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Iraq Veterans Against the War - Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations

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Iraq Veterans Against the War Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations

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The only way this war is going to end is if the American people truly understand what we have done in their name.Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War

In spring 2008, inspired by the Vietnam-era Winter Soldier hearings, Iraq Veterans Against the War gathered veterans to expose war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here are the powerful words, images, and documents of this historic gathering, which show the reality of life in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of American brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by a few bad apples, as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of an increasingly bloody occupation.

Here is the war as it should be reported, seeing the pain, refusing to sanitize an unprovoked attack that has killed over one million people. All over America are victims who have returned from this conflict with hideous wounds -- wounds that turn the lives of the entire family upside down. And the American people are not seeing this. Until now.

Winter Soldier, an enormously important project of Iraq Veterans Against the War, cuts this debacle to the bone, exposing details hard to come by and even harder to believe. This is must reading for patriots who have already begun the effort to insure that this never happens again.

--Phil Donahue

Winter Soldier makes us feel the pain and despair endured by those who serve in a military stretched to the breaking point by stop-loss policies, multiple combat tours, and a war where the goals and the enemies keep shifting ... [and] also make[s] us admire the unbreakable idealism and hope of those men and women who still believe that by speaking out they can make things better both for themselves and for those who come after them.--San Francisco Chronicle

Formed in the aftermath of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded in 2004 to give those who have served in the military since September 11, 2001, a way to come together and speak out against an unjust, illegal, and unwinnable war. Today, IVAW has over seven hundred members in forty-nine states, Washington, DC, Canada, and on military bases overseas.

Aaron Glantz is an independent journalist who has covered the Iraq War from the front lines. He is the author of How America Lost Iraq (Tarcher) and a forthcoming book on the Iraq War from the University of California Press.

Anthony Swofford is the author of Jarhead: A Marines Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles.

Iraq Veterans Against the War: author's other books


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Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan Copyright 2008 Iraq Veterans Against the - photo 1

Winter Soldier
Iraq and Afghanistan

Copyright 2008 Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz
Published in 2008 by Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL60618
773-583-7884
info@haymarketbooks.org
www.haymarketbooks.org

Cover and interior testifier portraits by Jared Rodriguez
Additional photographs by Mike Hastie, including testifier portraits on pages 38, 74, 89, 124, 138, 140, 167, 169, 182, 209
Cover design by Eric Ruder
Book design by David Whitehouse

Published with the generous support of the Wallace Global Fund.

Trade distribution:
In the U.S. through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-psl.com
In Australia, Palgrave MacMillan, www.palgravemacmillan.com.au
All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com/home/worldwide.aspx

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please contact Haymarket Books for more information at 773-583-7884 or info@haymarketbooks.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Winter soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan : eyewitness accounts of the occupations / Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz.

p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-931859-65-3 (pbk.)

1. Iraq War, 2003---Personal narratives, American. 2. Afghan War, 2001---Personal narratives, American. I. Glantz, Aaron. II. Title.

DS79.76.I7272 2008
956.7044'3092273--dc22
2008036840

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Winter Soldier
Iraq and Afghanistan
Eyewitness Accounts
of the Occupations

Haymarket Books Chicago Illinois We dedicate this book to good people of - photo 2

Haymarket Books
Chicago, Illinois

We dedicate this book to good people of Iraq and Afghanistan who know the veracity of these stories.

And to all the servicemembers and veterans who never had a chance to tell their stories.

Foreword Anthony Swofford Early in June of 2008 President Bush awarded the - photo 3

Foreword
Anthony Swofford

Early in June of 2008 President Bush awarded the Bronze Star posthumously to Specialist Ross A. McGinnis of the United States Army. McGinnis had done what most civilians would find unthinkable: hed jumped on an enemy hand grenade that had been thrown into his vehicle. His body took the force of the entire blast and he died instantly, saving four fellow soldiers from certain heinous injury and probable death. His was the selfless act popularized in the culture by Hollywood lore and the macho love talk of tough men: Id take a bullet for you; Id jump on a grenade to save so-and-sos life. No one ever means it. But men and women in battle do. Its not in any manual. Its written in the code of the combatants heart. Its the kind of impulse that is part of the reason most people join the United States military in the first place: to serve, to honor, to protect.

The men and women who testified at Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan in March of 2008 displayed the same kind of courage that Specialist McGinnis did: they took individual action and great risk to honor the men and women, American troops and Iraqi civilians, who have died in this misbegotten and often criminally executed war. They didnt use their bodies; they used their narratives, the bare-knuckle stories that tell us the truth about what happens at the other end of the rifle, the missile, the bomb.

I listened to most of the testimony live that weekend. Despite my service in the Marine Corps during the 19901991 Gulf War and my intimate knowledge of the brutality of combat and the systems that prepare one for combat, there were times during the testimony when I found myself in utter disbelief. I call combat a psychosis-inducing situation. But still, the events being narrated by the testifying troops shocked me. You too will be shocked. Your natural tendency will be not to believe.

It will be hard to imagine the same kind of sweet young kid you went to high school with or that your sons or daughters went to high school with telling about warships firing on civilian-inhabited apartment buildings while troops cheer the destruction; it will be difficult to believe the blind blood-thirst a unit lives and kills on after suffering casualties; you do not want to know about the constantly loosening Rules of Engagement that eventually debilitate to the point of allowing troops to shoot anyone who makes them feel unsafe. You wont want to believe the incentivizing one marine captain does: be the first to kill with a knife and youll get some extra days off when the unit rotates home.

Tim OBrien has written that in a war story, the craziest stuff in therethe events a civilian would never believe because they are filled with such violence and depravitythose are the true parts of the story. These are what I call the seared elements: the images and associated narratives of a combatants history he or she most wants to forget but never will. In this testimony there are countless seared elements that you the reader will want to forget.

But honor the casualties of this warthe dead, injured, psychologically altered, those who have already managed to healby refusing to forget the elements and consequences of combat that our leaders would rather us not know in the first place. Do not turn away from these stories. They are yours, too.

June 2008

Message from
Kelly Dougherty
Executive Director of
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Kelly Dougherty served in Iraq from March 2003 until February 2004 as a medic - photo 4

Kelly Dougherty served in Iraq from March 2003 until February 2004 as a medic in a military police unit of the Colorado National Guard. She is one of the original founders of IVAW and currently serves as its executive director.

In the winter of 2002 I was working in a caf and preparing to finish my bachelors degree at the University of Colorado. The U.S. governments threats toward Iraq were growing and there was more and more anticipation of a war being an inevitable, foregone conclusion. While I was working, I wore a pin on my apron that said, Attack Iraq?! NO! One day a customer looked at my pin, scoffed, and said, Its more like, Iraq, dont attack us! While being opposed to a war against Iraq from the beginning, and highly skeptical of the information flowing out of the White House and major news outlets, I still felt detached and not overly concerned about the prospect of war. Yes, I was a sergeant in the Colorado Army National Guard, but I was in a headquarters unit, we didnt get deployed.

Looking back, this attitude was not only naive, but also selfish. Today the pervasiveness of just such an ambivalent, flippant attitude maddens me. I would soon experience in a very real way just how political decisions have a personal impact on peoples lives. In January 2003 I received a call from the National Guard informing me that I had been transferred from my safe unit into a military police unit that was getting mobilized to active duty status the next day and would be deploying to Kuwait in preparation for the war. Whats more, my military job had been changed from medic to military police.

I deployed with my unit in February of 2003, was in Kuwait for the initial invasion, and then moved north into Iraq. I spent nearly a year patrolling Southern Iraq, escorting U.S. corporate convoys, and anticipating the day I would return home. While my experience in Iraq was difficult, stressful, and confusing, my unit brought everyone home alive and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be intact. The experience of being an armed occupier in an unknown, foreign country, and the impact that the war and occupation of Iraq had and will continue to have for generations, led me to make a decision to try to become a proactive force in effecting positive change.

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