U.S. soldier in Baghdad kills four fellow troops before killing himself

CONTINUED............

"It's been a healing experience," he said. "It's allowed me to close a lot of chapters and answer a lot of questions."

In the book, he claims he and a group of Marines were near Baghdad when a group of 10 Iraqi men started to protest near them, yelling out anti-US slogans. At the sound of a gunshot, he said he and his men fired on the group, killing most of them, only to find out later that none of them was armed.

He also recounts several episodes at checkpoints where civilian cars failed to stop and their unarmed occupants were shot to death.

At one point he says he told an officer that the US military campaign "resembles a genocide" and that "our only objective in Iraq is petrol and profits."

Massey, a chubby-cheeked man with short hair and glasses, said in the lobby bar of a Paris hotel that the casual violence exhibited by him and his men was the deliberate result of combat training approved by the very highest US authorities.

Later revelations of abuse by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere were symptomatic of the breadth of the problem, Massey said.

"Overall, we have to look at the (Bush) administration in terms of responsibility for the atrocities and the murder at the checkpoints," he said, questioning "the level of brutality instilled in the Marines."

The briefings they received, he said, made US troops view "everyone as a potential terrorist -- they put fear and panic into my Marines."

Although the target of criticism from serving members of the US military -- some of whom see the book as score-settling by a disgruntled Marine forced to leave the services -- Massey has received significant interest in his book in France.
His next few days, he said, are to be spent being interviewed by media outlets.

His publisher said that, while an English language version of the book was still pending, a Spanish edition would be coming out early next year.

When Peace becomes as profitable as war, nations will kill to keep the peace profits---oh wait..they are already killing many innocents and making much profits! so, which is it?

If a significant number of ex marines would be interviewed and corroborate the viewpoint set forth in this book there would certainly be enough evidence supporting it's validity and at that point wider acceptance would happen.

How did so many WWII vets return home and live normal productive lives and others drank themselves to death? What is the defining difference? Is it not actually seeing those you kill? Is it being accepted as a hero at home ? What stablelizes these vets or Korean vets?
I understand the whole concept of the Vietnamese War. We were protesting and flag burning and those poor soldiers came home to people booing them and treating them like lepers. Plus the government made drugs and alcohol readily available so GI Joe could 'face' each day blown away.....and not to mention Napalm, agent orange, and not knowing who the bad guys were...the northern and southern people looked alike plus women and children hid bombs and got in among the GI's with this deceitful ploy and then blew them up......

I appreciate your concern. Yes....in World War ii men fought men, and this is what a young soldier with high ideals expects to do. However in Baghdad American soldiers go house to house....break in the door and terrify whole families......being asked to terrorize children and women, and to kill them, is not acceptable to well brought up young men. However, most of the time the brainwashing and mind altering drugs do the job........but reality catches up with them eventually and they have to live with it for the rest of their lives

Read the piece written by the young soldier who wrote the book KILL KILL KILL and you'll sree what these young men have to deal with.
Considering these young men were sent into this war by three draft dodgers............Bush, Cheney and Rove.......... it is hard on these soldiers...especially as because by the time they get home there will be more world news available and the results of their handiwork will be walking around on stumps being interviewed by the world media.
Coming home EVENTUALLY will be harder on these young men than on those from Vietnam because we live in the digital age and its harder to hide war crimes.
God have mercy on the civilians in Iraq.

Britain ends combat operations in Iraq:
The British military formally ended combat operations in Iraq on Thursday after six years of conflict by handing over control of its main base in Basra to an American brigade.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/04/30/britain-iraq.html

This is truly sad. It seemd to happen more and more.I feel sorry for the ones that were killed. may they rest in peace. I knew of a kid in Fort Lennerdwood who went on a shooting spree . They said he did that because he was so stressed out and knew he was going back to Iraq. He did this as a way to get out of the military. They caught him before anyone was hurt. Glad to see that the British Military has stoped fighting in Iraq. Now if they all would stop and find a more peaceful way . I can only wish that would happen

the statistics are heart-string tugging, as usual, but as usual, also useless and misleading unless you include how many soldiers went off to each war and how many murders, suicides or actions of returning vets could be attributed to wartime stress.

otherwise, out of tens of thousands of troops deployed, the numbers are statistically vanishingly small for this war, and maybe for other armed conflicts, too..

the data suck.

The soldier who did this , didn't kill himself. But he did kill others. I can't say what that young man was thinking when he did this. But the fact that the military sends these men back time after time to the war zone is most likely part of the problem . I am not making any kind of excuses for what this young soldier did. I know he will pay for his crime with his life.. Most likely the firing squad.
I feel sorry for him and the ones that died. The military needs to wake up and know that multi deployments are not what these soldiers need. It can lead to terrible mental problems.