up in the media, these
daily -- like you mentioned, the hundred
people that are dying a day in Iraq,
these issues need to be brought up. The
mistreatment of prisoners, the
mistreatment of civilians, whether or
not they are detained or not, these are
all --
AMY GOODMAN: Sgt. Clousing, we just have
ten seconds, but you are now turning
yourself in. Are you willing to go to
jail for going AWOL, absent without
leave?
SGT. RICKY CLOUSING: I knew when I made
my decision that there would be
consequences, and I felt like I needed
to be true to my conscience, so whatever
the result is, I feel at peace, and I
feel calm and collected that this is
destiny and that I am standing up for
what I really believe in.
MORE:
"Her Son Had Joined The Army, Excited
And Proud To Fight For American
Liberties"
11 August
2006 By David Swanson,
AfterDowningStreet.org [Excerpts]
Clousing
said he did not apply for conscientious
objector status because he is not
certain he would oppose every possible
war, such as one fought in self-defense.
Clousing
described US vehicles smashing into
Iraqi cars, bashing windows, and opening
fire on livestock for fun. He described
these acts as not isolated incidents,
but "the daily devastation of occupation
... daily incidents where innocent
Iraqis are being killed, and it's not
reported in the media."
Clousing's mother, Sharon Pankalla,
joined him at the podium in support of
his decision to refuse to fight. She
said that her son had joined the Army,
excited and proud to fight for American
liberties, but that after he returned
from Iraq he was depressed and confused.
When he sought help he was told, in that
common military phrase, to "suck it up."
Do you have a friend or relative in
the service? Forward this E-MAIL
along, or send us the address if you
wish and we’ll send it regularly.
Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base
in the USA, this is extra important
for your service friend, too often
cut off from access to encouraging
news of growing resistance to the
war, at home and inside the armed
services.
Send requests to address up top.
IRAQ WAR REPORTS
Baghdad IED Kills Two U.S. Troops
12 Aug
2006 AP
Two U.S.
soldiers were killed Saturday when their
foot patrol was hit by a roadside bomb
south of Baghdad, the military said.
The deaths brought to 23 the number of
Americans killed in Iraq this month. At
least 2,600 members of the U.S. military
have died since the Iraq war started in
March 2003, according to an Associated
Press count.
Nevada Marine Killed In Anbar
August 11,
2006 U.S. Department of Defense News
Release No. 768-06
Lance Cpl.
Jeremy Z. Long, 18, of Sun Valley, Nev.,
died Aug. 10, while conducting combat
operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th
Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I
Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine
Palms, Calif.
REALLY BAD PLACE TO BE:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW
U.S.
troops at the site of multiple bomb
explosions July 22, 2006, in east
Baghdad. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Camden High School Grad Jagger Killed
08/12/06
Chad Dally, The Hillsdale Daily News
A graduate
of Camden High School became the second
soldier with a connection to Hillsdale
County to die in Iraq.
First Sgt.
Aaron Jagger, 43, died Tuesday west of
Baghdad along with two other soldiers of
the Army’s 1st Armored Division when a
roadside bomb was detonated near their
vehicle.
Jagger
finished high school in Camden in 1980
and joined the Army soon after
graduating.
He was
serving his second tour of duty in this
conflict after completing tours in
Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm in
1992 and Bosnia earlier in his military
career. He was assigned to C Company,
1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment.
He leaves
behind a wife and five daughters.
Jagger will be buried in Michigan,
though arrangements are still pending.
Baji IED Wounds U.S. Soldier
10 Aug
2006 Reuters
A U.S.
soldier was wounded when his vehicle was
struck by a roadside bomb near Baiji,
180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, the
U.S. military said in a statement.
"As Iraqis Stand Up, We’ll Kill Them"
[Especially Ones In Ambulances Who Can’t
Fight Back]
Resistance Attack Wounds Occupation Cop;
U.S. Helicopter Attack On Ambulance
Finishes Him Off
Aug 12,
2006 By DPA
An Iraqi
policeman was killed after being wounded
in one of three bomb attacks in and
around Baghdad on Saturday.
Eyewitnesses told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa that an explosive
device planted near an Iraqi police
checkpoint on a Baghdad highway injured
four policemen and two civilians.
Then, while an ambulance was carrying
one of the wounded policemen, it was
fired on by a US helicopter, resulting
in the death of the injured policeman
and the wounding of the ambulance's
driver and doctor, said the
eyewitnesses.
[Not to worry. Probably a press error.
No doubt this confuses something that
happened in Lebanon with Iraq. It’s the
Israeli armed forces that make a
specialty of targeting ambulances and
butchering medical personnel and the
helpless wounded.]
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Resistance Ambush Kills 3 U.S. Soldiers
8/12/2006
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)
Three U.S.
soldiers were killed and three wounded
in a firefight in northeastern
Afghanistan after militants attacked an
American patrol with rocket-propelled
grenades and small arms fire, a military
spokesman said Saturday.
U.S.
troops used artillery to repel the
attack in Nuristan province Friday, and
helicopters rushed the wounded soldiers
to medical care, said Col. Tom Collins.
A civilian was also injured.