COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Several people actually wrote in to ask me to comment on this Bob Herbert column today, featuring an interview with a disaffected soldier.

Even though the unit is identified, the 320th Military Police Company, a Reserve unit out of St. Petersburg, FL, Herbert seems to make no attempt to reach the command for comments.

He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

First of all, in my year overseas (actually, closer to 11 months, with 10 in Iraq, but you get the idea), I never ONCE saw a glass Coke bottle, nor did I see any other glass soda bottles. Never. I don't even recall seeing plastic soda bottles. The Iraqis and Brown and Root sold sodas in cans. Think about it: Cans are much, much easier to transport and store in bulk. And I transported sodas in bulk overseas. Hell, I loaded it into the trailers myself, when we opened the Hurricane Point PX.

Second, you just didn't get a chance to shatter ANYTHING over peoples' heads, because, well, genius, if the Iraqis were that close to the vehicles, you either had to A.) man your weapon like a soldier, or B.) Button up completely so no one could toss a grenade through the window.

Besides...think about it. How close to the road to people stand with traffic going 50-60 miles an hour? Unless we were stuck in traffic downtown like everyone else, Iraqis pretty much gave us a wide berth. I couldn't have done it if I wanted to. This soldiers' story does not compute.

And if it DOES, then this soldier is guilty of covering up a crime. Crashing a bottle over someone's head from a moving vehicle is assault with a deadly weapon.

As to whether the Iraqis were known as "Hajis" or "Ragheads," I hardly ever heard the term "Raghead." I heard "Haji" constantly. Or more formally, later on, "I.Z's." Don't ask me what "Z" stood for.

At any rate, either this soldier is lying, or he's guilty of covering up a crime which he should have reported to the chain of command.

Herbert is guilty of credulousness. Geez, didn't he bother to reality-check ANYTHING?

Now, obviously, there were serious leadership lapses at Abu Ghraib in 2003. The chain of command there seems to have collapsed under the strain around that time, and troops were clearly running amok.

Do troops act inappropriately? Sometimes. I believe that much. Have troops exhibited a callous disregard for Iraqi welfare and safety? At times. But such is the exception, by far - not the norm. Nobody wanted to see the innocent suffer. That's why we went over there in the first place.

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old.

Ok, Bob...you're a journalist. Who? Where? When? Why? Is there any record of this? Did Delgado file a report? Are there any other witnesses? (If Delgado says no, he's lying. Troops don't travel alone or even by two's. If it happened, there was an American audience. Try doing your job and digging a little bit for once.)

Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.

Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "

Now, just what sort of moral judgement is Herbert implying by closing with this? Most soldiers would have fired, under those circumstances. (Some people are still living in a dream world of nonlethal munitions.) You think the command took that decision lightly? Ok, Herbert: Why? State your case.

Or admit you don't have one.

The reality is that that guard fired to protect people like Dalgado, who had already relinquished his weapon, the fool.


Splash, out

Jason