WASHINGTON, May 16 (OneWorld) - Antiwar veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took their case to Capitol Hill Thursday, baring their souls with stories of killings of innocent civilians, torture, and wrongful detentions.
"On several occasions our convoys came upon bodies that had been lying on the road, sometimes for weeks," said Marine Corps veteran Vincent Emanuele, who served in al-Qaim near the Syrian border in 2004 and 2005.
"When encountering these bodies standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also standard practice when encountering the dead in Iraq," he told the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which organized the hearing.
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| After killing this Iraqi insurgent, Emanuele said he and his patrol dragged the body from a ditch, took pictures, and left the man 'to rot in a field.' © Iraq Veterans Against the War |
"Our rules of engagement stated that we should first fire warning shots into the ground in front of the car, then the engine block, and the windshield. That is if the car was even moving in the first place," he said. "Many times cars that actually had pulled off to the side of the road were also shot at."
Thursday's hearing was an outgrowth of an event in Maryland earlier this year called "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan - Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations." For four days in March, dozens of veterans of the two wars testified about atrocities they personally committed or witnessed while deployed overseas.
Continued . . .
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