Oh no oh no oh no

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution has a story about a talk Seymour Hersh gave at UCal Berkeley on October 8. During the speech, Hersh spoke about a telephone call he'd gotten from an American officer in Iraq. This is an edited version of that portion of his remarks. A full transcription of the story is here and a video of Hersh's entire talk is here.

He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. ... [T]here was a granary around. ... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. [T]he guys that owned the granary, had hired ... we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. ... So Iraqis were guarding the granary. ...

They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, "No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents."

Hersh said he told the soldier to shut up, keep his head down and just get through his tour. Because now the captain knew he thought his soldiers had committed murder. "You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war."

That's where we are with this war. STDD>HO.