Happy Anniversary Iraq

In writing Triple Deckers, there was a chapter of emails from a young soldier mentally tortured by what he saw and what he had to do. Jason was sharing the information with his brother, but he pulled his punches, because there was so much he couldn’t say. I did much research and cried both at what I read on blogs and I cried again as I wrote those emails. Even then I was not able to capture the horror of what we have demanded our “blood and treasure” do for nothing at best and for a lie at worse.
Last night I listened to www.democracynow.org/2008/3/14/hundreds_of_veterans_of_iraq_and when they showed the Winter Soldiers from the Vietnam introduced by the late Phil Ochs singing, “Masters of War.” Those soldiers talked about the atrocities they were asked to commit, not a few bad apples, but as a regular part of their days.

There's a lack of regard for anything humane or morale. One soldier, who testified, is shown smiling as he is next to a body from a pile of bodies, and he talks about how ashamed he is.

Another talked of beheadings (Rumsfeld kept citing beheadings as the worse example of what the terrorists do—although I suppose dropping tons and tons of bombs on innocent people in shock and awe is civilized by his definitions)

A new Winter of Soldiers is being held with Iraq Veterans telling of their acts against the Geneva convention, that are illegal and immoral.

So many soldiers have killed their souls thinking they were protecting their country. What they were protecting was the wealth of a few.

When Obama’s minister rages against what the US has done, it is only too bad that more Americans aren’t ready to face the truth. We are a horrible, destructive people, who by ignoring what is done in our name, we destroy others and our own. No wonder so many soldiers come back with mental problems.

Here’s some examples but as you read remember that somewhere in Iraq at the time you read this there is good chance one of our soldiers is committing the same type of crimes.

"That was my first day in Vietnam. In Quang Tri City, I had a friend who was—he was working with USAID. And one time he asked me would I like to accompany him to watch. He was an adviser with an ARVN group, and he asked me if I would like to accompany him into a village that I was familiar with to see how they act. So I went with him, and they didn’t find any enemy, but they found a woman with bandages. So she was questioned with about—she was questioned by six ARVNs, and the way that they questioned her was, since she had bandages, they shot her. She was hit about twenty times. So, after she was questioned and, of course, dead, this guy came over who was—and knowing him, he was a former major, he was in the service for twenty years, and he got hungry again and came back over working with USAID, Aid International Development—and he went over there and ripped her clothes off and took a knife and cut from her vagina all the way up—well, just about up to her breasts and pulled her organs out, completely out of her cavity, and threw them out. And then he stopped and knelt over and commenced to peel every bit of skin off her body and left her there as a sign for something or other"

"The calling in of artillery for games, the way it was worked would be the mortar forward observers would call in—we’d pick out certain houses in villages, friendly villages, and the mortar forward observers would call in mortars until they destroyed that house, and then the artillery forward observer would call in artillery until he destroyed another house, and whoever used the least amount of artillery, they won. And then, when we got back, someone would have to buy someone else beers."

"And I saw one case where there were two prisoners, and one prisoner was staked out on the ground, and he was cut open while he was alive, and part of his insides were cut out. And they told the other prisoner if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know, that they would kill him. And I don’t know what he said, because he spoke in Vietnamese, but then they killed him after that anyway."

"The way that we distinguished between civilians and VC, VC had weapons and civilians didn’t, and anybody that was dead was considered a VC. If you killed someone, they said, “How do you know he’s a VC?” The general reply would be, “He’s dead,” and that was sufficient.
The cutting off of heads—on Operation Stone, there was a lieutenant colonel there, and two people had their heads cut off and put on stakes and stuck in the middle of the field. And we were notified that there were press covering the operation and that we couldn’t do that anymore."

"I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers. And when we got up to her, she was asking for water. And the lieutenant said to kill her. So he ripped off her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread her eagle and shoved an E- tool up her vagina—an entrenching tool—and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out, and they used a tree limb, and then she was shot."

"The key issues are the fact that we’re here today to show that soldiers are not committing these crimes and atrocities in Iraq individually; it’s actually a policy from the top. From the top general to the US President, they’re all implicit. And by sending soldiers to go and fight and die in an illegal war is causing this country to become, you know, polarized, go into a crisis. And so, for us to be able to speak out on our experiences, I think, is most important, to be able to articulate our opposition to the war for the American people and be able to show them that this is something from the top. These atrocities—Abu Ghraib, Haditha—are policies of the US government and not individual soldiers." From an Iraq veteran

"I arrived at the base camp of the 1st—of the 1st Cav., which is Hill 29. When I arrived there, my S-2, a captain, told me that my job was to elicit information. This meant that I could elicit information in any means possible. He told me that I could use any technique I can think of, and the idea is “Don’t get caught.” And what he meant was, I could beat these people, I could cut ‘em, I could probably shoot ’em—I never shot anyone—but I could use any means possible to get information; just don’t beat them in the presence of a non-unit member or person. That’s someone like a visiting officer or perhaps the Red Cross. And I personally used clubs, rifle butts, pistols, knives, and this was always done at Hill 29."