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TechnoratiWest Coast Winter Soldier: "Enough Is Enough, It's Time to Get Out"
SEATTLE - Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.
At the Seattle Town Hall, some 800 people gathered to hear the testimonies of veterans from Iraq. The event was sponsored by the Northwest Regional Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and endorsed by dozens of local and regional anti-war groups like Veterans for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society.
"I watched Iraqi Police bring in someone to interrogate," Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, told the audience. "There were four men on the prisoner...one was pummeling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat house gang-rape."
Manzel joined the army after 9/11 for economic reasons -- he'd just been laid off, and his wife had just had a baby. Manzel told another story of military medics he was with in Tal Afar who refused to treat an elderly man in their detention centre. Manzel described the old man as being jaundiced and lying on the ground, writhing in pain.
"The medics said the old man was just being lazy and they were not authorised to treat detainees," Manzel said.
Jan Critchfield worked as an army journalist while attached to the 1st Cavalry in Baghdad during 2004. "I was with a unit that shot at a man and wife near a checkpoint," Critchfield said, "She had been shot through her shinbone, and that was the first story I covered in Iraq."
Critchfield told the audience that his unspoken job in Iraq was to "counter the liberal media bias" about the occupation.
"Our target audience was in the U.S., and the emphasis was reporting on humanitarian aid missions the military conducted," Critchfield said. "I don't know how many stories I reported on chicken drops (distributing frozen chickens in a community). I don't know what else you can call that, other than propaganda. I would find the highest ranking person I could get, and quote them verbatim without fact checking anything they said."
Other veterans told of lax rules of engagement that led to the slaughter of innocent civilians in Iraq.
"We were told we'd be deploying to Iraq and that we needed to get ready to have little kids and women shoot at us," Sergio Kochergin, a former Marine who served two deployments in Iraq, told the audience. "It was an attempt to portray Iraqis as animals. We were supposed to do humanitarian work, but all we did was harass people, drive like crazy on the streets, pretending it was our city and we could do whatever we wanted to do."
As the other veterans on the panel nodded in agreement, Kochergin continued, "We were constantly told everybody there wants to kill you, everybody wants to get you. In the military, we had racism within every rank and it was ridiculous. It seemed like a joke, but that joke turned into destroying peoples' lives in Iraq."
"I was in Husaiba with a sniper platoon right on the Syrian border and we would basically go out on the town and search for people to shoot," Kochergin said. "The rules of engagement (ROE) got more lenient the longer we were there. So if anyone had a bag and a shovel, we were to shoot them. We were allowed to take our shots at anything that looked suspicious. And at that point in time, everything looked suspicious."
Kochergin added, "Later on, we had no ROE at all. If you see something that doesn't seem right, take them out." He concluded by saying, "Enough is enough, it's time to get out of there."
Doug Connor was a first lieutenant in the army and worked as a surgical nurse in Iraq. While there he worked as part of a combat support unit, and said most of the patients he treated were Iraqi civilians.
"There were so many people that needed treatment we couldn't take all of them," he said. "When a bombing happened and 45 patients were brought to us, it was always Americans treated first, then Kurds, then the Arabs."
Connor added quietly, "It got to the point where we started calling the Iraqi patients 'range balls' because, just like on the driving range (in golf), you don't care about losing them."
Channan Suarez Diaz was a navy hospital corpsman who returned from Iraq with a purple heart, among other medals. He served in Ramadi from September 2004 to February 2005 with a weapons company. He is now the Seattle Chapter president of IVAW.
"Our commanding officer wanted us to go through a route that another platoon did and was completely wiped out in an ambush," Diaz explained. "We refused. They canceled that mission and we didn't go. I don't think these are isolated incidents. I think this is happening every day in Iraq. The military doesn't want you to know about this, because it's kind of like lighting a fire in a prairie."
The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.
From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled "Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan" outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
10 Comments so far
Show AllThe history of war is always the same, and promoted by the same ideas. Death, and gore seem to be forgotten by succeeding generations who promote it. Noble stories of heroism, rewarded by trinkets and ribbons are given much lip service and promoted in the media. Written and diluted in school books and for public propaganda.
Why do we fall for such nonsence in the first place?
Why do we not resist in our minds and hearts the gory glory?
Is propaganda that powerful?
Are humans never capable of evolving higher than adrenalin and testosterone?
The history of the human race has not always followed this path. There are cultures which evolved without the accoutrements and attitudes of domination, fear and control.
Anthropological research has proven that there was no evidence of aggresive activity
or weaponry during a 25,000 year time period before 7 thousand BC. in the very portion of the world that we now describe as the middle east, Iraq, Iran.
The name of such behavior is known as NURTURING. It is the antithesis of WAR.
I find it sickening that the people of the IVAW WERE FORCED BY THEIR CULTURE to experience actions of the savagery of war. I find their willingness to discuss their
trauma remarkably brave. It is sad they were never truthfully informed at the outset.
We should start understanding the meaning of "teach your children well"
talk about regressing - blackwater mercenaries used to kill people who are trying to scrounge food to ease starvation,
New Orleans/katrina was a run through to make sure the government's ducks are neatly in a row, whatever you do when they come on the tv or radio & tell you to go to your local stadium or municiple building so you can be safeguarded from an impending attack, be very skeptical.
I for one will take my chances on my own.
I know where to get fresh water (fingers are crossed that they don't doctor it with cholera or other fatal poison.)
Food might be harder but I will not be turning myself in to be sent to the concentration camp closest to me which is in Huntington PA (a former prison)
There are at least 3 of these camps in PA.
I've read the biggest is in Illinois & can hold over a million people & another huge one in Alaska. Not to worry though, every locality has their share.
Pacifica Radio aired the entire broadcast of Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan from Maryland back in March. An amazing event! All of that audio has been archived at www.warcomeshome.org there you'll find more info, fotos, bios of all those who stood and spoke with such bravery..Thanks Dahr for covering this!
Give Mark Twain's The War Prayer a read:
http://midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html
Gee, I wonder if Fox News aired any of these stories?
Navy hospital corpsman Diaz's anecdote about the unit in Ramadi that refused to go on a mission back to a neighborhood where an earlier platoon had been ambushed is reminiscent of the bad old days while the Vietnam War was hypocritically winding down. There were all sorts of refusals to follow needlessly risky orders, fragging episodes, group malingering, and brig prisoner revolts that intentionally went unreported in the mainstream US media. The handwriting clearly was on the wall.
Military forces always do everything in their power to cover up dessertion rates and incidents that border on mutiny. But these sorts of things are the visible symptoms of the underlying disease. The IVAW deserves our wholesale support in their efforts to end the military occupation of Iraq and bring American troops safely home - all of them - as quickly as possible.
Bill from Saginaw
Member, Veterans for Peace
As in the 60's, this group will be penetrated by government agents. Perhaps it already is. The threat should be recognized. I have seen some with hair so long that I wonder if they have some miracle drug to grow it so quick after coming back from Iraq.
It should be noted they are building a private Army made up of non-Americans who will be used to enforce martial law, and the British and Canadians have promised to send troops to the US if needed. Most of the mercenaries in Iraq under contract with Blackwater are from 3rd world countries. British troops have been seen in training exercises in US cities in the past year, since the urban environment in the US is different than in the UK.
Illegal immigrants will be a useful ally, and will be recruited to suppress the outraged gringos. African-Americans will be released from prisons, seething with rage, rightfully due to the injustice of their incarceration, and recruited to control whites in urban environments, hence, a black commander in chief might help facilitate this control. The divisions created by the elite will prove useful to them as they divide and conquer. Much of the Southwest will in the end be handed back to Mexico, and we will all be merged into a NAU with one totalitarian government, represented by the 3 regions.
Americans in the armed services have been given questionaires asking them if they would obey orders to use force against Americans are home. Those Americans in the army that can not be trusted are sent to and kept in Iraq and Afghanistan for as long as possible, to minimize resistance at home. It also serves to destroy the states National Guards equipment which is sent over with them, but does not come back. The National Guard in most states has little equipment left.
Those allowed to come back from Iraq are diagnosed with PTSD and given drugs to make them docile, which will allow the government to prevent them from owning guns. Iraq has served multiple purposes, not just Oil and Israel.
I hope I am wrong, but from where I sit, it looks to be a repeat of the 60's and early 70's where they tried to fuel enough civil unrest to justify scrapping the constitution, but not enough to be an effective revolution. They failed then. But they look better positioned to succeed today.
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?"
This is what strikes fear into the heart of the ruling class. When it comes down to it, they need obedient storm troopers to enforce their rule.
When IVAW speaks, it shows the lies that the ruling class depends upon to keep their power. Good for the decent human beings of the IVAW!
War is a package deal where grisly death, torture, rape, abuse and other atrocities are part of the package.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/10/9/2402709.html
old goat June 3rd, 2008 5:24 pm
Thank You. I am speechless. One of my Mothers favorite sayings was, "Watch out what you wish for. You may get it".