US Atrocities In June (pt2)
“Blood red stains on habits black, Fell before my roving eye, Hands uplifted to their god, Now in blood mud dirt they lie." Nuns of El Salvador – Rubicon
Rubicon & Griobhtha
Too long for email? Click the title to read online.
This is the conclusion to US Atrocities In June (pt1)
The bells ring out in the chapel steeple A priest prepares to say mass The sad congregation come tired and hungry To pray that troubles will pass Meanwhile the sun rises over the dusty streets Where the crowd gathers round Flies and mosquitoes are drinking from pools of blood Where his body is found Oh, the soul of El Salvador Out on the ranch the rich man's preparing To go for his morning ride They've saddled his horse out in the corral He walks out full of pride He looks like a cowboy in one of those pictures A president made in the past Peasants in rags, they stand back for they know That El Rico gallops fast Over the soul of El Salvador El Salvador - Christy Moore from Ride On
While it is true that “I don't know what I don't know”, it is also true that once I do know, if I turn a blind eye or fail to act I am guilty of committing the sin of ignorance upon myself and my fellow men.
– Juan Idalgo
I (Rubicon) am going to preface this with what I’ve said before, “There is no condoning or excusing such action” (X Rubicon, Dream Sequence). Nuns occurred one year later from the previous writings concerning June. This just represents failure on so many levels — personal, systemic, and public. This represents complete loss of humanity in order to spread capitalistic greed. We all live with the consequences of my actions, of US fascist ideology. El Salvador now is a complete fascist US outpost, with the largest prison in the world, where Donald Trump has illegally sent people from the US to avoid due process.
You’re not going to like this — I already know this. But the purpose in your reading this is to become aware of US massacres, atrocities, performed and paid for by the US on behalf of Capitalist & Salvadoran fascists, and your own part in allowing these things to happen. You and/or your parents & grandparents authorized this via your “representatives” and Presidents which you voted for; and since all military spending is done on credit, you and everyone who has financed US Government spending are still paying the bill (which has now grown exponentially into the trillions) even at this late date, and the guilt spreads ‘round & ‘round, and the wheels on the bus go ‘round & ‘round. The US proxy wars in Palestine, Syria, and Ukraine are no different, just as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Central America, South America, Africa, and variously elsewhere were no different.
There were 18 missions in all, in Iran, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, just with my own experience, 17 of which involved massive and violent death. Each mission cost in the several millions, and these types of missions were being carried out all over the globe, by Rangers, Green Berets, SEALS, MEF, and Scouts. By June 1981, my eyes opened to the full magnitude of US atrocity, and it became more clear, and the evolution of my thoughts became more clear, and my forebrain rose up in revolt, and guilt began settling on me like a wicked albatross, and inside me like a killing fog. By the time of this mission my conscience was kicking my ass hard, and guilt was ready to crescendo into cacophony. These are related to Memorial Day, and they are detailed prefaces of what will be discussed in the chapter 4 July (to be published on Substack just before that day). But I urge you to read the book and discover what the US, and its citizens, have been guilty of for their entire existence. You have a chance to save yourselves, your sons, your grandsons, your brothers, your lovers, your friends.
There is no pride for me in any of this, only pain. I’ve said repeatedly that I AM guilty. “This writing is a mea culpa, an admittance of guilt. It is the repentance that making amends demands. I AM guilty of the evil I have committed and in which I’ve participated.” (X Rubicon, Rubicon’s Statement)
There are those who will withdraw into twaddling precocious self-righteousness reading these. They mistakenly think that just because they never joined the military, or they are now or always have been, a so-called “pacifist”; or they are armchair “warriors”, or have “served” within the military, or “patriots”, or are non-combat pretenders, etc… they are somehow superior to the millions of men who have gone into combat. You need to disabuse yourself of these ignorant thoughts now. Depending on where you were born, your parents, your relatives, your upbringing, your education, your environment, your indoctrinations, your applied propagandas, your purchased lies, your economic desperations, and more, THIS COULD HAVE BEEN YOU!
You need to be present and aware, especially when our presidents, vice-presidents, Congressidiots, and corrupt Supreme Court “Justices”, and the ultra-rich are egregious fascist virgins talking about sex, ready to sacrifice youth and freedom to war for their own gain.
I invite you, the reader, not to get trapped in the intensity and overwhelming nature of this narrative. If you get snared in personal shock, judgments, and opinions, you will miss the truth of the message which ultimately can bring about understanding, and radical change. This writing has the potential to shake you to your core and inspire you to open your heart and find compassion. Please allow it to touch you deeply and do its healing work. We are all in this together. You WILL be shocked. This experience is extremely shocking. Some of you will be shocked, because you won’t want to believe such evil demands were placed on a young man at the tender age of 18 years and that he did such evil deeds in the name of “freedom and liberty”. And you won’t want to even entertain the notion that this is not just one veteran’s story. There are thousands of stories akin to this one. (Julie in X Rubicon: Foreward, Or The Vanguard)
~
Nuns
#16 – June 1981
Blood red stains on habits black,
Fell before my roving eye,
Hands uplifted to their god,
Now in blood mud dirt they lie.
— Nuns of El Salvador – Rubicon
El Salvador. Oligarch families formed the power in El Salvador under the auspices of the US, and military leaders trained by US forces and the SOA [School of the Americas] exacted rule. In the ‘70s, liberation theology took hold with a vengeance for the people to attempt to hold on to their land, homes, and villages which oligarchs and US interests wanted to control or own. There was, of course, an opposition based on socialist ideas. Roman Catholic Arch-Bishop Oscar Romero was the most outspoken critic of the regime and US support of that regime. US President Jimmy Carter, spewing the usual anti-communist rhetoric vowed in Oval Office conversations to squash any and all socialist sentiments in Central America. He complained about Romero to Zbignew Brzezinski, who in a recorded call to the Vatican demanded that they silence Romero, “or we will”. Low and behold, in March 1980, in a country practically guided by the CIA, Arch-Bishop Romero was murdered while officiating in front of his congregation. Nuns of all orders were helping the people and rebels with humanitarian support, because the oppression was that strong, and evil reigned in a civil war of the Haves seeking to have more.
~
Another convoy was to be destroyed, consisting of ~30 heavy trucks filled with weapons, ammunition, explosives, and personnel, and ~15 support vehicles, mostly all terrain vehicles with machine guns bolted in the bed or rear area, a few maintenance vehicles for the larger trucks, and a small fuel tanker. The rebels controlled the mountain areas, and moved these things around to avoid detection. The CIA received information of the move and I was ordered along with Wicked Wanda and Big Ben to destroy this convoy. After reviewing imagery and times, I conferred with the pilots and picked the best location for an ambush trap, along a high mountain road which left no room to maneuver or escape.
A troop helicopter dropped me with gear and supplies (explosives) on top of a hill opposite the road the convoy would be on. In the middle, between the hill and road, was a fairly deep ravine, with serious drops on the road side. I positioned myself on this hill across the main ravine ~100 yards away from, and with equidistant view of, the road.
At the location of the ambush the road wound slowly back and forth around ravine drops with an extreme slope above and an extreme drop-off below. This section wound like this for ~2km, enough room for all vehicles to fit in the trap. Wicked Wanda and Big Ben (AC-130H Spectre Gunships) marked my location via radio signal to avoid firing there, because from 20,000 feet away, everything on infrared camera [or radar] looks like target blips. A shallow bridge-like connection led from my side to an area in the front of the road trap. Previous to the convoy’s arrival I used charges to fell trees across the road at the front of the trap, well before the connection spot. I then laid RC mines at various distances down the road.
These gunships were killing machines. The twin Gatling guns alone were meant to place an explosive projectile, with the approximate force of a grenade, in every square foot of a football field size area in a single pass. If you were in their line of fire, you were going to die.
At ~0030 the convoy had fully entered the trap and had to stop for the fallen trees, I exploded the road charges, then painted the lead truck with a laser which Wicked Wanda hit with its 40mm gun and proceeded onto the second truck. Simultaneously, Big Ben used its 105mm Howitzer to destroy the road to the rear, then began hitting the trucks from that end. On this occasion, in addition to my M-16 with scope, I took a sniper rifle. As trucks, cargo, and personnel were destroyed by alternating 105mm and 40mm cannon fire, and repeated bursts of twin 20mm Gatling guns, rebel personnel were attempting to flee. Some attempted climbing up to no avail, with 20mm rounds or my sniper rifle picking them off. Some attempted going down, only to meet the same fate or simply fell to their death. Some saw my flash and fired in my direction, and I heard rounds wizz by, but was alright by changing locations. Many were attempting to traverse the road, explosions, and burning wreckage to get out the ends, only to meet their death by 20mm rounds or sniper fire.
After 15-20 minutes the constant firing ceased, and after ~40 minutes all firing ceased, and Wicked Wanda and Big Ben left the target area. They still detected live human targets, not moving, but they had to go. I had additional orders from the CIA – no survivors to tell about the gunship attack, and I was to check the road and trucks to ensure that all weapons, ammunition, and people had been destroyed – euphemistically named by the CIA, Clean Up. I really despised this part of the mission. It’s easy enough to locate intact weapons and ammunition boxes, toss a grenade and destroy it; but its quite another to search for survivors and kill them. There were a few who were only slightly wounded and still wanted to fight. Who wouldn’t? But there were some who were conscious and expected mercy, a hospital, medical attention. But while in a declared conflict the US still doesn’t follow rules of humane treatment, in undeclared conflicts, especially run by the CIA, no such rules apply. The CIA officer in charge of this mission, who I had worked with many times, declared that you could kill whoever you wanted and as many as you wanted, so long as it fulfilled the orders, the US wasn’t implicated, and it didn’t interfere with the Agenda.
I started at the front of the road and approached the first truck. It had a gaping hole blown through its engine compartment and the cargo area was a burning splintered wreck. Bodies lay everywhere, torn to shreds by shrapnel, exploding 20mm or 40mm rounds, just blown apart, burned by explosion or tracer rounds, or half vaporized by 105mm shells. I found a few trucks with cargo areas still intact, and tossed in grenades. I found rebels alive and mangled so badly that shooting them in the head was their best blessing at that point; and there were, as always, a few who feigned being wounded or dead and tried to escape, to no avail.
When you carefully wend your way through such a mess, being careful and watchful for enemies who may fire on you, you naturally crawl or get on your hands and knees. The day had been dry. The road had been relatively dry. However, common to these convoys in an ambush trap, that many bodies bleeding out in such a confined area had turned much of the ground into mud made with blood. You would find yourself standing in puddles of blood up to your ankles, crawling through blood, kneeling in blood… and you could smell it – an overwhelming metallic smell that reeked of iron.
I also found what I had feared; what I thought I saw through my scope… nuns. Nuns in headdress and work clothes. Out of ~400 rebels, I counted 30 nuns and/or novices. They were all unarmed. They were grouped together, many with hands clasped in prayer, holes torn through their bodies and heads, some with a single sniper wound. From a distance, I could think, “Was that a nun?” But immediately it would seem impossible that there would be nuns. I couldn’t really tell, so I kept firing.
Nuns had been supplying humanitarian aid to villages throughout the country under threat and terrorism of the government – food, medical attention, etc... Often they traveled with rebel convoys to new locations to assist the people and provide succor. This raised so many doubts and questions in my mind about what we were doing there, about the morality of what we were doing. I wasn’t being religious, but I wondered why women who wanted peace in the world would be so convicted to help in an obvious civil war. I started to ask myself what the rebels were fighting for, instead of accepting the word of my commanders, especially the CIA.
Having finished what can only be described as macabre clean up, I returned to my hill location. I called for the Combat Talon, and they dropped a Fulton Recovery Unit. I donned the harness and let up the balloon, and they yanked me off that hill and pulled me in, and I thought how badly those rebels would have liked this for an escape.
Back at the staging base, I rounded up the pilots and Electronic Warfare Officers and told them that nuns were in the convoy. To a man they replied, “Really? That’s interesting.” but didn’t really care. When I told the debriefing officer, Lt Weasel, he said, “Who cares? The CIA doesn’t care and neither do we. The nuns have no business sticking their noses in this.” I became enraged and yelled, “You motherfucker! That’s so fucked up!”. The observing sergeant pulled me from the room.
I spent sleepless nights after this trying to understand what I was involved in; why people were so willing to invest their lives in fighting; why we were always supporting right-wing regimes with ties to US business vs supporting human rights and calling out mendacity. Learning more about the conflict, I learned that right-wing Salvadoran military and para-military death squads had targeted nuns for rape, torture, and murder because they opposed the regime and preached liberation theology. I started to feel like a Nazi.
Reflecting on the fact that the CIA always knew how many would be in the convoys – and they knew ~400 would be on this one – it has struck me that they knew nuns were aboard this convoy, but they chose not to make this known or debate the issue. With the intelligence they had gathered, and with what they did share, it’s not possible they didn’t know. Somewhere in Washington or Langley pictures of dead nuns torn to shreds by US fire sit in archives. The CIA, in many respects, is a lot like the SS, with detailed documentation and images of the death and destruction they have orchestrated. The United States Central Intelligence Agency knew those nuns would be killed, and they wanted them killed because they upset the Agenda.
To this day the sadness over having participated in this atrocity pervades my being. It’s one thing to attack and kill those who don soldiering outfit and gear – they know what they’re getting in to; but to slaughter those whose sole purpose is to support, protect, and provide aid to the afflicted and innocent...
You may wonder, do I feel my evil here? Absolutely!
El Salvador — Christy Moore
~
An Epilogue of sorts, trying to see Dawn
In 1937 GA Borgese, an Italian who had lived under Fascism, a columnist and university professor of literature, finished his epic work Goliath: The March Of Fascism (1938, New York, The Viking Press). He went on to teach at the University of Chicago. His thoughts for a new Dawn, as opposed to the current reality of Fascist ideology, envisioned a brotherhood & sisterhood of mankind, yet he was unaware of the nuclear weapons that would emerge from WW2, but I find him intuitive and understanding nonetheless. I think now he would tell us that Fascism did indeed win.
“Should Fascism win a world war, then the blackness of the coming age would make the so-called Dark Ages of the past seem as bright as sunshine. They never at their darkest willfully rejected the unbroken tradition of man…
“No interest has been saved, no feeling has been spared by Fascism; and all fine things of Earth and sky have been defiled. May the world confusion be as short as it is ruinous, the Dawn as near as the night is deep.
“Dawn, however, will rise, in days or generations. And a great lesson will have been bequeathed by the black age to man. From the gratuitousness of Fascism, to the towering heights to which Destruction was lifted by it on foundations of pure perverseness and idiocy without any concern of necessity or motives, man will learn a higher estimate of the power which resides in his imagination and will.”
~
Rubicon spent just under three years as a military Scout. During that time he was awarded the “AF Cross, 2 Silver Stars, 4 Bronze Stars, Defense Superior Service Medal, AF Good Conduct Medal, and the CIA Distinguished Service Medal” (ODNI). When he refused to kill further, he was stripped of these awards and was abandoned with his PTSD by the military and thrown away.
Sean Griobhtha (gree-O-tah) is a combat veteran. His latest book is X Rubicon: Crossing Life, Sex, Love, & Killing in CIA Proxy Wars: An indictment of US Citizens: ignorantia non excusat, which details the life of Rubicon (“2.5 years Deception & Death; 40+ years locking away Emotions & Truth”). It’s important that you read the Foreward, Or, The Vanguard; written by a highly intelligent woman with a heart of empathetic gold; she’ll bring you in gently, which neither Rubicon nor I would ever do.
Mrs Rubicon has been tutoring dyslexics and non-dyslexics in reading and writing for over three decades. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities, and a Master’s degree in Pastoral Care and Psychology. She completed Pastoral Care training at the University of Chicago Hospital; and she has worked with various court systems in turning children around. She has volunteered in school sponsored reading programs where we’ve again witnessed her skill in improving even the most recalcitrant students. She holds teaching certification in Orton-Gillingham tutoring from the Michigan Dyslexia Institute.
If you enjoyed this writing, you can tell Crossing Rubicons that their writing is valuable by purchasing X Rubicon from Amazon, Ingram, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, your local independent book seller, or your favorite digital store. View about the author, the book, and abridged translations here. If you would like to understand the effort and trouble that went into publishing this book, read X Rubicon: Author Statement.
Thank You Sean
Was Nuland’s putrid Ipecac Face used in this pic of the State of Liberty?