Dozens veteranen van de V.S. het beroep van Irak kwam in deze stad van de westenkust tijdens het weekend samen om verhalen van wreedheden die te delen dagelijks in Irak, in een voortzetting van de hoorzittingen worden begaan van de Winter „van de Militair“ die in de Zilveren Lente, Maryland in Maart worden gehouden.

Door Dahr Jamail | Bij het Stadhuis van Seattle, Verzamelden zowat 800 mensen zich om de verklaringen van veteranen van Irak te horen. De gebeurtenis werd gesponsord door de Veteranen van Irak van het Noordwesten Regionale tegen de Oorlog (IVAW), en werd onderschreven door dozens lokale en regionale anti-war groepen zoals Veteranen voor Vrede en Studenten voor de Democratische Maatschappij.

„ik lette op Iraakse Politie breng in iemand om te ondervragen,“ Seth Manzel, een voertuigbevelhebber en een machineartillerist in de V.S. Het leger, vertelde het publiek. „Er waren vier mensen op de gevangene… men zijn nieren met zijn vuisten pummeling, nam een andere omhoog een fles op zijn rectum. Het keek als een troep-verkrachting van het frathuis.“

Manzel werd lid van het leger na 9/11 om economische redenen - hij enkel op non-actief gesteld, en zijn vrouw had net een baby gehad. Manzel vertelde een ander verhaal van militaire dokters hij met Afar in Tal was wie weigerde om een bejaarde mens in hun detentiecentrum te behandelen. Manzel beschreef de oude man zoals zijnd jaundiced en liggend op de grond, die in pijn writhing.

De „dokters zeiden de oude man enkel lui was en zij niet gemachtigd waren om gevangenen te behandelen,“ bovengenoemde Manzel.

Januari Critchfield werkte als legerjournalist terwijl verbonden aan de 1st Cavalerie in Bagdad in 2004. „ik was met een eenheid dat schot bij een mens en een vrouw dichtbij een controlepost,“ bovengenoemde Critchfield, „zij door haar shinbone was ontsproten, en dat was het eerste verhaal dat ik in Irak.“ heb behandeld

Critchfield vertelde het publiek dat van hem baan in Irak tegen waren „de liberale media bias“ over het beroep unspoken.

“Our target audience was in the U.S., and the emphasis was reporting on humanitarian aid missions the military conducted,” Critchfield said. “I don’t know how many stories I reported on chicken drops (distributing frozen chickens in a community). I don’t know what else you can call that, other than propaganda. I would find the highest ranking person I could get, and quote them verbatim without fact checking anything they said.”

Other veterans told of lax rules of engagement that led to the slaughter of innocent civilians in Iraq.

“We were told we’d be deploying to Iraq and that we needed to get ready to have little kids and women shoot at us,” Sergio Kochergin, a former Marine who served two deployments in Iraq, told the audience. “It was an attempt to portray Iraqis as animals. We were supposed to do humanitarian work, but all we did was harass people, drive like crazy on the streets, pretending it was our city and we could do whatever we wanted to do.”

As the other veterans on the panel nodded in agreement, Kochergin continued, “We were constantly told everybody there wants to kill you, everybody wants to get you. In the military, we had racism within every rank and it was ridiculous. It seemed like a joke, but that joke turned into destroying peoples’ lives in Iraq.”

“I was in Husaiba with a sniper platoon right on the Syrian border and we would basically go out on the town and search for people to shoot,” Kochergin said. “The rules of engagement (ROE) got more lenient the longer we were there. So if anyone had a bag and a shovel, we were to shoot them. We were allowed to take our shots at anything that looked suspicious. And at that point in time, everything looked suspicious.”

Kochergin added, “Later on, we had no ROE at all. If you see something that doesn’t seem right, take them out.” He concluded by saying, “Enough is enough, it’s time to get out of there.”

Doug Connor was a first lieutenant in the army and worked as a surgical nurse in Iraq. While there he worked as part of a combat support unit, and said most of the patients he treated were Iraqi civilians.

“There were so many people that needed treatment we couldn’t take all of them,” he said. “When a bombing happened and 45 patients were brought to us, it was always Americans treated first, then Kurds, then the Arabs.”

Connor added quietly, “It got to the point where we started calling the Iraqi patients ‘range balls’ because, just like on the driving range (in golf), you don’t care about losing them.”

Channan Suarez Diaz was a navy hospital corpsman who returned from Iraq with a purple heart, among other medals. He served in Ramadi from September 2004 to February 2005 with a weapons company. He is now the Seattle Chapter president of IVAW.

“Our commanding officer wanted us to go through a route that another platoon did and was completely wiped out in an ambush,” Diaz explained. “We refused. They canceled that mission and we didn’t go. I don’t think these are isolated incidents. I think this is happening every day in Iraq. The military doesn’t want you to know about this, because it’s kind of like lighting a fire in a prairie.”

The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.

From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled “Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan” outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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