Election Section

Aidan Delgado, an Army reservist who witnessed multiple war crimes at Abu Ghraib, returns to the Bay Area May 29, 6 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. Joined by other nationally known war resisters—Camilo Mejia, Tim Goodrich, Jeff Paterson, Stephen Funk, along with family members of servicemen killed in Iraq—Delgado will present a slide show of atrocities he himself observed in Iraq. Delgado spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. 

I first saw Delgado’s slide show at Joseph Schottland’s senior government class in Lafayette. The photos were incriminating—a soldier toying with a skull, charred remains of children, a dead prisoner who was unarmed when he was shot. To a roomful of stunned students, Delgado said he observed mutilation of the dead, mass roundup of noncombatants, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire—all violations of the Geneva Conventions, which Delgado seems to know by heart. Delgado’s own buddies—decent Christian men, as he describes them—shot unarmed detainees. 

When I talked with Aidan after class, he expressed deep love for his country, but insisted that racism is driving the occupation, infecting the entire military operation in Iraq. 

“From the very earliest time I was in Iraq,” he said, “I began to see ugly strains of racism among our troops—anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments.” He gave me examples. “There was a master sergeant. He whipped this group of Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna. He just lashed them with it because they were crowding around, bothering him, and he was tired of talking. Another time, a Marine, a lance corporal—a big guy about six-foot-two—planted a boot on a kid’s chest, when the kid came up to him and asked him for a soda. It was a matter of routine for guys in my unit to drive by in a Humvee and shatter bottles over Iraqis’ heads as they went by. And these were guys I considered friends. I told them: ‘What the hell are you doing? What does that accomplish?’ One said back, ‘I hate being here. I hate looking at them. I hate being surrounded by all these Hajjis.’ Hajji is the new ethnic slur for Arabs and Muslims. It is used extensively in the military. The Arabic word refers to one who has gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is used in the military with the same kind of connotation as ‘gook,’ ‘Charlie,’ or the n-word. It’s real common. Throughout my entire stay I never once heard the term ‘Iraqi’ for Iraqis. There was really a thick aura of racism.” 

Delgado saw a lot of paperwork on the detainees. He told me that a lot of prisoners were imprisoned for no crime at all. “They were not insurgents. They were picked up in mass sweeps of men between the ages of 17 and 50. A lot of completely innocent civilians were in prison camp for no offense, and detainees were beaten within inches of their life.” 

For more information on the upcoming event in Berkeley, “Military Voices Against Endless War,” go to www.notinourname.net. For a full-length interview, see “What’s New” on www.inmotionmagazine.com.  

Paul Rockwell is a Bay Area journalist and a columnist for Common Dreams.