Iraq Vets Testify to War Atrocities, Vow to Fight and Resist Bush Policy

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted May 20, 2008.

"I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable," Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. "These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions." Lemieux, a former Marine who was part of the invading force that entered Baghdad in March 2003, came to Washington, D.C., with Iraq Veterans Against the War, weeks after the fifth anniversary of President George Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" to tell Congress enough is enough. Invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., the veterans spoke firmly and eloquently before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, telling stories that were just "the tip of the iceberg," as Lemieux put it, but which nevertheless offered a frightening range of accounts: violent house raids, the killings of innocent people, "drop weapons" used to make dead civilians look like insurgents, racism in the ranks, and their own process of dehumanization as they became inured to the humanity of those who they were supposedly sent to "liberate."

The morning was infused with a sense of urgency. "Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed, or forced to flee their country as refugees," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of IVAW, in introductory remarks. "More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical, with little support to help them readjust.

"Many," she added, "will fall victim to suicide." Indeed, of the nine veterans who testified that day, two said they had tried to kill themselves after returning home.

Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered in Silver Spring, Md., to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, "Winter Soldier on the Hill" was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation -- this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the rest of Congress was debating the next round of funding for the war -- whether to approve more than $160 billion in additional taxpayer money to continue the occupation. "I think you know that the very issue that we're talking about today is on the House floor today," Woolsey noted -- a partial explanation for the small hearing room and the small handful of lawmakers who showed up. Even for those politicians who have consistently criticized the war, however, a group like IVAW -- whose platform includes immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, including contractors, as well as paying reparations to the Iraqi people -- is a politically risky ally. "I think we're generally viewed as too radical for most politicians," one IVAW field organizer and former military intelligence officer, T.J. Buonomo, said after the hearing. And this is a Congress where political courage has been in lethally short supply.

Not that IVAW expects Congress, after five years of cutting checks, to suddenly become the driving force that will end the war. Rather than lobbying politicians or pouring its energy into the presidential election, IVAW has focused on recruiting and chapter-building to fortify its ranks. Membership has reached 1,200, with members in all 50 states, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently, Germany. Concluding his remarks before the caucus, Washington, D.C., chapter head and nine-year veteran of the New York National Guard Geoffrey Millard spoke confidently about IVAW's role in fomenting an antiwar movement capable of ending the occupation. "The only remaining question is," he said, "will Congress be there to help us?"

"Welcome America to the second Vietnam"

Growing up, all Kristofer Goldsmith wanted was to join the Army. "I wanted to be in the military my entire life," he recalled, showing a photograph of himself at age 10 in military garb. But whatever sense of patriotism inspired him to want to wear the uniform as a young boy became something different after 9/11; the Bush administration's lies linking the terrorist attacks with Saddam Hussein inspired a willing foot soldier for its "war on terror."

Goldsmith was 16 years old when the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and he recalls thinking that the United States ought to use biological weapons to take out the entire Middle East. "I joined the Army to kill people," he admitted, "to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims." Trained to use artillery -- "some of the most destructive weapons that the army has" -- he deployed in 2005, only to find himself in Sadr City doing "supposed humanitarian aid," which he described as becoming "trumped by presence patrols" -- a daily reminder for Iraqis that they were surrounded by an "armed and dangerous army" patrolling their streets."

"It's basically fear tactics," Goldsmith said. The violence against civilians and the degrading conditions the occupation imposed on Iraqis became appalling to him. Slides he presented during his testimony showed raw sewage covering the floor at schools and the ground outside a hospital. "We made no attempts to repair it," he said. "We were unable to." In fact, the armored vehicles used by the military tore up the streets, exposing drinking water pipes to raw sewage. Goldsmith also showed a photograph he took of graffiti written on the side of a school in Sadr City that read, "Welcome America to the second Vietnam." It's not only critics in the United States who have drawn such comparisons, he said. Iraqis, he says, "are smart, educated people that are dying every day."

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Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

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