Thank you CDers, too many to name, who leaped to the defense of these brave Winter Soldiers who exposed themselves to shame and vilification to tell their stories. Even here on CD, self righteous people like josephmorton, iowairish and youngturk rushed to condemn them, being clueless about how they themselves would handle the pressures these young people had to endure, following the lifelong cultural and army brainwashing they were exposed to. I have not been in their shoes, I could not possibly judge them. Christ warned of judging others. Plato said "...Time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain, therefore, awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters". Words to live by. And surely what people endure in a war setting, where your commanders and their expectations of you, holding your life in their hands, count as highest matters. I've read of recalcitrant soldiers being sent out on what they knew were suicide missions. Do not judge what you in your comfortable chair have not had to experience. Pat Tillman wasn't a loser when he enlisted. Regrettably he was brainwashed, but so are most of our young. it's easy to do, they want to believe they live in a good country, reflecting their own values. The corporate media is careful not to disabuse them of that notion. Like the soldiers said, they were ordered to play by the book in front of embedded media.

Now I need to go back and read more of these comments. I got here kind of late. Thanks, dear friends, Siouxrose, Poet, Kem, and many others who also understand.

kathyodat

ezeflyer, too many already are ending up homeless. I gave money to a homeless Vietnam vet, who wasn't actually begging, and he told me he still cries. We hugged, I could smell the alcohol on him. I didn't care, he's been mortally wounded by his experience and abandoned by his country. We are the ones with the shame. We demand the utmost from our soldiers and then desert them.

kathyodat

Dear Cindy, I suspect that as you are running against Nancy Pelosi, CD may consider printing your articles to be seen as a form of endorsement and they might have a policy about that. I don't recall seeing any articles by people running for office, and I'm also not seeing articles by Ralph Nader since he declared his candidacy for President. Just an idea.

Read your powerful story about Casey. Certainly the military has been caught in numerous lies. I'm so sorry about your loss. For what you're going through, I'm on the outside looking in. But there are those who can understand and console with you and you know who they are. I give you all my love, Kathy.

kathyodat

As with Abu Ghraib, these weren't just a few soldiers doing these things for grins and giggles; they were ordered by their commanders all the way to the top. Now Congress, you have some names here. Let's see some hearings on this. More than a million Iraqis didn't die from shooting each other. Oh, and let's not forget Blackwater; they also have zero rules of engagement.

Bush has made it clear that the only rule of engagement is victory and control of the oil. This is why he is so dangerous. He looks at his goal and feels justified ordering terrible strategies to get there. He never considers that his terrible strategies are not the only strategies available...or that his goal is an international war crime.

These soldiers are dealing with the atrocities they took part in, what of the thousands of other that will carry that mentality (and/or guilt) back to the US? What goes around comes around; and everything goes around. These personal conflicts are a metaphor for our national conscience. We will have to atone for our misdeeds as a nation in the future or it will tear us apart at the seams. The present administration has pushed us over the precipice and we stood there and let them. Where is the sense of national disgrace? People better wake up, because without atonement we are doomed to the fate of so many of the civilizations before us.

"if they were carrying a shovel or bag, we could shoot them"

I guess you dont want to be a shopper or ditchdigger in Iraq..

Stupid comments. Went to Iraq to defend the U.S. They went because they were losers who could not get a job or because they were psycopaths. If this dumb characters are going to defend my freedom, they can stay home. It is incredible that these morally inferior people could be sent anywhere to do anything. We need to get out of the world so that we do not have these stupid losers killing people.

I suggest we give josephmorton an M-16 and drop him off in Fallujah. See how long it takes him to turn into a "stupid loser" and start killing people. Not long, judging from his completely assinine post--he wouldn't have far to go.

I served 8 years in the US Army in the 80s--tours in Korea and Berlin. Soldiers are just people. Put them under intense stress, afraid for their lives, and they will bend and break. How many spoiled brat Americans can claim to truly understand what these young people have been through? Until you've been there, keep your hatred to yourself.

When our troops get home, the rest of us had better be prepared to comfort them, counsel them, forgive them, listen to them, cry with them. Because what we --yes, you too josephmorton-- have allowed Bush and Co. to do to them is unspeakable.

Don't talk to me about holding terrified twenty-year-olds accountable until Cheney and Bush are in solitary confinement where they belong.

Lemue continued, "... By my third tour, we were told to just shoot people, and the officers would take care of us."

So, Mr. Lemue, you, what, just SHOT PEOPLE because someone told you to??? And just how many of them were children, Mr. Lemue?

Good god, man! Where is your conscience? How is it possible that anyone just shoots people?

I simply can not get my mind around this soldier / killer mentality. There is nothing in my experience that I can draw upon to understand this complete and total lack of scruples, principles, ethics; the total disregard of another human being - of their joys and fears, of their desire to live - just like the rest of us; of any sense of what it means to be human.

How is it possible that we have created a world where this mentality not only exists but is honored as the mentality that 'stands up for the soul of its country.' [Thomas Paine]

That's a soul of a country that is not mine.

In the beginning it was a lot of young people stuggling to feed their families, get a better education, or just get by, so they joined the National Guard - as people have been doing for as long as I can remember. Some joined up as a way to help their country in times of trouble. Going to war in a foreign country had never been a part of their agenda, but when they were ordered to go, by their "commander-in-chief," they went.

After 9/11, and all the scare tactics propaganda catapulted from Washington via the media constantly, there were those who believed that joining up was what they had to be done to save this nation. That's what has gone on in every war we've had.

And in every war, it's a bunch of kids going off to do the killing, and being killed. They join up an innocent seventeen or eighteen, and if they're lucky enough to come back, they're eighty, or a hundred year olds not even able to remember what innocence was. The majority over there fighting are not "stupid losers killing people."

@ josephmorten,

What sort of rock did you crawl out from under, sir?

First, one is not a "loser" because one can't get a job. It has something to do with the economy.

Second, many of the people in Iraq are Nat'l Gaurd -- people who joined out of serviece to their country in case of need.

Third, the people in the regular forces joined for reasons only each individual can know.

Finally, in the devolving chaos that is Iraq, even a saint would be hard pressed to avoid psychopathy, but you, sir, I think need not apply for treatment. As they say about the clowns -- sir, you have already arrived!

"Good god, man! Where is your conscience? How is it possible that anyone just shoots people?" Wrong tense. He is confessing these things now because he has recovered his conscience. As to what happened to it: the war machine ate it up. Recruits to the armed forces are routinely and ruthlessly brainwashed into killers - a process actually begun in the popular media before they even get into uniform. The number of times I have seen or read fictions in which warrior codes and sympathy for them are the "norms" is shocking. Non violence is routinely dismissed as naive and idealistic while the killer is praised as a hero. That's the assumption made in almost every Holywood film and tv show. It's a mindset that has corrupted us (look at Obama rejecting Wright's entirely christian and moral condemnation of US foreign policy, as if admitting that the US has slaughtered millions would make him unelectable - of course it would) and swept us from the moral highground. A man like this, with the courage to speak out about the true state of affairs, deserves our thanks and support.

You don't hear much about Iraq on the Corporate Media whose corporate affiliates and fellow corporate fascists are cleaning up on. Bush is fearmongering for a new war to get Repug ratings up.

Meanwhile our military and mercenaries are getting their ultimate adrenaline rush by killing and torturing men, women and child ragheads for Jesus in the best video game with real roadside bombs and RPG's, pigging out in the green zone, testing weapons and killing technologies for war profiteering corporations, making lots more money than working at Wal Mart, being glorified as heroes for stealing oil and saving Israel from Islamofascists while poor and middle class Americans foot the bill in the trillions.

OLDBADGERTOO

'That's the assumption made in almost every hollywood film and tv show'
not to mention the stupid video games..............

I'm sorry that these soldiers aren't testifying under oath at an official hearing. Why ain't that happenin' do you s'pose???

Aren't military decorations called "medals," not "metals"?

The United States spends more than half of its enormous national government budget on military and spying enterprises. That spending is more than the rest of the world combined spends on arms and military forces. The only way that happens is because the citizens of the United States continue to play along with the propaganda that presents this overwhelming devotion to war above all else and above all other countries is an expression of honor, fairness, and good intentions in the world rather than the violent tools of empire that account for the U.S. dominating international trade, finance, and government institutions since World War II--when the Military Industrial (and Government) complex took off.

It's really no wonder, then, that millions of Americans continue to join the military in search of honor and fortune. Military might and presumed goodness, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, is as American as motherhood, apple pie, and baseball. It is part of the basic national myth that cannot be safely questioned or resisted without touching off intense social conflict and more than one could safely point out fundamental ethical and logical failings of churches that were once at the center of power in European governments before Europeans fled to America to get away from such oppression and injustice.

The point is, the abhorrent experiences and actions of these soldiers are just a small slice of the predictable consequences of a brutal and duplicitous society that most Americans accept and cling to. Just as the atrocities being carried out in Iraq, Afghanistan, and some other areas surrounding about 700 bases the U.S. has erected around the world are not the work of "a few bad apples," the roots of the illegal wars and occupations in which they serve are not limited to the confines of PNAC, large corporations, or one or both major U.S. political parties. The whole country, save a few dissenters, are in on the basic beliefs and values that feed war and empire as basic pillars of "the American way of life," that Dick Cheney rightly described as non-negotiable.

The shame and blame belongs with the entire country, not just the few who happen to be dropping bombs or shooting guns on behalf the entire country at any given moment. And so it shall be until the entire country can at least question the wisdom and righteousness of treating military domination as an honorable endeavor instead of something more akin to piracy, extortion, and, yes, terrorism, all of which use similar tools, methods, and rationale, though not on the scale undertaken by the United State of America since World War II.

"They went to Iraq to defend the U.S..."

Defend from whom? The Saudis who pulled down that Corporate Axis Mundi? Murdering people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Colombia, Viet Nam and Korea are all mortal sins against the security of America.

The people in this thread who criticize the soldiers are, for the most part, aiming at the wrong target. I've never been in the military, but I'm going to guess it's a cross-section of (young male) humanity. Some creeps, some heroes who'd risk their lives to save civilians, and everything in-between. But I've never been in a combat situation, so I'm not going to judge people who might be decent in normal circumstances, but do things under stress that they would never imagine doing back home.

The fault is in our leaders.

Young male and female humanity, now that I think about it. But I suppose it's mostly the men who do the most of the shooting.

The fault is in our conservatives (and theirs).

The fault is in the values and beliefs of most Americans who are not outraged at the continued use of half of the federal budget to support a military institution that is as big as the rest of the militaries of the world combined. Those values and beliefs are the fertile soil in which the seeds of jingoism and domination through brute force flourish and grow into the idea that fighting for and with the U.S. empire is, without a doubt, a noble choice. Similarly, the national will to fund the world's most dangerous and deadly organization in the pursuit of cheap gasoline and tech toys from East Asia for the benefit of a fraction of the 5% of the world's population who live in the U.S. is the basis for the economic and military manipulation the United States and its people have come to rely over the course of the past century, particularly since World War II.

"Good god, man! Where is your conscience? How is it possible that anyone just shoots people?"
Good god man when were you born?
America is brand conquor and enslave. It is what we do. The young soldier awakens with sadness to the horror he or she is sucked into thinking all the while it is for god and country.
You, readers and writers, are the b_____ds that supply the guns, ammo, flack jackets, rationale, pat on the back and sent him/her there.
You sent him with orders to kill. This is a democracy in name at least and in name at least you are responsible. You are the financial and legal authority that sent him there to shoot farmers in their fields at night.
You sit in your warm houses using the lastest technology to debate the morals of 20 somethings that after all are only doing your bidding.
You might claim that it is the corporations that are creating this holocaust for profit and we are powerless. Which makes you three times the fool.
You paid for it.
Your responsible for it.
You do not gain from it.
You might claim it's the corrrupt politicians or political parties. The boot of American foriegn policy has never stopped imprinting "I own your ass" across the globe regardless of what party was in power. In fact our military ass is so big just turning around in the world knocks off a few, how did you put it " stupid losers".
Don't you have to go out to eat at the mall and buy some stuff made by children in deplorable conditions or something?

Saddam and Iraqis attacked us on 9-11. They were just about to annihilate us with nuclear and chemical and biological. We had to have payback. The only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi..... I'm sure many soldiers thought these thoughts, especially on their first tour. I do wonder if they thought the same on their 2nd and 3rd tours?

"Don't talk to me about holding terrified twenty-year-olds accountable until Cheney and Bush are in solitary confinement where they belong."

I agree completely with that statement about Bush and Cheney belonging in solitary confinement.

Obama's pastor was telling the truth and Obama should have the freedom to both become president and attend a house of worship where the truth is spoken, especially in a "free country."

The cynical and completely criminal Republican business class is using American working class kids (soldiers) and adults (contractors) as mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan to promote its hidden agenda to continue US world hegemony at all costs. But US hegemony is crumbling anyway as the massive economic mismanagement of recent years makes inevitable a financial meltdown in the near future. The very fact that soldiers have been sent into danger with inadequate protection (body and vehicle armor) reveals the utter cynicism of the American ruling class. They actually thought (and still think) that they could get away with this and that the resulting deaths and severe injuries would be tolerated by the American people.

So they've admitted to committing war crimes, how is that a newsflash? Are they going to turn themselves in?

I have to agree with Josephmorton here, because if we make excuses for other ADULTS, than there are no lessons to be learned. They joined the army because they seek danger, and like the uniform, and probably identify with the people in Hollywood films, who go to foreign lands, and use their superior firepower to dispose of whichever enemy is on the current list.
They knew what happens in a war situation, because Desert Storm was only a decade before.
This was an illegal war, fought between two grossly unequal opponents - one giant playground bully and his friends against the dysfunctional wannabe (who used to be one of the bully's friends). There was only ever going to be one outcome, but unfortunately the bully started to pick on everyone around him, and they started to hit back. Very soon, the bully was revealed for what he really is.

pigs

i'm with joseph...anyone who kills because they are told to, is shit.

Yesterday George W. Bush said he wishes he were young and could go to Afghanistan and help the people there. He called military service in that country 'romantic'. He said this to soldiers. American soldiers.

I suggest that Bush is a psychopath, so out of touch with reality that it is unbelievable he manages to stay alive whenever he shows up in front of the troops.

I remember hearing Howard Zinn speak about his aerial bombing during WWII, the "good war". He is an adamant and vocal opponent of war. So we learn by fucking up. What's new.

My question is this, how many of these fiascos are we going to do as a species before we get it.

David B March -- You accurately clarify:"Aren't military decorations called "medals," not "metals"?"

What's sickening funny is that with hundreds of tons of DU metal being left for the next few billion years to clean up, all over Iraq, Kosovo, & Afghanistan -- and with the use of our once proud serviceman as little DU vacuum cleaners (to return part of the scavenged DU to their families, and us civilians).

This hideous disgrace (also a war crime against our own troops, and all of humankind) has been documented in a book entitled:"Metal of Dishonor"

Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK

Luckily, April 15th nears, a time when peace loving Americans will anti-up to rearm our military and their civilian minders. The agony of one countries economic collapse is other countries' golden moment. The leaden brains of the support the troops crowd have poisened rational thought. While Americans are expert at judging
emergent talent on American Idol, they are unprecedented dupes when it comes to judging US foreign policy. Bottom line, at the end of the day, and all the other cliche boardroom crap, if America bankrupts itself, it will save lives.

"Good god, man! Where is your conscience? How is it possible that anyone just shoots people?"

It is simple. The reason that these typical, wholesome, Midwestern white, USAns can do this is that they have been indoctrinated from birth to consider dark-complected people who don't speak English (and therefore mentally inferior) as something less than bona-fide humans.

It goes something like this:

[humor and satire on]

Israelis - Gods chosen people! (even if they don't speak English, since it follows that Hebrew is, alongside English, God's chosen language)

British, Australians, Canadians and NZlanders - smart and civilized people - the Geneva conventions will be strictly followed!

French, German, Dutch, Belgians, Scandinavians, Irish (but only very recently) and Japanese (also recently) - pretty smart and civilized too... The Geneva conventions apply to them in most cases.

Spanish, Italians, Poles, Albanians, Romanians, Slavs (except Serbians), Greeks, Turks - well, maybe. But only if they allow us to build missile bases on their land.

Arabs, Persians, central/south Asians (insert Serbians here too) - THE ENEMY!, except the faithful, Hindu, Gunga-Din types, the Geneva conventions will NOT apply to them!

Latin Americans - If they are rich used to own casinos or half the land in their countries (and can speak fluent English of course) - Yes! Welcome to Miami!

Latin Americans If they are poor, and consequently have indigenous or African features, (and only speak Spanish) - probable Communists! The rules of engagement DO NOT apply to them!

Chinese - yellow hordes!

...and so on and so forth...

[humor and satire off]

Everyone surprised at this "news flash" please raise your hand.

This is what people do. This is war. I'm not going to judge these guys. They'll have to live with themselves.

I will, however, judge George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, et al.

I won't condemn the dogs for being let off the leash. I condemn the man holding the leash. Those bastards belong in the Hague, on trial for war crimes.

"Get serious. They're ants. When the time comes, we'll crush them."

Adm. Fallon revealing "our" true feelings about Iranians, whom "serious" people consider ants to be crushed.

Not "if." WHEN the time comes.

IOW, all non-God blessed Americans are ants to be crushed. There's your "rules of engagement" delivered by the boss.

CALL BUSH: 202.456.1111

hydrocarbonman March 15th, 2008 1:49 pm wrote:

"When our troops get home, the rest of us had better be prepared to comfort them, counsel them, forgive them, listen to them, cry with them. Because what we –yes, you too josephmorton– have allowed Bush and Co. to do to them is unspeakable."

Beautifully said. Thank you.

~FRANK 1569~ you have posted that comment about Admirial fallon numerus times this week. ___ You are taking his reply to a question completely out of context.

In reply to a question such as this for Fallon, "Of what would likely happen to the Iranians, if at some time in the future, they developed atomic weapons and used them against another country".

Fallon replied, they would be crushed like ants. The wording used in that reply does not suggest that Admiral Fallon thinks the Iranians are nothing more than ants and for someone to suggest such is just a feeble attempt, to show that Fallon is not a decent person, or one to be trusted.

What is your purpose for posting that comment over and over? Admiral Fallon has publically blocked Bush from attacking iran and any sensible person realizes it.

For some reason, CD is not posting my articles. I wrote one last week about the truth about what happened in Iraq to my son, Casey.
Although it tears me apart to know he was forced to go into the battle that killed him, I have never been so proud of him. He said "no" he was a conscientious objector.

I met a young CO today at an action in Richmond, Ca and he had the exact same experience as Casey, but he refused to go to Iraq from Germany and he is alive.

Please read: The Casey Sheehan Doctrine here:

www.cindyforcongress.org
Love
Cindy

Cindy,

I hope I am off-base about this. But with all this mania over the democratic candidates, I am getting a sense among "liberals" like those who run this web site, that discussion of over the criminal actions in Iraq, is becoming, well, "unfashionable".

We are being subtly, or not-so subtly, pressured to get behind one or the other Democratic candidates, avoid independent candidates at all cost, and set Bush's crimes aside.

~Cindy~ It's not uncommon for an editor to hold an article for a week or more, timing is often relevant and perhaps they didn't want your article to be over-shadowed by some other current issues.

I support our soldiers - as humans born into such a fate. I've lived through the riots and war zones here in the sixties of the US of A. I didn't ask for it. People have shot at me. I held a .45 at a man's head while he had an AK at my gut - for five hellish minutes. And we both survived.

No one can IMAGINE what it is to face or deal out death. No one. It is ironically only something that can be lived ... like love...

It is but by some divine grace that any of us can go in peace!

I will always support ANYONE who has had to take up arms to defend...

And pray they at some point can rest in this grace...called peace.

I got a black eye in my yellow ribbon,
an Arab fist I'll feel forevermore.
Seems I hardly ever even left my crib 'n'
here's this coffin coming through the door.

Dear Kem
CD has not posted the last 4 articles I have sent here.
I have no idea why??? I can't even speculate. Maybe they
weren't good enough.

All my articles can be read at my website.
www.cindyforcongress.org

Love
Cindy

"First, one is not a "loser" because one can't get a job. It has something to do with the economy."

And race, of course. Everything that happens in the USA is about race.

Hi Cindy, Rhoda USAF 75-77, mother, sister, aunt, daughter and caretaker. I am so sorry they have been doing this to you here. Not that has remained a staple for me, so long as I am able to read your posts somewhere.
Casey must have been some young man with some wonderful Mom to have allowed him to stand tall, you know military Cindy what they shove our 17 year old, not 20, faces in during basic and boot. You are able to empathize with the ivaw testimony, I thank you from my heart for that. As Celeste is as well, she always greets me with a hug and good word when I see her in Philly. Blew my cover for you Cindy, only one of me in this city, I love you, I thank You and hope, although I may have been on a conference call or 2 when you spoke, to meet you. After you ARE elected.

I am so grateful this is garnering international attention. We need to shine a light into into all the dark places, here. Sunshine is just the best disinfectant.