Covering Iraq - Pt2 - Torture and Abductions

Eric Fair: Now, the first time I entered this detainee's room and roused him from his sleep, I recognized that I had crossed a line. As instructed, I stripped him of his clothes and forced him to stand in the cold, which only increased his sense of despair. And though I had witnessed others employ this technique at places like Abu Ghraib, I had never done it myself, and the experience shook me to the core.

Speaker 2: Former U.S. military contract interrogator turned Princeton divinity student Eric Fair, talking about his role in abusive interrogations in a U.S.-run military prison in Fallujah, Iraq. Fair made his remarks while serving on a panel May 3rd at an event held at First Parish Unitarian Church in Brookline, Massachusetts, called Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators. The event also featured Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Prize-winning organization, and Stephen Saltz, A psychoanalyst, social activist and professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. Solz is one of the nation's leaders in opposing psychologist participation in torture and abuse. The event was moderated by David Sloan-Rossiter. He is co-chair of the curriculum committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. Organizers of the May event have been winning over many psychologists and others, as they continue to take on their membership organization, APA. American Psychological Association. Half of the members of the APA's board have U.S. military ties and have been working under contract with U.S. military and intelligence agencies in areas involving the interrogation of U.S. prisoners, described as enemy combatants in the so-called War on Terror. The facts presented by the anti-torture psychologists who have done massive research have shocked therapists who may have assumed that the role being played by the APA was strictly positive. Stephen Soultz provided the following update on their challenge to the APA board.

Stephen Soltz: As a result of these efforts, of what were initially a few, hundreds of psychologists have joined a group withholding their dues from the APA until policies change and APA says that it's not ethical for psychologists to participate in sites where human rights are violated and international law is violated. Nebraska's own Mary Pfeiffer, author of the New York Times bestselling book Reviving Ophelia, returned an award that she had received, a presidential citation from the APA, saying she didn't want a citation from an organization that would allow participation in these abuses. Many distinguished association members, including the founding director of the association's practice directorate, psychoanalyst Bryant Welsh, who was a in that position for 10 years, and former chair of the ethics committee, Ken Pope, have resigned in protest. This former ethics chair, in his resignation letter, described recent developments in the association thus: These changes take APA so far away from its ethical foundation, historic traditions and basic values, and from my own personal and professional view of our responsibilities, Then I cannot support them with my membership. We are running one of our group's— group of critics, Stephen Reisner, my dear friend, as a candidate for APA president. In a very exciting development, Stephen topped the nomination stage of balloting of the top 5 winners, getting 32% of the vote of the top 5. So we stand a chance, and we ask those of you who are members to help us out there. The APA, reeling under the pressure and looking ahead to the end of the Bush administration, is furiously trying to refurbish its image while insisting at all costs on keeping psychologists engaged in detainee interrogations, human rights violations or not. Over the last few years of struggle, I have collaborated on a daily basis with a small group of wonderful colleagues, a couple of whom are here today. Each of us, for our own personal reasons, simply cannot go to sleep knowing that U.S. torture is continuing and we didn't do everything we can to stop it. Recently, several of the members of our little group independently thought of those immortal words from the conclusion of our Declaration of Independence. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. And I know it's corny, but we really feel that we have pledged our lives, our modest fortunes, and our sacred honor to the struggle against torture. We are in it for the long haul. But at the same time, we are tired. One can only confront torture and those who order, countenance, abet, and deny it for so long without it taking an enormous psychic toll. It is now up to others, to you, to decide if our country will remain a torturing society. During the American Revolution, at a place called Drake's Farm, 7 wounded revolutionaries surrendered to the British and Hessians and were brutally murdered. The natural impulse was to retaliate in kind against captured Hessians. But George Washington ordered his men to take a different path, a path that befitted the ideals of that young country they were fighting for. As described on NPR, we will not kill our wounded soldiers, he said. And then he went on, we will also protect them. We will feed them. We will house them. They will not be harmed. Because we are fighting for a cause, and our cause, he said, requires that we behave with honor. And one-third of those prisoners stayed in the new United States. So, it is up to us, you and me, to decide if our country will again become one where we behave with honor or remain one of brutality and inhumanity. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Next, David Sloan-Rossiter introduces former U.S. military contract interrogator Eric Fair.

David Sloan-Rossiter: I had the pleasure of having dinner with Eric last night and getting to know him a little bit. We called him out of the blue. I had read his op-ed piece in The Washington Post. It's a very compelling piece entitled An Iraqi Interrogator's Nightmare, where Eric speaks to his experience as an interrogator in Iraq. And the impact upon him. Eric's currently a divinity student at Princeton University, and we're very honored to have him take time out of his busy schedule, with a 6-month-old baby son, to come join us for a cause that he clearly believes strongly in. But also, he's one of apparently only 2 former interrogators who have gone public to describe the situation. So he's been asked widely and has agreed to join us. So, Eric?

Eric Fair: Thank you, David. I am a first-year student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, and Princeton takes pride in speaking. They like to send people away, and they have what's called Princeton Speak. You become a pastor or a minister, and preaching is very important. So all first-year students are required to take a very rigorous speaking class. We spend a year Erasing bad habits and learning how to not be nervous and those sorts of things. I can tell you this morning that all of those will go out the window. This is a very unpleasant topic for me, something I do not like to speak about. I, every day, wish that I could find a way to just be quiet and go away. So I apologize, but I will read you from a manuscript this morning. It allows me to keep my thoughts collected and to keep them brief. And I think I'll spend most of my time here in Question and answer, as the bell tolls. My story of Abu Ghraib, my involvement in coercive interrogation, and the issues surrounding the consequences of those actions since my return are, in a word, complicated. I assure you that if you come to this issue knowing exactly what it is that you think, with firm convictions, whether in support of my position or opposed, you have not grasped the complexity of this issue. I've been on both sides of this issue, both as a well-intentioned supporter of abusive tactics As well as an unbending opponent to all forms of coercion. As for the war in Iraq, I currently stand opposed to the conflict, but I am not so foolish as to believe that I have all the answers. I, in fact, believe a rational debate can be had about the efficacy of the invasion, as well as our current mission there. The mission in Iraq may still have value. It may still be one that we can win. I tend to disagree with those positions, but at the very least, I can respect the logic and the good intentions that drive them.

Stephen Soltz: Thank you.

Eric Fair: What I cannot respect, and what I refuse to tolerate, is a position that suggests the intensity of this current conflict, or any conflict for that matter, serves to justify the erosion of the very values for which so many of us have fought. Arguments about the protection of innocent lives and ticking time bombs are powerful, to be sure, and in 2004, I was one who was making them. But experience has taught me a very painful lesson about the devastating consequences A course of interrogation. In the spring of 2004, while serving on a small interrogation team in Fallujah, I was asked to participate in the sleep deprivation of an Iraqi detainee. Sleep deprivation was common in Iraq in 2004. It was used by interrogators across the theater. Now, I'm the father of a 6-month-old son, and many have joked that I now have experienced sleep deprivation myself. Many of you in the room here this morning are from academic fields, I suspect from very rigorous academic programs.

Ethan McCord: Yes.

Eric Fair: You, too, have undoubtedly experienced more than your share of sleepless nights. Rest assured, however, that a simple lack of sleep, no matter how long it may last, no matter how exhausting it may feel, has nothing in common with the tactic known as sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation involves taking a prisoner of war and stripping away what little sense of hope he or she may have left. The prisoner has no way of knowing when or if He will ever sleep again. Life suddenly has no future. A day never ends, which is to say that there is never a tomorrow. One does not go to sleep. One does not wake up. Time essentially stands still. And a man who can see no future is stripped of hope. This can be done in 2 or 3 hours, not 2 or 3 weeks or 2 or 3 months. It's immediate. Once a man is stripped of hope, his mind can torture him more than any stress position, any police working dog, or any enhanced tactic ever can. Now, the first time I entered this detainee's room and roused him from his sleep, I recognized that I had crossed a line. As instructed, I stripped him of his clothes and forced him to stand in the cold, which only increased his sense of despair. And though I had witnessed others employ this technique at places like Abu Ghraib, I had never done it myself, and the experience shook me to the core. I was overtaken not only by a sense of moral outrage, but by an intoxicating feeling of power. I controlled this man's entire life, his body, his emotions, his mind, and his spirit. His entire life rested in my hands, and I could manipulate it however I saw fit. Now, in the midst of a violent and unforgiving insurgency raging around us, and considering comrades of mine may very well have been wounded or killed by the man now standing before me, I would be lying if I said I was not tempted in some way to proceed. In such moments when we are forced to choose what we may feel an unnatural path, We search for justification, and if we can find none, we move on to excuses. And as a man who sees things in black and white, I could find none. The experience shattered my convictions. I hadn't just thought about crossing that line, I had stepped right over it. I hung on a few weeks longer, desperate to salvage something out of the experience of Iraq, but eventually quit my job and returned home in the hopes of forgetting about what I had done.

David Sloan-Rossiter: Aww.

Eric Fair: It did not work. I was plagued by nightmares, anger, and depression. I self-medicated with seclusion and alcohol. Now, as the debate moves forward about abuse of interrogation, we hear impassioned arguments from an administration that insists it has an obligation to reserve aggressive techniques for the most frightening of scenarios. But it is this very lack of courageous leadership that leaves open a door that should have been closed long ago. We claim a moral high ground based only on convenience. Discipline is an army's greatest attribute, and for those that have served, like me, we know that all too well. Soldiers with clear directives based on firm and uncompromising chain of command will wield violence in a controlled manner in order to accomplish the most heroic of tasks. But take those same soldiers, deprive them of clear directives, remove discipline, and then toss them into the complex world of human conflict, to say nothing of the chaos of Abu Ghraib, And they will wield that same violence in the most irresponsible of ways, to the shame of the very cause they swore to defend. The shame, however, is not entirely theirs. It falls on the shoulders of those who swore to lead them, those who swore to give them clear direction, and those who swore to never let them stray. The soldier does not fail. The leader fails. Anyone who has worn stripes on his shoulder or stars and bars on his collar knows this all too well. And in the United States, the chain of command does not end at the feet of a uniformed general, nor does it end at the feet of the president of the United States. It ends squarely at the feet of the American people. And so the debate about interrogation is not to be had in the interrogation rooms of Iraq or on the prison grounds of Guantanamo Bay or in the Oval Office of the White House. It is to be held here at home by the people responsible for the well-being of our servicemen and women. We must not send them into the chaos of war armed with ambiguity. And as long as we tell them that there are exceptions to every rule or circumstances that call for enhanced techniques, Or ticking time bomb scenarios, or a need to operate in the dark side, rest assured, abuse will continue, and the values of this nation will continue to erode. The door to abusive interrogation remains wide open. And as long as we tell one another that it is a necessary evil or a regrettable necessity, we as a nation will continue to fall short of the incredible high standards that we have all been called. As I sit here in this church this morning, and as I myself was a seminary student, I can offer no All I can say is that may God help us bring this horrific chapter in American history to an abrupt end. Thank you.

Speaker 2: You're listening to Talk Nation Radio, talknationradio.org. We'll share just a few of the questions that came from the audience of about 150 people after former U.S. military contract interrogator Eric Fair talked about his role in abusive interrogations in prisons in Iraq.

Speaker 6: I have a question, and I don't even have the words for it. I'm going to try, though. In a way, you guys are sort of preaching to the converted. And when you're talking about somebody who is afraid, then you can debate a person who has fear. But what about the large majority of people There are so many people who just don't think about this situation, who just don't want to. As psychologists and as citizens, I want to ask you, Eric, is there anything you can share with us about some moment of experience when you realized that you couldn't do this anymore, that the America of your ideals was not the America that you were having to deal with?

Ethan McCord: Yeah.

Speaker 6: to implement in that moment, because these are the moments we need to know to help us work with people or talk to people who simply have dissociated this as a problem. Thank you.

Eric Fair: My, I guess, conversion, you could say, was instantaneous. The second I walked in and I did it once— my job that night was to deprive him of sleep over the course of 12 hours. I was to go in every hour, wake him up, strip him naked, let him sleep, just to keep him on his toes. The first time I did it, I knew it was wrong. And I did it for the next 2 or 3 hours, trying to debate whether or not I had crossed a line, recognized that I had, and that was the end of it. And I think a lot of the people that debate about the values of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques, like Judge Scalia from the Supreme Court, are people that don't have life experience. They haven't done these things on their own. They haven't gotten their hands dirty. And they don't know what it's like to stand in a room with another human being And do this to a person. And so I think that's when— if you're having a discussion with someone who supports these things, I would ask them carefully, you know, what's your experience? You know, what are you basing this on? And have you done this yourself?

Speaker 6: I'm not a psychologist, so I'm speaking for your goal for involving more of the community. My question has to do with how you repair the psyche of those of us who are so appalled by this torture so that we can speak with some conviction, as you do specifically, about American values rather than the more elitist values of professional values. I think that the notion that we should be talking about American values has the potential to reach more people in the community. But I think many of us have gotten terribly disappointed in what we thought were American values.

Eric Fair: I can speak to that a little. I think having worn the uniform of the U.S. Army and also as a police officer, they're very American values. As a police officer, you do whatever it takes to get someone in handcuffs. And if that involves macing them or wrestling them to the ground or whatever it takes, you get them under control. But the second they're under control, you are not allowed to coerce them, beat them, kick them, push them, spit at them or yell at them. That is a central value to the United States of America. And that carries over to the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Navy. Those who suggest that we need to use these tactics because they help us or assist They're an embarrassment to the uniform. And those are the comments that you can make. There are plenty of men and women who wear the uniform who are appalled by this move. And in some ways it's been directed by people who haven't worn the uniform or people who are wearing the uniform and don't deserve to be wearing it. That's the direction that the discussion needs to head.

Speaker 2: Stephen Soltz also took questions in what became a give-and-take with the audience.

Stephen Soltz: One of the most wonderful parts of this— and I speak this as a longtime antiwar activist— —has been meeting so many people in the military, active and retired, retired interrogators, who are adamant that this should not be happening, people who have put their careers on the line to oppose it. Someone I know who is up for general and says, I don't— I'm not going to get it, but I can live with that. But I can't go to sleep at night knowing I didn't speak out on torture, because— —because— We just can't tolerate it. On repairing the American psyche, unfortunately, none of us have the real answers. But I think one small part of it is to remember values and rights, as we've learned so painfully in the last 7 years, are never something we can take for granted. They're never something we have. They're only something we fight for. Remember, Thomas Jefferson said that our country needed a revolution every 20 years. And what— exactly how you interpret that. But they're living things. If we don't fight to protect the rights, we will not have them. And I also will say that there is great gratification in joining with others in activism, and it fights a lot of the depression and the hopelessness and the isolation we have been experiencing over these last painful years.

Ethan McCord: Hello.

Speaker 7: I'm actually a member of the church here, and I just want to thank you very, very much for doing this today. Ironically, last night there was another session here downstairs, and I'm just using this so I get the title right. We screened a film called Leading to War, and the producer was actually here with us, and it was— it is entirely clips from the news beginning at 9/11 to the time we invaded Iraq, and you watch in a very condensed way The words of our leaders and how they brought us to the point where people were willing to invade Iraq. Afterwards, the conversation was fascinating in terms of everyone sitting there saying, well, did they believe it themselves or not? What was the— you know, why did they do that? And so we left saying to ourselves, will we ever know? And the producer said, oh, it's going to take novels. It's going to take 50 years. Listening to you today, I have a very different I have a thought that I'd like to ask your thinking about. Somewhere here we need expertise to not only make that video, but to help us with the conversation as a country to deconstruct what happened, so that just like someone in therapy begins to understand the pattern and make a choice not to fall to that pattern. Institutionally, when you look out over history, I know that my friend's children who are being raised in Germany— I'm from Germany. Um, actually take ethics classes as part of their education in which they talk about what happened in the Holocaust. There are truth and reconciliation commissions in South Africa and other places. What can— what institutional vehicles do you know of, or what thinking can you give to this idea that the expertise in this room can begin to help us have that larger conversation so we don't have them in silos, that the media doesn't do this and psychologists don't do this, so that we have the bigger Deconstructing conversation to get to truth and reconciliation and healing of what's happening.

Stephen Soltz: You took the words that I wrote down that I realized I had forgotten to say. I think that's right. Now, what— I don't know what the process— I've been talking recently about the need for a truth and reconciliation process. As Len said, You know, the new administration, whoever it is, is going to want to be careful. You know, they're politicians. Their job is to not piss people off and get reelected. And some of them will be a little bit braver than others, and some of them pander a little less. But ultimately, that's not their job. That's our job as citizens, is, I think, part of what we're all saying. And we need to find mechanisms to do that, probably both locally and Nationally, to have a process, part of which is to lay out what happened, to try and put the pressure on the government, on the new administration, to make public all this information that has been withheld, not just on torture, but on the other abuses of the administration, but to try and get the secrets out there is part of it. I want to speak then again as a health professional. I think, as part of that process, the health professions need to have a truth and reconciliation process to come to terms with our role in this. You know, each of my colleagues who's been involved in the battle within the APA, I think, has a different set of motivations. We discuss this a lot, and there's different things that drive us. There's different things— like, we have a discussion about what do we really want. And I think, for myself, in some sense, it's a coming to terms with this. What I can't tolerate is going along with the social lie, the polite lie, that this didn't happen. In the case of psychologists, the psychologists were not complicit, and more than complicit, were central, is what we're finding out in this process. But it's not just psychologists. As Len said, the other health professions, I mean, the American Medical and the American Psychiatric Association did take much nicer stands. And the American Psychiatric Association, to their credit, when the first reports came out about the role of health professionals at Guantanamo in Giving medical information to be used in interrogation so that you could pinpoint people's weaknesses. Say, you know, they have a phobia about buried alive, well, then you threaten to bury them alive. When these first reports came out, they expressed their grave discomfort, and they said they were very disturbed about these reports. The American Psychological Association said absolutely nothing. But on the other hand, none of the associations has taken any action beyond their resolutions. And none of them has done the soul-searching about our professions, what have we done, and what are the institutional What are the ethical, moral, educational, and systemic and institutional factors that have contributed to this? And I think that we have to do that. And it has to be a process that involves health professionals, human rights advocates, and people like Eric, former interrogators, people who know what really goes on in the field. Because, you know, I'm a psychologist. I don't know what goes on in an interrogation session. People like Eric know something about that. And we have to bring them in on this conversation, too. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Psychoanalyst Stephen Solz, a social activist and professor at Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was speaking at an event in Brookline, Mass., moderated by David Sloan Rossiter, co-chair of the Curriculum Committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, about torture and the APA, American Psychological Association. In answering one of the questions, Stephen Solz referred to a Len, That was Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, the Nobel Prize-winning organization. We will hear his portion of the May 3rd presentation next time. You can listen to the entire series and find related links online at talknationradio.org. At the end of the event, Stephen Soultz introduced Stephen Benke, ethics director of the APA.

Stephen Benke: We heard some things today that I think have left some pretty important pieces of APA's work on this out. But I do want to say, and Len and Stephen and David, David, we have all met, and we've all talked about these things. Mr. Fair, we have not spoken, but I really wanted to say, when we started to do work at the American Psychological Association on this issue, the first thing we did was to reach out to people who had extensive experience working with interrogators. And their message resonated exactly with yours, that abuse and torture are an assault upon human dignity, and they're absolutely ineffective. And in many cases, they have precisely the opposite effect that one would want, in all kinds of levels, as Stephen was just alluding to. Our position has been absolutely torture is off the table. There is never a justification for it. It is always unethical, and the APA has explicitly rejected a post-September 11th justification for torture. So there's no justification for torture. The question then becomes, how does one achieve Len's first objective, which is to stop torture? And I think that's the place that everyone starts from. And I think toward the end of the discussion, that is really where we end up. Do you—

Speaker 7: I agree.

Stephen Benke: adopt a policy of engagement or a policy of disengagement. And I think that would be an excellent place to start the discussion, if people were interested in discussing and talking about APA's position. As I said, I'd be happy to come back, and I think that would be a wonderful place to start that talk.

Speaker 9: People say, we didn't— we don't gas Jews. You know, that's the thing they always say. We're not Nazis. We don't gas Jews. But we do a lot of what the Nazis used to do. So I want you to imagine now that it's midnight and you're in your own home in Los Angeles. It's dark. You're in bed. Your family are asleep in the other rooms. OK? So it's nice and dark. It's nice and quiet. Everything's peaceful. And whilst you're asleep, 25 armed men, uh, We've got shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, explosives. We're creeping up to your house. You don't even know we're there. We're creeping up the side of your house and we're creeping up to your front door and we're putting a huge amount of explosives on your front door. You're still asleep. The first thing you know about us coming in is bang! The explosives go off on your front door. There's dust everywhere. Your ears are ringing.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 9: It's still dark. And before you can realize what's going on, you know, it's like the biggest firework you've ever heard has just gone off in your house. You can hear men in your house downstairs. You can hear these men. They're coming in. They're coming up the stairs. You can hear them in the rooms downstairs, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, kicking your door in. Maybe they're throwing a minor explosive in on the way in. They've got you. They're dragging you out of your bed. All the males, you're being dragged downstairs into one room.

Ethan McCord: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9: Females into another room. Children into another room. You're all being held at gunpoint. The males are taken into a room and brutally interrogated, slapped around, punched around, shouted at in a foreign language they can't understand. The women and children are held at gunpoint in another room. And my job at this point was to go around your house with a big sack, like a mail sack, and take everything out of your house of any use. Bank statements, passports, mobile phones, money, any weapons you might have. And before you're thinking, oh, weapons, they must have been terrorists, everyone in Iraq at that time had a rifle in the house. It was one of the most dangerous places on earth. There were kidnaps and ransoms going on all the time. You know, it was a common thing for people to have rifles in their houses. So whilst we're interrogating the males— and we're talking about anyone between the ages of 16 and 65— Your house is getting trashed. And we're not carefully going through your house. Everything's being ripped apart. All the cupboards are getting ripped open, all the drawers. Everything's getting trashed. People are crying now. Now we're filling all this stuff up, putting all this stuff in the bags. And maybe you dare to have a glimpse out of the room you're being held in. After 20 minutes, we've got everything that's in your house into these 3 bags. And your dad or your brother or your husband or whoever it is He's in the hallway. We've put a black sack over his head. We put some earphones on his ears, and we tied his hands up with plastic cable ties. And we're dragging him out through the hole where your front door used to be. This has lasted about 20 minutes. And this is the job that we were doing again and again, night after night, going into people's houses, doing this job. Sometimes we'd go into a first house And the guy who was leading it all would say, we've got the wrong house. It's next door. And we'd stack up again and do the same job again, again and again. Most of the time, the people we took back with us were not the people we were looking for. We'd have a name and a photograph on our arms. We're after this person here, Mr. Smith. But this guy's Mr. Davis. Doesn't matter. He's in this address. This is a known address he's coming to.

Ethan McCord: One of the first things I remember hearing was a little girl crying. And I knew that the cry was coming from the van. That was there. And I ran up to the passenger side door with one of the privates who was with me, and we looked inside the van. And the private that I was with started vomiting and ran away because he couldn't bear to look at the children the way they were. What I saw was a little girl. She was probably about 4 years old, sitting on the bench seat with a severe belly wound and glass in her hair and in her eyes. She couldn't blink or close her eyes. And she was crying like— it wasn't a pain cry. It was a cry that— me having children, knowing that my daughter was the same age as this little girl, waking up from a horrible nightmare in the middle of the night, and just— it was almost bloodcurdling. Next to her, in the middle of the bench seat, half on the floorboard, With his head resting on the bench seat, was a boy about 7 years old. I immediately thought he was dead, because he had a severe wound to the right side of his head. And in the driver's seat was who I assumed was the father, the way he was hunched over them in a protective manner. And he was completely destroyed. There was no way that he had survived. I grabbed the little girl out of the van, yelled for a medic. And we took her to the house that was directly behind the vehicle, where I took off my gloves, got water and rinsed the wounds, checked for any exit wounds, other wounds that she might have had, and was picking glass out of her eyes with my hands so that she can blink. That's when, in the video, you can hear the medic say that there's nothing else we can do here. She needs to be evac'd. And I was able to get her to the ambulance. He takes the little girl, and he runs her to the Bradley. I go back outside to the van. And, you know, I don't know actually why I went to the van. I thought that the boy was dead and the father was dead. But when I went back out there, the boy took a labored breath. And that's when I started screaming out that the boy's alive, the boy's alive. And I picked him up in my arms.

Stephen Soltz: I was in the backseat.

Ethan McCord: And started running towards the Bradley with him, the whole time telling him, you know, it's going to be okay, don't die, don't die. And at this point, he looked up at me, his— just for a split second, then his eyes rolled back into his head. And at that moment, I thought he had died in my arms. But I got him to the Bradley. And when I took him to the Bradley, my commanding officer, Officer, or my platoon leader, was there, and he told me that I needed to quit worrying about these MFing kids and to go pull security. At the time, the only thing I could think of was, you know, roger that, and I went to pull security. While sitting on the rooftop, I could hear them firing the Hellfire missiles into houses. I saw the pictures of The families that were in these buildings. There were no armed men in these buildings. They were just families, women, children who were killed. I got back to the FOB later that day, and I remember thinking to myself, I was like, there's no way that we did that. You know, it had to have been the men on the corner. There was one guy who had an RPG. RPG, and one guy who had an AK-47. And, you know, from being over there, you're like, okay, well, these guys are obviously insurgents if they have weapons, not knowing that these other men were cameramen. And what frequently happens in Iraq is if there's a person with a camera, people will come out of their homes and say, hey, look at me, this is what I have, put me on TV, put me on the news, make me famous, now pay me for my picture. And you were there. There was no RPG rounds in the RPG. So, to me, my reaction is that I don't think that they were armed to fight us. They were just showing off for the cameramen that were there. But later on that night in the FOB, while I was washing the blood of the children off of me, I couldn't really cope with it. I was having a hard time dealing with the fact that we did that, the Apaches did that. So I went to my staff sergeant, who was in my line, in my chain of command, and I told him, I think I need to see mental health. I need to go talk to somebody, because I'm having a hard time dealing with—

Speaker 9: What happened?

Ethan McCord: What I had just seen, what I witnessed, what I was a part of. And he laughed at me and told me to get the sand out of my vagina and to quit being a pussy and to suck it up and to be a soldier. And so, you know, you kind of like, okay, well, there's nothing else I can do. So you just kind of do. You kind of suck it up. You push everything down. You bottle it up.

Eric Fair: I'm sorry.

Ethan McCord: But that anger and that rage sits inside you, and it gets to the point where it just bubbles over. And you get so angry that you start yelling at people who don't deserve it— family members, your privates, soldiers who are your brothers. And, you know, that was just one incident. And I've been saying this for a long time. That was one incident.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Ethan McCord: That was one incident of many that you guys got to see.

David Sloan-Rossiter: Mm-hmm.

Ethan McCord: Things like this happened almost on a daily basis in Iraq. It may not have been an Apache. It could have been a Bradley. I saw a Bradley fire on a vanload of children, nothing more than children, and watched the Iraqi police pull bodies out, pieces of children. And the whole time they're looking at it, shaking their heads. And, you know, it's— again, that was one incident. But you guys can see from that one incident that we shouldn't be there, that we're over there and we're killing innocent people. These are people who are only trying to live their lives and the best that they can during an occupation.

Speaker 7: Thank you.