Marines Shot This Boy

He wants the boy evacuated to a field hospital. The major on duty informs him that Lieutenant Colonel Ferrando is sleeping and can't be disturbed. Fick is livid.

"I wanted to tell the major that we were Americans, that Americans don't shoot kids and let them die, that the men in my platoon had to be able to look themselves in the mirror for the rest of their lives."

Lance Corporal Jeffrey Carazales:

Do you think people at home are going to see this—all these women and children we're killing? Fuck no. Back home they're glorifying this motherfucker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain't even a real Texan.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick:

Worst of all were the accolades and thanks from people "for what you guys did over there." Thanks for what, I wanted to ask—shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people's homes?

Evan Wright:

As Graves steps back in horror, his boot slips in the girl's brains. "This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home," he says.

Sergeant Antonio Espera:

Before we crossed in Iraq, I fucking hated Arabs. I don't know why. But as soon as we got here, it's just gone. I just feel sorry for them. I miss my little girl. Dog, I don't want to kill nobody's children.

Do you realize the shit we've done here, the people we've killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison.

Evan Wright:

But when you see a little girl in pretty clothes that someone dressed her in, and she's smushed on the road with her legs cut off, you don't think, well you know there were Fedayeen nearby and this is collateral damage.

The problem with American society is we don't really understand what war is.

Sergeant Antonio Espera:

[The priest] told me killing is OK, for a purpose. Where in the bible does it say that? Where did Jesus say you can kill people for a purpose? As soon as the priest told me I could kill with a purpose, there was nothing he could tell me after that, because he lost all credibility with me.

Sources: Iraq: the Hidden Human Costs, by M. Massing, The New York Review of Books, Dec 20, 2007. (Not online yet.) Excerpts from "One Bullet Away" by N. Fick and "Generation Kill" by E. Wright (interview).