[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]There are many topics I’d like to tackle – the Michigan/Florida primary debacle, Obama’s speech, military spending, and so on – but I’m turning this week’s column instead to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. To be precise, I’m piggybacking on Democracy Now’s reporting of the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings put on by Iraq Veterans Against the War between March 13 and March 16. As the Iraq War hits the five-year mark and U.S. troop casualties reach 4,000, it seems only right that we set aside the usual business.
I understand that the original Winter Soldier hearings, held in regards to the Vietnam War, have achieved a great deal of controversy, particularly of the kind associated with the historical revisionism characteristic of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I also take Amy Goodman’s point that these testimonials by soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been vastly under-reported, if not ignored outright, by the mainstream media. However, I’m not going to get in a political discussion or debate about any of that. Instead, I simply want to take a moment to listen to what these young men and women have to say. They’ve been to Iraq. They know better than we do what it’s like over there. And as harrowing and heartbreaking as their stories are – I’ve only been able to get through a fraction of the testimonials; they are VERY intense – their voices deserve to be heard by everyone, regardless of political ideology.
And so I stop typing here and direct you to the webpage where you can watch video testimonials on your computer:
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony/video
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