Carmelized remains of a White Phosphorus victim in Fallujah (Photobucket Commons)
Ross: I've seen that documentary put together by the Italian journalists. [see my article on White Phosphorus use in Fallujah - Mac]
Mac: Yeah, that's the one I'm referring to. And then I saw some still photos too. Did you see any bodies that were burned like that?
Ross: I didn't see any burned bodies.
Mac: So, did you see very many civilians running around during all these firefights, or was everyone just hunkered down?
Ross: The chain of command told us that there were zero civilians inside the city, that the only people left were these hardcore international Jihadists. On the very first day, though, we saw that that wasn't true. We saw civilians on the first day. We saw women and children trying to cross the street with a white flag. But the way we had justified like the way we were doing combat, in a way that there would be extreme levels of collateral damage, like using tanks in an urban center, was that we kept maintaining that there were no civilians in the city, so, I mean, from the very first day we knew that was bullshit, but we kept doing it anyway.
And we even started using this tactic called reconnaissance by fire, which is basically when you fire into a house to see what's inside. So if you fire into it and hear screaming and stuff, then you know there's people inside.
Mac: That's right out of the Geman Wermacht playbook!
Ross: But I've heard reports from friends from my same unit that they ran into civilians too. They take a very different point of view on this from me. They think that we were extremely compassionate toward civilians, that when we did see civilians in the city, that we called in trucks to truck them out into the desert. From their point of view we were being compassionate.
Mac: Before I forget, let me ask you a couple of background questions. Where are you from?
Ross: Fitchburg, it's like central Massachusetts.
Mac: And what prompted you to join the Marine Corps?
Ross: Free college, money, benefits, respect.
Mac: After the three weeks in Fallujah, then where did you end up?
Ross: What did I end up doing?
Mac: Yes
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