[Shadow_Group] Conscientious Objector Witnessed Killing of Iraqi Detainees

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Friday, December 17th, 2004

Exclusive: Conscientious Objector Witnessed
Abuse, Killing of Iraqi Detainees at Abu Ghraib

http://tinyurl.com/4llgw

In a Democracy Now! national broadcast
exclusive, we speak with former Army Reserve
Specialist Aidan Delgado. He served in Iraq from
April 2003 to April 2004 where he was deployed in
Nasiriyah and Abu Ghraib. Soon after his arrival
in Iraq, he sought conscientious objector status
and turned in his weapon. At Abu Ghraib, he
witnessed U.S. soldiers abuse and kill Iraqi
detainees. After serving his full tour of duty,
Aidan Delgado was finally granted conscientious
objector status and was honorably discharged.

[rush transcript follows] 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, New
College student Aidan Delgado was at the Army
recruiting station in Tampa, Florida finalizing
his paperwork to enlist in the Army Reserves.

Later that morning, still at the station,
Delgado watched the second plane crash into the
World Trade Center. A year and a half later, as
the US invasion of Iraq was in full swing,
Delgado was shipped off to fight. Soon after his
arrival in the southern city of Nasiriyah,
Delgado decided he did not want to participate in
the war and applied for conscientious objector
status and handed in his weapon.

After six months, he was transferred to the
notorious Abu Ghraib prison, where he served as a
vehicle mechanic for his remaining tour of duty.
During his time there, Delgado says he witnessed
numerous cases of abuse, violence and killing of
Iraqi detainees. On April 1, 2004, exactly, one
year after his arrival in Iraq, Aidan Delgado
returned home. He was finally granted
conscientious objector status in June and was
honorably discharged. Aidan Delgado joins us in
our firehouse studio today.

    * Aidan Delgado, soldier in the Army
Reserves. He served in Iraq from April 2003 to
April 2004 where he was deployed in Nasiriyah 
and
Abu Ghraib. He sought conscientious objector
status soon after his arrival in Iraq. He was
granted CO status after he served his full tour
of duty in Iraq.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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JUAN GONZALEZ: Welcome to Democracy Now!, 
Aidan.

AIDAN DELGADO: Thank you. Good to be here.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Tell us a little bit about your
decision, first, to get into the army, and into
the reserves, and what prompted you, and then 
how
you ended up in Iraq?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well, actually, ironically, even
though I enlisted on September 11, really, the
reason that I joined had nothing to do with
September 11. I was in school. I wasn't doing
very well. I was stagnant. I was looking for a
change of scene and I thought the army would be
something for a young man to do, get a little
travel, do something different. Then when I
signed up, it was not a big deal to be in the
reserves. It was not serious military commitment,
and then, after that morning of September 11, and
everything changed. So, the reasons I signed are
really just personal. Just go do something
different, and then the reasons I ended up
serving, well.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How soon after you enlisted 
did
you learn that you were going to Iraq?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well, I heard about that after I
came back from my advanced training, which was 
in
August of 2002 or 3. So, I served about a year-
and-a-half in the reserves before I was deployed,
and I'd been to maybe three or four drills; a
weekend here and there, once a month. And so I
really didn't have very much military experience
or much of a career under my belt when I got
deployed.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the situation in
Nasiriyah. You first went to Nasiriyah?

AIDAN DELGADO: Yeah, when we first crossed 
over,
we were kind of in the second wave. The third
infantry division had gone ahead and had done
most of the heavy fighting. We were there in the
third or fourth week of the war. We moved through
Nasiriyah and served in this sort of bombed out
Iraqi air base called Talil in the south. At that
point, the war was still going on. Nasiriyah was
still hot. There was a lot of fighting going on,
somewhat of an insurgency, some remnants of
Saddam's army. Mostly the threat that confronted
us was unexploded ordinance and the occasional
bombing or mortar shell. So, when I settled in
Nasiriyah, it actually was pretty hot. There
wasn't any supply. There wasn't any
infrastructure for soldiers. We were really kind
of roughing it in the desert at first. And then
later as we sort of settled in, after the forces
took Baghdad, then things became more stable, 
and
Nasiriyah was much more of a permanent base.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You were telling us before the
show began, that you began to have doubts early
on about whether you wanted to be in the combat
situation there. Can you talk a little bit about
that, how your thinking evolved?

AIDAN DELGADO: Actually yeah, after I came 
back
from my advanced training as a mechanic in
August, I talked to my sergeant about the
possibility of being a conscientious objector,
and I didn't feel right in the military anymore,
that having become much more serious of a
Buddhist and having given more consideration to
it, I thought maybe the military and I were not a
good fit. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time
to pursue that, because I was deployed to Iraq
very rapid. Over there, you know, two or three
months of the occupation, had really made it much
more personal for me. The idea to become an
objector before was kind of abstract, you know,
because you're not really a soldier, you're just
going to these weekend drills. But then when
you're in war and you're seeing it face-to-face,
it becomes much more immediate, and you just
can't ignore it anymore. And ultimately I was at
such ill ease, and so miserable in the conflict,
doing what I was doing that ultimately, I had to,
and that's when I turned in my weapons and said,
take this back I want to be a conscientious
objector.

AMY GOODMAN: Had you used your weapon.

AIDAN DELGADO: No, thank God. I had no desire 
to
use it, and that's why I felt no remorse at all
giving it up. That just turned out to be the
first step in a very long, very harrowing process
to become a conscientious objector. The command
was extremely hostile.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you also give in your
protective gear?

AIDAN DELGADO: No. Actually, I was issued a
ballistic plate, that's like the hard shell on
the front and back of the vest that actually
stops bullets. Without that, the vest is
virtually useless. I have been issued one, after
I applied for conscientious objector status, they
took it back and said that there weren't enough
and if I wasn't a combatant that I wouldn't need
one. Which was mostly true in Nasiriyah, which it
wasn't much of a threat. However when we went to
Abu Ghraib prison, we were taking 30 to 40 mortar
rounds a night and the base was being routinely
shelled. Then I began to feel the lack of my
ballistic plates.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What was the response of your
fellow soldiers in the unit to your decision?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well you know, I had a few 
close
friends in the army that really kept me alive.
But generally, they were very hostile. People
knew about my background, from Egypt, they 
knew
that I spoke some Arabic. They knew I was very
sympathetic to the Arabs and very critical of the
occupation. So, by and large, people called me a
traitor. They didn't want to sit with me. They
didn't want to eat with me. Didn't want me to go
on missions. They thought I wasn't trustworthy.
And that's really what hurt the most. That I was
there in Iraq, as a soldier, doing my job,
working to the bone as a mechanic, and people
would call me a traitor, and whisper behind my
back. Only my close friends in the motor-pool who
knew what kind of a person I was, knew I was
sincere, ever actually supported me. The 
command
itself was against me and did a lot of sort of
punitive measures, and that's another thing that
showed just how hostile they were.

AMY GOODMAN: Like what?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well initially, they restricted
me to base. I wasn't allowed to leave. I couldn't
go out into the city anymore and talk to Iraqis.
One of the few aspects of my job that I relished,
going on humanitarian missions or speaking to
Iraqis, getting a chance to practice my Arabic
and get acquainted with the local citizens. That
wasn't so bad, you know, the war was getting
really ugly. So I wasn't too sad to be not able
to go out anymore. But then they said that I
couldn't go on home leave because having applied
for conscientious objector status, they were
afraid I wouldn't come back. They said I was a
flight risk, simply because I said I didn't want
to kill anyone. And this was extremely
distressing after eight months in Iraq. I really,
really wanted to go home. Ultimately, I just
pestered my command so much and became such 
a
nuisance they finally relented after about nine,
maybe ten months in Iraq. They let me take my 
two-
week home leave.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You mentioned earlier your
knowledge of Arabic and you said your time in
Egypt. Can you talk a little bit about that? How
you learned Arabic?

AIDAN DELGADO: Sure, actually, my father is a
diplomat. He works in the overseas. I only came
to the United States in 2000 to go to college. I
spent all of my life before that in different
countries, Thailand, Senegal. And then I spent
eight years through middle school and high school
in Egypt. So, I am not a fluent Arabic speaker,
but I picked up slang, street enough to be able
to get along and ironically, I was one of the two
people in the battalion who spoke any Arabic.
They ended up using me sort of as an inform
translator and to help them get around and help
them do things in Nasiriyah. Because I was the
only one that spoke anything.

AMY GOODMAN: And what were Iraqis saying. 
What
were you translating back?

AIDAN DELGADO: Generally at first I was just
buying things, helping people get around the
city. But eventually, Iraqis realizing that I
spoke some Arabic would open up to me and ask 
me
questions about when are you leaving or what are
you doing here? How many are you? Things I
couldn't answer. At first, they were very
friendly. It was almost a level of flowers in the
streets, really. God bless you. We love you. We
love George Bush. Thank you. Down with 
Saddam.
That was in the initial months of the war. As the
occupation continued, their attitude definitely
soured. Six months into it, the predominant
response I got was thank you, God bless you, but
when are you going home. All I could say was
soon, I hope. I want to go back to America, too.
Then near the end in Abu Ghraib when I would
occasionally meet electricians or Iraqis working
in the prison, they would say, you need to go
home. So.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Talk to us about some of that
experience in Abu Ghraib and also the things that
you saw that convinced you more than ever that
you needed to get out of the army?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well, by the time I got into Abu
Ghraib, I had made it clear to the command that I
was very critical of the war, that I was a
pacifist, virtually, that I had no interest in
doing what they were doing. So they knew I was
not going to play ball. They knew I was not going
to tow the party line. So they tried to keep me
as far away from prisoners, prison operations as
possible. Ultimately, they relegated me to the
very undesirable duty of working in the battalion
headquarters. It was a long shift, and it was far
away from my company. But there I got a good
inside view of sort of the running of the prison
and I got to know a lot of what was going on
there. I was working in the command with bunch of
officers and with sort of all of the key
paperwork. That's where I found some things that
really disturbing like I discovered that the
majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib weren't even
insurgents. They weren't even there for crimes
against the coalition. They were there for petty
crimes: Theft, public drunkenness. And they were
here in this horrible, extremely dangerous
prison. That's when I began to feel, oh, my God,
I can't believe I'm even participating in this.
Then there was sort of a series of demonstrations
or prisoner protests against the conditions,
against the cold, against the lack of food and
the type of food. And the military's response to
these demonstrations was, I felt, extremely heavy-
handed. I'm not going to say it was illegal. I
don't have the background to bring a legalistic
challenge, but I will say that it was immoral,
the amount of force they responded with. And I
think I shared some images of prisoners beaten to
within an inch of their life or dead, by the
guards. And five prisoners that I know of were
shot dead during a demonstration for what
amounted to throwing stones. I just felt it was
extremely heavy-handed. I was very disillusioned
with how the military handled it.

AMY GOODMAN: Aidan Delgado we have to go to
break, but when we come back, we want to 
continue
to talk about what happened, because you were
there until April of 2004. The Abu Ghraib prison
scandal was just breaking in the United States.
But you knew about it months before. And we want
to ask you about that. We're speaking with Aidan
Delgado. He served in Iraq. He applied for
conscientious objector status and he ultimately
got it.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. 
I'm
Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez. Our guest is
Aidan Delgado. He's a soldier in the Army
Reserves, served in Iraq from April 2003, where
he was sent to Nasiriyah for 6 months then went
on to Abu Ghraib, where he also spent 6 months.
He applied for conscientious objector status,
turned in his weapon; ultimately when he came
back from Iraq, was granted CO status-
conscientious objector status. And I just want to
warn our viewers--Democracy Now! broadcasts on
three hundred radio and television stations
around the country, Pacifica and NPR stations,
public access TV and PBS stations as well
as...satellite networks….-- I want to warn those
who are not just listening, but viewing, that
Aidan took many pictures in Iraq, and we're going
to be showing some of those pictures. Some are
gruesome-- what he saw, what he captured in Iraq.
And if you don't want to watch, just turn away
and listen.

Tell us about Abu Ghraib, and you can also tell
us about the circumstances of these photographs
that you took.

AIDAN DELGADO: Generally the circumstances at
Abu Ghraib were extremely grim, extremely dire.
My predominant impression of the prisoners [was]
they were treated with the bare minimum 
standards
of humanity. They were in a barbed wire
enclosure, they were resting on wooden platforms
in mud. For a long time, they didn't have cold
weather clothing, and it was extremely cold in
Baghdad. And then there was just the element of
continual brutality and disregard from the
soldiers.

AMY GOODMAN: When did you start to learn 
about
the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib?

AIDAN DELGADO: You're referring to the torture
of the prisoners that came out on CNN, the
scandal? We heard about that in late December,
early January of 2004. We hadn't heard the
specifics, and I myself - I was surprised at the
nature of the abuse-- but that it was going on
was old news to us. We'd heard that there had
been some hijinks in the hard site and certain
units were involved, and one of them was
disgruntled and had sent a tape to CNN. We also
chuckled about that, thinking, "Oh, now we're all
going to get in trouble." And much to our
chagrin, our members of our command came out 
to
us and had a little talk and they said, "You
know, there's some stuff going around but we're
all a family here, we wash our own dirty laundry.
This doesn't need to go to CNN. Nobody needs to
find out about this." There was sort of an
informal gag order, just an attempt to muffle
what was going on.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they acknowledge there 
were
pictures?

AIDAN DELGADO: My impression originally was 
that
it was a videotape. That's what we heard. That
was the main thing, that they had sent a tape to
CNN.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How many soldiers, American
soldiers overall, roughly, were at Abu Ghraib, do
you think?

AIDAN DELGADO: Uh, several thousand.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Several thousand?

AIDAN DELGADO: Yeah, several thousand.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of your unit, you
specifically were doing what at the prison?

AIDAN DELGADO: Mostly my job -- by profession, 
I
was a mechanic, so I was in charge of fixing
humvees. That's what I did a lot of the time
there. However, for about two months they put me
on this battalion radio duty, where I'd be like,
basically, the voice of the base, the radio
operator and coordinating operations. That's when
I got to see a lot of inner workings of the
prison, that was the only chance I had to really
go outside of my unit, outside the motor pool.

AMY GOODMAN: And on the issue of prisoners 
being
shot, prisoners being tortured, what exactly did
you witness?

AIDAN DELGADO: Within two months of being at 
Abu
Ghraib prison, it had become really clear that
the prisoners were dissatisfied, there was a lot
of unrest. There were almost these continual
nightly demonstrations [with] homemade banners;
the prisoners would march around in the yard,
protesting against not being allowed to smoke, or
some conditions-- cold weather, food, different
circumstances. The MP's, the military police, had
experience dealing with these disturbances, and
they put them down relatively peacefully.
However, one day we got sort of like an alert
that everyone was to get on their flak vest and
grab their weapons and report to the base-- to
the prison camp, that is. I of course didn't go,
since I had no weapon.

AMY GOODMAN: You had given in your weapon?

AIDAN DELGADO: Yeah, I had given in my 
weapon
long ago. So, but everyone else in my unit went
out there, because there was a prisoner
demonstration that had become out of control.
They were throwing tent stakes and pieces of
stone and debris. And they had struck one of the
soldiers with a rock. He wasn't seriously
injured, but he was annoyed. And so in response,
they had asked for the permission to use lethal
force. It was still unclear afterwards, in the
military's very cursory investigation, whether
they actually got the order to use lethal force--
it was obscure. So, they opened fire with a heavy
machine gun and they killed five prisoners--
several of whom took several days to die. This is
something that I learned about from the horse's
mouth when they came back and told me, "Oh, 
here
is a photo of the guys we killed. I killed three,
I killed two. My guy took three days to die, I
shot him in the groin with a machine gun." And
the command had even posted these photographs 
in
our headquarters, and they had been very
ghoulishly circulating them. It was very much a
trophy-taking thing. And I remember just sort of
questioning the guy, saying, "Do you really feel
proud of having shot an unarmed man who threw a
stone?" He was like, "Well, I'm doing my job." It
was a very machismo thing, to have killed
someone. I felt this immense loathing and this
immense disgust for the whole incident.

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the pictures that you 
sent,
extremely bloody. People in their own blood,
people shot up. Where are they from?

AIDAN DELGADO: The ones from the initial 
assault
come from the Third Infantry division. They had
gone ahead of us, and we were attached to them,
served as their support. Any of the photos taken
that are extremely sharp, with a telephoto lens--
those come from the Third Infantry division; I
was not the photographer. The grainy photos are,
are myself. The prisoners who were killed, those
photographs come from the people who were 
there.
I received them from a friend of mine who-- from
one of the participants.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do they feel about your
taking pictures?

AIDAN DELGADO: Not good, I imagine. There's a
real old boys' club and a sense of we're all --
there's this brotherhood mentality that we
protect each other and I agree with that in some
respects. But when it comes to just this blatant
immorality, then I feel like I have a duty to
come forward.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But the fact is that many, many
soldiers in Iraq brought cameras with them,
right? Because I have talked to many who have
taken --

AIDAN DELGADO: Thousands.

JUAN GONZALEZ: There must be thousands and
thousands, downloading them into their 
computers...

AIDAN DELGADO: I'm sure there must be 
thousands
of similar photos floating around. The point I
want to bring up is that what happened at Abu
Ghraib that came out on CNN was not anomalous 
in
any way. When I was in the south in Nasiriyah, it
was routine for members of our unit to strike
Iraqi children, break bottles over people's
heads, they would drive by. This was a matter of
no comment. That's how common it was. And so,
they transported all that brutality to Abu
Ghraib. I can tell you that my company would not
be a bad example for all of the soldiers at Abu
Ghraib. And there was just this aura of brutality
and this aura of disconcern.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you feel was the 
signal
being sent by the commanders about the treatment
of civilians or the treatment of prisoners?

AIDAN DELGADO: At best the commanders 
absolutely
ignored anything they knew was going on. I
wouldn't go so far as to say there was approval,
but I would say there was tacit approval in not
condemning it. Our command definitely knew 
about
the prisoners being shot. They posted the photos
in their headquarters. They knew about prisoners
being beaten. But it was just very like, a prison-
guard like machismo atmosphere, like, the harder
you were with the prisoners, the better a soldier
you were. And so there was at least a lack of
concern.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Aidan Delgado, 
at
Abu Ghraib as this was coming out-- as they were
taking the pictures, as the prisoners were opened
fire on, as prisoners-- did you hear that they
were being tortured? The stories of the dogs, the
stories of the sexual abuse?

AIDAN DELGADO: No. No, I never heard any of
those specific incidents. All I encountered was a
prison guard level brutality, like beatings or
shootings. But I heard of someone having their
leg shot off and then dragged on the stump, that
was like the sort of… But I didn't hear of any of
the inventive tortures that came out on CNN.

AMY GOODMAN: And as you come back and now 
have
gotten your conscientious objector status: your
thoughts today about what's happening in Iraq?

AIDAN DELGADO: Well, you know, I am a patriot
despite being a conscientious objector, and I
really do love the U.S., and I really want to be
sort of a voice of conscience for the military.
I'm not trying to denigrate soldiers and I'm not
trying to undermine morale, but I really think
that when something like this happens, I really
want American people to think about their support
for the war. And if they have this sort of
unexamined support for the war, I want them to
know there's all these horrible, nasty incidents
going on, that's taking place in their name, and
that they should have a sense of ownership about
all that, too, in addition to opening schools and
bringing democracy to Iraq. So that's my goal and
the reason I'm speaking and the reason I'm
getting out here is that I want people to examine
their own support for the war, and to think about
all these horrible things that are a part and
parcel of the occupation, like, "When I give my
support for the war, I'm supporting that, too."

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the protective gear. You
didn't have it at Abu Ghraib and you weren't able
to get it, even as you came under attack from the
outside, the shells, gunfire…

AIDAN DELGADO: Yes. Abu Ghraib was being
routinely shelled with mortars and eight foot
rockets from outside the base, from the
insurgency. I had been issued a heavy ballistic
plate in the south. Later, after I applied for
conscientious objector status, my command said
that I didn't need it since I wouldn't be a
combatant. So I didn't have the plate that stops
bullets and heavy shrapnel. So, yeah, it was
dangerous, but it really wasn't something I could
do anything about, so I just tried not to think
about it, and tried to stay out of harm's way as
much as possible. But I felt that was another
punitive measure, at least a repressive measure
against me, for coming out with my beliefs.

AMY GOODMAN: Aidan Delgado, thank you so 
much
for being with us. [Aidan Delgado] served in Iraq
for a year, from April 2003 to 2004, April; was
deployed in Nasiriyah and Abu Ghraib, and
ultimately got conscientious objector status and
now lives in Florida. Thank you for joining us.

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