Former Soldier Writes Book No US Company Would Touch

Why would US companies refuse to publish a book that details brutality by US soldiers in Iraq? The following article indicates that a former soldier writes vividly of how US soldiers used violence in Iraq that created an environment of desensitization to human concern for Iraqis. The book also makes a case that much of the violence used by the insurgents is simply a reflection of this ultra-violence visisted upon the Iraqi population by the soldiers.

I condemn any rationalization of US violence to justify the heinous and barbaric suicide bommbings and ehtnic violence that is tearing Iraq apart. If there is justification to this soldier's story it involves the notion of violence and revenge killings that permeate a semi-tribal society such as Iraq. The US govt. certainly never took into consideration this cultural aspect when it planned its war in Iraq. Once a country visits violence into this type of environment, it will simply create a cycle of killings that might take decades to burn itself out.
------------------------
Ex-Marine denounces US brutality in Iraq in new book
Paris, AFP

US military training has created troops so desensitised to violence that battleground brutality in Iraq is rampant and has helped fuel the bloody insurgency seen there, a new book released today in France by a former Marine says.

US military training has created troops so desensitised to violence that battleground brutality in Iraq is rampant -- and has helped fuel the bloody insurgency seen there, a new book released today in France by a former Marine says.

Jimmy Massey, a former staff sergeant, told AFP that the daily attacks now doled out to US-led forces and Iraqi civilians are "because of the brutality that the Iraqi people saw at the start of the invasion." In his book, "Kill! Kill! Kill!", he says he and other Marines in his unit killed dozens of unarmed Iraqi civilians because of an exaggerated sense of threat, and that they often experienced sexual-type thrills doing so.

The book was being released first in France -- and in French -- because, he said, "I didn't find an American publisher." The French journalist who helped him write the work, Natasha Saulnier, said she believed the US companies were reluctant to touch the book because its "controversial" nature threatened commercial interests and the US public's image of their fighting forces.

Massey, who left Iraq in May 2003 shortly after US President George W Bush declared "mission accomplished", wrote the book after being discharged from the Marines with a diagnosed case of post-trauma stress syndrome.

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

Read more