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TechnoratiNorthwest Indiana natives Vincent Emanuele and Derek Giffin grapple with their pasts.Both served in the war in Iraq and say they are scarred by what they witnessed. They say they are resentful because they feel the U.S. government lied to them about the battle's purpose.
On Thursday, Emanuele of Burns Harbor and Giffin of Schererville will be in Washington, D.C., to send a message to the country's leaders. They will join hundreds of other protesters from Iraqi Veterans Against the War and other organizations. The protest coincides with the five-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.
The "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" is a four-day event, from Thursday to Sunday featuring testimonies from veterans of both occupations.
Military recruiting officials would not respond to Emanuele and Giffin's views on the record because they were ordered not to give comment.
But Marlene Bland, a public affairs official for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at the Fort Knox, Ky., headquarters, said anti-war protests are protected.
"Part of a soldier's responsibility is to uphold the First Amendment right to free speech," Bland said. "We certainly respect the opinions of others."
Emanuele, 23, and Giffin, 27, hope their activism will compel more Americans to question their government.
The veterans said weapons of mass destruction, a major hook to go to war, were not found. And, they said, bringing democracy to countries is one of the Bush administration's other causes for the war.
The veterans said the public needs to put politics aside and consider both sides of the issue.
Coverage in the mainstream media provides a scant glimpse of the day-to-day warfare, they said.
"There are things we don't see on CNN ... the nightly news," said Giffin, who served from March 2004 to March 2005.
Giffin's view of the war has "fractured" relationships with his family, he said. "It tears me apart," the Andrean High School graduate said.
His grandfather wrote him a letter essentially ostracizing him from the family. At a family gathering, his aunt, a 20-year Air Force veteran, slapped him, he said.
Giffin said the war experience and his religious values clashed.
"After 12 years of religious indoctrination, I was taught 'Thou shall not kill.' In the war, they say, 'God's on our side,'" he said.
The emotional toll haunts him.
"It's hard to describe what war does to the psyche," Giffin said.
Emanuele, a Chesterton High School graduate, served in the Marine Corps from September 2004 to April 2005.
He said he has had flashes of disturbing memories while shopping for groceries. He has trouble sleeping.
Now, he doesn't take anything for granted.
"It's hard for me to hear people complain." he said. "It's all trivial to me."
He can't let go of images of Iraqi civilians shot and killed or the memories of running over corpses.
Emanuele remembers a moment of reflection during the warfare.
His squad leader had read a passage from the Bible. Some time after that reading, Emanuele's squad defeated insurgents firing from their bunker. The squad went over to the bunker. Emanuele saw a Koran was opened up to a passage.
With that, he began to "understand the other side."
"This is not 'Saving Private Ryan,' this mythical image (of heroism)," Emanuele said. "I don't feel like a hero."
To view the Winter Soldier event, go to www.ivaw.org
Contact Jane Huh at jhuh@post-trib.com
© 2008 The Chicago Post-Tribune
37 Comments so far
Show AllThe first Winter Soldier took place in 1971 member of my Chapter gave testimony. I am a USAF Vet 75-77, they were demonized.
Winter Soldier II from 3/13 through 3/16 WILL have some brave Active-Duty soldiers giving testimony and Iraqi and Afghani civilians.
http://www.youtube.com?v=4Wh4XGmfJo4
http://www.IVAW.org
Pick screenings or media whatever to help, they need places and people that are able to Livestream this Testimony.
Bronze Star Families for Peace has a woman in my area, Philly, Celeste Zappala that every last Friday of the month stands( they make her stand across the street) at the recruitment centers in North Philly, dangerous area, her son was murdered and she is there come rain or shine. She was harrassed by nasty thugs at first now they know her and bring get her hot drinks and encouragement.
These Patriots from IVAW are paying $1200 a day to give testimony, I suppose Freedom is not Free. Their lives are in danger, thegatheringof eagles.com or org depending on the day etc.
They did a 25 mile ruck from Independence Hall to Valley Forge this past weekend. About 12 degrees at night when they had to camp.
Do not forget about the 5 years of Iraq march in DC on March 19 please. We could use all the bodies we can get since Congress will be in session.
Thanks for your time.
Roe
I applaud the soldiers who are taking a stand against this Administration. But my fear is it will have little effect because we have two presidential candidates who are part of the Military Industrial Complex, and a third who does not stand a chance taking it on.
Arrgh. Nothing has effect in and of itself! If all you (not you personally) come here to do is moan about how shitty things are, well...a lot of things are shitty. What are you going to do change it? In fact, what should we all do to change it? Saying "the MIC doesn't care" is just pointless. Of course they don't care, they're the MIC!
Bottom line is: get together with others and DO SOMETHING! Otherwise, it's just doom and gloom, go jump off a bridge time, and somehow, I doubt you (and you personally this time) are saying that.
Action leading to organizing leading to more action leading to...THAT breeds empowerment, everything else is just talk.
To the parents and relatives who turn their backs on these soldiers of conscience in their hour of need: when you get old and feeble and you want your children, nieces or nephews to take care of you, those soldiers of conscience will remember how you turned your back on them. To those cold hearted relatives: I hope karma bites you hard!
The protest of soldiers and their officers will only continue and grow, as it did during my season of discontent when I left Army ROTC and began to protest the assault on Vietnam
For a great article on Kelly Dougherty, Camilo Mejia and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) go to: www.sillyconvalley.net/aboutus/aboutyourhost.html and click True Patriots at the bottom of the page.
I don't blame the soldiers who were all gung ho for this war anymore than the Senator's who voted for it the first time. Everyone was lied to!!!! Bush used a tragedy (9/11) to further his greedy ambitions. He is ultimately the one who is responsible for the nightmares, the death and the destruction. But, it's obvious he is never going to receive his just punishment in this life. And I personally don't believe in an afterlife. So the man will probably get away with it. Some of us knew before it started it was a all a monstrous lie! It's sad that it's not going to end before it destroys a bunch more lives!
This is how Viet Nam ended.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
during the Vietnam war, and before that the French/Algerian war, I spoke to soldiers who had tortured prisoners or watched while others did. An argument I heard then, and hear now: this is necessary to... win the war. These wars. Funny - who actually did win ?
seems like the torture bit didn't quite work, as supposed to.
Message for tonkatsu above: I'm not certain you know the total wounded/returned count because if all of them were vocal anti-war, anti-Bush, we all, including MSM would hear them because it is in excess of 50,000. Many are just trying to cope, get the care they deserve, and some how get back to living in 'the World'. Get over the anger, and get over the fact that once out of uniform, their new peer group does not have any idea what these soldiers/marines have been thru, and, frankly, are so caught up in their own lives, they don't really care or pay any attention. I know from what I speak.
Good for these veterans which is more than I can say for their parents who oppose their actions. These cold hearted parents think any war that any President decries should be obeyed and led without serving their own conscience first. There are many in my age group who still don't see how illegal and unjust this war has been and who fail to see what has happened to our country over the past 40 years. Good luck and speak loud, Vets.
bring charges against the slapping aunt for assault, then as punishment, send her to iraq and see how bold she is then
"Part of a soldier's responsibility is to uphold the First Amendment right to free speech," Bland said. "We certainly respect the opinions of others."
Absolutely!
Please don't forget your "military oath" to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic".
The "first" duty of a soldier is to protect the Constitution and the people - from physical harm and treason.
Very good news. While the 'dumb animal' reactions from the aunt and grandfather makes for a sad story happening to a now honourable soldier, his reaction makes the whole story good news. It's good to see that he stands by his committed conscience when it's irrefutably right.
Soldiers must be able to stand honourably, and giving in to dishonourable choices is never good or acceptable. It's always better to part from the 'dumb animal' members of our lives. After all, it's these 'dumb animals' that are dishonourable, and, in this case, traitors or very nearly, for they are betraying the military oath of loyalty to not the clowns who are politicians, but the Constitution. That might not be enough to constitute treason in the minds of others, but it is in mine. Those who value replacing oath to the Constitution with obedience to whatever schmucks are filling political offices are all traitors imo. They commit this betrayal, as well as betraying care for their loved ones.
In any case, the article brings good news, and the Winter Soldiers testimonies will hopefully be very beneficial in terms of achieving real changes in the course of the U.S. govt and its allied war-criminal govts. What these testimonies will provide should be known and honourably respected by [everyone].
It should be three days of (human) earthquake or -quaking!
I spoken with a good number of Gulf I and II veterans and active duty who oppose the occupation.
A GI Rights counselor who I spoke with at length said that they have talked with GIs who are more afraid of being ostracized by fellow soldiers, family and community than being killed or maimed. These soldiers know that our occupation is based on a mountain of lies.
The veterans and active duty servicemen and women who have spoken out against the invasion/occupation are the ones who take the oath to " defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic" seriously.
The paths taken by the IVAW members as well as Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as family members in Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace are not easy.
We need to support them as they speak truth to unchecked power of greed, violence and fear. Check www.ivaw.org, check where in your area you can listen or view Winter Soldier.
Hoa binh
"war is inevitable" Bush Jr., 18 Dec. 2002. "I hope this Iraq situation will be resolved peacefully. ... I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq," "I hope this can be done peacefully." Bush Jr., 31 Dec. 2002. "We will be in Baghdad at the end of March." Bush Jr. talking to Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar on 22 Feb. 2003. "No decision has been made to use force against Iraq." Bush Jr., 6 March 2003.
"There's bulletproof evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the government of Saddam Hussein." Donald Rumsfeld, Sep. 2002, then Defense Secretary speaking on CNN. An "exhaustive" Pentagon-sponsored review of "more than 600,000 Iraqi documents" captured after the 2003 invasion "has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network." Pentagon report released March, 2008.
There are far too many reasons for Winter Soldiers to speak out but as Tom Clancy said, "What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else."
It's great the vets are making this effort, but only when the active duty military joins in will we see any real change.
It's very sad American soldiers who once bravely fought against Fascism overseas are now simply following orders from the Fascists here at home.
The military itself exists to defend our rights under the Constitution. When they allow rule by "a man" to triumph over rule by "the law," they make a mockery of not only themselves, but our entire system of government.
Move out of human dense (target) areas.
Acquire neodymium magnets and magnet wire, configure an alternator and make your own electricity.
Prepare facilities to collect and purify rain water.
Learn Wild Foods. Grow your own crops, read up on Raised Field Agriculture, automate agriculture on rails.
Read up on Wormwood, Blackwalnut husk, cloves, distilled pine sap to absolve fungus, food grade diatomaceous Earth to eliminate pests and parasites.
Read up on chelation by EDTA and various other heavy metal chelators.
Consume 12mg iodine daily.
Learn self defense and equip yourself to defend yourself under extreme conditions as prepared ambush. A concealed taser should suffice in most cases.
Do all this and everything will be ok, with 99% surity.
MAXHEMUST
thanks for the info on the march. i have a friend in austin and will inform him of this event. he's a musician too. i would be there with you, but i'm not even in the u.s.a...........
"boycotts and strikes"
When citizens boycott MSM and soldiers strike , then things will improve and not until then . Solutions , especially the boycotts , are cheap , legal , handy and effective but generally Americans are too stupid and lazy to recognize and use an opportunity.
Therefore , American serfs , suck-it-up and grin-and-bear-it for you are now the almost-slaves of an empire whoever you vote for. ( the last dig was for our "vote-Dems-across-the-board David Daniel ).
I signed up for the US Navy during the height of the Cuban Missile crisis. I had been in the merchant marine, prior to that. I had seen Yugoslav ships transporting ICBMs to Cuba. WWIII looked imminent. Had there been a war (and there almost was) we wouldn't have been fighting some starved third world country as we are today. Had the nukes flown, there wouldn't be enough people left to conduct a body count. Thank God that asshole Bush wasn't president then. Had he been, we'd have all kissed our asses goodbye five years ago.
It gets better. In the spring of 1962 I was on a Swedish tramper going from England to Burma. We were dropping off weapons and other war material, earmarked for NORTH Vietnam. The crew that had been on the trip before told me they were carrying American and British-made firearms to Hanoi, a North Vietnamese port.
The only freedom American soldiers ever REALLY fought for was the freedom for capitalist corporations to screw the soldiers, their wives and their kids every which way but loose.
I am glad that at least some of our brave (whatever else you say, they are brave) men and women have seen the truth and have the courage to bear witness.
I'm sorry but these people who put on uniforms should know what they were expected to do and saying they were lied to is not good enough. Clinton is another one claiming she was lied to, well if they're so thick they don't know an obvious lie from a statement of fact then they should stay home.
The fact is the whole bloody mess has gone sour, there's no glory any more so they all run for the exit. No dice I'm afraid, they went to Iraq and are just as guilty as the rest.
anney,
Thanks for the picture. I will be praying with you. Today Cheney just left Washington to head to the ME. I think this is the last dress rehearsal before the final act (with Fallon out of the way).
It is wonderful that these two have joined the hundreds of other Iraq/Afghanistan veterans courageously standing up Bush's folly. Poor Griffin: he must come from a pretty intolerant family; maybe being ostracized will work to his long term interest, because his grandfather and aunt don't sound like very nice people. Personally, I think they aren't very good Americans, either. From a WWII veteran, keep your chins up, fellows.
Thank you Winter Soldiers for telling the painful truth about this war. May all of you find peace.
claudius
You know, when I saw this picture of Bush and Fallon together
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
(I hope it isn't moved somewhere else by the time you see it)
and remembered GW's wimping out to the TANG to avoid the rich man's son's service during wartime, I could not help but feel outrage that George would DARE fire Adm. Fallon, who is brilliant, knows what he's talking about, and wishes to keep America safe.
To avoid the kind of ratcheted up warfare to which you allude, I pray that the rest of the military will just refuse to attack Iran or any other country that the warmongering administration wants to slaughter. I really do.
Getting slapped around by your patriotic auntie and getting disowned by Grandpa. These are the same people who blithely voted for Bush, absently parroting his "uniter, not divider" talking point. As long as America is full of rigid, violent, vindictive (and willfully ignorant) people like this, we will go right on attacking others. All with a big bright, stupid grin on our big, bright, stupid faces. Well, as John Edwards used to say, "there are two Americas".
anney,
Thanks for the link. I do not think Iran is the only nation facing attack by the US. I have a feeling that with the help of Israel, a final "purge" of terrorists and potential terrorists is in the works. You can bet that Hamas and Hezbollah are on the list. George the Inferior has to cement his legacy and he does not care what other people think nor what the consequences of his actions are.
andrew herman is correct - protest works.
Attending ralys and marching in the street is but one means of protesting. To maximize the effectiveness of protest we should utilize other nonviolent means such as boycotts and strikes.
One of the biggest myths in America is that protesting accomplishes nothing. I'm sure the military-industrial-complex is behind spreading this myth.
Otherwise why would the Trilateral Commission have penned a book called: The Crisis of Democracy? The book was written in 1975 in response to the worldwide protests of the Vietnam War that made "the people" very difficult to govern.
I say, "Hell yeah mother-f-ers! Difficult to govern is our patriotic duty!"
They do not want us to re-discover the true power and freedom available to us by simply saying no to them and refusing to cooperate in their endless murderous wars for power and resources.
After reading about Gandhi's 40 year-struggle to free India from colonialization (British Empire), I realized the true power of nonviolent protest/resistence. Once Gandhi had succeeded in repeling the Brits, the ripple-effect of his success spread all around the world and within a dozen years there were essentially no more colonies left in the world. Amazing, isn't it? Wow!
Jesus' nonviolent sacrifice is already taught all over the planet, but we need to teach Gandhi's struggle all over the world too. Gandhi was spirtual but not very religious in nature, so he could be taught to all children without interfering with religious beliefs. He was an amazing person that every school-aged child should know all about, if we hope for world peace...
Breaking News: Admiral William Fallon of CentCom has been fired -- has retired -- from his post. He challenged Bush straightforwardly on actions in Iraq and particularly plans about Iran. This Esquire article was published less than two weeks ago and caused quite a bit of consternation in the White House:
http://www.esquire.com/features/fox-fallon
So another voice of sanity has been silenced by the Bush administration. This move heightens the probability that the administration plans to attack Iran before November. Fallon stood in their way.
I believe that voting is vital. I also believe that it is vital once again this weekend to take to the streets!
As a U.S. Air Force Veteran 1963-1967.
As a friend to two of my friends, F.N. Powers and Russ Lundeen, who served in Viet Nam and later died from cancers contracted from contact with "Agent Orange"......
I am prouder of those men meeting in Washington D.C. to protest the "Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan" than those men who lied about their negligence during 9/11 and then lied about their reasons for sending American Troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The American Government has destroyed the "Soul" of the American People......A Nation that no longer believes, "with liberty and justice for all !"
Here's a great war protest coming up this weekend...
come if you can!
Million Musicians March
Saturday, March 15, 2008, 12:00pm-4:00pm
Austin, Texas
http://www.instrumentsforpeace.org/
===========================================
Find out about other marches in other towns:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
No one is more qualified to have strong views on war than those who fight in them and survive. And we shouldn't think that this is just about the Iraq and Afgan wars. What these vets will tell us is common to all the overt and covert military operations our country engages in. What's most disturbing about this whole affair is that what these vets are going to tell us is nothing new. These are lessons we should have learned after WW1 and WW2 and Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and Kuwait and Columbia and Palestine and all the other 'wars' our country is and has been involved in. In the not too distant future we will have Venezuela vets telling us of their experiences.
Hoa binh
Hoa binh
If they had a war and nobody showed up to fight the war, you wouldn't have much of a war, would you ?
This is the real reason the "Loyal Bushies" don't want the war to end or the troops to come home.
The ones who Have come home have this strange tendency to become Politically Active. In Opposition to the War.
Disloyal Non-Bushies the bunch of them.
The 'Support the troops' crowd shows its real colors when it only supports those troops who, unquestioning, play follow the leader.
I applaud the soldiers who are taking a stand against this Administration. But my fear is it will have little effect because we have two presidential candidates who are part of the Military Industrial Complex, and a third who does not stand a chance taking it on.