Confessions of Jessie Macbeth - An Iraq War Veteran

"What we are doing over there is wrong"

We went to the home of Iraq veteran Jessie Macbeth and his wife Lynn and their newborn baby boy. Jessie served as an Army Ranger in Iraq for 16 months before being wounded and ultimately discharged from the military. He is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

JESSIE: I thought I was going to be a hero, that I was going to go and be the best and go and protect my country, make sure people at home don’t suffer, even though I [indistinct] people back at home. I still wanted to do my job for everybody else, you know, for all the innocent people. And I was proud for my country, my home, my government.

I got shipped off to Korea for like one week. They go to pick up some more people. After that we were off to Baghdad. We dropped off in Kuwait first, we got caravanned to Baghdad.

Once I was in Baghdad, once I got there, my whole aspect of the country changed. When we were in Kuwait we got debriefed about our missions, about the Rangers. Our job over there is to strike fear in the hearts of the Iraqis. That is what they told us. They said do whatever it takes. We’re not going to hold anything against you, you’re not going to get charged for anything. Do whatever it takes to make them fear you; they told us to be brutal. They said we’re not there for them. We’ve got our own purpose. The Geneva Convention, it doesn’t mean crap. The Geneva Convention is something for political crap.

So, once I hear that, I’m like, what happened to the Army values, the stuff you pumped us up for? What happened to “We’re going there to liberate the people”? Operation Iraq Freedom is more like Operation Iraqi Slaughter.

I remember when my friends got there, after the debriefing they had us go out and clear out the bunkers after the air force had bombed the crap out of them. So we had to go in and make sure everything in there was dead. So, where there were women, children, whatever, that weren’t dead, we had to finish them off and drag the bodies out.

These were like little underground bomb shelters, or houses with basements, you know. Most of them were just families hiding down there, but we were told there were insurgents hiding down there. Saddam’s forces were hiding down there, you know.

So we went down there and a lot of them were dead and a lot of them were not dead, just wounded. I remember walking in there, smelling the smell of burnt flesh, and hearing people cry, hearing people begging us to help them, because they thought we were there for them, you know. And seeing people lying around and rotting. And some that weren’t wounded very bad, we had to kill them.

After experiencing that first part, it changed me. After having witnessed that, doing harm to other people’s life, I feel like I lost a lot of myself.

There would probably be like an average, sometimes more, sometimes less, of five or six people that lived, you know, and they were wounded, or they were hurt just a little bit, or because they were deep down in there, they avoided the main blast, they hid behind something, it didn’t matter whether they survived that or not, we had to kill them inside, where the rest of the media and that crap couldn’t see, and then bring them out.

A lot of times the intelligence on them, I think they knew there weren’t any insurgents in there. And I think they just said that, because every time we bombed someplace, the news blew it up, and so I think that they said that to get support and to make it look like they were doing the right thing.

The Iraqi people, the insurgents did a lot of jacko stuff to the American soldiers. I’m not saying it’s right, what they did, but if some people came into America, a huge foreign army, doing the crap that we did to them, I’d be just like them, doing the same thing back. People have the right to fight for their families, for their country, especially if we’re terrorizing someone’s country, they have the right to fight back. I don’t blame them. I would do the same thing.

I’ve been called a traitor for saying that, and all kinds of stuff. Well, I feel like a traitor to everything the military has taught me for doing what they told me to and for not speaking out I feel like I’m betraying my battle buddy that died.

After that, we were doing the night raids in houses, we would pull people out and we would have them all on their knees and zip-tied, and we would ask the guy a question, of the whole family, the man of the house is questioned, and if he didn’t answer the way we liked, we would shoot his youngest kid in the head, and we would keep going with our interrogation. He could be innocent. He could be an average Joe trying to support his family. If he didn’t give us a satisfactory answer we’d kill off his family ‘til he told us something. If he didn’t know anything, I guess he was SOL (?). It sucked. I didn’t feel anything. I just wanted to do my job. I wanted to be a good Ranger. I wanted to lead the way.

I felt wrong. I felt disgusted with myself, because I had to make myself hate them in order to do my job. I had to make myself not think of them as people. Just think of them as a target, or an enemy, or just dehumanize them. That way I could live with it. I still can’t. It hard for me deal with it, now that I’m back home, but that is the way I could complete my job.

I didn’t keep count, but I say by my hand alone probably almost 200 people that were taken out by me. That is a rough estimate and a lot of them at close range, like the distance from me to you, or closer. When we were doing the raids on the houses, they would be close; they would actually feel the hot muzzle of my rifle on the forehead. I wouldn’t shoot them that close, but I’d step back and shoot. We just had to scare them first, you know. Maybe we’d beat them up, or kick them, or hit the wife, or a couple of guys were fondling the wives, just to piss them off, to try to get them to say something.

We’d do that at several houses, multiple houses, slaughtering 30 or 40 people a night sometimes in the houses, women and children. I didn’t sign up to kill women and children. I was trained in the Ranger school in 18 months of that crap. I didn’t want to kill. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to fight other elite soldiers. But I had to go fight kids, women and innocent people that don’t know how to fight.

I really got disappointed in my country, I got disappointed in my government, but I didn’t say anything. I would have been locked up and got court-martialed if I spoke out while I was in active duty.

Other things that they told us to do, we were ordered to go into a mosque. This really hurts me a lot. My nightmares come from this most time. We’d be ordered to go into a mosque, and people were doing some sort of late night prayer. They don’t usually do a late night prayer, but they do it once a night in the holy days, or something. And we infiltrated the mosque ahead of time, we’d be all posted up there, and we were waiting for them to come there. There were like maybe a couple hundred people that were praying, all ages, women and men. While they were in their prayer we started slaughtering them, started shooting them, started taking them out. And then after that we would burn their bodies, we would hand their bodies from the rafters in the mosque, and we would write stuff up on the wall, like “You’re not safe, and you’ve got to leave here, and Allah can kiss my ass, and America, and who else in the world do they know?” And we’d leave some bodies in the streets. After a while it was just sickening, to think that I take part in that, and that my country turned me into that very same thing that I’m fighting against.

Now that I look back at it, we are the terrorists. We’re the ones terrorizing the country, a whole nation of people that did nothing wrong to us. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. I didn’t know that then. I know it now. I feel the death of my battle buddies, my suffering, all the soldiers over there, it was for crap. It was for lies. That’s hard for me to live with, you know. That’s why I talk out. I feel if I speak out I’m doing something to justify the deaths.

A lot of Iraqis didn’t want us there. We shot at protesters because we were told that they had weapons, whether or not they did. They’d say, “They’ve got weapons in there; you’ve got to go take them out, and that we’d find weapons afterward.” We found none. No weapons afterward. Kids that threw rocks at us and our commander told us to take them out. In that sort of environment, we had to take them out. Kids throwing rocks, protesters holding up signs, burning flags. Our job was to kill, kill, kill. You know what they’d say now, “What makes the green grass grow? blood red” That’s pretty much what they had to do, to grow some grass in the desert. I’m so disappointed in my country. I’m ashamed to have served in Iraq. The reason why I wear this hat and I go to these meetings and stuff is so I can speak out and tell the truth so that people know I was there and I’m ashamed of being there. I’m ashamed of having to hurt innocent people. I’m ashamed of taking part in one of the hugest damndest things our government has done.

Iraq is horrible. A lot of people are dying and a lot of stuff happening. I lost a lot of buddies myself. A lot of people are coming home not being able to deal with stuff they had to do over there, and our government doesn’t care. Most of the people don’t care. Lots of them do care, but the majority of Americans don’t care. There are homeless Iraq veterans; there are homeless Vietnam veterans, homeless Desert Storm veterans out there. If people really cared as much as they say they do, they’d get out on the ball and make a difference. They would stop the killing, because everybody that’s for the war, they’re supporting all the dying over there, all the loss of life. The death toll of Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of people. I didn’t know that many people could die, and it could be hidden from the world.

While I was in Iraq I saw huge ground pits filled with bodies that were being burned or buried or covered up. And how can they hide that from the rest of the world? How can they hide all those deaths? A lot of innocent people. It’s like mass genocide.

Our country has become terrorists. That’s why people hate us. I love my country, man; I would die for my country any day, but I won’t die for our president, I won’t die for our government. If I have to fight again, man, it would be to take that asshole out of office. I’m tired of Iraq. I’m tired of all these deaths, seeing all these people and feeling bad because I took part in it.

I remember this one time over there, there was this family. It was after we raided a house, and this lady, she was just holding her kids, three kids, they were young, one was about a year old, little older than my son, and a couple like five or maybe seven, I don’t know. They weren’t that old at all, and she was holding them and she had blood on her hands, one of her children was hurt, and she was sitting there, and I saw her first. She was begging me, begging me to save her, save her and to save the kids. But, I didn’t, you know. I wanted to be, uh, I killed them, because, that’s what I had to do. And not a day goes by that I don’t regret that.

I think about my own son a lot, what if that was my son, if someone came and killed my family. Iraq is horrible, and what we’re doing over there is wrong. I can’t say it enough. If you have dreams of serving your country, then you can do it another way. You can do it by stopping the war. I had the same grandiose ideas of being a glorious war hero. I modeled myself after the Vietnam guys.

People were telling me “War is not like you think it is,” but I didn’t listen. Once you go out there and experience it for yourself you realize the people were right, and it’s horrible, and nobody should be subjected to that.

The military, they lie to you. They manipulate you. And basically they can do whatever they want to you and get away with it. The government, they have complete power like that. A lot of people think it’s not true, but then look at Iraq. We’re terrorizing that nation. We’re getting away with it.

Guys going into the military, you make your own revolution in the military here at home. You do that. If you want to fight for a cause, fight for a good cause. Don’t fight for a war over money or oil or a war to take over the whole Middle East. This war is over money, and the military is not what it used to be. I’m disappointed in my military, disappointed in my whole country. I’m tired of everything, all the lies. Now they want to conquer Iran; they want another war. Next thing it’s going to be Iran Veterans Against the War; there might be Syria Veterans Against the War, or Saudi Veterans Against the War, or China Veterans Against the War. Who knows how far that asshole is going to go?

A lot of people in the military, they’re over there fighting, they don’t want no more war. They don’t want that. And all it takes is a few good men to hold the rallying flag, for them to rally behind. And we’ll stop this shit. The thing is, the government is doing so much to not let us be heard. The major media, they won’t play a lot of stuff. I talk a lot. They won’t play a lot of stuff that we talk about. They cut it out. They only play what they want the people to hear. They want to hush us up. We got to do stuff; we’ve got to find people that will listen, that will put real stuff out. Like you guys in Indymedia. because you’ve got to put out the truth and people rally behind that.

I’m so dedicated to my country. If it takes me holding up the flag and getting killed to put this shit to stop, I would do it, because it needs to stop, for my family’s sake, and for the rest of the world’s sake.

We don’t need to be over there. We don’t want to be over there. BRING US HOME. BRING US HOME.