Winter Soldiers - Embodying Truth In Action, to correct cultural insanity

[Guest guest]

This material penetrates to bone, and to the soul. It is not

sensational, it is crucial.

 

Here is a transcript of a portion of the Winter Soldier conference of

US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are " coming clean " on just what

" we " as a global humanity are doing to ourselves.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/17/winter_soldier_us_vets_active_duty

 

It's really long.

 

And it's deeply important that we know what this is ALL about. This

eventful moment is another historical watershed, like the Truth and

Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa after apartheid collapsed.

 

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now is the only major news source that has

even reported that this event happened. DENIAL is not a river, it is

a ticket to misery.

 

I pray for the capacity to digest this lump in our collective

experience. I spent 11 years in the active us army reserve. I went

through us army basic training in 1960-61 when I was 17 years old. I

listened to JFK's " Ask not what your country can do for you, but what

you can do for your country " inauguration speech in a coal heated warm

up tent on a firing range at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It was 5

degrees F. outside (which was a rather small sacrifice on my part,

compared to what myriads of others experienced later). But I'm not a

stranger to the psychology and behavior of military organizations. I

rejoined the us army reserves in 1974, as a Khalsa. The Khalsa

standard of warriorhood was a revelation to me, and I was blessed to

stand in the aura of Guru Gobind Singh, in an american uniform with

beard and turban, until the Reagan administration threw us out. The

purpose in being there was to embody values that Sikhs in military

defense of humanity have demonstrated unequivocally, that would never

allow the kinds of travesty these stories below will tell you about.

 

We are the alternative. We are honored to represent the changes that

are coming, by grace, into the world as this turbulent period moves

into Aquarius. Take some courageous time to study what we stand in

opposition to, morally and spiritually, in order to appreciate why the

values we hold are so deeply needed in the world. It is our gift and

Seva to uphold them within the world.

 

Having this knowledge, of itself, will not harm you. It may become a

saving grace. One can take hope in remembering that " When you keep up

you will be kept up. " Divinely. Somehow, and how doesn't really

matter in the " diviner scheme " of things.

 

Sat Nam,

Krishna Singh

 

 

Democracy Now, March 17, 2008

Winter Soldier: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and

Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War

US veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend to testify at

Winter Soldier, an indictment by eyewitnesses to atrocities, and

widespread patterns of atrocity committed by US troops during the

ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers spoke of

free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians,

racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and

assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners. While the

corporate media ignored the story, we broadcast their voices.

AMY GOODMAN: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gathered in Maryland this

past weekend to testify at Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of

atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in

Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the

event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held

during the Vietnam War.

Over the weekend, war veterans spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings

and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of

the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and

the torturing of prisoners.

Although Winter Soldier was held just outside the nation's capital, it

was almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media. A search

on the Lexis database found that no major television network or cable

news network even mentioned Winter Soldier over the weekend, neither

did the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times or most

other major newspapers in the country. The editors of the Washington

Post chose to cover Winter Soldier but placed the article in the local

section.

On Friday, Democracy Now! broadcast from Winter Soldier. This week, we

play excerpts from the proceedings. We begin with Jon Michael Turner,

who fought with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines.

JON MICHAEL TURNER: Good afternoon. My name is Jon Michael Turner. I

currently reside in Burlington, Vermont. I served with Kilo Company,

3rd Battalion, 8th Marines as an automatic machine gunner. There's a

term, " Once a Marine, always a Marine. " But there's also the term,

" Eat the apple, F the corps, I don't work for you no more. "

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jon Michael Turner, stripping his medals and

ribbons from his chest and throwing them into the audience to the

applause of attendees at Winter Soldier. Turner then went on to

describe some of his time in Iraq.

JON MICHAEL TURNER: On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed

killed. This man was innocent. I don't know his name. I called him

" the fat man. " He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in

front of his friend and his father. The first round didn't kill him,

after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterwards he

started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my

friend, who I was on post with, and I said, " Well, I can't let that

happen. " So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried

away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body

away.

We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that

happened to have been mine. My company commander personally

congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the

same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by

stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq.

There was one incident, where we got into a firefight just south of

the government center about 2,000 meters. We had no idea where the

fire was coming from. And the way our rules of engagement were,

pinpoint where the fire is coming from and throw a rocket at it. So,

at that being said, we still didn't know where the fire was coming

from, and an eighty-four-millimeter rocket was shot into a house. I do

not know if there was anyone in it. We do not know if that's where the

fire was coming from. But that's what was done.

Please go to the next image. This man right here was my third

confirmed killed. As you can see, he was riding his bicycle. Later on

in the day, we went ahead, and we had CBS's Lara Logan with us, but

she was with the other squad, and so she wasn't with us. So, myself

and two other people went ahead and took out some individuals, because

we were excited about the firefight we had just gotten into, and we

didn't have a cameraman or woman with us. With that being said, any

time we did have embedded reporters with us, our actions would change

drastically. We never acted the same. We were always on key with

everything, did everything by the books. The man on the bicycle, he

was left in the street for about ten minutes until we realized that we

needed to leave where we were. And his body was dragged about ten feet

to the right of him, where his body was thrown behind a rock wall and

his bicycle was thrown on top of him.

Another thing that we used to do a lot was recon by fire, where we

would go ahead and try to start a firefight if we felt threatened in

any way, shape or form. There was one particular incident where we

were working with the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Special Forces in

downtown Ramadi, and with our squad and the Iraqi Army there was also

lieutenant colonels, majors, first sergeants and sergeant

majors—sorry, sergeants major. With that being said, the Iraqi Army

would go into the house, kick in the doors and then go ahead and

shoot. And there were loud bursts of machinegun fire. We thought we

were taking fire, but then we later found out that it was them.

House raids—because we were a grunt battalion, we were responsible for

going on several patrols. A lot of the raids and patrols we did were

at night around 3:00 in the morning, around there. And what we would

do is just kick in the doors and terrorize the families. That was an

image taken around 3:00 in the morning through night vision goggles.

And that is the segregation of the women and children and the men. If

the men of the household were giving us problems, we'd go ahead and

take care of them anyway we felt necessary, whether it be choking them

or slamming their head against the walls. If you go back to that one

picture, that was one man that wasn't taking—that was taken care of in

a very bad way, because of all the wiring that he had. We considered

it IED-making material.

On my wrist, there's Arabic for " F you. " I got that put on my wrist

just two weeks before we went to Iraq, because that was my choking

hand, and any time I felt the need to take out aggression, I would go

ahead and use it.

Please go to the next picture. Next, there's an instance of detainees

and how they were treated in a nice manner.

Next, that is the Fatima Mosque minaret. As you can see, it is ridden

with bullet holes and holes in the top of it. Those were from mortars.

And the next video that I'm going to show you is a tank round that

went into that minaret, where we weren't sure if we were taking fire

or not. Actually, I'll talk about this one. This is after one of the

guys in a weapons company had gotten shot. This is a way that we would

take out our aggression. For those of you who don't know, it is

illegal to shoot into a mosque, unless you were taking fire from it.

There was no fire that was taken from that mosque. It was shot into

because we were angry.

Can you please play the next video?

[clip] We are on [inaudible], trying to suppress the blue-and-white

minaret named Madinat al-Zahra. Hellraiser, Hellraiser, go ahead. You

can move the tank around that door over—at that mosque door. Another

round Kilo Two.

 

Next image. That—OK, with that being said, there's many more stories

and incidents for me to talk about, although we don't have the time

to. But this just goes to show you that that was the aftereffect of

the tank round. This just goes to show you that everyone sitting up

here has these stories, and there's been over a million trips that

have gone in and out of Iraq, so the possibilities are endless.

Next image, please. The reason I am doing this today is not only for

myself and for the rest of society to hear, but it's for all those who

can't be here to talk about the things that we went through, talk

about the things that we did.

Next image. Those four crosses and this memorial service were for the

five guys in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines that we lost.

Throughout our unit, we had eighteen that got killed. With that being

said, that is my testimony. I just want to say that I am sorry for the

hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people, and I'm

sorry for the hate and destruction that others have inflicted on

innocent people. At one point, it was OK. But reality has shown that

it's not and that this is happening and that until people hear about

what is going on with this war, it will continue to happen and people

will continue to die. I am sorry for the things that I did. I am no

longer the monster that I once was. Thank you.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Former Marine, Jon Michael Turner, fought with the 3rd

Battalion, 8th Marines. The videos and photos the soldier showed can

be seen at our website, democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! We'll

be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return now to our coverage of Winter Soldier, Iraq and

Afghanistan.

JASON HURD: My name is Jason Hurd. I recently completed ten years of

honorable service to my country in both the US Army and the Tennessee

National Guard. I served in central Baghdad from November of '04 to

November of '05. I'm from a little place nestled in the mountains of

East Tennessee called Kingsport, and hence the mountain man beard.

People don't really trust you if you're clean-shaven there. Kingsport

is truly small-town America. There is a Baptist church on every street

corner, and even the high-class restaurants serve biscuits and gravy.

My father, Carl C. Hurd, who died in 2000—he was seventy-six years

old—he was a Marine during World War II. Obviously, I was a latecomer

in his life; he didn't have me until his late fifties. As a matter of

fact, when he died, shortly after that, I have the two World War II

battles he participated in tattooed on my arm, and my father had the

same tattoo. He was in the Pacific campaign and participated in the

battles of Tarawa and Guadalcanal, which were some of the bloodiest

occurrences of that war.

I decided to join the military in 1997. I was seventeen years old. I

had just graduated from high school, and I didn't know exactly what I

wanted to do with my life. My father was adamantly opposed to me

serving in the military. My father was one of the most warmongering,

gun-loving people you could ever meet, but he didn't feel that way

when it came to his son, because he knew the negative psychological

consequences of combat service. Looking back—looking back, I know for

a fact that my father had post-traumatic stress disorder. He had the

rage, he had the nightmares, and he had the flashbacks.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Hurd went on to describe his time in Iraq. In 2004,

he was deployed to central Baghdad with Tennessee's 278th Regimental

Combat Team.

JASON HURD: One of the observation points that overlooked the Tigris

River looked out at the old Republican Guard barracks, which were

across the river. And there was one of those buildings that was sort

of dilapidated; however, we knew that squatters had taken this

building over, and we actually used to make jokes that this place

looked like a crack house and that they were running drugs out of

there. We had no evidence of that; it was just joking.

One day, Iraqi police got into an exchange of gunfire with some

unknown individuals around that building. Some of the stray rounds

came across the Tigris River and hit the shield of one of our Hummers.

The gunner atop that Hummer decided to open fire with his

fifty-caliber machinegun into that building. He expended about a case

and a half of ammunition. And I'm no weapons expert—I'm a medic—but I

talked to some of my colleagues just the other night, and to put this

into perspective for you all, each case of fifty-cal ammunition holds

about 150 rounds. A case and a half is well over 200 rounds. Over 200

rounds of fifty-caliber ammunition could take out just about every

single person in this room. We fired indiscriminately and

unnecessarily at this building. We never got a body count, we never

got a casualty count afterwards. Another unit came through and swept

up that mess.

Ladies and gentleman, things like that happen every day in Iraq. We

react out of fear, fear for our lives, and we cause complete and utter

destruction.

After we finished the mission manning those observation points, we

moved on. My platoon specifically was tasked with running security

escort for two explosive ordnance teams, one US Navy and one

Australian EOD team. On day one, the US Navy team took us all aside

for some specialized training. They took us aside and said, " Look, EOD

teams are some of the most highly targeted entities in Iraq. The

reason being is because, hey, we're the guys that go out and we disarm

car bombs, we mess up the tactics and the operations of the

insurgency. That's why we're highly targeted. So you guys have to use

more aggressive tactics to protect us. "

And they explained to us that what we were to do is keep a fifty-meter

perimeter, a fifty-meter bubble around our trucks at all times,

whether we were driving down the road or whether we're stationary. And

if anything comes in that fifty-meter bubble, we're to get it out

immediately. If it doesn't want to move, we use what are called levels

of aggression. Your first option is to try to push it out by using

hand signals, hand and arm signals. Your next option is to fire a

warning shot into the ground. And from there on, you walk bullets up

the car. And your last option is to shoot the person driving the car.

This is for our own protection. Car bombs are a real danger in Iraq.

In fact, that's the vast majority of what I saw in Baghdad, is car

bombings. My unit adhered strictly to these guidelines for a few weeks.

But as time went on and the absurdity of war set in, they started

taking things too far. Individuals from my unit indiscriminately and

unnecessarily opened fire on innocent civilians as they're driving

down the road on their own streets. My unit—individuals from my

platoon would fire into the grills of these cars and then come back in

the evenings after missions were done and brag about it. They would

say, " Hey, did you guys see that car I shot at? It spewed radiator

fluid all over the ground. Wasn't that cool? " I remember thinking back

on that and how appalled I was that we were bragging about these

things, that we were laughing, but that's what you do in a combat

zone. That is your reality. That is how you deal with that predicament.

After we finished the EOD escort missions, we moved on to another

mission: patrolling the Kindi Street area, which is right outside of

the Green Zone. Kindi Street is a relatively upscale neighborhood.

Some of the houses in the Kindi area would cost well over $1 million

here in America. This area, from what we were told, had no violent

activity at all, up until the point we started patrolling this area.

We were the first US military to do so on any regular basis. So we

went in. We started doing patrols through the streets. We started

getting out and meeting and greeting the local population, trying to

figure out what sort of issues they had, how we could resolve those

issues.

I remember we were out on a patrol one day, a dismounted patrol, and

we were walking by a woman's house. She was outside in her garden

doing some work. We had our interpreter with us, and our interpreter

threw up his hand and said " Salaam aleikum, " which is their greeting

in Iraq. It means " Peace of God be with you. " And he translated back

to us what she said. She said, " No. No peace of God be with you. " She

was angry, and she was frustrated. And so, we stopped, and our

interpreter said, " Well, what's the matter? Why are you so angry?

We're here protecting you. We're here to ensure your safety. "

And that woman began to tell us a story. Just a few months prior to

this, her husband had been shot and killed by a United States convoy,

because he got too close to their convoy. He was not an insurgent; he

was not a terrorist. He was merely a working man trying to make a

living for his family. To make matters worse, a few weeks later, there

was a Special Forces team who operated in the Kindi area. And as you

know, Special Forces do clandestine operations. And so, even though

this was my unit's area of operation, we didn't know what the Special

Forces teams were actually doing there. They holed up in a building

there in the Kindi Street area and made a compound out of it. A few

weeks after this man died, the Special Forces team got some

intelligence that this woman was supporting the insurgency. And so,

they conducted a raid on her home, zip-tied her and her two children,

threw them on the floor. And I guess her son was old enough to be

perceived as a possible threat, so they detained him and took him

away. For the next two weeks, this woman had no idea whether her son

was alive, dead or worse. At the end of that two weeks, the Special

Forces team rolled up, dropped her son off and, without so much as an

apology, drove off. It turns out they had found they had acted on bad

intelligence. Ladies and gentleman, things like that happen every day

in Iraq. We're harassing these people, we're disrupting their lives.

I want to tell you a very personal story, and I want you all to bear

with me, because this is always difficult for me to tell. One day, we

were on another dismounted patrol through the Kindi Street area. We

were walking past an area we called " the garden center, " because it

was literally a fenced-off garden. As is policy, we are to keep all

cars and individuals away from our formation. And so, a car was

approaching us from the front. I was at the rear of the formation,

because I was the medic and the medics hang out at the back with the

platoon sergeant in case anything happens up front so you can respond.

They waved the car off down a side street, so that it would not come

near our formation.

As I made it up to that side street, the car had turned around and was

coming back towards us, because the street was blocked off by a

concrete T barrier at the other end. So I began doing my levels of

aggression. I held up my hand, trying to get the car to stop. The car

sped up. And I thought to myself, oh, my god, this is it. This is

someone who is trying to hurt us. And so, instead of doing what I

should have done according to policy and raising my weapon, instead, I

did what you should never do, and I took my hands off of my weapon

altogether and began jumping up and down, waving my hands back and

forth, trying to get this car to stop and see me. The car kept coming.

And so, I raised my weapon, and the car kept coming. I pulled my

selector switch off of safe, and the car kept coming.

I was applying pressure to my trigger, getting ready to fire on the

vehicle, and out of nowhere, a man came off of the side of the road,

flagged the car down and got it to pull over. He walked around to the

driver's side door, opened it up, and out popped an eighty-year-old

woman. Come to find out, this woman was a highly respected figure in

the community, and I don't have a clue what would have happened had I

opened fire on this woman. I would imagine a riot.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hate guns. I spent ten years in the military,

and I carried two of them on my side in Iraq, but I think they should

be melted down and turned into jewelry. To this day, that is the worst

thing that I have ever done in my life. I am a peaceful person, but

yet in Iraq I drew down on an eighty-year-old geriatric woman who

could not see me, because I was in front of a desert-colored

vehicle—or, excuse me, desert-colored building wearing desert-colored

camouflage.

Another personal story from my experience, the next mission that we

got was to man the main checkpoint that entered into the Green Zone.

We called this checkpoint Slaughterhouse 11, because the very first

day we got into country, a car bomb went off in that checkpoint. We

were a couple of blocks away at the time, and none of us knew what it

was, so we were asking around, " What was that? What was that? " Oh,

that's the car bomb that goes off every single morning at checkpoint

11. And that's where the name Slaughterhouse 11 comes from. You could

literally set your watch by the time a car bomb would explode in that

checkpoint every day.

Towards the end of my tour, we got the mission to take that checkpoint

over. And my unit said, " What is the matter with you people? We're

getting ready to go home in just a couple of months. Why are you

giving us Slaughterhouse 11? Are you wanting us to die? "

Day one that we took that checkpoint over and ran it ourselves, a car

bomb drove into it and exploded. We found out that there was over a

thousand pounds of explosives in that car afterwards. Luckily, it did

not hurt any of my guys. My guys were able to find cover, and it

didn't hurt them. But it killed untold numbers of Iraqi civilians in

queue to come into the checkpoint and injured so many more. I treated

five people that day myself, and I would imagine twenty or thirty

others got carted off into civilian ambulances before I could get to

them.

But I have an image that is burned into my mind to this very day. And

I remember a man running towards me at the front of the checkpoint,

carrying a young seventeen- or eighteen-year-old Iraqi guy, very thin,

very sort of pale. He came running to me with this guy and laid him at

my feet. I looked down at him, and the guy was missing from here to

here of his arm, and his forearm was only held on by a small flap of

skin. The bones were protruding, and it was bleeding profusely. He had

shrapnel wounds all over his torso. And when I log-rolled him onto his

side to check his rear for wounds, I noticed that his entire left butt

cheek was missing, and it was bleeding profusely, and it was pooling

blood. And to this day, I have that image burned in my mind's eye.

Almost every couple of days, I will get a flash of red color in my

mind's eye, and it won't have any shape, no form, just a flash of red.

And every time, I associate it with that instance. So not only are we

disrupting the lives of Iraqi civilians, we're disrupting the lives of

our veterans with this occupation.

You know, conservative statistics say that the majority of Iraqis

support attacks against coalition forces, the majority of Iraqis

support us leaving immediately, and the majority of Iraqis see us as

the main contributors to the violence in Iraq. This gives us a view at

the prevailing sentiment in Iraq. And I'd like to explain it to

everyone this way, especially in the South, because it rings with some

semblance of truth to people down there. If a foreign occupying force

came here to the United States, and regardless of what they told us,

whether they told us they were here to free us, to liberate us and to

give us democracy, do you not think that every person that owns a

shotgun would not come out of the hills and fight for their right to

self-determination?

And I'd like to sum it up like this: the prevailing sentiment in Iraq

is this—another time that I was out on patrol in the Kindi Street

area—as I said, part of our mission was to meet and greet the local

population and find out what their problems were—and so, I approached

a man with my interpreter on the side of the road, and I asked him, I

said, " Look, are your lives better because we're here? Are you safer?

Do you feel more secure? Do you feel like we are liberating you? " And

that man looked at me straight in the eye, and he said, " Mister, we

Iraqis know that you have good intentions here. But the fact of the

matter is, before America invaded, we didn't have to worry about car

bombs in our neighborhoods, we didn't have to worry about the safety

of our own children as they walked to school, and we didn't have to

worry about US soldiers shooting at us as we drive up and down our own

streets. "

Ladies and gentlemen, the suffering in Iraq is tearing that country

apart. And ending that suffering begins with a complete and immediate

withdrawal of all of our troops. Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Hurd was with Tennessee's 278th Regimental Combat

Team in Iraq. He testified at the Winter Soldier hearings this weekend

at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, joining

hundreds of other active-duty and veterans from both Afghanistan and

Iraq. The Winter Soldier hearings were modeled on what happened

thirty-seven years ago in Detroit, Michigan, the Winter Soldier

Investigation, where soldiers from Vietnam came back and described

atrocities they themselves had been involved with. We will continue to

run these testimony throughout the week on this fifth anniversary of

the invasion of Iraq.