By MBD April 4, 2014 0 Comments Read More →
After six years in the U.S. Air Force, a former drone operator has started opening up about the psychological toll of killing large numbers of innocent people.
Brandon Bryant, 27, from Missoula, Montana, killed scores of innocents – by his own admission – simply by pressing a button from a control room in New Mexico.
Bryant couldn’t take any more after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan. He knew that following the orders was wrong, but the very fact that he had been ordered to murder people who it was clear to all were innocent, told him that he was fighting for some very bad people.
“I saw men, women and children die during that time,” he said in an interview with Spiegel Online. “I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn’t kill anyone at all.”
Bryant joined the military when he was told that he could go to college for “free” if he enlisted. It was shortly thereafter that he found himself shooting innocent people by remote.
The very first time he fired a drone missile, Bryant killed two men instantly and cried all the way home.
“I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week,” he explained.
“I saw men, women and children die.”
“These moments are like in slow motion,” he said further.
After seeing a flash on the screen – an explosion – and a building collapsing on a child right next to it, he had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the drone operator who was sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the more seasoned operator coldly replied.
Now, he says, he “can’t just switch and go back to normal life.”
Bryant has left the military and is living back at home in Montana, and has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
(Article by M.B. David)
Replies
April 23 ... alignment of the Grand Cardinal Cross ... maybe that has something to do with it .. I think ..
Goldenmind: What's going on April 22-25?
This type of senseless killing has been going on for a long, long time. Not drone killing but impersonal killing, like in war. It's now getting quicker and easier with advances in technological weaponry. Maybe it gets to a point where the reality of it cannot be ignored so easily because of the advances in social media that come with technology. Then the collective unconscious puts a stop to it. I think we're reaching that point. More and more are waking up to the fact that we are all the same humans regardless of viewpoint or appearance.
The people who gave him the orders to do it need to be stopped, quite obviously ... they are crazy, heartless, robotic psychopaths and their daily job is to make sure that drone operators kill people ... they are more screwed up than this guy ... but he is brain washed aswell ...
The whole thing is really messy ... makes me wonder how many more inocent lives are going to be wiped out..
It often makes me wonder how these people will actually feel as they begin to wake up from the illusion they are under ... and realise what they have done .. as their awareness of the Christ Conciousness unfolds ... and where is their karma?
I feel almost as sorry for this young man as for the people he was ordered to kill. Maybe even more. He has to live with his conscience while the "casualties" are in Elysieum beyond this world of pain and tears.
cant wait for the main streem media audience read/watch these stories...................
I hear ya Michael, however, I am afraid these type of true stories get swept under the rug....The pile under the rug is turning into a mountain. Mainstream media is not allowed to share these types of stories...Media is controled and not supposed to make the President or government look bad. It is monstous to expect someone to sit and kill people, innocents like that...It is enough to break anyone with a conscience or morals...so sad that it would be expected of anyone. It is sickening when the killing of innocent children and civilians just going about their lives is considered simply collateral damage...so sad a statement about mankind and about who is giving the orders behind the scenes....
It is terrible what happens to people in the army. Many of them suffer from PTSD, but also many people can suffer from PTSD from abusive childhoods.