Tales from the Front Line
Former soldier speaks out against Iraqi prisoner abuse
By Justin Chapman, Courier (Pasadena City College), 3/24/2005
Aidan Delgado, a conscientious objector, gave a presentation on campus March 15, The 23-year-old Buddhist spent one year in Iraq and witnessed the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib.
The event was hosted by Students for Social Justice in the CC Loung and drew an estimated 200 people, overcrowding the room and proving that people at Pasadena City College (PCC) are concerned about what is happening in Iraq.
Delgado wanted to join the military and signed his army contract on the morning of 9/11, right before the planes hit. He was deployed to Iraq in August 2002.
"I was politically and intellectually against the war from the beginning. A lot of soldiers were excited about going to war and getting the bad guys," Delgado said.
His infantry followed in the wake of the 3rd Infantry Division and collected POWs. He witnessed blatant racism by Americans towards Iraqis, or hajis as our troops call them. This offensive racial slur even appears in official Army documents.
Once Delgado filed for conscientious objector status, his command immediately turned hostile. They did all kinds of things to persuade him to pick up his gun again. He was honorably discharged in January 2005.
PCC student Marcos Trinidad, 22, served three years in the army training troops that were going to Iraq.
"If you voice opposition to the war while in the army, you're going to get shit for it," said Trinidad. "It's all about not rocking the boat."
Delgado found the Iraqis to be enormously friendly. The feeling was not mutual.
"It was a matter of routine for soldiers in my unit to drive by and shatter bottles over Iraqis' heads," Delgado recalled. This obviously does not reflect on every soldier but for most coming to Iraq it was a complete culture shock.
Abu Ghraib houses roughly 5,000 prisoners. Most of the prisoners are kept outside in the canvas tents surrounded by razor wire while the soldiers sleep in the cells.
The military had a policy of random sweeps. After an attack from outside, they would go into the local towns and collect all males aged 17 to 45 for questioning at Abu Ghraib.
After finding that they did nothing wrong, the paperwork to release them from the prison took six months to a year. This information is in the 2005 Department of Defense Report on Random Sweeps at Abu Ghraib, released by the Pentagon.
One day a couple prisoners were throwing stones at the guards and hit one guard in the face. The guard asked to use lethal force and received an OK. He and other guards shot and killed three prisoners and wounded nine others.
They bragged about how "one of the hajis got shot in the groin and took three days to bleed to death."
They also remarked, "I shot this one in the face and his head split open like in the 'Terminator' movie."
Delgado didn't think the rumored pictures of the abuse would get out until military officers said to the soldiers, "'If you've heard anything, don't say anything back home. If you have revealing photos, destroy them. We're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public.'
"The military knew enough about [the abuse] to tell us not to talk about it," said Delgado.
Trinidad, who volunteered for Assemblywoman Carol Liu's campaign at the Democratic Headquarters last fall, says he's also against the war and believes one of the main reasons we're in Iraq is to continue fueling our excessive American culture.
But unlike Delgado, you won't find Trinidad criticizing the actions of troops overseas. He believes they do what they feel they must in order to get the job done.
"Fuck it. Big deal," said Trinidad. "Any type of abuse is wrong, but you have to understand there's a war going on. When your buddy next to you gets his face shot off and you capture these guys, you want some information. Getting them naked, taking pictures of them and wondering if that's bad is the last thing on your mind. You're going to do whatever you can to finish the job, whether it's running hot water on them or not feeding them or whatever. And if it's so bad for them, why can't they just talk? ... It takes two to tango. You're not poking animals in a cage with a stick. That's just wrong. But when you're trying to get information from someone that's going to save lives, and then you have people bitching about it, fuck you. If you think their tactics are wrong, you go over to Abu Ghraib and try to get some information over a cup of tea. But don't come to me complaining about that shit."
Additional story in Pasadena Weekly:
Of good men and bad apples (PW article)
Of good men and bad apples
Iraq war veteran says abuse of prisoners and average citizens goes far beyond what’s being reported
By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 3/31/2005
Aidan Delgado, a former Army private who fought in Iraq, became a conscientious objector while in the service and witnessed the torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison, said news outlets only showed "the tip of the iceberg" of American abuse of prisoners.
Delgado, 23, further said that while Iraqis were friendly, generous and welcoming during his one-year stint, the feeling was not mutual among some of his fellow soldiers, who frequently behaved violently toward average Iraqis and used racist and demeaning language when talking to local residents.
"It was a matter of routine for soldiers in my unit to drive by and shatter bottles over Iraqis' heads as they passed by," said Delgado, who recently gave a PowerPoint presentation on his war experiences at Pasadena City College.
"One time a master sergeant in my unit whipped some Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna because he was tired of them pestering him," recalled Delgado.
Obviously not every American soldier in Iraq behaves this way. But it wasn't just a few bad apples either, Delgado said.
When asked why he smashed bottles on civilians' heads, a soldier told Delgado, "I hate them. I hate being here. I hate looking at them. I hate being around these hajis," remembered Delgado, who is now a Buddhist. Delgado said the racial epithet "haji" is a slur on a par with "nigger," "spic" and "gook" and is commonly used by soldiers to describe people of Arab descent.
Delgado's talk on campus was hosted by Students for Social Justice in the CC Lounge and drew an estimated 200 people.
Delgado learned Arabic while living in Egypt, though he cannot speak it very fluently. He and his family moved to America in 2000. Delgado joined the Army on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, right before the two jets slammed into New York's Twin Towers.
"I was politically and intellectually against the war from the beginning. A lot of soldiers were excited about going to war. They wanted to go and get the bad guys," Delgado said. He explained that the Iraqis welcomed the Americans with open arms in the beginning. But today, it's a different story.
"When I first came to Iraq, civilians would come up to me and say, 'God bless you. We love you. We love George Bush. Thank you for freeing us from Saddam.'"
Six months into the occupation, however, Iraqis would say, "We love you, now when are you going home?" One year later, they would say, "We want you to go home."
His unit, the 320th Military Police Co., followed in the wake of the 3rd Infantry Division, collected prisoners and stored them in an abandoned Air Force base in southern Iraq. He then spent another six months at Abu Ghraib.
PCC student and former Army Specialist Marcos Trinidad, 22, served three years in the Army, training troops that were shipping off to Iraq.
Trinidad, who volunteered for Assemblywoman Carol Liu's campaign at the Democratic Headquarters last fall, says he's also against the war and believes one of the main reasons we're in Iraq is to continue fueling our excessive American culture.
But unlike Delgado, you won't find Trinidad criticizing the actions of troops overseas. He believes they do what they feel they must in order to get the job done.
"Fuck it. Big deal," Trinidad said of allegations of prisoner abuse. "Any type of abuse is wrong, but you have to understand, there's a war going on. When your buddy next to you gets his face shot off and you capture these guys, you want some information. Getting them naked, taking pictures of them and wondering if that's bad is the last thing on your mind. You're going to do whatever you can to finish the job, whether it's running hot water on them or not feeding them or whatever. And if it's so bad for them, why can't they just talk? ... It takes two to tango."
Delgado said that once he filed for conscientious objector status, his fellow soldiers turned against him. Officers told everyone in his unit what he was doing, took away the front and back ballistic plates in his bulletproof vest and denied him home-leave because they considered him a "flight risk." He was eventually honorably discharged in January.
Again, Trinidad was unmoved by Delgado's problem
"If you voice opposition to the war while in the Army, you're going to get shit for it," Trinidad said simply. "It's all about not rocking the boat."
Before being sent home, Delgado was assigned to the Baghdad Correctional Facility, or Abu Ghraib prison, which housed roughly 5,000 prisoners. At the time, most of the prisoners were kept outside in canvas tents that rested on wooden platforms surrounded by razor wire while Delgado and coalition soldiers slept in the cells indoors. Temperatures outside at night dropped to as low as 20 degrees and it rained a lot, Delgado recalled.
The first thing guards did to control the detainees was take away their tents, then their blankets and finally their cold weather clothing. Delgado recalled seeing several Iraqis huddling together for warmth, completely exposed to the cold.
"Virtually every prisoner at Abu Ghraib was infected with tuberculosis," said Delgado, calling the scene "pandemic."
The Pentagon's Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, public affairs officer for detention operations with the Multi-National Forces Iraq, refuted Delgado's contention about tuberculosis infections, saying there have been no reported cases of the disease there, both now and during Delgado's time there.
Delgado also said that he felt the level of brutality by the guards toward prisoners was unnecessary and extreme. He found out that more than half of the detainees were not in Abu Ghraib for crimes against the coalition, but rather petty crimes, another claim that Rudisill disputed.
"[Soldiers] don't just go in randomly and pick people out for questioning," Rudisill said. "They only arrest and question people who are seen with the attackers or are known to have been part of [an] attack."
One day, Delgado remembered how Abu Ghraib prisoners were protesting harsh conditions and one of them threw stones, hitting a guard in the face. The guard asked to use lethal force and received an OK. He and other guards then shot and killed three prisoners and wounded nine others, said Delgado, who did not actually see the killings but shown photographs taken of the dead Iraqis by soldiers who were there.
In fact, some of those soldiers even bragged to him about how "one of the hajis got shot in the groin and he took three days to bleed to death in the yard," Delgado said.
He also recalled one fellow soldier remarking, "I shot this one in the face and his head split open like in the 'Terminator' movie."
On this point, Rudisill did not know if records existed regarding that incident, but said that soldiers may use lethal force if they feel threatened.
Delgado asked one of those soldiers, a supposedly devout Christian, if he was proud of killing an unarmed man behind barbed wire fencing for throwing stones. He replied, "Well, I saw him hit one of my friends in the face. I knelt down and said a prayer, then I opened fire on him."
Delgado said officers at the prison even posted pictures of the dead bodies in the prison's command center.
It was around that time that Delgado said he started hearing rumors that there was some sort of abuse going on and that one of the soldiers involved intended to send incriminating photos to CNN.
Then he said officers told soldiers, "If you've heard anything, don't say anything back home. If you have any revealing photos, destroy them. We're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public."
Soon thereafter, digital photos taken at the prison were acquired by CBS, which broadcast a story about the abuse on "60 Minutes II," leading to a number of prosecutions, some of which are still ongoing, and the tendered resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which President Bush refused to accept.
Before all that, though, "the military knew enough about [the abuse] to tell us not to talk about it," said Delgado.
But to all of this, Trinidad remained unmoved.
"You're not poking animals in a cage with a stick. That's just wrong. But when you're trying to get information from someone that's going to save lives, and then you have people bitching about it, fuck you.
"If you think my tactics are wrong, you go over to Abu Ghraib and try to get some information over a cup of tea. But don't come to me complaining about that shit," Trinidad said.
