Memories of Iraq veterans against the war

[Guest guest]

To stop this war and prevent future wars, we must share these memories of

Iraq veterans with people who support the war. Their words are also on a video

at:

 

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* " If You Start Looking at Them as Humans, Then How Are You Gonna Kill

Them? " *

By Inigo Gilmore and Teresa Smith

The Guardian UK

 

Wednesday 29 March 2006

 

*They are a publicity nightmare for the **US** military: an ever-growing

number of veterans of the **Iraq** conflict who are campaigning against the

war. To mark the third anniversary of the invasion this month, a group of

them marched on Katrina-ravaged **New Orleans**. Inigo Gilmore and Teresa

Smith joined them.*

 

At a press conference in a cavernous Alabama warehouse, banners and

posters are rolled out: " Abandon Iraq, not the Gulf coast! " A tall, white

soldier steps forward in desert fatigues. " I was in Iraq when Katrina

happened and I watched US citizens being washed ashore in New Orleans, " he

says. " War is oppression: we could be setting up hospitals right here.

America is war-addicted. America is neglecting its poor. "

 

A black reporter from a Fox TV news affiliate, visibly stunned,

whispers: " Wow! That guy's pretty opinionated. " Clearly such talk, even

three years after the Iraq invasion, is still rare. This, after all,

is the Deep

South and this soldier less than a year ago was proudly serving his nation

in Iraq.

 

The soldier was engaged in no ordinary protest. Over five days earlier

this month, around 200 veterans, military families and survivors of

hurricane Katrina walked 130 miles from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans to

mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war. At its vanguard, Iraq Veterans

Against the War, a group formed less than two years ago, whose very name has

aroused intense hostility at the highest levels of the US military.

 

Mobile is a grand old southern naval town, clinging to the Gulf Coast.

The stars and stripes flutter from almost every balcony as the soldiers

parade through the town, surprising onlookers. As they begin their

soon-to-be-familiar chants - " Bush lied, many died! " - some shout " traitor " ,

or hurl less polite terms of abuse. Elsewhere, a black man salutes as a

blonde, middle-aged woman, emerging from a supermarket car park, cries out,

" Take it all the way to the White House! " and offers the peace sign.

 

Michael Blake is at the front of the march. The 22-year-old from New

York state is not quite sure how he ended up in the military; the child of

" a feminist mom and hippy dad " , he says he signed up thinking that he would

have an adventure, never imagining that he would find himself in Iraq. He

served from April 2003 to March 2004, some of that time as a Humvee driver.

Deeply disturbed by his experience in Iraq, he filed for conscientious

objector status and has been campaigning against the war ever since.

 

He claims that US soldiers such as him were told little about Iraq,

Iraqis or Islam before serving there; other than a book of Arabic phrases,

" the message was always: 'Islam is evil' and 'They hate us.' Most of the

guys I was with believed it. "

 

Blake says that the turning point for him came one day when his unit

spent eight hours guarding a group of Iraqi women and children whose men

were being questioned. He recalls: " The men were taken away and the women

were screaming and crying, and I just remember thinking: this was exactly

what Saddam used to do - and now we're doing it. "

 

Becoming a peace activist, he says, has been a " cleansing " experience.

" I'll never be normal again. I'll always have a sense of guilt. " He tells us

that he witnessed civilian Iraqis being killed indiscriminately. It would

not be the most startling admission by the soldiers on the march.

 

" When IEDs [improvised Explosive Devices] would go off by the side of

the road, the instructions were - or the practice was - to basically shoot

up the landscape, anything that moved. And that kind of thing would happen a

lot. " So innocent people were killed? " It happened, yes. " (He says he did

not carry out any such killings himself.)

 

Blake, an activist with IVAW for the past 12 months, is angry that

American people seem so untouched by the war, by the grim abuses committed

by American soldiers. " The American media doesn't cover it and they don't

care. The American people aren't seeing the real war - what's really

happening there. "

 

We are in a Mexican diner in Mississippi when Alan Shackleton, a quiet

24-year-old from Iowa, stuns the table into silence with a story of his own.

He details how he and his comrades in Iraq suffered multiple casualties,

including a close friend who died of his injuries. Then he pauses for a

moment, swallows hard and says: " And I ran over a little kid and killed him

.... and that's about it. " He has been suffering from severe insomnia, but

later he tells us that he has only been able to see a counsellor once every

six weeks and has been prescribed sleeping pills.

 

" We are very, very sorry for what we did to the Iraqi people, " he says

the next day, holding a handwritten poster declaring: " Thou shall not kill. "

 

As we get closer to New Orleans, the coastline becomes increasingly

ravaged. Joe Hatcher, always sporting a keffiyeh and punk chains, reflects

on his own time in the military and the hostility he has met from pro-war

activists at home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a town with five army bases

where he campaigns against the war at town hall forums. He says: " There's

this old guy, George, an ex-colonel. He shows up and talks shit on everybody

for being anti-war because 'it's ruining the morale of the soldier and

encouraging the enemy'.

 

" I scraped dead bodies off the pavements with a shovel and threw them in

trash bags and left them there on the side of the road. And I really don't

think the anti-war movement is what is infuriating people. "

 

When we reach Biloxi, Mississippi, the police say that there is no

permit for the march and everyone will have to walk on the pavement. This is

tricky because Katrina has left this coastal road looking like a bomb site.

 

Jody Casey left the army five days ago and came straight to join the

vets. The 29-year-old is no pacifist; he still firmly backs the military but

says that he is speaking out in the hope of correcting many of the mistakes

being made. He served as a scout sniper for a year until last February,

based, like Blake, in the Sunni triangle.

 

He clearly feels a little ill at ease with some of the protesters'

rhetoric, but eventually agrees to talk to us. He says that the turning

point for him came after he returned from Iraq and watched videos that he

and other soldiers in his unit shot while out on raids, including hour after

hour of Iraqi soldiers beating up Iraqi civilians. While reviewing them back

home he decided " it was not right " .

 

What upset him the most about Iraq? " The total disregard for human

life, " he says, matter of factly. " I mean, you do what you do at the time

because you feel like you need to. But then to watch it get kind of covered

up, shoved under a rug ... 'Oh, that did not happen'. "

 

What kind of abuses did he witness? " Well, I mean, I have seen innocent

people being killed. IEDs go off and [you] just zap any farmer that is close

to you. You know, those people were out there trying to make a living, but

on the other hand, you get hit by four or five of those IEDs and you get

pretty tired of that, too. "

 

Casey told us how, from the top down, there was little regard for the

Iraqis, who were routinely called " hajjis " , the Iraq equivalent of " gook " .

" They basically jam into your head: 'This is hajji! This is hajji!' You

totally take the human being out of it and make them into a video game. "

 

It was a way of dehumanising the Iraqis? " I mean, yeah - if you start

looking at them as humans, and stuff like that, then how are you going to

kill them? "

 

He says that soldiers who served in his area before his unit's arrival

recommended them to keep spades on their vehicles so that if they killed

innocent Iraqis, they could throw a spade off them to give the appearance

that the dead Iraqi was digging a hole for a roadside bomb.

 

Casey says he didn't participate in any such killings himself, but

claims the pervasive atmosphere was that " you could basically kill whoever

you wanted - it was that easy. You did not even have to get off and dig a

hole or anything. All you had to do was have some kind of picture. You're

driving down the road at three in the morning. There's a guy on the side of

the road, you shoot him ... you throw a shovel off. "

 

The IVAW, says Hatcher, " is becoming our religion, our fight - as in any

religion we've confessed our wrongs, and now it's time to atone. "

 

Just outside New Orleans, the sudden appearance of a reporter from

al-Jazeera's Washington office electrifies the former soldiers. It is a

chance for the vets to turn confessional and the reporter is deluged with

young former soldiers keen to be interviewed. " We want the Iraqi people to

know that we stand with them, " says Blake, " and that we're sorry, so sorry.

That's why it was so important for us to appear on al-Jazeera. "

 

A number of Vietnam veterans also on the march are a welcome presence.

For all the attempts to deny a link between the two conflicts, for both sets

of veterans the parallels are persuasive. Thomas Brinson survived the Tet

offensive in Vietnam in 1968. " Iraq is just Arabic for Vietnam, like the

poster says - the same horror, the same tears, " he says.

 

Sitting on a riverbed outside New Orleans, Blake turns reflective. " I

met an Iraqi at one of the public meetings I was talking at recently. He

came up to me and told me he was originally from the town where I had been

stationed. And I just went up to this complete stranger and hugged him and I

said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' And you know what? He told me it was OK.

And it was beautiful ... " He starts to cry. " That was redemption " .

 

---------------

 

 

US soldiers

We have a powerful film this evening. We follow a group of former US

soldiers who have returned from Iraq deeply affected by the experience.

As they march across America to protest against the war they reveal their

own experiences of the conflict, make some disturbing allegations about

military practices in Iraq and reflect on how it feels to come home.

 

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=1 & bbwm=1 & bbram=1 & nol_storyid=48594

58)

 

They are a publicity nightmare for the US military: an ever-growing number of

veterans of the Iraq conflict who are campaigning against the war.

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/7353469.html

 

 

 

 

 

MARC PARENT

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS

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