Winter Soldier Project - Iraq

Winter Soldier by Iraq Veterans Against the War, 2008, Excerpts

In the early summer 2005, there was a traffic control shooting. Traffic control point shootings are rather common in Iraq. They happen on a near-daily basis. A vehicle was driving quickly toward a traffic control point. A young machine gunner made a split-second decision that the vehicle was a threat and put two hundred .50-caliber machine gun rounds into the vehicle. He killed a mother, a father, and two children. The boy was age four and the girl was age three. After the officer in charge briefed the general, the colonel turned in his chair to the entire division level staff, and said in a very calm manner, “If these fucking hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.”

They said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation. In Iraq, any car can be a taxi cab; you just paint it white and orange. One of the snipers replied back, “Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxi cabs?” The lieutenant colonel responded, “You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxi cabs.” After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. That set the tone for the rest of the deployment.

During my third deployment, there was a rule in place where all Iraqi traffic had to pull off of the road to let military convoys pass. If they didn’t comply, or if somebody got back on the road too early, they would get shot up. If they approached a checkpoint too fast, or too recklessly, they would get shot.