welcome back here with our team here's a look at the top stories do you want to says a syria crisis has become a civil war with daily bloodshed resulting in more than four thousand deaths in nine months this comes as the e.u. ramps up pressure on the country with more financial and energy sanctions. egypt is holding its breath as it awaits the results of an opening stage of its first parliamentary elections despite the fact many doubt it will bring any real change protesters are demanding the military rulers step down and make way for civilian government. thousands of protesters take to the streets of new york to stage

a labor union rally demanding jobs and economic justice the latest demonstration comes on the back of occupy protesters swept through the u.s. for more than two months. because we had lines here on our t.v. back at the top of the hour meantime though we'll bring you special reports to kill or not to kill so watch this on the u.s. soldiers in iraq and of the difficult dilemma they have to face. the. reason why i don't army. i mean easy for my recruiter i say as why should a machine go and jump out of a plane he said sad right here i was raised on american pie i was

a cradle conservative i was voted most likely to succeed most conservative my nickname among a lot of my friends was g.i. josh and i wanted to the friend my pantry and i tried to listen the marines were that high school that hurt my football so join the national guard and i ended up going to west point and being punished enough for. football they have a patriotic son of a gun i love this country it's done some great pinch me about some great opportunities all of my grandfathers fought in world war one my father far awards who had offered for korea because it was their fault in vietnam or so there has been a family member in the military since there have been a couple. at

some point every soldier has to face the question like be able to kill another human. contact this film is about killing and war and about some us soldiers who have chosen not to the evidence is that far more soldiers refuse to kill and we might expect. in world war two research by the official us army historian brigadier general as l.a. marshall revealed that among the u.s. soldiers in combat less than twenty five percent actually fired their weapons at the enemy even with their own lives at risk seventy five percent

did not try to kill the enemy marshall wrote the average individual still has such an inner resistance toward killing a fellow man that he will not pay for life if it is possible turn away from that responsibility or confide all point he becomes conscientious objector. research doing as a soldier as a human being or even to live with you have to ask yourself and

what situations would kill in the right it's just not something you can put behind the states with the carrier hard. people are shocked by how upsetting it is to kill another human being. the end it's not that soldiers are somehow different or it's not hard to kill. soldiers to feel. only because they've been trained to do that for her. i. heard her. i. am not very. of the if that's true you are the if. i

thought of the birth of the i. celebrate right white right here up of a little part. no wonder bullets start flying that about a country like that about a man right next to you reckon you're right and that's about it. the earth. it would open up some people they cope with it differently than i but it all they don't talk about what they did over there with a wife and all the time they get drunk. i told my wife but i do know that. course i got drunk but it does happen. just have

to let it out. here thank you. so much. money. a lot was over there. maybe i thought i had to go through ten year old boy over there. he's going grenades in my squad if you do that grenade it would have been maybe five or six maybe the tire squad would mean he's a killed or wounded or just one kid and that's something that's something that you know that i made that decision because i was the person in charge at that time and

i got no regrets about it but looking back at it no it's like the demons come back . that's why at heart. and i say they were are we are doing the right thing over there. and. people just don't understand what it's like to be your. you know we recruit people to serve their country and to kill we train them how to kill we as asters develop the orders for them to kill. will give them awards or on the back a lot of times or you know credit them for being affective fighters and killers but

we never explain to them why it's ok so that when they do with even trained so well to do they can be a peace with our consciences for the rest of life. has anyone heard of s.l. a marshall man against far that's elaine marshall was the army's first real good story he was the head of the history department for world war two one thing he noticed is that in most units only one in four people try to kill the enemy. most people at the point of looking down and time to pull the trigger became conscientious objectors and there's a lot of reporter that it was a lot of people coming out saying yeah you know that was my experience i just couldn't kill. so the army decided well that's not good so the army said ok how do we help them overcome this. and they said let's can this one people so the idea is

reflexive fire training persons are torn apart. and just conditioning conditioning you to. keep shooting sure. what you want people to do is they're so trained they just. dead right where is the next target. and that's good it becomes muscle memory you don't think about it you can do it. and you raise an issue as fast as you can. so. firing rates went up to a fifty to sixty percent very korean war was introduced is not a training eighty five to ninety percent. in the vietnam war and i haven't seen any numbers on a current war. and i thought the whole lot of something isn't true leaders and people say. people are more lethal believe never imagined.

think. the problem with reflexive fire framing is it does bypass their moral decision making process so as in previous wars before we had this kind of training a soldier would look at a target and think through you know thinking through should i shoot this person ok now i'm going to shoot all that takes time that's dangerous. when you train a reflexive lee don't they learn to make those decisions much more quickly but the price of that is they're not thinking through the great moral decision of killing another human being. we sleep comfortably in our beds at night because of violent men the violence on

our behalf when i first read that i thought to myself i'm the person who allows people to sleep comfortably in their beds at night but hadn't actually gone to do the violence yet. i grew up in an evangelical household in evangelical christian household i grew up hearing stories about the nobility of service. war is not fought by or for ideas it was fought by individual persons who possess human will. liberty and democracy were not necessarily in the forefront of my mind i was first told to lock and load my m. sixteen. i was the only person to raise my hand when

a convoy commander as who's never done this before. look me in the eyes and he said. when you hear selector lever from say the semi you're shooting to kill. i stuck my m. sixteen the better two ton truck. i was thinking about what's my field of fire. who's on the side of the road. who's that moving on top of a building. i was acting on instinct is usually the mode that soldiers go into major combat zone. and for a kid who grew up in evangelical christianity as much as we might be patriotic but

something doesn't quite sit right i was thinking about the stories in sunday school of the gentle jesus in the gospels that says if a man strikes you on the left cheek turn him also your right. has started to ask questions about prevention. what would it look like if that same the trauma nation it's used to the feel the enemy is used to redeem the enemy . in the eleven am and. i had to act.

i focused on duty. i focused on the job at hand. and. following summer i started training in the art of interrogation. and i was pretty good. man. i've never killed anyone but i've talked with a lot of people who have i'm in the profession where that's a regular part of business right now and i've decided i really want to understand this better. but one of the things i did then to try to just get new ideas was i

put aquarian to army magazine and i wrote and said if you've killed anyone in war in combat i would be very interested to hear how you justify it oh responses they got powerful amen someone these are we talking about this this is great they're not just talking about it and the other half or what the hellcat don't have anything more to do how dare you question the morality of what we're doing and we don't talk about it it's a taboo topic soldiers that sort of their inner pain very often that they live with this person who wrote is a vietnam veteran who talked about he said the three fears that were in our twenty year old mines back then in the jungle one will i be able to stand up the combat when the bullets fly to will i survive but he mentions a third one and he described this fear as now i've been to the heart of darkness

and done things that i supreme the regret but i ever again be the person that i used to like. and he said this turns out to be the hardest question and it may go on and on answered for the rest of our lives. we share this story says thirty five years after a life changing experience still looking for a way i think to make sense of the experience of going on behalf of all of us and behalf of this country so. close. to. where you are out there in the middle of combat sometimes is kill or be q. some people

when you get into the first. and you actually would kill someone based on this without here and they start have mixed feelings about me and in the situation and i called them that's just a start building up and then it's just like. with a dog it just keep keep building and keep building. just. when i talk to my family about yes they have you know it took in one life before and you say yes i take it one life wanted to escape the subject. like yeah that's a tragedy but they really don't want to hear. no one really wants to take anyone's life sometimes it can be prevented.

sometimes you go look it's been the me or that person. duty honor country. standing supported for the constitution to me that's exactly what it means for going to protect the ideals that founded your country freedom. i was internet version of war but i wasn't

a ploy to war. so i kind of felt like i had fulfilled my obligation so. relisted in june of two thousand. and march two thousand and three i was deployed to iraq. this is just different places where i was while i was over there some of them weren't wait before we crossed in iraq and some of them were after we were there. my father who fought in world war two he tried to tell me or is not as glamorous as they make it out to be. but i was too stubborn and bullheaded to listen. i asked for and i really found out i saw more than i ever wanted to see.

the one i love that. i don't know that i can describe. it's hard it's hard to put it in words. although i thought oh my god there's something come of something or somebody got to know our process. so i can't remember how long ago. it's not a secret. but. i do mind is like you know except i'm. not going to tell.

me. the second history. books with mine down straight it will come back i'm going to that i was a really good looking. you see how a war affects the civilians that are in the area. you know every house you look as god. you know prayers and are full of holes in it. and just in general how it affects people. how it makes them put all their humanity aside or be able to survive in a war zone. and it. did the injured. and it did my asteroids and you smell the

decomposing bodies that are there. you see the young girl the stand alone start a row with. third degree burns and you want to help her but you can't do it because you're in the middle of a war and you see all that stuff and you see how it affects you and you see how it affects everyone around you and you just say you know what are we can do wonders anymore. we'll have a conscience we'll have you know a sense between that tell us is between right and wrong. when i joined the military i was nineteen and i say ok so if we end up going to war it's going to be for the costs you know if we end up going to war is going to be too great freedom to other lands. and we started gearing up to whatever.

it was a war they opposed politically but not very personally. i went to iraq thinking that i could push my principles aside and then get the world or with put it behind me move on. but. nothing ever burst your for the reality of war. broke up. over. that division well we should look at your gibberish but i've got. to get a. good job with the left over with come with the total of. almost. nothing erica paris you for going to iraq and seen the destruction of an entire nation nothing ever prepares you for. you know

the unmeasured killing of civilians. nothing ever prepares you for what the dustiest a human being you know to kill an innocent person. nothing's going to really prepare you for the level of the struction that you bring upon our nation and that you're bringing on yourself from being a part of it. and yet i have i have a conscience you know which goes way beyond any law it goes way beyond any order that i can receive. but. i don't care how old you get

if you're in this environment firing these weapons it's fine it's ok honest with you. if you caliber machine gun it's a very very very effective weapon it's got a range of eight hundred meters. it'll blow holes through walls. the personalized you don't have a chance if you're hit by a bullet from this weapon and there's it's devastating it's pretty gruesome actually. you saw it. yesterday so. there's no civilian job that compares to the infantry when you're training not to kill people. i have absolutely no hesitation about it it's just what i would i do with what i do it's my job how do i feel afterwards it's you know hey. i look at it like this the people on the other side are soldiers and soldiers who are soldiers and they're trying to kill us we're trying to kill them and i just

don't face a war. as russians pick for parliament who are the main contenders in the race for jewish seats party leader vladimir putin he swapped seats with dmitri medvedev in two thousand and eight may do so again in twenty twelve after midday to propose putin for the presidency current campaign. future his priorities modernization tackling inequality fighting corruption maximizing russia's impact in international affairs criticized as a monolith that's too slow to react to social change. the world for being home to the tons of logic and dmitri medvedev pointed russia. in two thousand and eleven on faulty.