By Kenneth J. Theisen, 9/20/07
Joshua Key enlisted in the U.S.
army and was sent to Iraq
shortly after the 2003 invasion. His book which is an account of his life and
his seven months in Iraq
is well worth reading. It is entitled,
“The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the
War in Iraq.”
Key is typical of many who have enlisted in the U.S.
military. He was poor in Oklahoma, with a family
to support, and with very few resources to support that family. One day he went
to an army recruiting office where the recruiter told him he could join up and
not worry about being deployed overseas.
He could spend his enlistment building bridges and learning a trade in
the U.S.
He might even get an education at
government expense. And like many who
bought such BS from their recruiters he ended up being a “grunt” on the ground
in a war-torn nation.
After being trained in demolition not construction, Key was
deployed to Iraq
in the spring of 2003. As part of the 43rd
Combat Engineer Company of the Second Squadron, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment,
Key found himself in the midst of a criminal war. He was first assigned to Ramadi, Iraq. He did get an education, but not the one
promised by the recruiter.
Nearly every night he was assigned to participate in raids
on Iraqi homes. With his expertise in
explosives, he would set charges that would blow open the entrances to the
homes that were invaded. Although
ostensibly he and his fellow troops were after “terrorists” and insurgents, he
states in the 200 plus raids he was on, they never discovered any such
people. Instead they found ordinary
families, usually in bedclothes and only awakened by the explosion.
In these raids, Iraqi males were usually beaten and if over
five foot tall, taken away in plastic handcuffs to places like Abu Ghraib for
further abuse and torture. Items in the home were either destroyed or stolen by
the troops. Key admits that at first he
took part in the stealing and abuse. He
saw the Iraqis as non-human which was consistent with his basic training where
Iraqis were referred to as sand niggers, terrorists, ragheads, and habibs. He was taught to kill the enemy and all
Iraqis were seen as the enemy.
But eventually Key began to see the humanity of the
“enemy.” One chapter of the book is
entitled “The Girl at the Hospital.” He
was assigned to guard duty at the children’s hospital in Ramadi. Each day he was visited by an Iraqi girl of
about seven. The girl was always dressed
in her school uniform and sandals. She
would say, “Mister, food” and he would give her his MRE or field rations. She would then run home to feed her
family. He was chewed out several times
by his Lieutenant for fraternizing with the enemy for giving the girl food.
But each day he looked forward to seeing the little girl who
reminded him of his own children. As he
said, “Her visits were the best part of my days”” Then one day, “I saw the girl run out of her
house, across the street, and toward the fence that stood between us. I reached for my MRE, looked up too see her
about ten feet away, and heard the sound of semiautomatic gunfire, and saw her
head blow up”The only thing I had heard was the distinctive sound of an M-16″I
looked in every direction. The only armed people in the area were my squad
mates”it was the sound of my own people’s guns that I heard blazing before the
little sister was stopped in her tracks”Her death haunts me to this day.”
But this is not the only atrocity he witnessed. One night while riding in his APC along the
Euphrates River he and his squad mates came across the gruesome site of “four
decapitated Iraqis in their bloodied white robes lying a few feet from a
bullet-ridden pick-up truck”I assumed that someone had used a massive amount of
gunfire to behead them.” He then observed
an American soldier screaming, “We fucking lost it, we just lost it,” while
“Two other soldiers were laughing and kicking the heads of the decapitated
Iraqis.” While driving away from this
scene the driver of the APC swerved it in order to run over one of the heads.
These are just two of the horrifying incidents described by
Key in the book. He also witnessed the murder of a 10 year-old girl and guards
being posted outside of a house while U.S. officers entered. The house
held several captive Iraqi women inside. Keys described the terrified screams
of the Iraqi women. Were they sexually assaulted, tortured, both? The book is filled with such crimes of
American forces in Iraq.
Finally Keys had had enough. When he got permission to go
home briefly he made the decision to desert in order to stop being a war
criminal. He describes in the book how
he and his family made it to Canada
and were welcomed by anti-war Canadians.
What was most striking about this book is that this was only
one soldier of hundreds of thousands of soldiers that have gone to Iraq. He was only in Iraq for seven months and yet he
observed over 200 war crimes in that short time. This includes the house raids. While not
everyone that goes to Iraq
will see this many, it is obvious that crimes too numerous to mention are
committed every day in Iraq
by U.S.
troops.
The Bush regime has 16 months to go and it is obvious that
the U.S. will remain in Iraq
for the indefinite future even if the Democrats win in 2008. How many more war crimes will be committed if
the U.S.
does not leave that war-torn country? What are you prepared to do about it?