One Excellent Reason Not to Join the Military: You May be Ordered to Kill Civilians

We are commiting war crimes in Iraq as a matter of policy.

One Excellent Reason Not to Join the Military: You May be Ordered to Kill Civilians:

"In January 2003, Jimmy was deployed to Iraq. During the initial invasion he was involved in a number of 'checkpoint killings,' the kind of atrocities that occur over and over today without fanfare or scandal.

A hard-core Marine, Jimmy was in charge of a platoon of machine gunners and missile men. It was their job to secure the road out of Baghdad. As bombs rained down on the ancient city of five million people, civilians fled in panic. There was chaos at the checkpoints.

'All Iraqis,' Jimmy told me in a recent interview, 'were considered a menace.'

'One particular incident really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. We fired some warning shots, but the car did not slow down. So we lit 'em up. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman on the ground looked up at me and said, 'Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong.' That hit me like a ton of bricks. "