The Winter Soldier hearings, held at National Labor College, in Silver Spring, Maryland between March 13 and 16, 2008, gathered more than two hundred veterans of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts and featured testimony from veterans, Iraqi civilians, military families, and others, the biggest event the IVAW has organized to date. Excerpts from Winter Soldier by Iraq Veterans Against the War provide vivid testimonies of the war from boots on the ground. Names have been removed and some testimonies combined.

Rules of Engagement Loosened

Rules of Engagement Testimony

House Raids

Concentration Camp Guard

Traffic Control

Racism Dehumanization of the Enemy

Gender and Sexuality in the Military

Deploy and re-Deploy

Public Apathy

Veteran Suicide Epidemic

Winter Soldier Project - Vietnam

GI Coffeehouses

Winter Soldiers Hit the Streets

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/04/9421/

04 June 2008

SEATTLE - In a clear change of strategy to energize public anti-war sentiment, Iraq veterans led a determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets of downtown Seattle last Saturday, following regional Winter Soldier hearings at the Seattle Town Hall.

Iraq Vets Break Silence on War

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/29/7368/

29 Feb 2008

U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to descend on Washington from Mar. 13-16 to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in those countries. Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of U.S. 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”.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, 1928, Excerpts

While they continue to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards – they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

For us lads of eighteen, they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress – to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains in the world invent weapons and words to make it more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing; - it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of this?

Film

The Valley of Elah

Rendition

Lions for Lambs

The Battle for Haditha

True events in Iraq inspire this wrenching documentary-like drama from director Nick Broomfield about a roadside bombing near the insurgent hotbed town of Haditha and the subsequent revenge killing of 24 Iraqis by the U,S. Marine unit that was hit. Told from different perspectives -- the Marines, the bombers and innocent civilians just trying to get by -- this provocative look at the madness of war defies easy answers.

The Ground Truth

Patricia Foulkrod's powerful documentary spotlights American soldiers sharing their experiences on the battlefield in Iraq and back home as they try to reassemble their lives. With aching honesty, these men and women discuss the anguish of war, the difficulties of readjusting to life after their tours of duty, post-traumatic stress disorder and the often callous treatment returning troops receive from the military and the Veterans Administration.

Redacted

Brian De Palma: Docudrama about an incident in which a 15-year old Iraqi girl was raped and killed by U.S. soldiers. Similar movie was Casualty of War starring Michael J. Fox where soldiers rape a Vietnamese girl.

Other famous war rapes: Rape of Nanking and the Rape of Sabine.