Posted on 11/06/2005 8:35:11 PM PST by Sam Hill
Former Marine's claims false
By Ron Harris
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.
In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Among his claims:
• Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.
• Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.
• Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.
Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports.
This year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan and he's spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.
News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.
He wasn't.
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated — according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and reporters from the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.
Massey, 34, of Waynesville, N.C., was with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines based out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The unit went to the Middle East in January 2003 and participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Massey was discharged in December 2003, shortly after returning from Iraq, due to depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome.
He began turning up in news stories last spring with accounts of military atrocities. Massey's primary claim has been that Marines from his battalion — some of whom, he told a Minneapolis audience, were "psychopathic killers" — recklessly shot and killed Iraqi civilians, sometimes, he said, upon orders from their commanders. During a hearing in Canada, Massey said, "we deliberately gunned down people who were civilians."
The Marine Corps investigated Massey's claims and said they were "unsubstantiated."
From the beginning, Massey misled reporters.
In early interviews, he told how he had lost his job at a furniture store because of his anti-war activities. But when asked about the incident in an Oct. 19 interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey said that he had quit his job but never felt pressure to leave.
"I left on good terms," he said.
He also backtracked from allegations he made in a May 2004 radio interview and elsewhere that he had seen tractor-trailers filled with the bodies of Iraqi civilians when Marines entered an Iraqi military prison outside of Baghdad. He said the Iraqis had been killed by American artillery.
He told listeners the scene was so bad "that the plasma from the body and skin was decomposing and literally oozing out of the crevices of the tractor-trailer bed."
He repeated the story during the Post-Dispatch interview. But when told that the newspaper's photographs and eyewitness reports identified the trailer containing all men, mostly in uniform, Massey admitted that he had never seen the bodies.
Instead, he said, he had received his information from "intelligence reports." When asked if those reports were official documents, he answered, "No, that's what the other Marines told me."
The details of Massey's stories changed repeatedly.
For example, he almost always told his audiences and interviewers of an event he said he'd never forget: Marines in his unit shooting four Iraqi civilians in a red Kia automobile.
In some accounts, Massey said Marines fired at the vehicle after it failed to stop at a checkpoint. In another version, he said the Marines stormed the car.
Sometimes he said three of the men were killed immediately while the fourth was wounded and covered in blood; sometimes he said the fourth man was "miraculously unscathed."
Sometimes he said the Marines left the three men on the side of the road to die without medical treatment while the fourth man exclaimed: "Why did you shoot my brother?" In other versions, he said the man made the statement as medical personnel were attempting to treat the three other men, or as the survivor sat near the car, or to Massey personally.
There is no evidence that any of the versions occurred.
Massey told a version of the story before an immigration hearing in December in support of an American soldier trying to flee to Canada. The Seattle Times reported Massey's allegations in a story about that hearing. Then, Massey said he and the Marines killed four of the demonstrators. In other interviews, he said the Marines shot at 10 demonstrators and killed all but one that he let crawl away.
In interviews with more than a dozen 7th Marines and journalists who were in the military complex that morning, none can recall such an incident.
The Marine Corps readily admits that some of its men shot civilians, but not intentionally, they said. The Post-Dispatch reported on the second day of the war that Marines in one battalion had mistakenly shot and killed members of a British-based television network while shooting at Iraqi attackers.
When Marines moved into Baghdad a month later, the Post-Dispatch reported two separate automobile-related incidents in which Marines from Massey's battalion inadvertently shot and wounded 12 civilians. All of the passengers survived following treatment by medical personnel.
One of the checkpoint shootings is apparently the basis for one of most shocking recollections claimed by Massey in numerous speeches and interviews: The shooting of a 4-year-old girl in the head.
While touring with Sheehan in Montgomery, Ala., he told of seeing the girl's body. "You can't take it back," he said, according to the local newspaper.
But in the interview with the Post-Dispatch, Massey admitted that he had never seen the girl.
No 4-year-old died in the incident or was even wounded, according to witnesses, including a Post-Dispatch photographer at the scene who filed photos of the incident that were published in the newspaper.
An unAmerican liberal lying in his effort to overthrow our country--I'm shocked!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/24/148212
"Really, what led up to my disgust with the war was the civilian casualties that we were inflicting. We were given intelligence reports -- the civilian casualties really started taking place after we left the town of Anu Mannia on the drive north towards Baghdad. We were getting intelligence reports from higher command saying that the Fedayeen and Republican Guards were trading in their uniforms for civilian clothes, and they were mounting terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers and marines using guerrilla-style tactics, suicide bombings. They were using civilians as human shields. They were loading down stolen ambulances and police cars with explosives. So, as we progressed on towards Baghdad, our fears and anxieties were heightened, and also due to the lack of sleep, some of us had less than 48 hours of sleep getting into Baghdad. So, whenever we were placed into these situations where civilian vehicles were coming up to our checkpoints, and not heeding our warning shot, we were lighting them up. What I mean by lighting them up, we were discharging our weapons, 50 cals and M-16's into the civilian vehicles. When we would do this, we were expecting secondary explosions, ammunition to be cooking off or actually have the occupants in the vehicle fire back at us. However, none of this ever happened. When we would go to search the vehicles, we would find no weapons, and nothing to link these individuals with -- these individuals with terrorists acts. And this happened continuously through the fall of Baghdad. I would say my platoon alone killed 30-plus innocent civilians."..............
This is her homosexual friend, right? Her "body guard"?
So, it was suppose to be Bush that lied, hmmmm? Add this little tidbit to the new (and excellent!!!)book Do As I Say (Not As I Do):Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.
So never despair over the lies these low-life's spread, they can no more keep truth in the dark than they can stop gravity or prevent water from seeking its own level. Their lies will come back to them one day, and will demand payment.
Let's do some PajamaPatrol on that question...
We know from this entry in the story "Massey was discharged in December 2003, shortly after returning from Iraq, due to depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome..."
Therefore we can conclude he is recieving tax free a minimum of two thousand two hundred dollars for being discharged for %100 PTSD/depression...
IIRC there was a few cases where veterans that put in for PTSD, and used their lies to promote themselves as heroes et cetera were found out by other veterans. Who then presented their evidence that the lying puke was filching tax payer funds by defrauding the Veterans Administration by using those same lies ad nauseum...
This may indeed be where part of his funding comes from...AND...this article may, along with this PajamaPatrol insight MAY be of interest to the Veterans Administration, who just MIGHT want to do a review of his case, AND save some of tax payer funds while at the same time revoke this pukes monetary means to promote his B.S.!!!
..a la Joe Wilson..
I just sent most Fox anchors the story re Maj Gen Paul Vallely saying that he and Wilson were waiting in Fox' green room to appear on a show when Wilson told him his wife was CIA. This happened in 2002 before the syndicated column was printed.
Fox's John Gibson or Hannity might want to read and report the real story about Jimmy.
You may be correct .. because you certainly seem to know a lot more about military affairs than I do.
But .. I have suspected the Kerry veternas group was somehow involved. These people are good at using others to perpetrate their junk.
The example I would use would be the "Jersey girls" - the ladies from 9/11 - who refused to take a settlement and were USED by the left to charge incredibly terrible things, until it was discovered that the group helping the Jersey girls was funded by the Heinz Foundation - or the "shove it" person.
If he hadn't been caught, he'd have been the next John Kerry, running for President in 2030.
Well, he don't look much like Kerry, J. F'ing.
"This is her homosexual friend, right? Her "body guard"?"
No, that guy's name is Jeff Key.
I'm sure that France was really eager to get anything like this out. Then try to reconcile it w/ what's going on over there.
apparently he missed that day in boot camp when they went over the whole Honor, Courage, and Commitment thing. He is no Marine.
<< ... this traitor's .... actions after getting out of the service are self serving and despicable ... >>
As were the actions and tongue-chewin'-idiot "PTSD" babblings he employed BEFORE getting himself out of the service quite clearly: "self serving and despicable."
They've probably lost too many customers because of their liberalism. I think people are getting sick of the liberal crap. It's hateful and ugly 24/7. It gets old, because most people are basically happy people. No one likes a downer, ya know?
My point is that how could this fool be GWB`s fault. That`s like blaming him for having fewer hours of sunshine during the winter.
Seems that when such a POS is clearly going for the publicity and self promotion. That a NIS investigation would call this guy in read him his rights, based on his "confession" sentence him to 10-20 years in the beautiful north east corner of Kanas.....making little rocks out of big rocks.
"What a shock that this lying traitor was touring with Mother Sheehan!"
What a shock that this POS wore a heroic uniform for so long!
His runner-up, "How to Firebomb Your Neighborhood" was due to release this week in France too!
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