Steve Gilliard:
Contractor alleges abuse by Marines
Was one of 16 security personnel detained in Iraq
Friday, June 10, 2005 Posted: 11:28 PM EDT (0328 GMT
Security contractors were heckled, humiliated and physically abused by U.S. Marines in Iraq while jailed for 72 hours with insurgents, one of the detainees said Friday.
"It was disbelief the whole time. I couldn't believe what was happening," said Matt Raiche, 34, an ex-Marine who was one of 16 American and three Iraqi contractors detained at Camp Falluja last month.
"I just found it crazy that we were being held with terrorists, that we were put in the same facility with them," he told The Associated Press in an interview at his lawyer's office. "They were calling us a rogue mercenary team." [...]
Raiche said his colleague told him that a guard then reached down and "squeezed his testicles so hard he could barely move."
When Raiche first arrived at the facility, he said a guard ordered him to the ground and put a knee in his back. He said he heard one Marine say, "How does it feel now making that big contractor money?"
Raiche said the Marines handcuffed them with "zip lock ties." When the detainees complained they were so tight they were losing circulation in their hands, they were cursed at and told to shut up, Raiche said.
A: They treated them like they treated Iraqis
B: The mercenaries have no legal status, the Marines could have executed them on the spot under the rules of war.
C: I think these gun happy fucks shot at the Marines and got some payback. The Marines hate these guys.
Not that abuse is rght, it isn't. But I can't say I feel more for them than I would Iraqis, and actually, a lot less. They went to this country to get rich off other people's suffering and to make doing the military's job harder by playing Rambo for profit. Shit happens, especially when you fire at US troops. Which I do believed happened.
They were cursed at? These guys were firing at civilians and Marines, and they're crying that they were cursed at?
The Right loves to rehash the fact that I give a rat's ass about these mercenaries, and I don't. Neither do the Marines. But, like I like to say, I wore combat boots. The vast majority of my critics did not. So they don't understand the resentement our forces have for those soldiers of fortune -- making vastly more money, beholden to no one, and putting them in danger because of rogue behavior.
Like randomly shooting at civilians and Marines.
And note who uses the word "mercenary" here. It's the United States Marines. Not some liberal blogger. But good to honest Marines.
So you either defend the mercenaries, or you defend the Marines. Which side are the 101st Fighting Keyboardists on? Because if they want to support our troops, they can't continue acting like those mercenaries deserve the same level of respect.