[Peace-discuss] What we did

[C. G. Estabrook]

    Winter Soldier: Eye Witness Accounts of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
    Submitted by John Stauber on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 19:28.

Two years ago public revulsion against the Bush Administration's unnecessary and 
disastrous attack and occupation of Iraq resulted in the Democratic Party taking 
control of the US Congress. But Nancy Pelosi and the new political leadership 
backed down before President Bush and refused to withhold funding for the war, 
while rhetorically denouncing it and thus playing to anti-war voters. The 
liberal lobby group MoveOn spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-war 
advertisements and door-to-door canvassing events as part of its partisan 
campaign to blame the war on the Republicans, while letting Democrats off the 
hook for giving Bush all the money he wanted to continue the occupation into 
next year.

Today as the 2008 election approaches, worry over Iraq has slipped down the 
public's list of concerns while more immediate economic issues and the 
spectacular collapse of the Wall Street investment banks take center stage. 
However, one anti-war organization has proven especially tenacious, independent 
and committed to immediately bringing home troops from Iraq and making good to 
the Iraqi people, while taking care of the soldiers who fought the war. That 
organization is the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) composed of about a 
thousand soldiers who have recently served or are still serving in the US military.

IVAW has provided the courageous and true leadership that partisan lobbies like 
MoveOn lack, opposing the war-funding politicians of both parties. When the 
Democrats nominated Barack Obama in Denver, IVAW was there in the streets 
demanding a meeting with Obama's people to press for an immediate end to the 
occupation. During the Republican Convention as John McCain was talking from the 
stage in St. Paul he was confronted with a lone soldier, IVAW's Adam Kokesh, 
calling from the balcony and waving a sign of protest against the war. TV 
cameras briefly broadcast the protest of Kokesh, but quickly pulled away from 
the young soldier in the black IVAW tee shirt calling out to McCain.

Last March the IVAW spent its own money and time to organize an historic event, 
the Winter Soldier hearings held outside Washington DC, where soldiers testified 
to the atrocities and war crimes they witnessed or personally committed while in 
Iraq and Afghanistan. The emotionally moving and carefully vetted truth telling 
lasted for days. Thanks to Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison and others at Berkeley 
radio station KPFA, the IVAW testimony was broadcast live and is today available 
free online for anyone to hear.

To its disgrace most of the mainstream corporate media ignored the hearings. The 
hard facts of the Iraq war, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, the 
millions driven from their homes, the thousands of American dead and tens of 
thousands wounded, are simply not deemed appropriate and newsworthy by American 
news media. Indeed, the US media has pushed Iraq to the back pages and off the 
TV tube.

Not to be deterred, the IVAW continues to organize local and regional Winter 
Soldier hearings. I will be speaking at one hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, this 
Saturday September 27, addressing the propaganda role of the US media as a 
cheerleader for war. Available at the conference, hot off the printing presses, 
will be a new book that is the official account of IVAW's brutally honest and 
deeply moving testimonies. Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan was written by 
the Iraq Veterans Against the War and independent author and journalist Aaron 
Glantz.

This book reflects the IVAW belief often expressed by executive director Kelly 
Dougherty that "the only way this war is going to end is if the American people 
truly understand what we have done in their name." It's filled with gut 
wrenching personal stories and histories from the women and men who fought the 
war and still fight in the occupation of Iraq. A collection of testimonies, the 
book is itself one single testimony to the powerful truths of soldiers facing up 
to a war millions would rather ignore and that the corporate media and political 
establishment does not want to honestly discuss. This is a very important book, 
one that every American should read and share. America owes an unpayable debt to 
its soldiers, especially its anti-war soldiers in the Iraq Veterans Against the 
War who do not back down to political gamesmanship from either political party.
======
John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, is an unpaid 
advisor to Iraq Veterans Against the War.


http://www.prwatch.org/node/7785