Winter Soldier (15 page)

I joined the Army in 1994 as an infantryman and did active duty for a little while. In 1997 I became a conscientious objector. But I opted to stay in the military and transfer into medical services. After getting out of active duty, I went to the North Carolina National Guard and I deployed with the North Carolina National Guard to Iraq from February 2004 until December 2004.

When we first got to Camp Caldwell in late February, early March, we were occupying an area that didn’t have a lot of U.S. military forces. It was an Iraqi training base and we ran operations out of there as well. So there was no established detention facility, no Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), and really nothing to establish a practice of care.

Late April, early May, I became the supervisor for the detainee medical program. I was a specialist, a rather low rank. It just turned out that I knew two or three phrases in Arabic, and no one else wanted the job. I developed an SOP to provide a daily sick call for the detainees. Medical personnel would go down every day and do a face-to-face with each detainee, see how they were doing, and treat any medical conditions they may have had.

My original plan called for a medical professional, either a physician assistant or a doctor, to go down as well. On the first day this plan went into effect, the doctors refused to go. Throughout the next eight months, only three of the fifteen doctors in our clinic would go to see the detainees. So the medics did most of the detainee medical care. Most of the things were headaches and backaches, which could be treated with Tylenol or Motrin. But there were urinary tract infections, hernias, things that really did require a doctor’s care. When I confronted doctors with this, at least four different doctors responded saying they wouldn’t see the detainees because they were not American.

Our detainee facility was a seventy-two-hour-tops detainee facility, where they would bring in locals who were being detained and decide whether or not they had enough evidence to push them forward to a larger detainee facility such as Abu Ghraib. So we only had them for a brief period of time.

Some specific incidents: Early on, there was a individual with blood clots in his lower legs, and it was possible that a blood clot would loosen itself and become lodged and cause a stroke. So we had him on Lovenox shots twice a day. This was right when the clinic was starting, so I was still going through and getting doctors’ signatures on prescriptions. I had to do it day by day. So whether or not this person would get his medication depended on the doctor on duty. Toward the end of the rotation, it got to the point where the medics—not the doctors—were prescribing medicine for the detainees because nobody else would do it.

When we did an initial assessment of all the detainees, the MPs who ran the detainee center tended to identify the detainees by what they had been arrested for. Instead of it being an individual, they became a number. 30-0024, for example, “tried to bomb U.S. soldiers” or “is targeting translators.” They lost their identity in that process and it was hard to maintain an unbiased attitude toward caring for them when the first thing you hear is what they’re there for. As it turned out, a high percentage of the people who were detained were just released because there was not enough evidence. I don’t have an exact number, but during the time I was supervisor, we saw approximately 225 detainees, and I would say that at least 60 or 70 percent were released for lack of evidence.

This medical neglect started to influence our treatment of other Iraqis. The Iraqi workers on the post would be doing construction work and have an injury, and they would be refused treatment. There was a translator I worked with quite often who developed a hip problem. I tried to get him an X-ray, and the doctors refused to treat him. There was a lot of neglect. Having been in charge, I feel a lot of guilt because I didn’t say anything. I feel that I did these people an injustice by not demanding that the doctors actually see them, and instead allowing myself and the other medics to do the doctors’ job on our own.

Between April and August of 2003, 1st Battalion 4th Marines was occupying a pistol factory in al-Hilla, and my platoon was tasked with detainee watch. There were three detainees in our custody for about a week. Over this week they were beaten relentlessly, humiliated, and teased with food and water. They begged the marines for food and water and the marines mocked them, throwing water in their faces. The detainees were flexi-cuffed with their wrists behind their back, and they were blindfolded.

The marines screamed at them to get up and then they’d trip them down on their face. The detainees couldn’t break their fall ’cause they were tied up. The marines showed the Iraqis pornography, which was strictly taboo to their religion. I saw a marine take the hat off of an Iraqi. He shoved it down the back of his pants and wiped himself with it and then tried to feed it to the Iraqi who was blindfolded. Because he was so desperate for food, the Iraqi actually tried to eat it.

These guys were in our custody for about a week and I didn’t see them eat the whole time. I wasn’t around them 24/7 and I don’t know how long the posts were but I didn’t see them eat or sleep at all. I remember the marines taking this flexi-cuffed guy out to use the restroom. He was wearing a dishdasha and was trying to squat to spread his gown so he could use the bathroom. But the marines kept kicking him in the ankles. His ankles were bloody. They shoved him over while he was trying to use the restroom, telling him that he should stand up and urinate like a man.

During both tours in Iraq, there was an obvious and intentional dehumanization of the Iraqis. We raided countless residences. Most of the time we’d show up, at like 3 a.m. in the early hours of the morning, bust into the house, systematically clear every room, pointing semiautomatic and automatic weapons in their faces, and screaming at them in a language they didn’t understand. I don’t know where the intelligence was coming from, but we barely ever found anything in these houses.

While searching the people taken from their homes, a lot of times the marines would hit them in the genitals or poke them with the muzzle of their rifle.

At the pistol factory during my first deployment in al-Hilla, I was on the front-entry checkpoint to the forward operating base with a fellow marine. We were having a conversation. We weren’t really paying attention, and suddenly there was a man fifteen feet away carrying a baby. All the baby’s skin was burned off. The man was very upset. He wanted medical help and said the explosion was a result of our ammunition somehow. He barely spoke English and we didn’t speak any Arabic, so we tried to call the corporal of the guard, who’s in charge of all the people on post, and we told him the situation. He told us to make the man and the baby leave.

I have no doubt in my mind that the baby’s injuries were a result of coalition forces because all of Iraq is riddled with our unexploded ordnance. Our own training tells us that they use this against us to make roadside bombs, so there’s no doubt that it’s out there.

After going through the process of boot camp, I was proud of myself and believed I was doing the right thing. They have a way of making you look up to people and they have a way of instilling pride in you. They also joke with you and sing cadences about killing people, and this puts pressure on each individual to be the stereotypical marine, to be ruthless and merciless.

We occupied a local train station in an area called al-Qaim near the Syrian border. We called it Tiger Base. I was put in charge of the detainee site, which consisted of a shipping container and a single building surrounded by barbed wire. I had two soldiers to back me up when I was handling the detainees. I was briefed by the sergeant I relieved that the men in the shipping container were captured combatants, and I was to deprive them of sleep. So I had them stand inside the shipping container, face to the walls, no talking. I let them have blankets because it was cold, but they were not allowed to sit or lay down. When they started falling or dozing off, they put their heads on the wall. I was outside the shipping container and just smacked it with a pickax handle to keep them awake. The men in the building were noncombatant detainees being held for questioning. There were ninety-three men, altogether.

Using one of them to translate, I told them that they had a clean slate with me. If they didn’t give me any trouble, then the next twenty-four hours would pass calmly. If they did, I told them it would be a long twenty-four hours. I just prayed that they didn’t give me any trouble because I didn’t know what I would have had to do. They even told me I was a good man while I was in charge of them.

One day a body bag was dropped off to me. When the soldiers came to retrieve it the next morning, they threw it on top of some junk in the back of a truck, but rigor mortis had already set in and it wouldn’t fit inside the truck. So the solder started stomping on it, I mean, really stomping it. I couldn’t imagine—I was like, “How can you do that?”

I also had a former Iraqi general, Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who was taken from my custody. I was told to keep him separated from the other noncombatants and give him everything he needed: “If he asks for anything, hook him up, take care of him, and don’t harass him.” I was like, “Well, I don’t need somebody to tell me to not harass somebody.” A soldier told me later, “Hey, he died during questioning, during his interrogation.” I thought to myself, “How tough does a question have to be to kill?” I don’t know exactly what went on during his interrogation, but he was fine when I had him.

Days after he was taken from my custody, I had his fourteen-year-old son, who was a very bright child and spoke four languages. He was supposed to be taken to his father. I was told that would get him to talk a little more. Instead, the boy was being taken to identify his father’s body. Now, I’m not sure, but if that child was pro-American or one of our friends and allies, I’m pretty sure he is not an ally of ours anymore.

Sometime later the detainee site was taken over and rebuilt by men called OGAs, which stood for Other Governmental Agency. That’s a pretty vague term. They built high walls around the detainee center. I figured, “Well, yeah, they’re terrorists. You don’t want them seeing out. You want to contain them, deny them any information that they could use to escape.” Later on I realized it was also so we couldn’t see in.

One night I was told to bring a message down to the detainee site. I knocked on the door, and when they opened it, I witnessed one detainee being kicked around on the ground in the mud, rolled over again and again. The agent was just kicking him with his foot, rolling him over in the mud, pouring water on his face, the whole waterboarding thing. Another detainee was standing there with a bag over his head and was forced to carry a huge rock until he just physically couldn’t do it anymore and just collapsed. That image seared itself into my mind’s eye, and I can’t forget it. I won’t forget it…[cries].

As I wrap this up, I just want to say two things. The longer we live as a human race, we’re supposed to be getting smarter and wiser and better. To the vets that we’re trying to bring home alive, decades from now, when you’ve got your grandchild sitting on your knee, bouncing in front of you, just try to remember what we did here today, under the flag, IVAW.