Irak 96

De Sunday Herald bericht: 'Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Serving in Iraq, Joshua Key Explains What Made Him Desert for a Fugitive’s Life.


IT was March 2003, just days after the US invasion of Iraq. Joshua Key was driving along the banks of the Euphrates near the town of Ramadi in his tank when he came upon a scene that has since engraved itself into his memory: US troops kicking the decapitated heads of Iraqis around in the sand in an impromptu game of football.
“We turned a sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and US troops in between them. I was thinking, ‘oh, my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘we f***ing lost it here!’. I’m thinking, ‘oh yes, somebody definitely lost it here’.
“I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, ‘I can’t be no part of this, this is crazy’. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did this happen?
“That’s what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, ‘oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that’. You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody’s going to ask, ‘are you sure?’ They’re going to high-five you and tell you that you did a good job.”
This and other claims of violence exacted against innocent Iraqis by American GIs are among the allegations that Key has laid before the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Key, a 27-year-old, working-class welder from Oklahoma, is the first US army deserter with combat experience to seek refugee status in Canada. He is also among a squad of US deserters who have levelled a series of horrific allegations against the US military machine, reported in a new book Mission Rejected by the award-winning US journalist Peter Laufer, which charts the escalating levels of desertion since the war began.
Key’s experience left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – the modern-day term for what was once called shell-shock. He dreams about severed heads in the desert, and rarely sleeps. “I’m not your perfect killing machine,” he says. “That’s where I broke the rules. I broke the rules by having a conscience.”
He recounts travelling in an armoured personnel carrier in Ramadi when an Iraqi man in a truck tried to overtake the convoy. “My squad leader fired a few shots and blew his truck up,” he says. “You don’t have to have reason to do anything. You can do whatever you want really.” When Key asked why the man had been killed for nothing, he was told: “You didn’t see anything.”
Key doesn’t buy the line from the US government that those resisting the occupation are terrorists. Homes are destroyed, sons killed, husbands taken prisoner, he says, so the Iraqis “have a reason to be pissed off”.' Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines0618-06.htm