Iraq vets prepared to dish on possible war crimes

Following in the train of a similar action 37 years ago by Vietnam vets, soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are prepared to start talking about war crimes.

More than 100 veterans gathered in a Detroit hotel in early 1971 to talk about things they had seen and done in the Vietnam War. Called the Winter Soldier Investigation, the group spoke about a horrifying array of allegations: convoys driving over civilians; burning of villages; bodies thrown out of helicopters; torture, mutilation and infamous “free-fire zones,” where anyone not wearing a U.S. uniform could be killed.

Thirty-seven years later, more than 100 veterans will gather over the next several days for “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.” The event is designed to be another purging of the horrors of war, and another effort to put American military policy on trial in the public eye. The gathering this time, at the National Labor College outside Washington, D.C., is sponsored by the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. “Soldiers will certainly be testifying about their experience and observation of actions which are absolutely in violation of international law,” says IVAW spokesperson Perry O’Brien, who served as an Army medic in Afghanistan in 2003.

Organizers are hoping that modern technology, i.e., such things as digital camera and video imagery from Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, will give them more publicity traction with the media than their Vietnam counterparts got.

At the same time, IVAW faces the same tightrope that Vietnam Veterans Against the War did – calling out the war crimes without painting grunts in the field as war criminals. And, like 37 years ago, that’s going to be dicey, Vietnam vet Rick Weidman said.

Some Iraq veterans agree that the pro-war crowd will work to create the impression that the event is an unpatriotic smear against the troops. “It troubles me a little bit,” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America said about the coming event. “I hope that they are thinking this out, because there are plenty of people who are going to want to have their ass.”

As March 21 is Iraq Moratorium Day, remember soldiers daring enough to talk like this.