New book on Iraq abuse

Published in France at least.

US military training has created troops so desensitised to violence that battleground brutality in Iraq is rampant - and has helped fuel the bloody fighting seen there today, a new book released in France by a former marine says.

Jimmy Massey, a former staff sergeant, told AFP that the daily attacks now confronting US-led forces and Iraqi civilians were "because of the brutality that the Iraqi people saw at the start of the invasion".

In his book, Kill! Kill! Kill!, he says he and other marines in his unit killed dozens of unarmed Iraqi civilians because of an exaggerated sense of threat, and that they often experienced sexual-type thrills doing so.

The book was being released first in France - and in French - because, he said, "I didn't find an American publisher"....