{"id":102641,"date":"2020-07-25T09:16:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T13:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=102641"},"modified":"2020-07-25T09:16:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T13:16:27","slug":"us-marines-trained-to-gasp-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=102641","title":{"rendered":"US Marines Trained to *GASP* Kill!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-102642 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/recon-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"476\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/recon-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/recon-500x327.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/recon.jpg 634w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Sergeant Rudy Reyes, 48, of Kansas City, Missouri, was part of a small group of elite Recon Marines sent ahead of the 2003 invasion in order to &#8216;clear the path&#8217; to Baghdad, making it easier for the regular US Army to reach the city. Pictured, US Marines in Iraq in March 2003<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Thank you Captain Obvious. In it&#8217;s typical shrill, hyperbolic fashion, the Daily Mail stuns us with the revelation that US Marines are trained killers, that the training begins in Marine Boot Camp (even the Hollywood one), and the recruits are desensitized at an early stage to some of the more gruesome realities of combat. This aspect of Marine training, with varying levels of sophistication, has been going on as long as there has been a US Marine Corps, and likely was stolen whole cloth from the British Royal Marines. All of which makes perfectly good sense to me.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently <a class=\"author\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/home\/search.html?s=&amp;authornamef=Stephanie+Linning+For+Mailonline\" rel=\"nofollow\">STEPHANIE LINNING<\/a> of the Daily Mail finds all this very newsworthy, and has found a self-described Recon Marine to relate his experiences in both training and combat.<\/p>\n<p>Caution! Graphic, err, verbiage and mental images ahead.<\/p>\n<h2>US Marine who was part of an elite group sent to Iraq to &#8216;clear a path&#8217; to Baghdad ahead of the 2003 invasion says he was &#8216;systematically trained to kill&#8217; and shown videos of heads being shot off to desensitize him to violence<\/h2>\n<ul class=\"mol-bullets-with-font\">\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>Sergeant Rudy Reyes, 48, of Kansas City, Missouri, served in the Iraq War\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>He was part of a small group of &#8216;Recon Marines&#8217; sent ahead of the 2003 invasion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>Sergeant Reyes describes how he was &#8216;systematically trained to kill&#8217; people\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li class=\"class\"><strong>Told how he spent three weeks fighting with no sleep during the mission<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">A US Marine who once fought for three weeks &#8216;without sleep&#8217; has spoken of how he was &#8216;systematically programmed to kill&#8217; and desensitized to violence in a\u00a0<a id=\"mol-5b3e4700-c513-11ea-9125-b18e89a09dbc\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/bbc\/index.html\">BBC<\/a>\u00a0documentary series about the\u00a0<a id=\"mol-5b4042d0-c513-11ea-9125-b18e89a09dbc\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/iraq\/index.html\">Iraq<\/a>\u00a0War.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Sergeant Rudy Reyes, 48, of Kansas City, Missouri, was part of a small group of elite &#8216;Recon Marines&#8217; sent ahead of the 2003 invasion in order to &#8216;clear the path&#8217; to Baghdad, making it easier for the regular US Army to reach the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Speaking in tonight&#8217;s episode of BBC2 documentary Once Upon A Time In Iraq, Reyes explains how he was shown real-life footage of targets having their heads blown off by sniper rifles as part of his training.<\/p>\n<p>He also reveals how recruits are ordered to say the word &#8216;kill&#8217; instead of &#8216;yes&#8217; during boot camp training as part of their &#8216;program to kill&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;In our boot camp, do you know how we say the word &#8220;yes&#8221;? It&#8217;s the word &#8220;kill&#8221;. It&#8217;s the only way you can say &#8220;yes&#8221;,&#8217; he explains.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Then we go into ballistics. Then we&#8217;re watching real world: head shots, footage of sniper kills. And then they&#8217;re slowing it down in slow motion, head expanding three times the size, then vacuum collapse, then brains and skull.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;When I saw that I looked at myself inside and I said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know if I have what it takes to do this.&#8221; Because there was still some human in me.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Reyes, who left the military in 2005 and is now a TV personality and martial arts instructor, describes the Marine Recon as the &#8216;Jedis&#8217; of the US Marine Corps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Recalling the Iraq deployment, he says: &#8216;We went three weeks straight with no sleep, straight fighting. No armor, no doors, no roofs. Just very capable violent professionals.\u00a0Sixty men spearheading the blitzkrieg to get to Baghdad. That&#8217;s immense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">He continues: &#8216;Our mission was to destroy any capacity they had for artillery or mortars. And also, of course, the NBC: nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Describing the scenes he witnessed, he says: &#8216;Incoming and outgoing artillery, small arms, machine guns, birds and rotary wing and the sound of all the engines, and the radios going non-stop, word going back and forth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Imagine seeing the freaking Cobras criss-crossing above you and the bass of the boom, boom, boom, boom&#8230; It was god-like.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Asked if he thinks his time in Iraq was &#8216;worth it&#8217;, Reyes adds: &#8216;Yes, it&#8217;s worth it. I think it has to be worth it. What&#8217;s the alternative?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Once Upon a Time in Iraq offers a closer look at the War and life under Isis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Since his time in the Marines, Reyes has spoken out about the devastating mental impact &#8216;heavy combat&#8217; had on him, explaining in a piece for\u00a0<a class=\"class\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@HeadstrongProj\/facing-stigma-with-rudy-reyes-65f8309b8480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer noopener\">Medium<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 that he struggled with depression after returning home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;After all that heavy combat, some of the worst suffering I went through was when I got home and had nobody around anymore,&#8217; he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-102643 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sgt-reys-250x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"408\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sgt-reys-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sgt-reys-277x333.jpg 277w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sgt-reys.jpg 634w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" \/><br \/>\nSergeant Rudy Reyes<\/p>\n<p>Read the rest, including a shameless plug for Episode 1 of <em>Once Upon A Time In Iraq<\/em>, here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/femail\/article-8517789\/US-marine-says-systematically-trained-kill.html\">Daily Mail<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hat tip to Mason for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sergeant Rudy Reyes, 48, of Kansas City, Missouri, was part of a small group of elite &hellip; <a title=\"US Marines Trained to *GASP* Kill!\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=102641\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">US Marines Trained to *GASP* Kill!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[406,400,331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-link","category-iraq","category-marines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102644,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102641\/revisions\/102644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}