This Winter's Soldiers

This Winter's Soldiers

http://cornellsun.com/node/29267

March 31, 2008 - 12:00am
By Perry OBrien

One student ­ a veteran, conscientious objector and anti-war leader ­
tells his story.
--

Over the weekend of March 14, as most students were preparing for
spring break, something incredible happened in our nation's capitol.
For the second time in U.S. history, combat veterans from a current
war gathered to testify on immoral and illegal military policies they
had witnessed while serving abroad. The event, called Winter Soldier:
Iraq and Afghanistan, drew over two hundred veterans. Over three
days, veterans offered testimony on the killing of innocent
civilians, torture, waste, discrimination, sexual assault, fraud, and
the mutilation of the dead. Testifiers represented a broad swathe of
the military, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army and
Marine Corps, from the initial invasion to the surge.

The event took its name from the first Winter Soldier, held in a
Detroit hotel in 1971, which helped expose the atrocities of the
Vietnam War. Organizers from Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)
named the event after the words of Thomas Paine, who in 1776
admonished the "summer soldiers" and "sunshine patriots" who treated
national service like a part-time job. During that first forum in
Detroit, members of VVAW asserted that they were continuing their
patriotic duty by exposing the realities of the war to the American public.

The time has come again for Winter Soldiers to speak out. Every day,
soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are witnessing practices that are an
affront to both their individual consciences and the conventions of
international law. Returning home from war, most soldiers keep these
experiences to themselves. On the few occasions that they do discuss
the war, veterans tend to sanitize and gloss over their war stories
with the popular narrative of liberation.

In my view, this silence results from an unofficial "don't ask, don't
tell" policy in civil-military relations. Traditionally, American
citizens are told to unconditionally support their troops, to avoid
asking any real questions. For their part, soldiers are told that
civilians can't handle the truth, that they must be psychologically
protected from the realities of war. Instead of speaking out about
their experiences, veterans carry the full burden of their memories.
Wary of betraying their fellow soldiers, and even more scared that
their experiences will mark them as monsters, many veterans carry
their stories to the grave.

The cost of this policy of "don't ask, don't tell" is devastating.
While the media narrative continues uninterrupted, a generation of
veterans is being pushed to the margins of society. With inadequate
benefits and a profound feeling of being misunderstood, many soldiers
turn to self-medication and solitude. No wonder that veterans of Iraq
and Afghanistan are already showing up in homeless shelters, and are
two to four times more likely to commit suicide than their peers. The
consequences for our democracy are equally damaging. A civilian
population that remains ignorant of the realities of modern war can't
possibly hold their leaders accountable for the consequences of U.S.
foreign policy.

In the interest of breaking this "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy,
here's my story:

In 2003, I was deployed to Afghanistan as a medic with the 82nd
Airborne Division. My unit operated out of the Kandahar international
airport, which had been transformed into a temporary field clinic
shortly after the invasion. We ran sick call for U.S. troops,
operated the military equivalent of an emergency room and performed
"hearts and minds" missions in nearby villages. As part of the
humanitarian component of our mission, we also offered emergency care
to local civilians who had been involved in accidents or caught in
the crossfire between U.S. soldiers and Afghan resistance fighters.
As might be expected, many of our patients didn't survive. Rather
than preparing these corpses for burial, however, as was always done
with dead American soldiers, a different policy was followed for
Afghans. After dying, Afghan corpses were routinely used as teaching
tools for medical "practice."

The first time this happened, I was re-stocking one of our trauma
stations when I heard an officer yell out from the surgery room: "Who
wants to see what a human heart feels like?" Following surgery, the
patient's chest had been cracked open to reveal the thoracic cavity.
Soldiers were invited to come into the surgery room, don gloves, and
feel around inside the body. Some took pictures. It was an
informative lesson on human anatomy, but it was also a flagrant
violation of both the Hippocratic Oath and international law, to say
nothing of common sense morality. Imagine if you brought a family
member to the hospital, and they sadly passed away. Now imagine how
you would feel if you discovered that their body had been used,
without permission, for medical students to poke, prod and
photograph? This is particularly offensive in Islamic societies,
where the sanctity of the dead is protected by religious law. It's
also worth noting that this practice wasn't limited to anatomy
lessons. One patient was given three post-mortem chest tubes, an
emergency procedure designed to create a third airway through the
ribs. This amounted to nothing less than the mutilation of the dead.

My story is not an isolated incident, and I've spoken with medics in
Iraq who saw the same practice in Baghdad. It's not hard to see that
this kind of behavior resulted from a systematic dehumanization of
the local population, inevitable in any military occupation. By
seeing Afghans as less than human, my unit was able to practice on
their dead bodies, without permission, as if they were animals.
Obviously, this attitude results in more extreme abuses.

Veterans at Winter Soldier testified to a wide variety of abuses. As
the testimonial team leader for the event, I was responsible for
coordinating the collection, verification, and presentation of all
testimony, as well as ensuring that all testifiers received legal and
mental health counseling. Over one hundred veterans volunteered to
tell their stories, and from this body of testimony, several patterns
emerged. The first pattern I noticed was that many soldiers had seen
the implementation of extremely broad Rules of Engagement (ROE).
These rules, designed to prevent the unnecessary loss of life,
determine when soldiers can use lethal force. Many soldiers testified
that they had been told they were entering "free fire" zones, where
it was permissible to literally shoot anything that moved. Many of
these soldiers were told to carry "drop weapons" in their Humvees; if
they killed an innocent civilian, they would leave the weapon on the
body and call it a combatant.

As I already mentioned, the other common theme in the testimony was
dehumanization. Testifiers told stories of pervasive racism,
including among general staff, which translated into widespread
abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's beyond the scope of this article
to describe the full range of testimony offered during the three days
of Winter Soldier. However, on April 15, Cornellians will get an
opportunity to see a live screening of select portion of Winter
Soldier. The viewing will take place at 7:00 PM in Lewis Auditorium,
Goldwin Smith, and be followed by live testimony and discussion with
members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Alternatively, you can view
selections of the testimony on Iraq Veterans Against the War's
website (www.ivaw.org).

As I've suggested above, veterans who break the military code of
silence have to overcome a psychological gauntlet of guilt and fear.
Many are attacked by their former brothers and sisters in the
military, and some could be facing legal repercussions for their
testimony. I would encourage every member of the Cornell community to
meet the courage of these testifiers, to not ignore the words of
those who volunteered to fight. I won't mince words when I say that,
as much as it is our duty to come forward and tell our stories, it
your responsibility to listen.
---

Perry O'Brien served as a specialist with the 82nd Airborne, U.S.
Army, from 2001 to 2004. He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003, and
honorably discharged as a conscientious objector. O'Brien is a member
of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the testimonial team leader for
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan. He can be contacted at po33@cornell.edu.

.

Winter Soldiers' Testimony

Winter Soldiers' Testimony

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5100

by Aaron Glantz
March 26, 2008

Former U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner John Michael Turner leaned
over the microphone, his voice choking with emotion, the words barely
forcing themselves out, the tears barely held back.

"There's a term 'Once a Marine, always a Marine,'" he said, ripping
off his medals and throwing them to the ground. "But there's also the
expression 'Eat the apple, f*@ the Corps, I don't work for you no more."

Turner was one of more than 200 veterans who came the Winter Soldier
hearings organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Like the
other veterans assembled, Turner spoke openly about what he saw and
did during his tours in Iraq.

"April 18, 2006 was the date of my first confirmed kill," he said.
"He was innocent, I called him the fat man. He was walking back to
his house and I killed him in front of his father and friend. My
first shot made him scream and look into my eyes, so I looked at my
friend and said, 'Well, I can't let that happen,' and shot him again.
After my first kill I was congratulated."

Not Just Bad Apples

When he was done speaking, Turner received a standing ovation from
the crowd of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans. The
ovation went on for over two minutes. Turner's comments, and the
response was typical of the three day gathering, which Iraq Veterans
Against the War hoped would show that well-publicized incidents of
U.S. brutality, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the
massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha, are
not isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples," as many
politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a
pattern, the organizers said, of "an increasingly bloody occupation."

Corporal Jason Washburn did three tours in Iraq including the
invasion. Over the course of his service, Washburn was stationed in
some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq: Najaf, Sadr City, and Anbar
Province. A squad in his unit was responsible for the massacre of 26
civilians in Haditha in November 2005.

Washburn told the gathering his commanders encouraged lawless behavior.

"We were encouraged to bring 'drop weapons' or shovels, in case we
accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body
and pretend they were an insurgent," he said.
"By the third tour, if they were carrying a shovel or bag, we could
shoot them. So we carried these tools and weapons in our vehicles, so
we could toss them on civilians when we shot them. This was commonly
encouraged."

Meager Media Coverage

These gripping, often tearful personal testimonies were broadcast in
their entirety through IVAW's website, the satellite statio Free
Speech TV, and Pacifica Radio (who's three- day live broadcast I
co-hosted) but they mostly went ignored by the mainstream media.

These grassroots outlets reached a much larger audience than
organizers expected. IVAW's website received more than 30,000 unique
views every day during Winter Soldier. Warcomeshome.org, the site I
edit for Pacifica Radio, received hits from internet users in over
110 countries and moving comments from veterans and active duty
service members and their families. The progressive print and online
media also paid attention: articles ran in In These Times, The Nation
and AlterNet.

Winter soldier also received wide play in the military press, with
favorable stories published in Stars and Stripes and the Military
Times chain of newsweeklies. The IVAW has posted media coverage of
the hearings on its site.

Success in alternative and military outlets was tempered, however, by
a nearly complete blackout by the mainstream media. Though the
gathering was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the
invasion of Iraq and was held in Silver Spring, Maryland less than 10
miles from the White House, the personal testimony of hundreds of
Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans garnered scant mainstream media
coverage, with the notable exceptions of Time, National Public
Radio's All Things Considered, the Boston Globe and The Washington
Post, which buried an article on Winter Soldier in the Metro section.
Meanwhile, The New York Times¸ CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS ignored it completely.

Instead, these media outlets proffered stories produced by embedded
journalists citing "progress" in Iraq, supposedly thanks to the
so-called "surge." The contrast between the raw, honest words of
these veterans and the coverage on TV was incredibly jarring.

Waking up at my suburban Washington hotel Sunday morning, I turned on
Good Morning America, and saw a live shot from "Camp Victory"
(formerly Saddam Hussein International Airport) where the reporter
excitedly reported "more troops is just one reason for the drop in violence."

No mention was made of the 4,4783 Americans who've been killed in
Iraq and Afghanistan, or the one million Iraqis researches at
Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University believe have died.
No mention, either, of more than 69,000 American soldiers the
Pentagon reports have been wounded, injured, or fallen ill in Iraq
and Afghanistan.

There was also no mention of the nearly 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan
war veterans who have gone to the Department of Veterans Affairs for
treatment; nor of the 250,000 who have filed a disability claim with the VA.

Five years into the war, we appear to be back where we started in
terms of media coverage, where a cowed media blindly follows the spin
coming from the White House. After Winter Soldier concluded, the
media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting released an
alert to its members asking them to "contact the broadcast networks
and ask them why they decided to ignore the Winter Soldiers hearings
while carrying the less-informed observations on Iraq of John McCain
and Dick Cheney."

Troubling Polling Data

It's not surprising then that when asked by the Pew Research Center
earlier this month, only 28% of respondents correctly said that about
4,000 Americans have died in the war. Most thought the number was
closer to 2,000 or 3,000.

According to the same survey, overall media coverage of the war
dropped from an average of 15% of stories in July 2007, to just 3% in
February 2008.

At Winter Soldier, veterans I spoke to found these developments
upsetting, but not discouraging. They note that when Vietnam veterans
held a similar forum on war crimes in 1971 it was also roundly
ignored by the mainstream press. But that did not cause the story to
go away, because word got out through military and veteran circles
got out that resistance within the ranks was building – a development
most members of Iraq Veterans Against the War see as even more
important than mainstream media coverage and lobbying on Capitol Hill.

"We don't need to rely on the mainstream media," said Aaron Hughes, a
former Illinois National Guardsman who drove convoys in Iraq. "We can
rely on the grassroots networks that we're building through events
like Winter Soldier. People are posting on blogs and organizing in
their workplaces and in their schools. That's what's important."

Hughes and other members of Iraq Veterans Against the War were also
excited to see the extensive coverage they were given by military
papers like Stars and Stripes and the Army Times. IVAW also bought
advertisements in both papers in advance of the event with an eye to
boosting their membership and increasing the amount of opposition to
the war within the U.S. military.

Changing the Whole Nation

"That's getting to the veterans and GIs who oppose this war but may
feel like they're alone," he said. "As long as we keep building that
it doesn't matter if the mainstream media is covering this or not
because we're going to change this whole nation but what we are doing."

Already 30 Iraq and Afghanistan have contacted IVAW since the Winter
Soldier gathering began on March 13 and hundreds of other veterans
who were already members of the organization have stepped forward
offering to add their testimony to those who testified in Silver Spring.

"This time we came with 200 veterans," Hughes said. "The next time
we'll come with 400 veterans and then 800. We will not let up until
this occupation is over."
---

Independent journalist Aaron Glantz, a Foreign Policy In Focus
contributor, has reported extensively from Iraq throughout the U.S.
occupation. He is author of How America Lost Iraq (Penguin). He
co-hosted the Pacifica radio broadcast of the Winter Soldier
hearings, along with veteran Aimee Allison. Full archives of Winter
Soldier are available at warcomeshome.org and ivaw.org.

.

Winter Soldier

Winter Soldier

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=25031

In three days of wrenching public testimony in Washington, DC, Iraq
War veterans shared the horrors of war, says Laila Al-Arian.

2008-03-25

While on tank patrol through the narrow streets of Abu Ghraib, just
west of Baghdad, Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib
had become a "free-fire zone," Hicks was told, and no "friendlies" or
civilians remained in the area. "Game on. All weapons free," his
captain said. Upon that command, Hicks' unit opened a furious
fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at
anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the
area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and
children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the
bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his
unit had killed 700-800 "enemy combatants." But he knew the dead were
not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. "I will
agree to swear to that till the day I die," he said. "I didn't see
one enemy on that operation."

Hicks soberly recounted this bloody incident to a packed auditorium
in Silver Spring, Maryland, as part of Winter Soldier: Iraq and
Afghanistan, a summit hosted March 13-16 by Iraq Veterans Against the
War (IVAW). Modeled after the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation -- in
which Vietnam veterans, including John Kerry, testified in Detroit
about US atrocities in Vietnam -- this incarnation featured more than
fifty veterans and active-duty service members testifying about
engaging in or witnessing atrocities and war crimes against Iraqi and
Afghan civilians. As a precondition for participation, IVAW required
veterans to provide corroborating evidence such as photographs,
videos and additional witnesses. Former marine Scott Camil, 61, who
spoke at the first Winter Soldier event, attended the conference
along with seven fellow Vietnam-era witnesses. "When we came home,
the World War II and Korean War veterans did not support our
activities. I know how that feels," Camil said quietly. "We're not
going to let it happen to these guys."

Soldiers and marines at Winter Soldier described the frustration of
routinely raiding the wrong homes and arresting the wrong people. It
was common for unarmed Iraqis to be killed at US checkpoints or by US
convoys, they said. Many said they were congratulated on their "first
kill." Some even desecrated Iraqi corpses. Spc. Hart Viges said he
refused to pose in a photograph with a corpse when his fellow
soldiers prodded him. "I said no -- not in the context of, That's
really wrong on an ethical basis," he said. "I said no because it
wasn't my kill. You shouldn't take trophies for things you didn't
kill. That's where my mind-set was back then."

Several veterans said it was common to carry a stash of extra
automatic weapons and shovels to plant near the bodies of unarmed
civilians they had killed to make it look as if they were combatants.
Others described the surreal sensation of committing cold-blooded
murder without facing any consequences. Jon Michael Turner, who
served as a machine gunner with Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Eighth
Marines, said he shot an unarmed Iraqi in front of the man's father
and friend. "The first round didn't kill him, after I had hit him up
here in his neck area. And afterwards he started screaming and looked
right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend...and I said, 'Well, I
can't let that happen.' So I took another shot and took him out. He
was then carried away by the rest of his family." Later, Turner
pointed to a tattoo on his right wrist of the Arabic words for "fuck
you." "That was my choking hand," he explained. "And any time I felt
the need to take out aggression, I would go ahead and use it."

"This is not an isolated incident," the testifiers uttered over and
over, to the point of liturgy, insisting that the atrocities they
committed or witnessed were common. The hearings were not organized
to point fingers at "bad apples" or even particular squads, several
testifiers said.

IVAW issued an impassioned statement that condemned not only US
military tactics but the occupation itself. "The military is being
asked to win an occupation," the statement read. "The troops on the
ground know this is an impossible task.... We have a political
problem that cannot be solved with a military solution. This is not a
war that can be won. It is an occupation that can only be ended."

While the Winter Soldiers offered a searing critique of the
military's treatment of civilians, which they described as
alternately inhumane and sadistic, they also empathized with fellow
soldiers thrust into a chaotic urban theater where the lines between
combatants and civilians are blurred. "It's criminal to put such
patriotic Americans...in a situation where their morals are at odds
with their survival instincts," said Adam Kokesh, who served as a
Marine sergeant in the raid on Fallujah in 2004.

For active-duty soldiers and veterans, testifying about combat duty
carries new risks -- including the possibility of being charged in
military court for complicity in war crimes or in federal court under
the War Crimes Act of 1996. But such concerns were not enough to
silence their voices. "If it's a choice between sitting in cowardice
and not speaking up against things that are wrong or being
court-martialed, I'll take the court-martial," said Selena Coppa, 25,
an active-duty military intelligence sergeant and one of several
women who spoke at the hearings.

During the last day, photographs of nameless Iraqi dead flashed on
large screens. Army Sgt. Kristofer Goldsmith took the photos on May
15, 2005, a day he remembered as "very hot, uncomfortable and
miserable." Goldsmith was ordered to photograph a dozen Iraqis who
were presumably murdered and dumped in a large landfill. But the
photos were not taken to identify the dead or assist the Iraqi police
investigation. "They were used for morale purposes," Goldsmith
remarked bitterly. "[Soldiers] bombarded me to copy my pictures. They
made videos of them to send home to their friends and families to
brag, 'This is war. This is what we did to the Iraqis.'"

The Winter Soldier hearings also featured Iraqi testifiers like Salam
Talib, a 33-year-old computer engineering student. Though Talib said
he was encouraged to see so many US veterans describing their
experiences in frank terms, the testimonies were not much of a
revelation for him. "What the American soldiers are talking about is
everyday life for Iraqis. They're not even talking about 10 percent
of what's happening there," Talib remarked with a shrug. "They are
simply giving credibility to the stories that have been told over and
over from Iraq by journalists, Iraqis and humanitarian organizations.
The American soldiers are saying, 'We're here, we did it and it's true.' "
--

Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist and author, with Chris
Hedges, of the forthcoming Collateral Damage: America's War Against
Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books).

.

Winter Soldier Never Happened

Winter Soldier Never Happened

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sharon_f_080320_winter_soldier_never.htm

3/22/08
by Sharon Frigiola

Maddening and SHAMEFUL! I can't believe that I have lived to see
this day in the USA. Perhaps in some other imperialist dictator-led
country, but NOT HERE in the good ole' US of A!

Our VOLUNTEER service men and women have served with honor and valor
along with shame and regret during our six years of bungled war
planning. Most courageously, however, those same forces once again
VOLUNTARILY gave their testimony as to their experiences while
serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq Veterans Against the War
(IVAW) held a gathering of Americans who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan in Silver Spring, Maryland from March 13 through March
15. They spent the entire weekend testifying before an audience about
the experiences that turned them against the war. Patriots all, these
brave men and women of principle were following the precedent of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War who met in Detroit in 1971 to
testify about the atrocities and wrongs they witnessed, or committed,
in their American war, (Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel, March 16, 2008)

Many of the Senators' operators that I phoned today at their DC
offices in order to protest, had no knowledge of Winter Soldier as it
came and went over those days of March. For the first time in the
history of "main stream media" (could this be the final step in Naomi
Wolf's staircase of descent into FASCISM), coverage of our brave
fighting forces words and testimony was a total BLACKOUT! Hard as I
looked over various times on those three days of March, I could
not find coverage or even video segments being shown on the 800
channels of television my cable package offers. All of the local and
national media were informed of the event by the IVAW, yet it
received so little television coverage, which is how most Americans
get their news, as to have not happened at all.

President Bush had the audacity to say, "If I were slightly younger
and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to
be on the front lines of helping this young democracy
succeed." Followed by, "It must be exciting for you…in some ways
romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really
making history, and thanks". Oh My God! He said this during a March
14 video conference with US military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan.

All that came out of his mouth smack in the middle of Winter
Soldier. For the parts of Winter Soldier I have seen, nowhere did
anyone mention anything remotely romantic or mysterious. Apparently
the wars in both regions remain a romantic mystery to our Governor of
Texas, George Bush, Commander in Chief of the Military of the United
States of America.

Maddening, shameful, ironic, and frightening to any thinking, liberty
minded individual, of which I am sorry to say there seems to be too
little of late. If Winter Soldier were given the of coverage that
was equal to the amount of money the American taxpayers are forced to
fork over for these fiascos, many more Americans would reconsider
these criminally insane endeavors. These wars are helping no one,
not Americans, Iraqis, Afghanis, NO ONE. They are only hurting
EVERYONE involved (with the exception of the war profiteers and
criminals), which is more than evident in the testimony that I had to
labor to find.

.

Crunch Time For U.S. War Resisters In Canada

Crunch Time For U.S. War Resisters In Canada

http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/16790

March, 01 2008
By Gerry Condon

Z MAGAZINE ONLINE-ONLY ARTICLE

When Private Jeremy Hinzman crossed the border into Canada in January
2004, he became the first AWOL GI to seek refugee status there. The
U.S. Army had denied his request to serve in a non-combat role as a
Conscientious Objector. They forced him into a tour in Afghanistan,
and then ordered him to deploy to Iraq. Four years after fleeing the
country, Hinzman, his wife and one-year-old son are facing the
possibility of deportation back to the United States.

In March 2005 Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board denied Hinzman's
refugee claim. Notoriously conservative in its determinations, the
Refugee Board refused to consider the illegality of the Iraq War and
declared that the court-martial and imprisonment that awaited Hinzman
in the U.S. did not amount to "persecution" for his political beliefs.

Brandon Hughey, the second AWOL GI to seek refuge in Canada, was also
denied refugee status, as have at least a dozen other U.S. war
resisters­and counting.

Although Canada has never granted refugee status to anyone fleeing
persecution in the United States, Hinzman, Hughey, and their Canadian
supporters continued undaunted in their quest for political refugee
status. Their lawyer, Vietnam War resister Jeffry House, appealed in
Canada's Federal Courts, eventually going all the way to the Supreme
Court. But on November 15, 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada announced
that it would not hear the war resisters' appeals.

Seeking refugee status, however, "was never the only arrow in our
quiver," says Lee Zaslofsky, coordinator of the War Resisters Support
Campaign, and one of 30,000 Vietnam War resisters who have become
Canadian citizens. "We have pursued a two-track strategy from the
beginning. Even while we fought in the courts for refugee status, we
were working on the political front to build popular support for
sanctuary and to win the support of the various political parties."

The war resisters' political strategy bore its first fruit last
December 6 in Canada's House of Commons. After hearing eloquent
testimony from former U.S. Army Sergeant Phillip McDowell, along with
representatives of the Mennonites and Quakers, the Standing Committee
on Citizenship and Immigration adopted a motion calling on the
government to allow war resisters to stay in Canada. The motion,
which also calls for a halt to deportation proceedings, passed by a
7-4 vote, with all of the opposition parties united against the
ruling Conservatives.

The Committee's motion, which was broadened to include resisters of
all wars not sanctioned by the UN, reads as follows: "The Committee
recommends that the government immediately implement a program to
allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members
(partners and dependents), who have refused or left military service
related to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations and do not have
a criminal record, to apply for permanent resident status and remain
in Canada; and that the government should immediately cease any
removal or deportation actions that may have already com- menced
against such individuals.

The passage of this motion was the first good news they had received
in some time. "This shows a willingness of the opposition parties in
Canada's Parliament to come together to ensure that none of these
resisters is returned to the U.S. where they face court martials,
incarceration, and possible deployment to Iraq," said Zaslofsky.

Campaign organizer Michelle Robidoux sounded a more cautionary note.
"I want to make sure that nobody leaves thinking that this is won.
It's very important that we understand that now the work begins….
[The passage of this motion] does not mean that people can stay
immediately. It means that there is a political opening here­it's a
significant poli- tical opening."

"What we need," continued Zaslofsky, "is for the Liberal Party as a
whole to take a stance on this. Together (the three parties) have a
majority and if they act together they can put something through the
House of Commons.

Poll Reveals Support

Coming only weeks after the disappointing decision by the Supreme
Court, the Committee's affirmative vote felt like a miracle. But it
was no fluke. For four years the War Resisters Support Campaign,
comprised of unions, churches, artists, and activists, has been
organizing across Canada with the slogan "Let Them Stay." The war
resisters themselves have spoken hundreds of times, collectively, in
community meetings and in the media.

The extent of the Campaign's success was demonstrated in a June 2007
poll showing that nearly two-thirds of the people of Ontario
supported the war resisters. Of the 605 Ontarians who responded to
the pollsters' questions, 64.6 percent said U.S. soldiers should be
allowed to settle in Canada while only 27.2 percent said they should
be sent home. The poll results were broken down by gender, age,
location, and party support. Each demographic was supportive of the
war resisters, with 74 percent of NDP voters, 71 percent of Liberal
voters, and even 53 percent of Conservative voters saying, "Let them
settle in Canada."

Shirley Douglas, a Canadian actor and mother of actor Keifer
Sutherland, agreed. "This poll shows that the Canadian tradition of
welcoming Americans who dissent from the policies of war is still
important to us," said Douglas. "The Canadian government should move
now to make it possible for war resisters to settle in this country
as so many did during the Vietnam War."

U.S. war resisters in Canada are very encouraged by this showing of
popular and parliamentary support. The Committee's motion must now be
put before the entire House of Commons where it is hoped that the
opposition parties will once again unite to pass it.

In the meantime, Jeremy Hinzman has received his Pre-Removal Risk
Assessment. His case is being reviewed and within months he may be
given an order to leave Canada. On yet another track, Hinzman is
appealing to the Immigration Minister to allow him to remain in
Canada on "Humanitarian and Compassionate" grounds, along with his
wife, Nga Nguyen, and their son, Liam, now five, who has spent most
of his life in Canada.

"It's great that people all across Canada and the U.S. are coming out
to show support for the war resisters," said Patrick Hart, a former
sergeant in the U.S. Army who came to Canada in 2005 with his family.
"My family could be told we have to go back to the States anytime
now. My wife Jill and I just want to be able to live here in peace
and raise our son, Rian. We hope that the politicians will let us do that."

Hart and fellow resisters Robin Long and Corey Glass have all
received their Pre-Removal Risk Assessments, a step toward deportation.

While a majority of Conservative party voters in the Ontario poll
were sympathetic to the plight of U.S. war resisters, that is not the
position of the minority Conservative government. In 2003, Stephen
Harper, Canada's current prime minister, was a vocal proponent of
Canada joining the U.S. war against Iraq. Fortunately, a sizable
majority of the Canadian people saw things differently and the
Liberal government at the time declined President Bush's invitation
to join the "Coalition of the Willing." Harper now denies he ever
supported the Iraq War.

But Canada's Conservative prime minister is an ardent advocate for
the U.S.-initiated war in Afghansistan, where Canadian soldiers are
an important part of the NATO deployment. The previous Liberal
government first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2001 and Harper's
Conservatives have extended that mission until February 2009 and are
pursuing an additional extension, while exhorting the European
members of NATO to send additional troops.

With more and more Canadian troops dying in Afghanistan, and a
scandal raging over the torture of prisoners captured by Canadians
and handed over to Afghan (and possibly U.S.) forces, the majority of
Canadians are against this war. In fact, opposition to the
Afghanistan War may be a major factor in forcing a federal election,
possibly as early as this spring. Ultimately, it may take a change at
the top of the Canadian government to ensure a safe haven for war
resisters. With the Liberal Party in disarray, however, progressive
Canadians worry that the Conservatives might return to power.

U.S. Antiwar Movement Joins Sanctuary Campaign

So it was with a mixture of optimism and urgency that the War
Resisters Support Campaign organized a "pan-Canadian" day of action
on Saturday, January 26, two days before the Parliament would
reconvene. Events were held in at least 11 Canadian cities­from
Victoria, British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia. People listened
to speeches, watched antiwar films, and wrote letters to government
officials and party leaders. In several cities, they marched to the
post office and made a show of mailing the letters.

In Toronto, the Bloor Street United Church filled up with hundreds of
supporters. When Jeremy Hinzman was introduced, the crowd greeted him
with a prolonged standing ovation. He then reminded listeners of the
reasons he came to Canada in the first place and thanked the Canadian
people for their tremendous support.

In the U.S., the war resister advocacy group Courage To Resist
coordinated solidarity actions on Friday, January 25 to coincide with
the pan-Canadian actions. Vigils were held outside Canadian
Consulates in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Dallas, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and at the Canadian Embassy in
Washington, DC. Delegations met with Consular officials and delivered
copies of thousands of names of people in the U.S. who have signed
petitions and letters to the Canadian government.

Significantly, the January 25 vigils and delegations were the first
nationally coordinated actions in the U.S. in support of our war
resisters in Canada. Groups that joined Courage to Resist and the War
Resisters Support Campaign in making this a successful day included
Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, War Resisters
League, Iraq Veterans Against the War, DECOI, Veterans for Peace,
Raging Grannies, Project Safe Haven, Twin Cities Peace Campaign,
Truth in Recruiting, Payday men's network, Global Women's Strike,
North Texas for Justice and Peace, United for Peace and Justice, and others.

United For Peace and Justice promoted these actions via email to its
entire national membership. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) did
the same, and IVAW members were front and center at many of the
vigils around the country.

"As veterans of the Iraq war, we have a special role to play in
supporting our war resisters," said Chanan Suarez-Diaz, president of
the Seattle chapter of IVAW. "Whether they are in Canada, Germany, or
the U.S., whether they are AWOL, in the brig, on active duty, or in
legal limbo like Lt. Ehren Watada, they need and deserve all of our support."

Many of the resisters are, of course, also Iraq veterans themselves.
They survived one tour but went AWOL when ordered back a second time.
IVAW members have made several trips to Canada to visit their fellow
veterans and they are making arrangements for some of them to testify
via satellite television at the Winter Soldier hearings being
organized for March 13-16 in Washington, DC. Iraq veterans are also
mobilizing members and supporters to reach out to active duty GI's,
including at Fort Lewis, Washington.

War Resisters Still Coming To Canada

Estimates of the number of U.S. war resisters in Canada range from
200-300. Approximately 50 of them have applied for refugee status.

AWOL GIs continue to make the trek north. They can still enter Canada
as visitors and then apply for refugee status, which gives them
immediate legal status in Canada as long as their refugee claim is
pending, possibly a year or more. Refugee claimants are eligible for
social assistance in some provinces and for Canada's free national
healthcare.

War resisters thinking of coming to Canada are advised to call the
War Resisters Support Campaign so that Canadian supporters know they
are on their way. This is increasingly important because Canadian
border guards at some points of entry are reportedly profiling AWOL
soldiers and discouraging them from entering, even putting them on
the phone with their commanding officers. In such a case, a war
resister can claim refugee status right at the border, and the
Canadian authorities will respect this. Otherwise, it is preferable
to enter Canada and see a Canadian lawyer before making a refugee claim.

"This is a complicated business," says Zaslofsky. "Actually, the
first thing we tell people who call for advice is to call the GI
Rights Hotline and find out all their options."

Some AWOL GIs may actually be eligible to be discharged from the
military without further punishment, and experienced counselors can
help them do that. Such an outcome is arguably preferable to an
uncertain future in Canada without the ability to travel home to the
U.S. to visit family or friends.

In case Canada does deport war resisters back to the U.S., the
antiwar movement must be prepared to defend them, legally and
politically. Some might call it amnesty. Some might call it justice
or human rights or solidarity. The bottom line is that nobody should
be punished for refusing to fight in an unjust war. By energetically
supporting all war resisters, we can help bring an end to the U.S.
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and make it more difficult to launch
such wars in the future. That should be our goal.
---

Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and war resister, is the director
of Project Safe Haven (projectsafehaven@hot mail.com), which has been
working for four years in support of U.S. war resisters in Canada. He
also serves on the national steering committee of the Friends and
Family of Lt. Watada.

.

War Dodgers

War Dodgers

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/magazine/23wwln-essay-t.html

By BEN EHRENREICH
Published: March 23, 2008

Next month, the Canadian House of Commons is slated to debate a
resolution that would allow conscientious objectors "who have refused
or left military service related to a war not sanctioned by the
United Nations" to apply for residency in Canada. The phrasing is
vague but the intent is not. The war in question is the Iraq war, and
the resolution represents the culmination of a four-year debate about
what to do with the small but steady stream of American soldiers who
have fled across our northern border to avoid fighting in Iraq.

It all began in Jan. 2004, when a young American with a long, serious
face walked into the Toronto law office of Jeffry House to ask for
help with what was at the time a highly unusual immigration case. The
American turned out to be a soldier named Jeremy Hinzman, an
infantryman in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. He told House that
his petition for conscientious-objector status was denied while he
was stationed in Afghanistan. He crossed the border into Canada just
days before his unit was to be deployed to Iraq. Of the more than
25,000 American soldiers who, according to the United States
Department of Defense, have deserted since 2003, the Toronto-based
War Resisters Support Campaign estimates that 225 have fled to
Canada. (The D.O.D defines a deserter as anyone who has been AWOL for
30 consecutive days or who seeks asylum in a foreign country;
desertion carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.)

The majority of the deserters in Canada have chosen not to make the
authorities aware of their presence. Like any other illegal
immigrants, they have settled for invisibility. A few dozen, though,
followed Hinzman's lead. Most found their way to Jeffry House. One
young Army medic named Justin Colby read an AOL news posting about
Hinzman's case while stationed in Iraq. He telephoned House from
Ramadi and showed up in his office a few months later.

House would eventually represent between 30 and 35 American
deserters. Most of them, like Colby, say they joined the military in
part out of patriotism. "I thought Iraq had something to do with
9/11," Colby says, "that they were the bad guys that attacked our
country." But unlike Hinzman, most did not apply for
conscientious-objector status. They tend to say they aren't opposed
to all wars in principle ­ just to the one they were ordered to
fight. It wasn't until Colby arrived in Iraq that he started to see
the conflict as "a war of aggression, totally unprovoked," he says.
"I was, like, 'This is what my buddies are dying for?' " Midway
through his tour, he decided: "I'm never going to do this again." He
went AWOL the day before his unit left to train for a second
deployment. House says that more than two-thirds of his clients have
been deployed to Iraq at least once. "One is resisting a third deployment."

Tens of thousands of American draft dodgers and deserters took refuge
in Canada in the late 1960s and early '70s. House was one of them. He
packed up his car and left his home in Wisconsin 38 years ago to
start a new life in Canada. The process was simple. "I came to the
border and said: 'I would like to immigrate to Canada. I'm refusing
to serve in Vietnam,' " he recalls. Border officials had him type up
an application for residency on the spot. "Four weeks later, I got my
permanent-resident status." But times have changed since Pierre
Trudeau, then the prime minister, declared Canada "a refuge from
militarism." While Canada is still a relative haven for
asylum-seekers, its immigration laws have tightened sharply, and
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been a faithful ally of the Bush
administration. (Harper has kept 2,500 Canadian troops in
Afghanistan, whose deployment the House of Commons recently extended
until 2011.) As a result, the new generation of war resisters find
themselves in an uncomfortable squeeze. In today's Canada, deserters
like Hinzman really have only one legal option: to apply for
residency as refugees.

"There's a very clear Canadian precedent for the idea that no soldier
has to participate in an illegal war," House says. That precedent,
interestingly enough, is a case in which an Iraqi Army soldier was
granted asylum in Canada after fleeing to avoid taking part in the
1990 invasion of Kuwait. But House's first task was to prove that the
Iraq war is illegal. His argument relied largely on his reading of
international law. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
lays out a slender possibility for relief. Mere disagreement with the
"political justification for a particular military action" is not
sufficient. The action must be "condemned by the international
community as contrary to basic rules of human conduct." Only in that
case can punishment for desertion or draft evasion "be regarded as
persecution."

Juridically, at least, House saw the case as straightforward. A
British court had awarded asylum to a Russian deserter of the Chechen
war on the same basis. (British case law often influences Canadian
jurisprudence.) And there was the precedent of the Iraqi deserter.
But convincing the Canadian courts to equate George W. Bush's
occupation of Iraq with Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait was a
politically daunting task.

In the end, House never got the chance. He showed up at Hinzman's
first hearing armed with evidence arguing for the illegality of the
Iraq war: 13 four-inch-thick binders containing everything from
former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's memos on the treatment of
detainees to Human Rights Watch reports to the British Army's
documentation of civilian deaths at American military checkpoints. In
March 2005, the immigration board ruled against Hinzman, insisting
that its "authority does not include making judgments about United
States foreign policy."

A Canadian federal court upheld that decision in 2006, interpreting
the relevant international law to apply only to high-level policy
makers. "The ordinary foot soldier," the court ruled, "is not
expected to make his or her personal assessment as to the legality of
a conflict." All the documents in House's 13 binders were thus
irrelevant. House objected that policy makers are rarely asked to
take up arms. But an appeals court ruled against him last April on
other grounds.

"The present position is basically Pontius Pilate," House told me
last fall, not long before he hit the end of the legal road. In
mid-November, the Supreme Court dismissed his request for an appeal.
"It's a huge loss," House said at the time. "As far as I'm concerned,
it's the court deciding not to be involved in the controversy."

The deserters' fight has since passed out of the courts and into the
hazy realm of politics. On Dec. 6, the Parliament's immigration
committee passed the resolution that would give American deserters a
chance at residency. The vote broke down along party lines: the four
members of the Conservative Party (which is currently in power but
lacks a parliamentary majority) voted against it, but they were
outnumbered by the seven representatives of the three major
opposition parties.

Whether such unity will survive the full House of Commons debate next
month remains to be seen. The Iraq war has been immensely unpopular
in Canada, and the leaders of the Bloc Quebecois and the left-leaning
New Democratic Party have both come out in support of the resolution.
But Canadian M.P.'s tend to vote with far more party discipline than
their American counterparts, and Stéphane Dion, the head of the
Liberal Party, has not yet taken a public stance on the bill. Without
his support, its fate is uncertain.

In the meantime, the deserters have little to do but wait. Though the
United States Army does issue arrest warrants for deserters, it does
not actively track them down; even at home, deserters are most likely
to be apprehended if they are picked up for an unrelated offense.
According to a State Department spokeswoman, the United States has
made no diplomatic efforts to bring deserters home from Canada. And
despite the Canadian Supreme Court decision in November, none have
yet been deported. But, as House puts it, "the machinery is grinding
along." At least eight deserters, including Hinzman, have received
Preremoval Risk Assessment notices, the bureaucratic preludes to
actual deportation orders. It's very unlikely, though, that the
government will make any move before the parliamentary vote in April.
Even then, the deserters' supporters say they hope, the government
might prefer that this issue disappear. Given the unpopularity of the
Iraq war and the Harper administration's narrow hold on power, "the
Conservatives have nothing to gain if this issue becomes very
public," says Michelle Robidoux of the War Resisters Support Campaign.

Undeterred by the Supreme Court ruling, new arrivals are still
showing up. Robidoux's group has added five to its roster in just the
last three weeks. For Colby, Hinzman and others, uncertainty in
Canada apparently looks better than combat in Iraq. "Every day that
I'm here," Colby says, "I'm glad I'm not in Baghdad."
---

Ben Ehrenreich is the author of a novel, "The Suitors," and has
written for L.A. Weekly, Men's Vogue and The Times Book Review.

.

Winter Soldiers Sound Off

Winter Soldiers Sound Off

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8421

by Dahr Jamail
Global Research, March 23, 2008
The Progressive, April 2008

Jason Moon suffers from persistent insomnia as he wrestles with
memories of his time in Iraq. "While on our initial convoy into Iraq
in early June 2003, we were given a direct order that if any children
or civilians got in front of the vehicles in our convoy, we were not
to stop, we were not to slow down, we were to keep driving," says the
former National Guard and Army Reserve member. "In the event an
insurgent attacked us from behind human shields, we were supposed to
count. If there were thirty or less civilians we were allowed to fire
into the area. If there were over thirty, we were supposed to take
fire and send it up the chain of command. These were the rules of
engagement. I don't know about you, but if you are getting shot at
from a crowd of people, how fast are you going to count, and how accurately?"

Moon is taking part in Winter Soldier. This is public testimony
organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War about the human
consequences of failed U.S. policy in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The group takes its name from the Winter Soldier testimony by Vietnam
Vets, including John Kerry, in 1971, which played a part in turning
public opinion against that war.

"We've heard from the politicians, from the generals, from the
media­now it's our turn," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of
Iraq Veterans Against the War. Dougherty, who served in Iraq in 2003
as a military police officer, said, "It's not going to be easy to
hear what we have to say. It's not going to be easy for us to tell
it. But we believe that the only way this war is going to end is if
the American people truly understand what we have done in their name."

When I was reporting from Iraq for eight months on and off between
November 2003 and February 2005, Iraqis told me of atrocities U.S.
soldiers were committing. The accounts now from soldiers themselves
confirm an awful picture.

"An Iraqi was once selling soda out of a motorcycle to soldiers in a
waiting convoy," says Moon. "In the side-car was his
seven-to-eight-year-old child. When the man refused to go away, the
MP on patrol put him to the ground with a gun to his head and started
stripping his vehicle and searching it. They then took the child,
picked it up into the air, and threw it full force onto the ground. I
didn't see the child get up."

Moon says soldiers devised cruel tricks to play on Iraqi kids.
"Whenever we arrived in an area, we did so along with support
vehicles with the radios, tractor trailers, bulldozers, and graters,"
he says. "So we would park those in a circle with yellow police tape
around. Iraqis had to stand outside that tape as we stood inside the
tape, armed and ready. That was our little base of operations.
Soldiers would place a $20 bill in the sand with a little bit showing
and walk over to the other side of the vehicles and wait for a kid to
charge under the tape to try to get the bill, which was equal to an
average monthly salary there. If some kid was stupid enough to take
the bait they would chase him, trying to hit him with the end of
their bayonet or the butt of their rifle."

Moon says his section sergeant would rally the troops every day in
the motor pool with, "I hope I get to kill me a haji today. I hope I
get to shoot somebody today."

Moon tells me of a soldier in his tent who used to boast of swerving
intentionally to hit the kids that rushed to pick up the food tossed
by patrol members and to run over the food so the kids couldn't get it.

"It was a game," Moon said. "When the soldier who had thrown the food
asked him why he had done it he said, 'Yeah, I want to hit one of
them. I want to kill one of those kids.' "

Moon brought back a video that shows his sergeant declaring, "The
difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they
are dead or alive."

Moon explains the thinking: "If you kill a civilian he becomes an
insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat."

Following a long family tradition, Cliff Hicks joined the military at
seventeen in 2002 because "we had been attacked, so it seemed like
the right time."

He served from October 2003 to August 2004. He admits that he and
other soldiers with him have been physically abusive towards Iraqi civilians.

"Hell yeah, that happened," he says. "That was extremely common. My
platoon leader, a lieutenant, broke the arm of an old man because he
was being difficult."

Hicks tells one story of how he himself beat up an Iraqi detainee.

"One night on a foot patrol in Baghdad, we found a thirty-year-old
Iraqi who we were told had an attitude," he says. "He acted like he
wanted to fight with us, so we all jumped on him and beat the shit
out of him. I zip-stripped him with plastic handcuffs behind his
back, dragged him to a pole and tied him to it, guarding him while
the rest of my platoon ran into his house to raid it. He was yelling
and screaming and talking to the crowd. I'm eighteen years old and
alone, guarding this guy in downtown Baghdad late at night. He's
talking to this massive crowd behind me. I couldn't get him to shut
up...so I just beat the shit out of him. The whole time it freaked me
out: He's a prisoner, totally defenseless, you're not supposed to
beat up prisoners, but for all I knew this guy was telling his
friends to kill me."

Living under daily threat took a psychological toll. "Insane driving
was even more common than beating people's asses: 99 percent of the
time you drive around in Iraq, and 99 percent of the way you get
killed in Iraq is driving your vehicle into something that blows up,"
Hicks says. "So you're driving, scared to death, pissed off, you have
a vehicle commander who's looking at a map, yelling at a radio, being
an asshole, and criticizing everything you do. He's freaked out
because he doesn't want you to do anything stupid, and you don't want
to do anything stupid. Our tanks weigh seventy tons, our Humvees six
tons, and we drove as fast as we possibly could."

The temptation to misuse their powerful vehicles sometimes got the
better of the soldiers. Iraqis "have these stands where they sell
kebabs, motor oil, gas, and stuff, and one time we just got off the
road and plowed through a whole row of these things," he says. "We
would just cruise through, make everybody run away. We would run over
empty cars. I remember one time I saw a really shiny Mercedes. I
asked my tank commander, 'Sir, can I crush that car?' He didn't say
yes, but he said, 'I didn't see anything.' So I ran over the car."

The language barrier also contributed to the abuse, Hicks says. "We
didn't have interpreters half the time when I was there," he says.
"We couldn't communicate. They are not doing what you need them to
do, so you freak out and beat the crap out of people all the time
over there. It happened so much it's not even worthy of note. People
are just constantly getting their asses kicked over there, for no reason."

What's going on in Iraq seems to reflect what the psychiatrist Robert
Jay Lifton calls "atrocity-producing situations." He used this term
first in his book The Nazi Doctors. In 2004, he wrote an article for
The Nation applying his insights to the Iraq War and
occupation. "Atrocity-producing situations," he wrote, occur when a
power structure sets up an environment where "ordinary people, men or
women no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit
atrocities....This kind of atrocity-producing situation...surely
occurs to some degrees in all wars, including World War II, our last
'good war.' But a counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting,
especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is
particularly prone to sustained atrocity-all the more so when it
becomes an occupation."

Moon and Hicks testify to that. Their stories were vetted by Iraq
Veterans Against the War, and the dates they served, and the units
they served with, all checked out. While their service in Iraq was
several years ago, other accounts from soldiers who have been there
more recently bear out their experiences.

Hicks confirms reports of illegal detention of innocent Iraqis and
willful destruction of their property. "You drive around Baghdad and
most of these houses don't have numbers, none of the streets are
named, all the houses and streets look the same, and the
interpreters, half the time they don't even know where the hell they
are," he says. "So we're always raiding the wrong house but you still
have to bring in some prisoners. You can't come back without
prisoners. So we just rounded up any fighting-aged
male we could find."

One particular incident stands out in Hicks's mind. "There was a tall
apartment complex, the only spot from where people could see over our
perimeter," he recalls. "There would be laundry hanging off the
balconies, and people hanging out on the roof for fresh air. The
place was full of kids and families. On rare occasions, a fighter
would get atop the building and shoot at our passing vehicles. They
never really hit anybody. We just knew to be careful when we were
over by that part of the wall, and nobody did shit about it until one
day a lieutenant colonel was driving down and they shot at his
vehicle and he got scared. So he jumped through a bunch of hoops and
cut through some red tape and got a C-130 to come out the next night
and all but leveled the place. Earlier that evening when I was
returning from a patrol the apartment had been packed full of people."

Looking back on his time in Iraq, Hicks sees a hopeless situation.
"You go out on your first mission and all the Iraqis think you're a
loser, they ignore you, or flip you off, or draw their finger across
their throat, yelling obscenities," he says. "Even though some were
nice to us, you quickly lose any trust in them, and you lump them all
together. The only way you can stay safe is to assume that outside
the wire everybody wants to kill you. You don't want to be there. And
it comes down to, 'Well fuck, I hate being here and I can't go
home…So I wake up every fucking day and I think, 'The only reason I'm
here is because you fucking people are forcing me to be here. I hate
you fucking people, and you hate me, and that's just how it is.' And
once you get to that place, it's over."

.

Eyewitness accounts of occupations

Eyewitness accounts of occupations

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_iraq22_03-22-08_AL9E310_v23.39c68e9.html

March 22, 2008
by CATHERINE LUTZ MATTHEW GUTMANN

LAST WEEKEND, we joined hundreds of young veterans of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan gathered near Washington, D.C., for the Winter
Soldier Hearings: Iraq and Afghanistan. In a packed conference
auditorium, under the glare of lights and the cameras of the BBC and
other international and national media, former and active-duty troops
brought the day-to-day reality of the war home to hundreds of people
attending this historic event. They gave eyewitness accounts of what
they saw and did with their units during the invasion and war whose
fifth anniversary is upon us, as well as in the now six-year-old
occupation of Afghanistan.

Named in response to Tom Paine's Revolutionary War indictment of the
"summer soldier and the sunshine patriot," the D.C. hearings follow
in a long tradition of soldier dissent, including a similar tribunal
held by anti-war veterans in Detroit in 1971, during the Vietnam War.
Last weekend's event brought together nearly 300 veterans ­ mostly
men and women in their twenties. They told of their year, or two or
three in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they saw and did there.

The veterans sharply criticized the military's Rules of Engagement
(ROE) and provided testimony that these ROE were inconsistent and
loose to the point of legitimating widespread abuses against
civilians. The soldiers and Marines were often instructed to shoot
"whenever they felt threatened," which came to mean virtually all
situations outside the wire of U.S. bases.

The vets told riveting stories of their own missions and recounted in
often grotesque detail the effect of these operations on Iraqi
civilians. They documented how this treatment of Iraqis and Afghanis
was regularly sanctioned or overlooked by commanders.

The veterans told of:

• U.S. troops raiding home after home after home in which no
insurgent activity or evidence was found, terrorizing the families inside.

• U.S. troops kicking, butt stroking and clothes-lining Iraqi
prisoners of war, whom they were told to always call "detainees" so
that Geneva Conventions did not apply.

• U.S. troops spraying machine-gun fire into homes after hearing a
single shot from somewhere in a village.

• U.S. troops throwing urine-filled bottles and feces-packed food at
people walking along the side of the road.

• U.S. troops shooting farmers working in their fields at night (to
take advantage of the erratic electricity to run their irrigation
systems) simply because they were out after a U.S.-mandated curfew.

• U.S. troops commanded not to stop for pedestrians, and instead to
run over anyone or anything in the road as their convoys roar down highways;

• U.S. troops commanded to destroy boxes containing entire archives
of birth certificates of the people of Fallujah, after a U.S.
scorched-earth campaign in that city in 2004.

In addition, numerous women veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan
occupations testified at the Winter Soldier Hearings last week about
repeated cases of sexual assault and harassment that they experienced
at the hands of their fellow U.S. troops, and the obstacles placed in
the way of female soldiers and Marines who attempted to report these crimes.

The anti-war veterans explained that abuses and killings of random
civilians sometimes occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan because troops
were angry about the death of comrades in their units. Many also
testified to the motivation provided by an endemic racial hatred
expressed by enlisteds and officers alike. They said they understood
the frustration and rage, but they emphatically declared in their
testimony that crimes against the people of Iraq at the hands of the
U.S. armed forces were not isolated incidents of pent-up resentment
or a matter of a few bad apples spoiling an otherwise healthy barrel.

The acts were habitual, repeated and officially promoted or condoned.

And their frequency helps explain poll numbers that show that the
overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave the country,
and to do so immediately. In August 2007, for example, 79 percent of
the Iraqi people said they opposed the U.S. occupation, and a
Department of Defense survey of Iraqis found that fully 88 percent
believe that the presence of U.S. forces has made the security
situation in their country worse, not better.

What can we as American citizens do? Demand more honest media
coverage of the war, for one thing. While we realize that sex sells
better than a bloody war, it is sad commentary when watching the
mainstream media last weekend would leave you more likely know the
details of Eliot Spitzer's sexcapades or an unusual weather event in
Atlanta than about this crucial source of information about the
nature of the wars in which we are engaged as a nation.

For another, watch this testimony, available on the Web at

www.ivaw.org, and demand more of our candidates for president. Barack
Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain all call for leaving major
bases and tens of thousands of troops behind in perpetuity. Let them
know that half an occupation is still an occupation, and will create
the conditions for continuing violence and atrocity.
---

Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, is
the author of Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th
Century (Beacon Press 2001). Matthew Gutmann is a professor of
anthropology at Brown.

.

Winter Soldiers Move Toward GI Resistance

Winter Soldiers Move Toward GI Resistance

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41692

By Aaron Glantz*

SILVER SPRING, Maryland, Mar 21 (IPS) - Hundreds of veterans who
gathered outside Washington last weekend to testify about their
experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning to their
communities across the country with the goal of stoking resistance to
the Iraq war from inside the U.S. military.

The so-called Winter Soldier gathering organised by Iraq Veterans
Against the War was designed to demonstrate that well-publicised
incidents of U.S. brutality, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of
Haditha, are not isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad
apples," as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They
are part of a pattern, the organisers said, of "an increasingly
bloody occupation".

"We have the power to bring the troops home, when they throw down
their weapons and refuse to fight," said Phil Aliff, a recently
discharged combat veteran, who helped start the first active duty
chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War at Fort Drum in upstate New York.

Aliff founded that chapter after serving a year in Iraq from August
2005 to July 2006, a tour that included stints in Abu Ghraib and
Fallujah, some of the most dangerous parts of Iraq for a U.S.
soldier. He participated in roughly 300 patrols and was hit by so
many roadside bombs that the entire unit became demoralised and
started to seek out ways to avoid combat.

In April 2007, after returning home, Aliff began talking to other
soldiers at Fort Drum who shared his opposition to the war. He
refused a second deployment to Iraq, noting he suffered from
post-traumatic stress disorder from his first tour, and started
organising with other soldiers on the base.

"Instead of relying on media exposure as a quick fix to gaining
members, we began weekly face to face meetings as a way to create
transparency from the chain of command," he said. "We had two main
tasks: to educate our fellow soldiers and win victories for them. And
we did win victories."

For example, Aliff noted, one of their members, Specialist Eugene
Cherry, was discharged without a court martial even though he had
gone Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for 16 months after being refused
treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other veterans at Winter Soldier noted that soldiers seeking to
oppose the war from inside the ranks need not break Pentagon
regulations to do so.

Garret Rappenhangen, a former U.S. Army scout sniper, who served in
Baquba near the Iranian border from 2004 to 2005, helped found a
military blog called Fight to Survive, which he and other like-minded
soldiers posted to throughout their deployments.

"When you're in the military, you are a citizen soldier," Rappenhagen
said. "You still retain your rights as a citizen and you're able to
use those rights."

To critics of his activities, Rappenhagen said: "It'll be a shame if
the actual use of your first amendment right [to freedom of speech]
becomes unpatriotic."

These increasing calls for GI resistance came amid an almost complete
media blackout from the large U.S. news organisations.

Though the gathering was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary
of the invasion of Iraq and was held in Silver Spring, Maryland less
than 10 miles from the White House, the personal testimonies of
hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans garnered only a small
article in the metro section of the Washington Post. The New York
Times¸ CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS ignored it completely.

Five years into the war, the country appears to be back where it
started in terms of media coverage. A study by the Pew Research
Centre last week revealed only 28 percent of respondents correctly
said about 4,000 U.S. citizens have died in the war. Most thought the
number was closer to 2,000 or 3,000.

According to the same survey, overall media coverage of the war
dropped from an average of 15 percent of stories in July 2007 to just
3 percent in February 2008.

But the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who spoke at Winter Soldier
could take heart in another survey released Wednesday by the Wall
Street Journal and NBC News which found 53 percent of respondents
think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is not possible.

Many members of Iraq Veterans Against the War see a parallel between
that kind of polling and the history of GI resistance during the
Vietnam war. They note that when Vietnam veterans held a similar
forum on war crimes in 1971 it was also roundly ignored by the
mainstream press. But that did not cause the story to go away,
because word got out through military and veteran circles that
resistance within the ranks was building -- a development most
members of Iraq Veterans Against the War see as even more important
than mainstream media coverage and lobbying on Capital Hill.

"We may be smaller in number than the Vietnam Veterans Against the
War were," Rappenhagen said, "but when they held their Winter Soldier
event in 1971 it was three years after the Tet Offensive. Hopefully,
by speaking here today we can end this war before there is a Tet
Offensive in Iraq."
---

*IPS correspondent Aaron Glantz co-anchored Pacifica Radio's live
coverage of Winter Soldier 2008. You can find audio and images from
the event online at the website www.warcomeshome.org.

.

Fighting for peace

Fighting for peace

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12650

Vets have family in the anti-war movement

by Sandra Svoboda
3/19/2008

When he enlisted as a U.S. Marine in 2003, Lars Ekstrom believed Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein needed to be
ousted to prevent terror strikes against the United States.

He trained as an infantryman and spent several months on ships in the
Persian Gulf with a maritime special purpose task force where he set
up blocking points and searched boats. He was also on the ground in
Kuwait where he experienced sniper fire.

By the time his unit was back stateside in early 2006 and training
for a second deployment to the Middle East, Iraq had been
unsuccessfully scoured for weapons caches and Hussein had been found
hiding in a dirt hole.

Those threats gone, he says he re-evaluated the military's role in
the region. Between the newly proven futility of the original
invasion and the stress he experienced in combat, Ekstrom broke.

"Rolling it over in my head, over and over again, one day I just
started crying for no reason. I cried for four to six hours. I asked
to see a chaplain," Ekstrom, 22, says. "After that, I suffered a
catastrophic blow to my morale. ... I just completely lost faith in
the chain of command and I developed chronic depression."

He wasn't ready to leave the military but wanted an administrative
assignment where he could get mental health treatment that he didn't
think would be available in a combat setting. He accepted an
administrative separation and was discharged in June 2006.

Coming home to Madison Heights, he found a night-shift job, enrolled
at Oakland Community College and thought about the conflict he'd been
a part of. Surfing the Internet, Ekstrom found the MySpace page for
Iraq Veterans Against the War and joined.

"Just in talking to other people, they have similar stories to mine
and have an understanding of what I've gone through. It's helpful," he says.

The Washington, D.C.-based group, founded in 2004 and now counting
nearly 1,000 members, is one of several military-related
organizations opposing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With members who are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans of
other wars and family members, the groups have several roles. They
provide a sense of community for veterans who, like Ekstrom, are
conflicted about their newfound opposition to war. They lobby for
medical care and other issues directly affecting servicemen and
women. They publicize the stories of active-duty soldiers and
Marines. And they constantly hope to leverage their unique
perspective to have Congress or a new president end the war.

"When you have the actual veterans and their families who have
experienced it, I think there's nothing better for credibility," says
Deborah Klein Walker, the immediate past president of the American
Public Health Association, a professional organization worried about
the health effects of war on civilians, veterans and their families.

Re-generation

World War II Navy veteran Bob Fehribach says Iraq has re-energized
his anti-war efforts. The Sterling Heights man was "pro-military" for
decades. But then a friend shipped off to southeast Asia in the late
1960s and early 1970s, which made the conflict more personal. With
the nightly news showing bodies coming home in bags, he thought about
the reasons U.S. troops were in Vietnam, and how those circumstances
differed from those of World War II. Over time, he saw leaders lie
about the situation in Vietnam and realized American troops had no
legitimate reason to be there. He feels the same way about Iraq.

"I just took a complete turnaround and ever since, I've been speaking
up," says the 80-year-old retired social worker, who is active with
the southeast Michigan chapter of Veterans for Peace, one of 120
chapters with 7,500 members internationally.

"I spoke up against the war in Vietnam. I went to Washington. I've
marched for peace. We're against any kind of war. We don't think we
should do any nuclear armaments of any kind. We just don't believe
that's a way of solving anything."

Such veterans' involvement in anti-Vietnam campaigns was credited
with helping turn public opinion against that conflict. Today's
groups say they have a "tougher" sell to the general public, which
may not immediately realize the effect the war is having on the home front.

Without a draft, there isn't a universal fear among Americans that
someone they know will be injured or killed in combat, so they don't
care as much.

"People are once removed from seeing immediate family, seeing their
sons and daughters going off to war," says Audrey Mantey, a former
U.S. military Russian linguist and intelligence analyst now active
with southeast Michigan's Veterans for Peace chapter. "People aren't
as affected by it."

But when military men and women do come home from Iraq and
Afghanistan, families then realize the toll war has taken, says Nancy
Lessin, who co-founded Military Families Speak Out in 2002 when her
stepson was deployed with the Marines. The group now counts 4,000
families as members.

"Our focus is on ending the U.S. military occupation in Iraq,
bringing our troops home now and getting them the care they need when
they get home. That's truly supporting our troops," says Lessin, who
lives in Boston.

And today's veterans' needs are many, according to Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit support group based in New York.

Traumatic brain injury is the "signature wound" of the Iraq War, the
group says, but the Department of Defense has not implemented
mandatory screening despite surveys that show as much as 20 percent
of Iraq veterans ­ about 300,000 people ­ suffer the injury.

The current Army suicide rate is the highest it's been in 26 years,
at least 40,000 Afghanistan and Iraq veterans have been treated at a
VA hospital for substance abuse, and 20 percent of married troops in
Iraq are planning a divorce, according to studies. Yet the U.S. Army
Medical Command found nearly one-third of soldiers and Marines in
Iraq worry about the effect a mental health diagnosis could have on
their career and more than half worried they would be considered
"weak" if diagnosed with a psychological problem.

Christopher Arendt would count himself among those veterans who could
use some better medical, educational and financial support. Halfway
through his senior year at Olivet High School in 2003 Arendt says he
bought into the military's "masculine concept and all the heroism."
He joined the Army National Guard, believing a recruiter who told him
the guard would only work domestically.

"That was immediately turned on its head," Arendt says. He was
enrolled at Kalamazoo Community College during the fall of 2004 when
the news came. "My unit was going to be deployed to Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, to be prison guards. I withdrew halfway through the semester, I
lost all the money. We deployed in December," Arendt says.

During training in New Jersey where he learned to guard prisoners,
Arendt filed papers describing himself as "psychologically unfit" for duty.

"I had a history of being depressed. I had a couple of suicide
attempts under my belt by the time I was deployed," he says. Being
assigned as a prison guard at the Cuban facility exacerbated his problems.

"I didn't want to be involved in the oppression of people. I didn't
like it. I didn't want anything to do with it," he says. But he went
and says he was a "successful soldier." Arendt received awards, was
offered promotion and supervised troops, he says.

But his views about the war put him at odds with the military
establishment. "We were being used. I thought it was offensive to
global politics. I thought it was offensive to human beings," he says.

Arendt says his post-service mental health issues are mostly
attributable to his military experience. "I think 75 percent of my
issues come from the military and 25 percent is from my life in
general," he says.

Now attending school in Chicago, Arendt says involvement with
anti-war groups helps him "find a sense of community and find a peace
for this part of my life."

Last weekend Arendt and Ekstrom were among the 250 people who
participated in an anti-war event organized by Iraq Veterans Against
the War in Washington, D.C. Called Winter Soldier, it was patterned
after the anti-Vietnam War event of the same name held in Detroit in 1971.

The first Winter Soldier hearings were sponsored by Vietnam Veterans
Against the War and largely credited for fueling the anti-war
movement in the United States. Then a young veteran, John Kerry
participated. A few months later he would testify at the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee where he famously asked, "How do you ask
a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Ekstrom says veterans need to continue speaking out and making their
opposition visible. He's hung anti-war fliers near military
recruitment materials on public bulletin boards and would like to
start a local chapter of the Iraq veterans' group.

"It will just kind of shake up the myth that veterans all support the
war," he says.

SEE ALSO:

Talking points
War-related quotes tell the story
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12652

Left was right
Peace activists and their grass roots
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12643

Blood and greenbacks
Calculating the costs of war
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12645

---

Sandra Svoboda is a Metro Times staff writer. Contact her at
313-202-8015 or at ssvoboda@metrotimes.com.

.

Soldiers Testify at Second Winter Soldier

Soldiers Testify at Second Winter Soldier

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/soldiers-testify-at

Veterans from Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Describe Systematic Brutality

By Spencer Ackerman
03/17/2008

Out of context, the picture seemed ordinary, open to interpretation.
It showed the butt end of five or six rifles, sloppily stacked in a
pile inside an armored vehicle. In context, it documented a cover-up
of accidental -- or even intentional -- shootings of Iraqi
noncombatants by U.S. Marines in Iraq's Anbar Province in 2005 and 2006.

At least three Marines who served in Anbar during that period said
that their platoons carried "drop weapons" or tools that Iraqis were
not permitted to possess to plant on the bodies of Iraqi noncombatant
corpses in case of a wrongful killing.

They did so with the approval of their chain of command. "It was
encouraged, almost with a wink and a nudge, to carry drop weapons and
shovels with us," said Jason Washborn, a Marine corporal who served
three tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. "In case we accidentally
did shoot a civilian, so we could toss weapon on the body to make
[him] look like an insurgent. I was told... that if [the Iraqis]
carried a shovel, or if they dig anywhere, especially near roads],
then we could shoot them [on suspicion of planting roadside bombs].
So we actually carried tools in our vehicles."

Washborn was one of 14 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who testified at
the Mar. 13-16 Winter Soldier investigation -- an eyewitness
indictment of what was called systemic brutality in the occupations
of Iraq and Afghanistan. The veterans declared that permissible uses
of force in the wars became more and more broadly defined in response
to the strength of the insurgencies there over time. The
investigation, sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War and held in
Silver Spring, Md., was intended, according to a background briefing,
to "mobilize the military community to withdraw its support for the
war and occupation in Iraq." It featured photographic and video
evidence of potential war crimes and proved to be an emotionally
grueling experience for both testifiers and witnesses.

The investigation took great pains, as IVAW's Jabbar MacGruder said
during Friday's panel on the rules of engagement, not to blame any
soldier or even policy-maker. "It would be a mistake to blame any
individual soldiers or individual leader," MacGruder said. "This is
not a failure of leadership... but the consequence of the nature of
occupation."

The charge that the original 1971 Winter Soldier investigation
smeared soldiers and Marines as war criminals but exculpated the
Vietnam war itself was a deliberate disinformation strategy by Nixon
operative John E. O'Neill. It has since gained great currency in the
Vietnam veterans' community and the popular imagination.

But over the last few days, the soldiers and Marines did testify to a
gradual degradation of the rules of engagement. Many had served
multiple tours in Iraq and said that during the early days of their
deployments, there was an effort to restrict the use of force to
clearly necessary cases. "As time went on and casualties grew higher
and higher, the rules got a bit lenient," testified Sergio Kochergin,
a Marine who served on the Iraq-Syrian border. Initially, when
confronting a perceived threat, a Marine needed to call into the
command post to await instruction in ambiguous cases. "We didn't
question it. We were angry," he said. "It went down to, if there's a
person who [had] a weapon, not calling the command post, or if
[someone was] doing suspicious activity we were allowed to take them
out. We'd call in, say, 'We have suspicious activity,' and we were
allowed to take them out."

...by the end of his deployment, it was essentially authorized that
any Iraqi who was seen having a "heavy bag or a shovel" -- to
potentially dig trenches for improvised explosive devices -- could be
killed. Kochergin said that by the end of his deployment, it was
essentially authorized that any Iraqi who was seen having a "heavy
bag or a shovel" -- to potentially dig trenches for improvised
explosive devices -- could be killed. "We just basically changed [the
rules] ourselves," agreed Garret Reppenhagen, an Army corporal who
served in Baquba in 2004 and 2005. "You're not concerned with the
rules of engagement and the Geneva Conventions. Your primary concern
is getting yourself and your buddies home alive." The attitude in his
company, he said, was, "We didn't get in trouble for that? Oh, let's try this."

One Marine sergeant named Jason Lemieux, who served three tours in
Iraq, said, "The rules of engagement were broadly defined and loosely
enforced. ... Anyone who tells you differently is a liar or a fool.
They were gradually reduced to a case of non-existence."

The chain of command, the testimony asserted, facilitated the
degradation of standards for using deadly force. Most veterans
testifying spoke of a willingness on the part of their company and
battalion-level commanders to accept false explanations for civilian
deaths; to not investigate U.S. culpability for wrongful death, and
to knowingly miscast blame for U.S.-caused killings of civilians on
insurgents.

Planting guns on killed civilians and calling them insurgents was
"commonly encouraged [by commanders] but only behind closed doors,"
said Washborn. Lemieux said that in 2006, he saw his commander "shoot
two old ladies walking [in Anbar Province] carrying vegetables."
Initially the commander, whom Lemieux did not identify, ordered one
of his men to shoot the women, but when the Marine refused, "the
commander shot them himself." Later, the same Marine engaged in
similar acts. "He was following the example [his] commander set."

Through tears, a Marine named James H. Gilligan recounted a story
about an artillery barrage on an Afghan village in 2004. The barrage
occurred because Gilligan relayed incorrect coordinates to his
Tactical Operations Center after his platoon came under a brief and
disorienting attack. He was pressured by his commanders after the
fact to falsify a report saying the attack was legitimate. Weeks
later, Gilligan's unit experienced its first IED attack after
visiting the devastated village. A unit leader, he said, spoke to a
village leader about the attack and told him, "If the Taliban does it
again, let us know."

This weekend's Winter Soldier included two elements that its
Vietnam-era predecessor lacked. The first was video footage. Jon
Michael Turner of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines showed video of on e
fellow Marine bragging, "I think I just killed half the population of
northern Ramadi." Another one showed a laser-guided bomb decimating a
building Turner identified as belonging to the Iraqi Ministry of
Health. "It was still in use and there were people in it," he said. A
third video showed the minaret of an Anbar Province mosque coming
under sustained and deliberate gunfire for nearly a minute. Turner
explained the Marines shot the minaret to "take out aggression after
a guy in our weapons company got shot. ... For those who don't know,
it is illegal to shoot at a mosque unless [you are] taking fire. We
did not take any fire."

Another addition to the Iraq/Afghanistan-vintage Winter Soldier was
video interviews with members of the population under occupation.
Another addition to the Iraq/Afghanistan-vintage Winter Soldier was
video interviews with members of the population under occupation. The
team behind the web-documentary series Alive in Baghdad provided
clips of a middle-aged man and a teenaged boy who had both been shot
by U.S. troops and survived. When a third Iraqi, from Baghdad's
violent Sunni Adhamiyah neighborhood, was asked if he wanted to say
anything to IVAW, he replied, "If they can end the occupation, I will
be very thankful."

Some soldiers and Marines testifying at Winter Soldier said they did
so to honor the memory of fallen comrades. Turner showed photographs
of memorials for five dead friends after ripping his ribbons and
medals off his chest and hurling them into the audience -- an act
reminiscent of Vietnam Veterans Against the War's 1971 protest on the
steps of the Capitol. Fighting back tears, Kochergin ended his
testimony by saying, "I want to apologize to all the people in Iraq.
I'm sorry and I hope it will be over as soon as possible."

On Thursday, the first day of Winter Soldier, President George W.
Bush participated in a video conference with U.S. soldiers and
civilians in Afghanistan. "It must be exciting for you," he said, as
reported by Reuters. "[And] in some ways romantic, in some ways, you
know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

.

U.S. Soldiers 'Testify' About War Crimes

U.S. Soldiers 'Testify' About War Crimes

http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/158957/1/

Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Tue., Mar. 18, 2008

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, Mar 18 (OneWorld) - Dozens of Iraq and
Afghanistan war veterans publicly testified this weekend about crimes
they committed during the course of battle -- many of which were
prompted by the orders or policies laid down by superior officers.

Some international law experts have said the soldiers' statements
show the need for investigations into potential violations of
international law by high-ranking officials in the Bush
administration and the Pentagon.

The weekend gathering was designed to demonstrate that
well-publicized incidents of U.S. brutality, including the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the
town of Haditha, are not isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad
apples," as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They
are part of a pattern, the organizers said, of "an increasingly
bloody occupation."

The so-called "Winter Soldier" event brought together more than 300
war veterans to discuss soldiers' actions and the impact of the
ongoing wars. The event was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the
War and was named after a quote from 1776 by the American
revolutionary Thomas Paine.

Among those testifying at the hearing was Cpl. Jason Washburn, a
former Marine who served three tours in Iraq. Washburn served in some
of the most dangerous parts of the country, including Najaf and
Iraq's Western Anbar Province. A squad in his unit was responsible
for the massacre of 26 civilians in Haditha in November 2005.

Washburn told the gathering his commanders encouraged lawless behavior.

"We were encouraged to bring 'drop weapons' or shovels, in case we
accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body
and pretend they were an insurgent," he said.

"By the third tour, if they were carrying a shovel or bag, we could
shoot them. So we carried these tools and weapons in our vehicles, so
we could toss them on civilians when we shot them. This was commonly
encouraged."

Another former Marine, John Michael Turner, tore off the medals he
earned during two tours in Iraq and threw them on the ground.

"Apr. 18, 2006 was the date of my first confirmed kill," he told the
crowd other veterans. "He was innocent, I called him the fat man. He
was walking back to his house and I killed him in front of his father
and friend. My first shot made him scream and look into my eyes, so I
looked at my friend and said, 'Well, I can't let that happen,' and
shot him again. After my first kill I was congratulated."

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at the nonprofit group Human
Rights Watch, told OneWorld "we shouldn't scapegoat soldiers for any
orders they have been given."

"The bottom line should be where up the chain of command does this
[investigation] need to go," he said. "When we're looking at torture
at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay we need to ask where were the
officers and what were they doing?"

In 2006, Garlasco co-authored a report for Human Rights Watch titled
"No Blood, No Foul," which featured numerous anonymous U.S. soldiers
telling stories of torturing detainees.

"Detainee abuse was an established and apparently authorized part of
the detention and interrogation processes in Iraq for much of
2003-2005," the report reads. "The accounts also suggest that U.S.
military personnel who felt the practices were wrong and illegal have
faced significant obstacles at every turn when they attempted to
report or expose the abuses."

Last week, U.S. President George W. Bush vetoed legislation that
would have specifically banned certain types of interrogation
techniques that are internationally recognized as torture.

Bush announced the veto during his weekly radio address in which he
defended widely condemned practices including waterboarding, the
simulated drowning technique invented by Spanish inquisitors and
adopted by such regimes as the Khmer Rouge. Bush claimed that
techniques like this had alone prevented a repeat of attacks similar
to those carried out on Sep. 11, 2001.

"The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half
years is not a matter of chance," Bush warned. "This is no time for
Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of
keeping America safe."

But veterans who testified at the Winter Soldier gathering said
detainee abuse is just one of many types of brutality that has become
a systematic part of the occupation.

"The problem that we face in Iraq is that policy makers in leadership
have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don't abide by the rule
of law, we don't respect international treaties," argued U.S. Army
Sgt. Logan Laituri, who served a tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005
before being discharged as a conscientious objector. "So when that
atmosphere exists, it lends itself to criminal activity."

Laituri told OneWorld that precedent of lawlessness makes itself felt
in the rules of engagement handed down by commanders to soldiers on
the front lines. For example, when he was stationed in Samarra, he
said, one of his fellow soldiers shot an unarmed man while he walked
down the street.

"The problem is that that soldier was not committing a crime as you
might call it, because the rules of engagement were very clear that
no one was supposed to be walking down the street," Laituri said.
"But I have a problem with that. You can't tell a family to leave
everything they know so you can bomb the [expletive] out of their
house or their city. So while he definitely has protection under the
law, I don't think that legitimates that type of violence."

International law expert Benjamin Ferencz, who served as chief
prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg after World War II, said
none of the veterans who testify at Winter Soldier should be
prosecuted for war crimes.

Instead, he said, President Bush should be sent to the dock for
starting an "aggressive" war.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international
crime," the 88-year-old Ferencz told OneWorld. He said the United
Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II,
contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the
permission of the UN Security Council.

"Every war will lead to attacks on civilians," he said. "Crimes
against humanity, destruction beyond the needs of military necessity,
rape of civilians, plunder -- that always happens in wartime. So my
answer personally, after working for 60 years on this problem and [as
someone] who hates to see all these young people get killed no matter
what their nationality, is that you've got to stop using warfare as a
means of settling your disputes."

Ferencz believes the most important development toward that end would
be the effective implementation of the International Criminal Court,
which is located in the Hague, Netherlands.
--

OneWorld TV: Soldiers Speak Out
http://tv.oneworld.net/article/view/141901/1/

.