Iraq Veterans spoke out last month on what they saw and were expected to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, recalling being put into immoral and illegal situations:
Soldiers spoke out at an event sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against The War:
On the initial invasion:
“There were massive amounts of artillery strikes before we even invaded. We saw the results of that. Streets full of bodies – women and children – body parts, extremely indiscriminate. I’m talking about rolling through villages here, not military encampments.”
“I still believed everything we were force-fed: weapons of mass destruction and possibly even a nuclear weapon. We felt, like, we’re going to go in, overthrow this evil dictator and give these people some peace, finally. We thought we were doing a good thing.”
On home raids:
“Usually it was based on a tip – we’re told someone in the home is an insurgent. We would pick up people who had nothing to do with anything, keep them locked up until they came up with something.”
“We kick down the door and all we find are a few women holding babies and a couple of kids. We were ordered to take the babies away and put sandbags on the women’s heads, tie their hands behind their backs, put them on their knees facing the wall. Here I am zip-tying these women, and my buddy is standing next to me holding these babies asking what do I do with these kids? We stood there, like, oh shit, what do we do? The squad leader came in and shouted, ‘Everybody is bagged and tagged – everybody!’ So we did it.”
On interrogations:
“That’s not something I want on my conscience.”
On the very common ‘Shovel order:’
“Anyone carrying a shovel or any sort of implement that could be used to bury an IED could be considered a target…After dark, you can shoot anyone who is outside. Or anyone who puts anything on the side of the road can be considered a target. You won’t find it in writing, but it’s an order indicated to soldiers.”
On accountability:
“(Our commander) made it clear to us that if an innocent person was shot he would stage a scene to protect us”.
On the Haditha Massacre, when 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, some women and children were killed by angry U.S. soldiers, after losing their brothers in an IED attack:
“My squad was doing medivacs out of the town. I was not there to witness the shooting, but I know many marines who were.”
“I have a lot of feelings about this incident. A friend of mine from my first two tours was in that squad. He was the guy they gave immunity to to testify against the squad leader.”
“The people on the ground are looking at serious prison time. Like life. The people who were giving orders were only relieved of command. And I don’t think that’s right.”
The Haditha massacre, us ugly as it sounds, was not an isolated incident:
“It’s the one that just happened to be uncovered.”
On the Abu Gharaib abuses (after describing some inhumane hazing incidents routinely performed on fellow soldiers):
“What happened at Abu Ghraib is those orders came from the top. If the policy makers and the commanders can dehumanise their own troops, why wouldn’t they dehumanise the Iraqi people?”
On the mission and the war against terror:
“Everything that we were doing seemed almost designed to create more terrorists. To turn people against America. I couldn’t understand how we were liberating anyone. But I could understand how an Afghan person who was ambivalent about America could easily become an extremist based on their interaction with American soldiers.”
On the chain of command:
“The soldiers and marines are just doing their jobs, doing what they were trained for or what they were told to do when they got over there. Things that seem really horrible just become routine – and they are implicitly or explicitly condoned, or encouraged, by the commanders and the policy-makers.”
