Quotes from Collateral Damage, by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian

- ‘Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza, or Vietnam, are placed in ‘atrocity-producing situations.’ ’ (xiii)

- ‘The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians, who are seen to support the insurgents. Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap but a massive moral leap.’ (xiii)

- ‘Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue.’ (xiii)

- ‘As the war sours, as it no longer fits into the mythical narrative of us as liberators and victors, it is fading from view.’ (xvii)

- ‘They know this war is not about bringing democracy to Iraq, that all the clichés about staying the course and completing the mission are used to make sure the president and his allies do not pay a political price while in power for their blunders and their folly. The press knows all this, and if reporters had bothered to look they could have known it a long time ago. But the press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.’ (xviii)

- ‘These soldiers and marines have at their fingertips the heady ability to call in airstrikes and firepower that obliterate landscapes and villages in fiery infernos. They can instantly give or deprive human life, and with this power they become sick and demented. The moral universe is turned upside down. All human beings are used as objects.’ (xix)

- ‘It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy. All feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on the battlefield. Moral courage, which these veterans have exhibited by telling us the truth about the war, is not.’ (xx)

- ‘We make our heroes out of clay. We laud their gallant deeds and give them uniforms with colored ribbons on their chests for the acts of violence they committed or endured. They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. They are our plaster saints of war, the icons we cheer to defend us and make us and our nation great. They are the props of our civic religion, our love of power and force, our belief in our right as a chosen nation to wield this force against the weak, and rule. This is our nation’s idolatry of itself.’ (xxx)

- ‘Over a period of seven months from July 2006, Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian interviewed fifty combat veterans including forty soldiers, eight Marines, and two sailors.’ (xxxv)

- ‘When the columns of vehicles leave their heavily fortified compounds, they usually roar down the main supply routes, cutting through densely populated areas and reaching speeds of more than sixty miles an hour. The larger trucks take up a lane and a half, causing oncoming traffic to swerve to avoid being hit. The convoys leap medians, ignore traffic signals, and veer without warning onto sidewalks, scattering terrified pedestrians. They slam into civilian vehicles to push them off the road. Iraqi civilians, including children, are frequently hit and killed. The troops live in a world where remaining stationary can mean death and constant movement is seen as paramount to survival.’ (4-5)

- ‘IEDs are the preferred weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. They have been responsible for killing more U.S. troops – 39.8 percent of the more than thirty-eight hundred killed as of November 2007 – than any other method since the invasion in March 2003, according to the Brookings Institution.’ (6)

- ‘The soldiers and Marines in the convoys began to feel exposed every time they appeared in their vehicles on the road. The increased sense of vulnerability led to a correlating increase in the use of deadly firepower to protect convoys.’ (8)

- ‘The convoys are also a potent symbol of the disparity in power and wealth between the occupation forces and Iraqis. They are a constant visual reminder to Iraqis that the main concern of the American occupation is to protect and indulge American troops. The military provides KBR and other contractors with much higher levels of security than it does to Iraqis. ‘All these Iraqis are just seeing this vast amount of housing units, vast amount of convoys going by with this aggressive protection. And they’re probably thinking, ‘How does this help us? They’re just helping themselves stay here longer,’” said Sergeant Flanders.’ (10)

- ‘They arrive conditions to place the safety of the convoy above civilian life, even that of children. Instructors tell troops never to stop the convoy and to run over anyone who gets in the way. Spc. Fernando Braga, a slight, soft-spoken National Guardsman from the Bronx, trained at Fort Dix in New Jersey before he went to Iraq in the spring of 2004. During his training a lieutenant asked hundreds of troops what they would do if an Iraqi child stepped in front of their convoy. ‘People had a billion different answers,’ Braga remembered. ‘But the answer that he gave us war, ‘Run him over.’ ‘He said the reason was that we shouldn’t hesitate because of the way they treat their children,’ Braga said. ‘They don’t value human life like we do and they don’t share our same Western values.’ ’ (12-13)

- ‘ ‘The enemy doesn’t wear uniforms….You almost have to assume that everybody’s hostile.’ ’ (21)

- ‘While many veterans said the killing of civilians deeply disturbed them, they also said there was no other way to operate a patrol safely.’ (24)

- ‘The checkpoints are deadly for civilians. Unarmed Iraqis are frequently mistaken to insurgents when they approach too quickly or fail to heed warning signals to slow or stop. Troops, fearful of explosives packed into vehicles and rocket-propelled grenades, often open fire on cars they deem to be suspicious. Veterans said the shooting of civilians at checkpoints was so frequent it ceased to be regarded as unusual. Few of these incidents, they said, were investigated.’ (30)

- ‘In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, slowing down or stopping in front of government buildings could be cause for arrest. It was considered by Iraqi authorities to be ‘suspicious’ behavior. Iraqis, accustomed to driving quickly past government buildings and not looking right or left to attract attention, find that this old habit can get them killed, especially since many checkpoints are set up in front of the same buildings that are now used by occupation authorities.’ (31)

- ‘The enemy can come from any direction. They can come in any form, whether it’s a pregnant woman who blows herself up on soldiers or it’s this can just sitting idly on the side of the road.’ Sergeant Flanders (37)

- ‘ ‘It’s a battle zone. It’s a war zone. I think Americans don’t understand that it’s absolute chaos and it’s beyond what you can imagine,’ Flatt added.’ (43)

- ‘According to a May 2007 report from the Government Accountability Office, the Defense Department issued nearly $31 million in solatia and condolence payments between 2003 and 2006 to civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan who were ‘killed, injured or incur[red] property damage as a result of U.S. or coalition forces’ actions during combat.’ The study characterizes the payments as ‘expressions of sympathy or remorse…but not an admission or legal liability or fault.’ Civilians in Iraq, according to the report, are paid up to $2,500 for death, as much as $1,500 for serious injuries, and $200 or more for minor injuries. Iraqis who accept payment are forbidden from filing future claims against the U.S. government.’ (44-45)

- ‘ ‘As an American, you just put your hand up with your palm towards somebody and your fingers pointing to the sky,’ said Sergeant Jeffries, who was responsible for supplying fixed checkpoints in Diyala twice a day. ‘That means stop to most Americans, and that’s a military hand signal that soldiers are taught that means stop. Closed fist, please freeze, but an open hand means stop. That’s a sign you make at a checkpoint. To an Iraqi person, that means, ‘Hello, come here.’ So you can see the problem that develops real quick. So you get on a checkpoint, and the soldiers think they’re saying ‘stop, stop,’ and the Iraqis think they’re saying ‘come here.’ And the soldiers start hollering, so they try to come there faster. So soldiers holler more, and pretty soon you’re shooting pregnant women.’ (45-46)

- ‘The checkpoints, designed to hamper the insurgency, rarely uncovered insurgents, weapons, or explosives. The danger to exposed troops, as well as to Iraqi civilians, left many veterans questioning the usefulness of many checkpoints. ‘In all the checkpoints I did,’ said Sergeant Westphal, and again, must have been hundreds – I never, not even once, found anybody with anything they weren’t supposed to have.’ ’ (50)

- ‘ ‘You run in. And if there’s lights, you turn them on – if the lights are working. If not, you’ve got flashlights….You leave one rifle team outside while one rifle team goes inside. Each rifle team leader has a headset on with an earpiece and a microphone where he can communicate with the other rifle team leader that’s outside. You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall. You have junior level-troops, PFCs, specialists will run into the other rooms and grab the family, and you’ll group them all together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds and you make sure there’s no weapons or anything that they can use to attack us. You get the interpreter and you get the man of the home, and you have him at gunpoint, and you’ll ask the interpreter to ask him: ‘Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-U.S. propaganda, anything at all – anything – anything in here that would lead us to believe that you are somehow involved in insurgent activity or anti-coalition forces activity? Normally, they’ll say no, because that’s normally the truth,’ Sergeant Bruhns said. ‘So what you’ll do is, you’ll take his sofa cushions and you’ll dump them. If he has a couch, you’ll turn the couch upside down. You’ll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you’ll throw everything on the floor, and you’ll take his drawers and you’ll dump them….You’ll open up his closet and you’ll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it. And if you find something, then you’ll detain him. If not, you’ll say, ‘Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.’ ’ ’ (52-53)

- ‘Troops ransack Iraqi homes in the hopes of uncovering weapons caches, ammunition, or materials for making IEDs. Every Iraqi family is allowed to keep one AK-47 at home. When more than one weapon is uncovered, it is confiscated and the men in the house can be detained.’ (57)

- ‘The Army officially banned the practice of hooding prisoners after the Abu Ghraib scandal, but several veterans said the practice continued after the ban. ‘You weren’t allowed to, but it was still done,’ said Sergeant Cannon.’ (67)

- ‘Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been incarcerated in prisons and detention facilities in Iraq. The numbers range from 60,000 to 120,000, according to military officials. Some prisoners have languished for months, even years, in Iraqi prisons. Families are forced to navigate a dysfunctional bureaucracy to find and plead for the release of relatives. Prisoners are not allowed to receive visits during the first sixty days of their detention, under U.S. military detainee visitation guidelines. The policy of isolating prisoners from their families and legal counsel, according to the human rights monitor Amnesty International, is ‘a contributory factor facilitating torture and ill-treatment and other human rights abuses and detainees.’ Prisoners are allowed four visits per month following the two-month period. Their families, however, are often unable to visit because the detention facilities are far away or it is too dangerous to travel to them. The vast majority of detainees, veterans said, were innocent, or guilty of minor infractions. ‘Probably 99 percent of those people were guilty of absolutely nothing, but the way we treated them, the way we abused them, turned them against the effort in Iraq forever, said Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste (ret.), when he testified in a Senate hearing on September 26, 2006, about Abu Ghraib Prison.’ (72)

- ‘Specialist Delgado was assigned to battalion headquarters inside Abu Ghraib Prison in the winter of 2003. He worked there with Maj. David DiNenna and Lieut. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, both of whom were implicated in the Taguba Report, the official Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal. Delgado’s duties included reading prisoner reports and updating a dry-erase board with the moving and holding patterns of inmates. ‘That was when I totally walked away from the Army,’ Delgado said. ‘I read these rap sheets on all the prisoners in Abu Ghraib and what they were there for. I expected them to be terrorists, murderers, insurgents. I look down this roster and see petty theft, public drunkenness, forged coalition documents. These people are [sic] here for petty civilian crimes.’ Delgado applied for conscientious-objector status. The Army approved his application in April 2004. ‘These aren’t terrorists,’ he said. ‘These aren’t our enemies. They’re just ordinary people.’ ’ (86)

- ‘Most veterans speak of a world so brutally dangerous and chaotic that is deemed more prudent to shoot Iraqis who appear to be a threat and ask questions later. The effort to win hearts and minds on the ground in Iraq was  lost months, perhaps years, ago. Many veterans say that as far back as late 2003 the hope of reaching out to Iraqis were extinguished. They said it was only during the initial stages of the occupation that it was possible to walk the streets of an Iraq city. Troops deployed immediately after the invasion said they noticed a change in the way they were received as the weeks wore on and the occupation became institutionalized. Iraqis, who hoped that the occupation would result in improved economic conditions and democratic reforms, became embittered as none of these things materialized.’ (96-97)

- ‘For many Iraqis, who even under Saddam Hussein had one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world, the collapse of the infrastructure and the failure to repair it was blamed on the occupying force. ‘Electricity, heat, gasoline, the basic necessities that a lot of us take for granted, they had that before we arrived,’ said Lieutenant Van Engelen. ‘And basically, all of that was stripped from them.’ ’ (98)

- ‘You start blaming the Iraqi people because you can’t abuse your own chain of command and your superiors, but you do have complete power over the average Iraqi.’ Spc. Reppenhagen (102-103)

- ‘We were told from the first second that we arrived there, and this was in writing on the wall in our aid station, that we were not to treat Iraqi civilians unless they were about to die….So these guys in the guard tower radio in, and they say they’ve got an Iraqi out there that’s asking for a doctor.’ Spc. Resta (106)

- ‘ ‘You have this group of guys that couldn’t give two shits about the people, the Iraqis. Their goal, and rightfully so, was to get home. That was their mission,’ said Sergeant Campbell. ‘Winning hearts and minds, that’s not – their mission is to get from Point A to Point B, get their ass [sic] home and then say hello, kiss their wives and children good night.’ ’ (108-109)

- ‘The United States is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to organize Sunni Arab militias that are, at best, an unreliable ally. The same tactic was tried in Afghanistan. The military handed out money and weapons to tribal groups to buy their loyalty. Once the payments and weapons shipments ceased, however, the tribal groups slipped back into the ranks of the Taliban.’ (110)

- ‘The Sunnis dominated Iraq’s old officer corps and made up its elite units, including the Republican Guard divisions and the special forces regiments. They also controlled the intelligence agencies. There are several hundred thousand Sunnis with military training. These militias could become the foundation for a deadlier insurgent force and plunge Iraq into a long and protracted civil war. The hearts and minds program largely consists at this point in the war of the U.S. military funding, and in some cases arming, all three of the major ethnic factions in Iraq: the Shiites, the Kurds, and the Sunnis. These three groups are aggressively partitioning Iraq into armed, ethnic enclaves.’ (111)