Richard WarnickWinter Soldiers Testify to Congress Amid Media Blackout
Yesterday, nine members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) testified about the dehumanization of the Iraqi people, the abuse of detainees, the changing rules of engagement and the killing of innocent civilians before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Unless you watched C-SPAN 3, you probably didn’t hear about it (my Comcast cable package doesn’t even have C-SPAN 3).
The Congressional Progressive Caucus isn’t even a formal committee. Yet the members of Congress in the Caucus were the first, five years after the invasion of Iraq, to hear testimony from “average boots-on-the-ground soldiers.”
Spencer Ackerman was there. Here are some excerpts from his report:
Jason Lemieux, a Marine sergeant who served three Iraq tours from 2003 to 2006, spoke of deliberate falsification of statistics during his service in Anbar Province. Investigating a 2006 incident in which Marines returned fire in a town called Tamim, Lemieux said he found that only four rounds of “poorly aimed enemy fire” resulted in thousands of rounds of artillery, machine gun and grenade fire into “an area of Tamim known to be owned and occupied by local civilians.”
Scott Ewing was an Army scout who served with the 3rd Armored Combat Brigade in the northern town of Tall Afar from 2005 to 2006.
Ewing told a story about coming upon middle-aged Iraqi women “covered in blood” after an Apache attack helicopter opened fire on their front lawn. While his fellow soldiers attempted to apply battlefield medicine, some were badly wounded. He gave no indication that the women had done anything wrong. “Anytime a suicide bomber kills civilians it is highly publicized,” Ewing said. “But from my personal experience in Tall Afar, the number of Iraqis killed or injured by our forces far outnumbered those killed by insurgents or suicide bombers.”
Kelly Dougherty, an Army veteran, reminded Congress of the consequences of funding the Iraq occupation. “Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed and forced to flee their country as refugees,” Dougherty said. “More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical.”
Another Army veteran of Iraq, Kristofer Goldsmith, confessed that he attempted suicide after returning home.
” I joined the Army to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims,” Goldsmith said, before apologizing. When he finally went to Baghdad in 2005, he found the Iraqis had greater sympathy to the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr than the U.S.-backed government. “They feel they have been let down by America and by their own government that George Bush’s administration put in power,” he said.
Previous One Utah posts:
Return of the Winter Soldiers (March 3, 2008)
‘I thought I was signing up to do something honorable’ (March 7, 2008)
More From the Winter Soldiers (March 11, 2008)
Getting Past the Winter Soldier News Blackout (March 15, 2008)
May 16th, 2008 at 11:34 am
They haven’t had testimony before because Members of Congress are supposed to be talking to the troops via the mechanism set up to do so, to wit, talking to them while on CODELS in country. Had my friends and I testified, you no doubt would be lamenting that we were trotted out to support the war effort, and that nothing could be trusted because we were dragged in front of Congress and were no doubt reporting our support for the missions on the basis of our fear.
And since the testimony was allegedly to address the “surge” and none of those testifying have been in Iraq since the surge began, Congress might as well have taken testimony from the Maytag Repair Man.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
C-Span is a treasure trove of unstaged politics, but could do more if they would stop covering so many Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation stuff. I have Comcast too, so I don’t have C-Span3, but it seems like every time there is something that happens in congress that could REALLY HURT the republicans, it’s on that channel. But you wouldn’t really expect a corporation that filters it’s customer’s E-mails that might negatively effect them, and who sends payed shills to take up space at hearings that might negatively effect them to want it’s fellow citizens to have that channel. We want more shopping, celebrity, FO news, and religious programming. I guess that’s what we’re supposed to believe anyway.
If Karl Rove has to testify about Don Siegelman, it will be on C-Span3 and then it will be rebroadcast on one of the other channels, but it will be next to impossible to find out when. Sigh…