Winter Soldiers tell their story

Socialist Worker, March 21, 2008

ERIC RUDER reports on the testimony of antiwar veterans and active-duty soldiers at Winter Soldier in Washington.

FOR THREE days, a steady stream of U.S. military veterans took the stage to describe their experiences from the front lines as part of "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

Their eyewitness accounts of free-fire zones in dense civilian areas, house raids that terrorized residents, indiscriminate shootings, severe beatings and torture of detainees, and the medical neglect they faced upon returning home riveted the audience of several hundred people who attended the event in Silver Springs, Md.--and many more who followed the hearings through the independent media.

The fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has been accompanied by a deluge of media coverage focused on the supposed successes of the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq ordered by George Bush in early 2007.

But this historic gathering of firsthand witnesses to the atrocities committed by U.S. military forces was a searing indictment of the Pentagon's war strategy and its callous disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians.

Continued . . .