Truthout: "The Iraq War Through a Soldier's Eyes"

RENNER: This is Matt Renner, reporting from Winter Soldier in Silver Spring, Maryland. Today I sat down with Logan Mehl-Laituri [transcribed as "Logan Latorre"] to talk with him about his faith, and how it affected his experience in Iraq and as a veteran.

LOGAN: I told myself I was Christian basically my whole life, and I came to see that that faith obligates me to nonviolence. I applied to be a conscientious objector — I asked my unit, my commanders, specifically, to return to Iraq without a weapon; I asked to be a non-combatant. Through the process of being a CO, and having an interview with the psychiatrist, I was given a diagnosis of maladjustment disorder, because every soldier is trained to be an infantryman first — so the idea of a soldier going to battle without a weapon is incomprehensible.

RENNER: You testified on a panel about the rules of engagement. During your testimony you spoke about your faith — can you tell me more about that?

LOGAN: A lot of my discomfort going into Iraq, because I called myself a Christian, was the religious language that was used to justify the war — I never quite felt on board with that. As I began to study the Bible a lot more intimately and personally, I realized that isn't what the Bible is talking about. I've always told people that, to me, my CO application wasn't an application — it was a declaration: this is who I was, this is what I believe. The federal government could recognize it, or they may not — but that won't change who I am.

RENNER: And you actually wanted to serve in combat, but—

LOGAN: That's correct — as an unarmed non-combatant, that's correct. It was at that point I was told I'd lied to my psychiatrist, that I had some grand scheme to get out of the Army — even though I was clear, in my packet and to the psychiatrist, that I didn't want to leave my unit at all. And I was told that I'd, quote, "gotten what I wanted." I was immediately reassigned to another unit.

RENNER: Your unit then redeployed without you — is that right?

LOGAN: I watched from the balcony of staff duty as guys were saying goodbye to their families. The buses had come, and I remember looking out for my first sergeant, wishing more than anything that he'd understood what I really wanted. It really was a conundrum for me, because I felt very strongly that Christians can serve their country [transcribed as "can't" — this reads more consistently as "can" given the rest of the sentence, but flagged since it changes the meaning; check the audio], but they must first and foremost serve the God they worship — and the God I worship is nonviolent. His grace exceeds justice.

At the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, my battalion commander — after three weeks "in the box" at Fort Irwin — sat my company down for a pep talk, and made it explicitly clear that if there was a problem, if the wrong person went down, we would plant weapons to make sure you guys were protected.

RENNER: In your testimony, you talked about your commander briefing your unit and saying your unit would cover up civilian deaths by using drop weapons. Can you tell me about that?

LOGAN: Yeah — the terminology wasn't used, but he did make it expressly clear that if the wrong person went down, he'd make sure — he had our best interest in mind, and it was couched in language that was very much, "I'm here to protect you, I'm here for you." But the reality was that he was willing to commit a crime in order to give his own soldiers immunity — essentially, that we'd be immune to the moral ramifications of what we were doing.

RENNER: But how did this play out, actually, on the ground? [transcribed as "on the street norick" — unclear, possibly a verbal filler or a mangled word; check audio]

LOGAN: I didn't end up deploying with that commander — that was the commander I would have had for my second deployment. In June or July of [200]7, just recently after he'd given that speech at the National Training Center, two of his unit members came under Article 32 charges — similar to a grand jury. They were charged with premeditated murder, in an incident where a sergeant first class, an E-7, shot a detainee and ordered a specialist to do the same. I think that case is still pending, but the significance to me is that the atmosphere existed [that made something like that possible].

Signal, shout, show, shove, shoot — that was the extent of what our ROE was, on a running basis. The one rule we could always count on was: if you feel threatened, don't hesitate to use a weapon, if you feel it's necessary — because that was our license. If something occurred, we could always say we were threatened. I observed that a couple of times with other members of my unit.

RENNER: A lot of people on the panel talked about the general attitude toward the civilian population of Iraq. What would you say the general attitude was, and how did this affect interactions between U.S. forces and the civilian population?

LOGAN: I lived with our platoon interpreter for about a month and a half, I think, during the time we were in Kirkuk. It was the first time I really understood Iraqis as human beings — like, "oh, these guys have lives." He was a graduate of Mosul University [transcribed as "Missoula University"], with an engineering degree. He'd served in the Iraqi National Guard, or the Republican Guard — [he himself was uncertain which, or this was unclear in the recording]. He was working with the Americans, who by the time we left were seen as an occupying force. When we first got there, I don't think that sentiment had really solidified yet — I think people were still pretty friendly and sympathetic toward us. But by the time we left, [interpreters like him] were seen as collaborators with the enemy.

I began wondering what it must have felt like to walk through his own country and watch foreigners shoot, kill, or run over his own countrymen, and the emotional turmoil that must have brought him — knowing his family was still living there, that they couldn't tell their neighbors he was working with us [they may have had to say he was dead, for his family's safety — original unclear here], and that he'd been promised extraction [transcribed as "extradition," which doesn't fit the context — "extraction," meaning resettlement/evacuation, is almost certainly correct] once he was done working with the Americans.

I think after a certain period of time, when we were in a static position, or if we visited a forward operating base that had artillery or mortars sitting in a static position for more than a week or two, you have to register the guns — to weather conditions, and other factors. So every now and then forward observers were tasked to sit on an OP and watch rounds being fired — "training," if you want to call it that, because we did use it to train up some of our younger soldiers. But essentially what we were doing was firing rounds into Iraq because we were bored. I didn't understand until recently that white phosphorus isn't supposed to be used against, or near, civilian targets, et cetera — that's what we used as training rounds, in what were "hasty" impact areas.

RENNER: In your testimony, you talked about the use of white phosphorus around mortar rounds—

LOGAN: Yeah — it's not supposed to be used as a weapon. [The classification given was something like "marking and incendiary" — original transcribed nonsensically as "Swizz Beatz from marketing," almost certainly a badly garbled military term; this is a guess, not a confident reconstruction.] To me, the words were like "incendiary, non-personnel" — but there was something that didn't quite connect. So when I called for fire with Willie Pete [white phosphorus], we were just registering the guns and keeping them current — it wasn't like I was calling it in on people. There's a disconnect, a cognitive dissonance: this weapon isn't supposed to be used except for specific purposes, and — no fault of my own, but the training wasn't conducted in a way that instilled an awareness that there's real weight to what you're doing. I think a lot of people kind of stumble onto that themselves — when they have their first kill, or have to run over even animals, possibly children. I think that's where that moral awareness snaps into focus — after you've done something that was too much. I think that's where I was at.

RENNER: During your testimony, you quoted Martin Luther King, in a speech he made about the Vietnam War. Why did those words resonate with you?

LOGAN: Martin Luther King was a man of faith, in my mind — he was a prophet of the highest degree. He called our country to account on several occasions — it began with civil rights, but as the Vietnam War grew, he began to speak out on that as well. He said something like: "I can't speak to the violence in our streets unless I also address the greatest purveyor of violence in the world — and that's our own government." And he did it because he loved America. I'm not an enemy of America — I grew up here, there's no amount of anything that can get the American out of me. And that involves a certain amount of pain for me too, because I don't want to be doing what we're doing in Iraq. I'm for peace and security in Iraq, but unfortunately, the longer we stay there, the longer we withhold that from a sovereign country. I understand and recognize the risk of pulling out, but what we're doing hasn't worked for five years, and we need to try something different.

RENNER: From Winter Soldier in Silver Spring, Maryland — this has been Matt Renner, reporting for Truthout.