From Their Own Lips

Where is this story on our evening news?

If I were a far better writer, I might -- might -- be able to convey the intensity of these Winter Soldier hearings.

On the way in were a few dozen right-wing protesters organized by the "Gathering of Eagles" -- a spin-off from the "Vietnam Vets for Truth" started during the 2004 campaign to go after Kerry. I've seen them at antiwar protests, and what struck me was that their messages were unchanged -- 'support the troops.' The concept that those giving testimony inside were the troops -- several with chests weighed down with decorations and metals -- was the definition of cognitive dissonance.

There was a heavy police presence surrounding the site of the hearings -- the campus of a local college in Silver Springs, Maryland. Snipers watched from rooftops, a mobile command post was set up and cops outnumbered protesters 2-1.

The panels were heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. Many of these vets are so young, and yet they've seen more than most of us can imagine. We talk about what the military is doing in our names, but to hear from people who were there doing it themselves, is something quite different. They talked about getting their first "kill," of having no clue what the mission was, of being in a clusterfuck of unbelieveable scope.

I knew about everything of which the vets spoke in an academic sense, but to hear them tell the tales in their own words -- some choking up visibly with the telling -- was enough to make a person cry, and many in the auditorium did just that.

I've written about a dozen articles about military contractors, and I think I have a pretty good handle on how destructive the endemic corruption of this occupation has been. But hearing the frustration expressed by a young MP as she told of providing security to KBR convoys is something that can't be found in any report. 'Every day we'd provide security for these trucks,' she said, ' and they told us that they were strategic assets vital to military operations in the country. We were supposed to be prepared to use deadly force to protect them.' When the trucks broke down, the convoys would keep barreling along, and her team was left to provide security. Hungry, desperate Iraqis would gather around, and they'd hold them off using rubber bullets and, if necessary, live ammunition. Inevitably, they'd then get the call to just destroy the vehicles, along with their cargoes. 'I had no idea what we were doing -- if the payloads were so valuable, why would we inevitably get the order to destroy them?' She detailed burning trucks full of food in front of hungry Iraqis, destroying a full-outfitted and perfectly serviceable ambulance in an Iraqi district that had none. It wasn't just the futility of the job, it was the repeated futility, day in and day out. One got the sense that a lot of these soldiers went over their with lofty ideals -- they went to help the Iraqi people -- and instead they found themselves members of an occupation that places very, very little value on Iraqi lives.

There was a panel on the Rules of Engagement. More than a dozen soldiers testified that they had been trained stateside to be professionals -- to use minimal force to achieve their objectives, to respect the spirit as well as the letter of the Geneva Conventions. When they got to Iraq, that flew out the window, and the unofficial but universally observed ROE was that if they felt at all threatened, they should shoot to kill. And all agreed that in a country where the enemies are indistinguishable from the friendlies, and with a mission that was poorly designed, the rules became looser and looser. All reported that they regularly carried 'drop' weapons to put next to the corpses of any civilians they had killed by mistake, and were told by their superiors that they'd be protected in such circumstances. And that happened with alarming frequency.

And they repeated, again and again, almost as if desperate to prove that they were not monsters, that these were not isolated events -- the standards were systemic, and they came from above. The only time they played it straight by the book was when they had embedded journalists with them. "Everything was different when the media was around," remarked one Marine.

What I found most striking was the candor with which they spoke of the horrors they themselves had committed. A young sniper told of killing two guys in a field after curfew. Turns out they were farmers, and the only time they could run the pumps to irrigate their fields was during the few hours when the power was working -- they'd defied curfew to feed their family and the soldiers in his unit knew who they were and knew their situation before they opened fire.

A marine told of his first kill -- an old, unarmed man on a bicycle at the wrong place at the wrong time. He told of his commander congratulating him for the act.

Ever see a Marine choke up? A noncommissioned officer did so while recounting how he had had to call in artillery fire in Afghanistan, and instead of using his GPS system to come up with the coordinates -- which takes too long to get a bearing -- he used his compass. But he took the reading too close to a big gun, and the metal threw off the reading. He got the azimuth wrong. When he said that he had gotten it wrong, he had to pause to collect himself. Tears rolled down his face. One of his comrades brought tissues, and another put an arm around him for support. When he collected himself, he told about how he had kept calling in barrages of mortars, one after the other, and the shells fell into a sleepy little village. A few days later his unit went into the decimated village and told the survivors that if the Taliban ever mortared them again, they should call the U.S. troops.

I've never been in combat, and I have no idea how much bravery is required to shoot at someone you feel is threatening. But I do know that coming forward to talk about these things was the most profound act of courage I've ever witnessed.

They told story after heartbreaking story to the rapt audience, and at the end of the day an almost palpable sense of exhaustion permeated the space.

As I listened, two things jumped out at me. First, I was struck by what idiots people are for believing that we can't end this occupation -- or I should say how credulous they are. Anyone who believes that such a thing as a benevolent foreign military occupation exists is seriously deluded. Soldier after soldier agreed: it's not about "mistakes" or poorly defined missions or a "failure of command," although all of those things are endemic in Iraq. The problem is the occupation, and there was a consensus among these soldiers and Marines that ending the occupation is a prerequisite for the Iraqis to try to put their wrecked country back together.

Originally appearing at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/79782/

Iraq Veterans Against The War Decend On Washington

This week, on March 13-16, a new generation of "Winter Soldiers," veterans of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, will descend on the nation's capitol to tell America in their own words what they saw during their service in the asshole presidents faux war on terror.

They'll give a ground's eye perspective on the occupation's toll on the people of those countries and the costs to the military, and they'll tell stories of what it was really like in places like Fallujah and Ramadi, places that are just names on a map to most of the people in America.

They'll be following large footsteps.

In the early months of 1971, a group of Vietnam vets, organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), gave two days of testimony about the Vietnam that they had seen, up close and all-too-personally, in the original "Winter Soldier" investigation. While largely dismissed by the political establishment, their wrenching testimony redoubled the peace movement's efforts to end that war.

In his opening statement 37 years ago, William Crandell, a 26 year-old lieutenant who served in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, the division that committed the infamous My Lai Massacre, told the hushed room, The Winter Soldier Investigation is not a mock trial. There will be no phony indictments; there will be no verdict against Uncle Sam." He promised "straightforward testimony, direct testimony, about acts which are war crimes under international law.

Acts which these men have seen and participated in.

And they did just that. Over two days, more than a 100 vets of the Vietnam conflict bore witness to the horrors that they had seen with their own eyes, "the inexorable result of national policy." One panel examined the question, "What are we doing to Vietnam?" and another asked "What are we doing to ourselves?"

The media largely ignored the hearings. The East Coast papers, with the exception of a New York Times article a week after the event, refused to even cover them. The VVAW complained of an "official censorship blackout."

That was before the right had built its formidable echo chamber, before Fox News, the Washington Times, the New York Sun and the emergence of the right-wing blogosphere, with its instinctive attacks on any who question the morality of the "war on terror." It's difficult to imagine the kind of character assassinations the soldiers who gather in Washington this week will face from the war's supporters, but it's likely that they're going to redefine courage and genuine patriotism in the face of withering criticism.

But the progressive community is also better prepared to push back against those attacks this time around. A robust alternative media, of which I, FED UP AMERICAN am proud to play a role, will at least allow this new generation of Winter Soldiers to be heard.