Winter Soldier 2008: Who Supports the Troops?

If I were a far better writer, I might -- might -- be able to convey the intensity of these Winter Soldier hearings.

On the way in were a few dozen right-wing protesters organized by the "Gathering of Eagles" -- a spin-off from the "Vietnam Vets for Truth" started during the 2004 campaign to go after Kerry. I've seen them at antiwar protests, and what struck me was that their messages were unchanged -- 'support the troops.' The concept that those giving testimony inside were the troops -- several with chests weighed down with decorations and metals -- was the definition of cognitive dissonance.

There was a heavy police presence surrounding the site of the hearings -- the campus of a local college in Silver Springs, Maryland. Snipers watched from rooftops, a mobile command post was set up and cops outnumbered protesters 2-1.

The panels were heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. Many of these vets are so young, and yet they've seen more than most of us can imagine. We talk about what the military is doing in our names, but to hear from people who were there doing it themselves, is something quite different. They talked about getting their first "kill," of having no clue what the mission was, of being in a clusterfuck of unbelieveable scope.I knew about everything of which the vets spoke in an academic sense, but to hear them tell the tales in their own words -- some choking up visibly with the telling -- was enough to make a person cry, and many in the auditorium did just that.

I've written about a dozen articles about military contractors, and I think I have a pretty good handle on how destructive the endemic corruption of this occupation has been. But hearing the frustration expressed by a young MP as she told of providing security to KBR convoys is something that can't be found in any report. 'Every day we'd provide security for these trucks,' she said, ' and they told us that they were strategic assets vital to military operations in the country. We were supposed to be prepared to use deadly force to protect them.' When the trucks broke down, the convoys would keep barreling along, and her team was left to provide security. Hungry, desperate Iraqis would gather around, and they'd hold them off using rubber bullets and, if necessary, live ammunition. Inevitably, they'd then get the call to just destroy the vehicles, along with their cargoes. 'I had no idea what we were doing -- if the payloads were so valuable, why would we inevitably get the order to destroy them?' She detailed burning trucks full of food in front of hungry Iraqis, destroying a full-outfitted and perfectly serviceable ambulance in an Iraqi district that had none. It wasn't just the futility of the job, it was the repeated futility, day in and day out. One got the sense that a lot of these soldiers went over their with lofty ideals -- they went to help the Iraqi people -- and instead they found themselves members of an occupation that places very, very little value on Iraqi lives.

There was a panel on the Rules of Engagement. More than a dozen soldiers testified that they had been trained stateside to be professionals -- to use minimal force to achieve their objectives, to respect the spirit as well as the letter of the Geneva Conventions. When they got to Iraq, that flew out the window, and the unofficial but universally observed ROE was that if they felt at all threatened, they should shoot to kill. And all agreed that in a country where the enemies are indistinguishable from the friendlies, and with a mission that was poorly designed, the rules became looser and looser. All reported that they regularly carried 'drop' weapons to put next to the corpses of any civilians they had killed by mistake, and were told by their superiors that they'd be protected in such circumstances. And that happened with alarming frequency.