Winter Soldier Hearings Get TV Coverage

from Al Jazeera:

Cheers And Smears: Winter Soldier Hearings Provoke Predictable Reactions

A cross-section of reactions to last weekend's "Winter Soldier" event, beginning with Eric Ruder at Socialist Worker: Winter Soldiers tell their story

Hart Viges joined the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division after September 11, 2001, was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003, and participated in the initial Iraq invasion force in March. His voice heavy with regret, he recounted his orders to launch a mortar assault on the city of Samawa in southern Iraq after some people were spotted entering a building.

"We got that fire mission, and we destroyed that building with our mortars," said Viges, who was part of a panel focused on the military's rules of engagement. "This isn't army to army. People live in towns. It's beyond imagination to think that civilians don't live in towns. It's upside-down thinking...I don't know how many innocents I've helped kill.

"Another big piece of weaponry they used on this little town of Samawa is the Spectre Gunship AC-130 with a couple belt-fed howitzers, a super gatling gun...I'm not sure of the exact nomenclature.

"They would sweep around Samawa, just pounding the city. This is definitely a sight to be seen, this airplane. Even though the rounds are coming from up in the sky, it's almost like the ground is shaking. Over the city, over neighborhoods, Kiowa attack helicopters with their Hellfire missiles, F-18s dropping bombs that would shake you to the bone, all the while I was laying down mortar fire on this town, full of people...

"Never a good thing came over the radio. One time, they said to fire on all taxi cabs because the enemy was using them for transportation. In Iraq, any car can be a taxi cab. You just paint it white and orange, and there you have it.

"One of the snipers across the radio replied back, 'Excuse me, did I hear that right? Fire on all taxi cabs?' And the lieutenant colonel replied back, 'You heard me, trooper. Fire on all taxi cabs.' And once that conversation ended, the town pretty much lit up. All the units that were in there fired on numerous cars."

Watch Hart Viges testify here (starting at 8:40).

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: Winter Soldiers II Wrap Up

These traitors have masterfully spun outright falsifications, pure lies, exaggerations, and misrepresentation of legal and moral (although gruesome and contextual) actions, into a pale imitation of the VVAW’s “masterpiece”.

Now that the “testimony” is out there, this is what I want to see. Every incident cited needs to be corroborated and investigated. Show us dates, the units involved, the names of personnel involved, exact details and locations, and signed affidavits or depositions attesting to the details of the allegations.

D: Date(s) – When did the incident occur?
U: Unit(s) – What military units were involved?
P: Personnel – What are the names of the participants and witnesses?
E: Event(s) – What exactly happened exactly where?
S: Signature(s) – Was this reported at the time or later and were reports, affidavits or depositions signed, or will they now be signed?

If they can’t provide that, then they can take their fairy tales and shove them up their treacherous asses. If they can, and do, then there should be full scale investigations and any one found to have violated the UCMJ or the Laws of Land Warfare should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Some one has disgraced the uniform in all of this, and I have a feeling that it ain’t the ones who aren’t at WSII.

It's a shame the anti-idiotarians weren't more interested in specifics when the treacherous asses who run this country were telling them fairy tales!

Tim Wheeler and Joel Wendland at People's Weekly World: Winter Soldiers offer look at reality in Iraq

Marine Matt Howard said the Marine Corps “bases itself on subjugation and abuse” of lower-ranking enlisted personnel. “I was beaten and then I was kicked out of my platoon for being beaten,” he said.

Many of the casualties in Iraq “are from friendly fire,” he said.

Howard was at the front in Kuwait the day the invasion began in March 2003. The first Abrams M-1 tank to cross into Iraq was destroyed by a U.S. helicopter gunship firing rockets armed with depleted uranium, he said. Luckily, the American soldiers escaped. “Why are we using these weapons?” he demanded. “We’re poisoning the soldiers. We’re poisoning Iraq. We’re poisoning the world. Depleted uranium is the Agent Orange of the Iraq war.”

Kevin and Joyce Lucey told the hearing of their son, Jeffrey, coming home from Iraq deeply wounded in spirit. He attempted repeatedly, without success, to get help from the Veterans Administration.

One evening, Jeffrey approached his father in the living room and the two men held each other for a time without words. The next evening when Lucey returned from work, “I held my boy one more time as I lowered his body from the rafters of the basement ceiling and removed the garden hose from his neck.”

Joyce Lucey via Ruth's Report:

"Unfortunately the tragedy is not that it just happened to one Marine but that this continues to happen to others four years after our son's death to countless others -- names that will never be placed on a memorial wall."

Listen to the Luceys' testimony here.

Katie O'Malley at Human Events: Tales of Winter Soldier II

My conclusions after hearing and reading hours upon hours of the testimony? War is hell. Bad things happen. People get hurt. Sometimes innocents get caught in the fire. As to the specifics that IVAW members alleged, perhaps a few things were questionable and they should certainly be investigated. The rest of the antidotal [sic] stories confirmed nothing more except that in war, unfortunate things happen. This was a collection of war stories, not the exposure of war crimes.

Perhaps a few things were questionable.

Ruth's Report (again): Garret Reppenhagen at Winter Soldier

IVAW's executive director Kelly Dougherty spoke on that panel about her time serving in Iraq. Dougherty was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003 and sent into Iraq as an MP in March of 2003. As an MP, her job mainly consisted of patrolling and providing escorts to convoys. Of those, they were mainly dealing with KBR (then a subsidiary of Halliburton) trucks which cost approximately $80,000 and which they were repeatedly told by their command were "national assets."

One would break down, get stuck in the mud, have a flat tire, etc., and the driver would jump out and hop into another truck in the convoy and leave. Doughtery's team would have to then deploy to the area and secure the abandoned truck. They would be told to protect it, they would be told it was important.

They would repeatedly wait around for hours, keeping Iraqi civilians away from the trucks, only to be informed by their command that the truck wasn't that important after all and they needed to shoot out the engine bloc and set the thing on fire to ensure that Iraqis could not use it for parts or utilize the abandoned cargo. "That was pretty much a daily occurrence," Dougherty testified. "Where we were abandoning vehicles by KBR contractors on a daily basis." They destroyed fuel at a time when Iraqis needed it and food at a time when they needed it.

They even were ordered to destroy an ambulance which had fallen off a truck, onto its side, into the mud because they did not have the means to pull it out of the mud. Dougherty explained the local sheiks were present and, because ambulances are in short-supply in Iraq and that area had none, begging them not to destroy the ambulance, saying that they would figure out a way to pull it out of the mud. As she noted of these type of missions, "I'm looking at people I can't even look in the eye."

Perhaps a few things were questionable.

Adventus quotes from Democracy Now! in Winter Soldier-ing:

During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot. It seemed like every time we turned around we had different rules of engagement. And they told us the reasons they were changing them was because it depended on the climate of the area at the time, what the threat level was deemed to be. And the higher the threat level was, the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond.

And, for example, during the invasion, we were told to use target identification before engaging with anyone. But if the town or the city that we were approaching was a known threat, if the unit that went through the area before we did took a high number of casualties, we were basically—we were allowed to shoot whatever we wanted. It was deemed to be a free-fire zone. So we would roll through the town, and anything that we saw, everything that was saw, we engaged it and opened fire on everything. And there was really—I mean, there was really no rule governing the amount of force we were allowed to use on targets during the invasion.

I remember one woman was walking by, and she was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading towards us. So we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher. And when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was only full of groceries. And, I mean, she had been trying to bring us food, and we blew her to pieces for it.

She shouldn't have been trying to bring them food.

This, too:

In another instance, it was actually a mayor of a town in our AO near Haditha that got shot. Our command showed us pictures from the incident. They had gathered the whole company together, and they were showing pictures of all of this, you know, what everything looked like, and pointed out the—that the reason that they did this was because there was a really nice, tight shot group in the windshield, and he announced to the company that this is what good Marine shooting looks like. And that was the mayor of the town. And it was actually my squad that was, after that, tasked with going to apologize to the family and pay reparations. But it was kind of like, basically, all we did was go there and, you know, give them some money and then leave. You know, “Oh, well” is the way it seemed they wanted us to apologize to them. It was really a joke.

Some joke!

War is hell. Bad things happen. People get hurt. Sometimes innocents get caught in the fire.

The Iraqis should have thought of that before they attacked us we attacked them.

Daniel Hasaw in The Guardian: 'It's not so much about the mission anymore'

The order came over the radio: "Charlie Mike," US army jargon for "continue mission."

Cliff Hicks' team of soldiers patrolling a typically friendly neighbourhood had mistaken celebratory gunfire at a wedding for a hostile attack and had shot up a house, wounding two people and killing a little girl.

The troops didn't want to linger in the house, and their command centre ordered them out.

"We didn't even have a translator, we didn't speak Arabic, we couldn't even say sorry," said Hicks, 23, a tank driver and machine gunner. "We just hopped in our vehicle and rode off."
...

The sad-eyed men, one wearing service medals pinned to his suit jacket, spoke of deadly weapons fired indiscriminately on civilians' vehicles and homes, of daily, humiliating harassment of Iraqis, and of the dehumanising effects the war has on the young men and women who volunteered to fight it.

War is hell. Bad things happen. People get hurt. Sometimes innocents get caught in the fire.

More Winter Soldier links: an audio archive here, and some transcripts here.

UPDATE: THE LIES CONTINUE

Josiah Ryan at CNS News: Credibility of Anti-War 'Winter Soldiers' Questioned

Patricia Williams, the Indiana state coordinator for Eagles Up, told Cybercast News Service that she too is dubious of VAIW's credibility and believes the group is hurting America's chances of winning in Iraq.

"It's not the truth - it's lies," Williams said. "They are trying to demoralize and denigrate our troops, and in doing so, they are aiding the enemy.

"If they were truths, why don't they do this is in a public court?" she said. "Why do they have it behind closed doors where people can't hear what they are doing?"

But as Ryan points out,

Many reporters and bloggers attended the VAIW event, and the program was Webcast over the Internet, and on satellite and cable television.

So who's lying?

Madeleine Mysko in the Baltimore Sun: Winter soldiers: Nation must heed the horrifying words of those who have returned from the front lines

From testimony of Jason Hurd of the Army's 278th Regimental Combat Team:

One day, Iraqi police got into an exchange of gunfire with some unknown individuals ... [and] some of the stray rounds ... hit the shield of one of our Hummers. The gunner atop that Hummer decided to open fire with his 50-caliber machine gun into that building. We fired indiscriminately and unnecessarily at this building. We never got a body count, we never got a casualty count afterward. ... Things like that happen every day in Iraq. We react out of fear, fear for our lives.
...

Car bombs are a real danger in Iraq. But as time went on ... individuals from my platoon would fire into the grills of [civilians'] cars and then come back ... and brag about it. I remember ... how appalled I was that we were bragging, that we were laughing, but that's what you do in a combat zone. ... That is how you deal with that predicament.
...

[An Iraqi] man looked at me straight in the eye, and he said, "Mister, we Iraqis know that you have good intentions here. But before America invaded, we didn't have to worry about car bombs in our neighborhoods, we didn't have to worry about the safety of our own children as they walked to school, and we didn't have to worry about U.S. soldiers shooting at us as we drive up and down our own streets."

If those good troops are stricken by what they have seen during their deployments, or by what they have done, isn't it vital that we pay attention? Their sickness with this war is a symptom we cannot ignore.

But the big media won't even mention about any of these questions or concerns. And that may be what George Bush meant when he said "Mission Accomplished!"

Iraq has been destroyed, millions of lives have been ruined, our economy is a thing of the past -- and so is our democracy! But we can't even speak about any of this in polite company.

What more could a mass murderer and a grand larcenist ask for?

Iraq war worth the cost: Bush

Winter Soldier Videos Posted

Iraq Veterans Against the War have started posting videos from this weekend's hearings.

Please watch them.

Live Blogging From Winter Soldier

The Winter Soldier hearings continue. (See also here and here.)

The Iraq Veterans Against the War website has a Winter Soldier Blog, where

Justin Cliburn, IVAW member and South Central Regional Coordinator, is blogging from Winter Soldier all weekend.

Here's a sample:

Winter Soldier LiveBlogging: Ruels of Engagement; Jason Washburn
by Justin Cliburn | Fri, 03/14/2008 - 3:31pm

Jason Washburn and his platoon once killed a woman that they genuinely believed was going to hurt them . . . only to realize the woman was bringing them food.

The stories Washburn is sharing are ones of paranoia, cruelty, and intimidation. I can't imagine how it must have been for the unit that replaced Jason's unit; they sure riled up the hornet's nest.

Jason shares his testimony with a more matter of fact tone than the other testifiers have thus far, but there is an air of shame in his voice; he finishes his sentences with a sigh. After the mayor of the town was shot and killed by US forces, Washburn's squad was tasked with going to the family and apologizing on behalf of the US military. It was not something anyone there felt was truly heartfelt, apparently.

This astounds even me: when I was in Iraq, we joked around about keeping an AK-47 in the humvee so that we could plant it on anyone we accidentally killed. Jason's unit actually did it, weapons as well as shovels (for digging IEDs).

Click HERE to read more from Justin Cliburn.

5 Years Too Many is also blogging the testimony.

Here's an excerpt, with a few comments:

10:42 AM: An Iraq veteran of the Army who served as a forward observer is describing the "stop-loss" policy as making the soldiers' who have been subjected to it, forced to serve numerous tours, encompassing 3 years and more, as prisoners of war.

He says the proud boy who enlisted just after Christmas 2003 died in Iraq. He thought the Middle East should be turned into a glass plate by nuclear weapons after Sept. 11th. He was 19 when he was deployed. He said he went there to kill people.

This is so sad. We've become a nation of vicious idiots.

Instead of improving things for the Iraqi people, there is now 2-3 random hours of electricity per day, sewage running in the streets. The destroyed water treatment plant in Sadr City where he was stationed wasn't worked on at all the year he was deployed there.

Iraqi men driving their pregnant wives to the hospital would be stopped and have their car searched. He said that happened almost daily, and that it wasn't just his unit, but his whole battalion, his whole division. He said the 2.3 million people of Sadr City were prisoners of war.

He said he used to be a model soldier, but he is here today fighting for his fellow soldiers more than he ever could than when he wore a uniform.

We are watching a video he shot of Iraqis exhuming the bodies of Iraqis who had been tortured and killed. He was supposed to shoot this video and take pictures of their faces in order to possibly try to identify them, but nothing was ever done with them. The videos and photos soldiers took just became trophies of war. They weren't used as intelligence to help the Iraqis, they were used to build morale and to promote the sense that killing and death is right. He was told to take a photo of a body whose face had no skin left on it and couldn't possibly be identified because the person giving the order just wanted to see the picture.

And the vicious idiotic things we do come back to haunt us ... for the rest of our lives.

When he returned, he became a severe alcoholic. He didn't go to the VA, because he knew that being labeled as suffering depression or PTSD would jeopardize his career.

All he had to look forward to was to get out of the military and go to college. That hope ended when Bush announced the "surge." His division was the fifth planned to go, and everyone was put on lockdown by "stop-loss." He was set to deploy the day his contract was supposed to end. He attempted suicide that day. He woke up handcuffed to a gurney in the mental health ward. He had previously been diagnosed with depression and PTSD, but was still set to deploy. After his suicide attempt, he was discharged, but the military tried to prosecute him from malingering. He was refused help to challenge it by the military attorneys, because the said fighting it would bring down the military.

Because of his general discharge, he was denied money for college, which he now can't afford to attend. He now delivers pizzas once a week, because that's the only job where he can call in and say that he's still stuck at the VA and can't get there.

It may well be impossible for anyone to comprehend the depth and breadth of suffering inflicted on America by this war -- suffering borne primarily by our troops and their families.

But we must never forget that the suffering we have caused is infinitely greater than the suffering we have endured. And the victims of our crime had never done anything vicious or idiotic to us.

They were just trying to live their lives, under a dictatorship that our government had installed, and not a single one of them wanted to see America turned into a glass plate.

They didn't enlist to make war against us.

They didn't come to our country to kill and maim innocent civilians.

They didn't drop bombs on our houses in the middle of the night.

They didn't take trophy photos. And they didn't laugh about it, either.

Winter Soldier: Bitter Truths From Those Who Know

This weekend, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of a defenseless oil-rich country which never threatened us, Iraq Veterans Against the War are presenting the testimonies of soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of civilians who have lived through the invasion and occupation of their country.

The event is called "Winter Soldier", and you can watch it happen (or watch archived video) here.

Apparently it isn't worth a mention in our allegedly liberal "paper of record".

Your search - site:nytimes.com "winter soldier" - did not match any documents.

But Saturday's Washington Post has a piece on page B1, the web version of which (much to the WaPo's credit) actually links to the IVAW website!

The WaPo piece, by Steve Vogel, gives the Pentagon a chance to speak, and cleverly leaves no doubt as to the value of the verbiage.

A Defense Department spokesman said he had not seen the allegations raised yesterday but added that such incidents are not representative of U.S. conduct.

"When isolated allegations of misconduct have been reported, commanders have conducted comprehensive investigations to determine the facts and held individuals accountable when appropriate," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said.

How laughable this would be if it were not so tragic. Mark Ballesteros hasn't even seen the allegations but he can already assure us that they're false!

This is an unprovoked war of aggression -- the invasion and occupation of a defenseless, non-threatening country -- the ultimate crime against humanity. That's not an isolated allegation of misconduct; that's a fact!

The so-called "War on Terror" is in fact a barbaric assault on several foreign countries simultaneously (Afghanistan and Iraq directly, and Somalia and Pakistan by proxy, with even more countries in the cross-hairs). It has killed at least a million people and ruined the lives of millions and millions of others. And all the reasons officially given for it have turned out to be not just false but ludicrous!

It's a crime of monstrous proportions, and the individuals who ought to be held accountable are still at large. But instead we get this ... so let's wait a while and see whether Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros can stuff his head all the way up into his small intestine. Oh, my mistake! There was no need to wait!

Vogel's piece bends over backwards to go the "fair and balanced" route, giving plenty of space to obvious liars of all types. But that seems to be the price of admission in post-democratic America, so it's not surprising.

And yet, the article also includes some nuggets of truth.

Former Marine Jon Turner began his presentation by ripping his service medals off his shirt and tossing them into the first row. He then narrated a series of graphic photographs showing bloody victims and destruction, bringing gasps from the audience. In a matter-of-fact voice, he described episodes in which he and fellow Marines shot people out of fear or retribution.

"I'm sorry for the hate and destruction I've inflicted upon innocent people," Turner said. "Until people hear about what is happening in this war, it will continue."

I couldn't agree more, and in fact this is the key reason why the government and the "news" media don't want us to know what is happening in this war.

Not just this war, of course: they don't want us to know what happens in any war. If everybody thought Rambo was realistic, the warmongers would be very happy. They do their best to control what we see, and it works very well for them, unless we go looking.

So we can't just sit passively and watch TV, or go to Hollywood movies for our worldly education. If we want the truth about what our country does in the world, we have to pay attention to the people who have done it, and listen carefully to the people to whom it was done.

Two former soldiers who served with the 1st Armored Division described an attack by an AC-130 "Spectre" gunship [photo] on an apartment building in southern Baghdad that they said took place Nov. 13, 2003.

"It was the most destructive thing I've seen, before or since," said [Cliff] Hicks, one of the soldiers.
...

"These are not bad people, not criminals and not monsters," said [Hicks]. "They are people being put in horrible situations, and they reacted horribly."

Horrible is right! And the most horrible aspect is that there is no reason for any of these horrible situations -- unless you count the part where we lost control of our electoral system, or the part where the real news vanished from our "news" media, or the fear generated by obvious false-flag terror, or the stupidity that somehow in modern America acts like a gas and fills all the available space.

Other than these relevant yet unrelated issues, there's no good reason for any of our soldiers to be in any horrible positions.

Unless you count the oil.

Adam Kokesh, a student at George Washington University who served with the Marine Corps in Iraq, said Marines were often forced to make snap decisions about whether to fire on civilians.

"During the siege of Fallujah, we changed our rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear," he said.

On the screen, a photograph showed him posing next to a burned-out car in which an Iraqi man was killed after approaching a Marine checkpoint.

"At the first Winter Soldier in 1971, one of the testifiers showed a picture like this and said, 'Don't ever let your government to do this to you,' " Kokesh said. "And still the government is doing this."

The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are not the only ones suffering, and they're not the only ones whose suffering has been mostly hidden from us:

At a session on shortcomings in veterans' health care, audience members sobbed as Joyce and Kevin Lucey described the suicide of their son, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, a death they blamed on his inability to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health specialists were on hand to help speakers and audience members, and a workshop was offered on PTSD.

The veterans who participate in Winter Soldier will undoubtedly be smeared forever for having told a few minutes of truth.

Such is life in post-democratic America.

Those who spoke yesterday described the experience as intimidating.

"It was terrifying for me," said Steven Casey, a former 1st Armored Division specialist from Missouri who also described the AC-130 attack. "I knew somebody needed to hear it. All I wanted to do is say what I saw. I'm not accusing anyone of a crime."

From the look of the IVAW site at the moment, a lot of people need to hear it.

The Return Of Winter Soldier

This weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of "Shock and Awe", Iraq Veterans Against the War are holding an educational event which they call "Winter Soldier" (see their press release here).

The phrase comes from a passage by Thomas Paine [shown in the portrait at right], the most famous pamphleteer of the first American Revolution -- a passage you can read at the top of my sidebar. As you can see, Paine didn't speak of "winter soldiers" directly, but instead referred to their "opposites": the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot.

Some of the men who fought in the (revolutionary) Continental Army did so on a seasonal basis; they joined in the spring or summer, and left in the fall (to harvest their crops) or in the winter (when the weather turned cold). Many of them re-joined when the weather warmed up again (or after their crops had been planted). For obvious reasons, these men were called "summer soldiers".

Meanwhile, some of the civilians who supported the revolution did so only when it was going well; otherwise they supported the King. These "fair-weather friends" of the revolutionaries were called "sunshine patriots".

So the name "Winter Soldier", like my own nom-de-plume, "Winter Patriot", signifies a deeper commitment than that made by the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots of Thomas Paine's time.

In 1971, a group of Vietnam veterans, including future Senator and presidential candidate John Kerry, convened in Detroit to describe what they had seen and done that led them to believe their country had committed war crimes in Vietnam. They called their exposition "the Winter Soldier Investigation". It was mostly ignored in the media of the day; a documentary film was made and that was mostly ignored, too. In fact the only aggressive publicity it ever received came in 2004, when its memory was roused to smear Kerry as "unfit for command" while he was "running against" George W. Bush.

Notwithstanding the media suppression of this important historical event; notwithstanding the way in which the anti-war vets were smeared for their efforts; notwithstanding the nauseating sight of John Kerry himself trying to outflank the warmonger on the side of more: more troops and more allies for more War on Terror; the men who came home and told the truth of what they saw and did in Vietnam went above and beyond the call of duty. They served their country in a way which it did not appreciate, and still doesn't. And they are still being smeared.

This weekend, in Silver Spring, MD, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will testify concerning a new generation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It goes without saying that they will be vilified, and in fact the attack dogs are already out in force. But to those who want the truth, they're putting it within reach.

You can watch them on satellite TV or via streaming video on the net. And all the proceedings will be archived for viewing at your convenience.

The event begins at 7PM EDT tonight (Thursday); to get an idea of what to expect, you can watch the following videos:

The IVAW site is busy but that's no surprise; it's the place to be at the moment.