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The initial Winter Soldier hearing was organized in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to the human rights violations occurring during the Vietnam War. Earlier this year, there was another "Winter Soldier" hearing held in Washington, D.C. The Northwest hearing was organized by the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and endorsed by dozens of local and regional activists groups like Veterans for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society. It's purpose was to bring awareness about the war and to end it.

Eight local Iraq War veterans testified during the first panel. Later during the day there were other panels and presentations by other veterans and community activists. A recurring message throughout the event was that American policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading to war crimes.

After the presentations, there was a spirited march to the Federal Building.

Michael William, Northwest Regional Coordinator of IVAW, opened the panel testimony by saying, "I have deep respect for all who have been touched by this illegal war of aggression. The veterans of the global war on terror carry many wounds and memories which are difficult to share." He told the audience that they would hear the painful personal experiences of soldiers as well as the tragic effects of institutional racism, sexism, and bigotry.

The IVAW demands the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. from the Middle East, reparations for Iraqis, and full Veterans Administration (VA) Benefits for all veterans.

Michael told the audience, "IVAW members still remember their oath to defend the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic. This struggle begins here, speaking to a public that was misled into an illegal, imperialist war under false pretenses.... This war was unjustly started ...[but] must justly end."

 

Michael William

Seth Manzel

Seth Manzel was a sergeant in the 5th Infantry. He joined the Army after he was laid off from his job. As a new father, he needed to support his family. A recruiter told him that his wife would be able to use his GI Benefits to finish her B.A. if he enlisted-- unfortunately for the Manzel family, this was untrue. Seth had one deployment in Iraq and he got out of the military before he was stop-lossed.

Seth said that many members of his former unit are now at the breaking point. "Soldiers with physical and mental pain self-medicate, leading to disciplinary and legal problems," he said, "You cannot expect people to use force, coercion, and brutality as a sole means of dealing with people for a full year and a half and then expect them to return to society without a problem."

Seth's experiences in Iraq hardened his belief that the war is wrong. He said that since the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Army has technically kept its hands clean by outsourcing torture to the Iraqi police. He told audience members about walking into an interrogation room while Iraqi police officers were torturing an Iraqi prisoner. He said, "It looked like a frathouse gang rape."

Seth also saw Army personnel routinely deny detainees medical attention. He asked the audience, "How can we possibly criticize other countries when we treat people this way?"

Ash Wilson served in the Wisconsin Army National Guard with a combat engineer unit. He joined the National Guard in 1999 to pay for college. Like many, he had limited opportunities for furthering his education. Student financial aid has been reduced while educational benefits for soldiers have increased. When Ash joined, the National Guard was paying 100% tuition and was promising recruits that they would not be deployed overseas.

The reality was different. Ash was deployed overseas twice, once as a peacekeeper in Nicaragua and the other in Iraq. He was activated just before the invasion of Iraq but wasn't part of the invasion itself. When he began his deployment in Iraq, he was 21 -- the second oldest person in his squad. Although he was part of a combat engineering unit, his unit supported civil affairs and provided security for important personnel.

Ash Wilson

 

Ash said that what he saw and did in Iraq "disgraced me as a human being". Civilians, even children as young as 6 years, were viewed as possible enemy threats.

Since returning, he has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Jan Critchfield

Jan Critchfield joined the Washington National Guard straight out of high school, when he was 17.

In Iraq, he was a member of a journalism unit covering the 1st Cavalry Division. He reported on humanitarian aid missions. He told the audience that the unspoken mission of his unit was to "counter the liberal media bias", however, in reality, his unit just wrote propaganda. Jan and his fellow soldiers didn't write about the negative aspects of the war, and they didn't do any fact checking. Jan said that he simply transcribed verbatim what high ranking officers told him.

His unit wrote feel-good stories for American readers. For example, he would write a story about a transformer station opening, but he wouldn't write about how it was blown up two weeks later. His unit also hired Iraqi journalists to produce articles for Iraqi papers that were sympathetic to the U.S. military occupation.

 

As a soldier, Jan was trained to be constantly on alert for threats. The nature of urban warfare made it difficult to discern who the enemy was. Over and over, he was put in situations where he "came close to murdering innocent people".

Many of his comrades watched what he calls "war porn". These soldiers had so dehumanized Iraqis that they would sit around and laugh while they watched videos of Iraqis being killed by coalition forces.

Jan said that the intelligence used for raids is inaccurate and, as a result, the raids are ineffective in stopping the insurgency. He told the audience that the American strategy of raiding a house and then abducting male family members is not a solution to the insurgency, it is the cause of insurgency.

Sergio Kochergin was with the Marine Corps' 7th Regiment for 4 years. Like other vets, he heard his superiors demonize Iraqis. Once the Army announced that the U.S. might invade Iraq, anti-Iraqi propaganda began. "They start telling us that you have to be ready for little kids to shoot at you," he said, "Be ready for women to fight you.... saying everything to make those people seem like they are animals and that they are lower than everyone else."

Sergio described the gradual evaporation of the rules of engagement during his second deployment. He was a member of the Scouts Sniper Platoon so "pretty much what we did was go out in the town and search for people to shoot".

Sergio Kochergin

At the beginning of his deployment, members of his unit had to get explicit permission to shoot. However, as his Platoon's casualties mounted, the rules of engagement became looser and looser until there were none. Under the initial rules of engagement, soldiers would see something unusual and report it. They would take photographs of what they saw and send them in for review. "We were allowed to take our shots if anything was suspicious," Sergio said, "And at that point of time, everything was suspicious....We were pissed off. We were angry. We were tired. We just wanted to go home.

"Later on, we had no rules of engagement at all. It was, go out there, and if you see something that is not right, take them out."

Two months before he returned, translators told his unit that flyers were being posted around town, warning Iraqis to stay off the streets because unknown snipers were killing both insurgents and innocent civilians. Sergio said, "When they told us about that, it didn't even register....But now when I look back on it, it's disgusting. It makes me sick just to think that I would have... I was so deep into it that I wouldn't question what I was told to do...."

For Sergio, as with many vets, the return to normal life has been difficult. "...A lot of us come back and try to get some help. Psychologists lines are about a year and a half or two years long," he said, "The only thing that they give you is medication. They give you sleeping pills -- that you use with alcohol and you pretty much abuse everything trying to keep yourself, keep your mind, off the things that you experienced."

Josh Simpson joined the army at 18 in 2001. He served for 5 years. He was one of the many soldiers who joined for financial reasons. In Iraq, he was an Army Sergeant with a Tactical Human Intelligence Team.

Josh said that the intelligence in Iraq is very flawed. 95% of the people the Army arrests have little or nothing to do with the insurgency. However, the American raids continue, creating a constant state of fear for Iraqis. Paid snitches provide the Army with unreliable tips and then innocent people are targeted as insurgents -- often because of the informant's greed or desire for revenge.

Josh said he feels badly about participating in the raids his group conducted on civilians. Josh also feels remorse about participating in the interrogations. "As an interrogator," he said, "We were told to physically go all out on the Iraqis."

Josh Simpson

Josh had to interrogate a prisoner until the prisoner confessed. There wasn't the option of returning to his command and telling them that the prisoner was not connected to the insurgency. Josh said, "The officers would tell me, 'Well, you're not being mean enough on them. You have to go down and put the screws to them.' "

If the Army wasn't able to make a prisoner confess, the prisoner might be turned over to the Iraqis for additional "interrogation" which really meant torture. When prisoners were returned by the Iraqi interrogators, the prisoner would have always confessed to a long list of crimes. After the interrogation, the prisoner's entire body would be covered with scars and bruises. Josh said,"Not an ounce of flesh was unmarked."

Josh became a reservist after his tour of duty. He was attending college at the Evergreen State College in Olympia when he was told that he would be switched to a unit in Texas so he could be deployed in Iraq for a second time. He decided, "I'm done with the army. I did my time. .... I can't take part in a war like this."

Josh Farris described how the unclear rules of engagement resulted in civilian deaths. Without a clear mission, he said, soldiers were "loosing their minds, loosing discipline".

Josh gave various examples of how soldiers humiliated and brutalized civilians out of confusion or boredom. This ranged from yelling at civilians because they didn't understand their language to exposing their genitals to children at a checkpoint to beating a man in front of his family. As the war progressed, so did the dehumanization of Iraqis.

"At this checkpoint I was at, I saw several of the Iraqis come in, zipped up with those zip ties," Josh said, "Their hands behind their backs, their feet tied up. Tied up like animals and thrown in the back up of humvees like a burlap sacks of potatoes."

Josh Farris

Doug Connor

Doug Connor is from a military family. He volunteered to serve in Iraq even though he didn't support the war. He hoped that he might be able to help American and Iraqi patients because he had nursing skills and knew the Arabic language.

Arriving in Iraq with the 4th Combat Support Hospital, he found that the Army medical equipment to be substandard. As a result, there was insufficient medical care for people treated at the hospital.

95% of his patients were Iraqi civilians. They were only eligible for treatment if an American soldier had caused their injuries. The initial plan had been to provide treatment to anyone with an American-caused "life or limb" injury. However, there were too many casualties to treat them all.

Before Doug arrived in Iraq, an NCO gave him some advice: "if it looks funny, kill it". He thought that the NCO was just one isolated burnt-out soldier, but once he arrived in Iraq, he discovered that all the soldiers were burnt out. Doctors, nurses, and psychologists made medical decisions based upon race. There were three operating tables, and a strict racial hierarchy as to who would use them. It was Americans first, Kurds second, and then Arabs a distant third. Iraqi patients were called "range balls" because golfers don't care about loosing range balls.

Despite his initial good intentions, Doug became overwhelmed by is experiences in Iraq. He struggled with depression and used racism as a coping mechanism. Doug is in his 30s, and he believes that the experience was far worse for younger soldiers. "Soldiers are committing suicide at an alarming rate -- 18 a day," Doug said, "There is a reason. This war is very, very stressful because there is no clear end in sight, and there is no mission."

Chanan Suarez-Diaz

Chanan Suarez-Diaz was a Navy hospital corpsman while stationed in Iraq. He was with an unarmed company. Chanan went to Iraq believing it was his duty to save lives, Iraqi or American. He believes that he was able to accomplish that.

"You don't know how war is until you've been in a combat zone," Chanan said. During his service, he was awarded a Navy Commendation Medal and a Purple Heart.

Chanan said that racism was used to systematically dehumanize the enemy. "It makes it that much easier to kill somebody," Chanan said. Most American soldiers used the word 'hadji' as a racial epithet to describe Iraqis and other Middle Eastern looking people. While he was in Iraq, the word hadj was used constantly."It was hadji this and hadji that," he said. Most soldiers had no respect or understanding Iraqi culture.

 

Chanan told stories about how the constant bloodshed and violence made soldiers uncaring. He recalled a Marine bragging about shooting an unarmed man who had been doing his daily errands. This sort of thing happened every day.

Chanan told audience members that the Iraqi people are not accepting American occupation. "The people in Iraq are organized. They are a resistance force," he said, "They are going to continue fighting and resisting us until the last day that we are there."

Tracy Manzel is a high school English and History teacher. She discussed what families endure when a soldier returns from deployment in Iraq. She is married to Seth Manzel (above). As with many returning veterans, Seth's experiences put stress on his marriage. However, over time Seth and Tracy have been able to resolve most of their problems. Unfortunately, this is not true for some of their friends.

Tracy described how vets have to fight the VA bureaucracy. She also spoke of the stigma against going into a treatment program. Many soldiers fear being seen as "not Army strong" if they acknowledge that they need treatment.

Tracy said that she has seen a high number of miscarriages among the wives of soldiers. She wonders whether American soldiers have been exposed to depleted uranium or some other toxic element.

Tracy Manzel

Sara Rich

Sara Rich is the mother of Iraq War veteran and war resister. Her daughter, Suzanne Swift, was a military police officer who went AWOL last year to avoid sexual abuse from superiors. Sara's daughter experienced military sexual trauma after joining the Army at 19.

After joining, Suzanne was confronted with institutional sexism. She told her mother that "in the Army women are seen as either bitches, dykes, or whores". Suzanne resisted playing any of these roles -- she just wanted to do her job.

Sara told the audience that she is grateful that Suzanne resisted redeployment to Iraq. Since the family went public about Suzanne's expereinces, a violent pattern has emerged. Many women soldiers who have been raped in Iraq are murdered before they are able to return home.

Evan Kanter, M.D., Ph.D., is a staff psychiatrist at the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Outpatient Clinic of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. He is also a neuroscientist on the faculty of the University of Washington.

He estimates that there will be 300,000 to 400,000 psychiatric casualties from service in Iraq. The younger veterans are more likely to have mental health conditions such as PTSD, substance abuse, and depression.

Before the war, Dr. Kanter traveled twice to Iraq to help document the health effects of economic sanctions. These effects include malnutrition and infectious disease, as well as devastating psychosocial impacts.

Dr. Evan Kanter

He now looks at the hidden costs of the war in Iraq: the deaths not counted as well as the physical and mental injuries. More injured soldiers are surviving battles than in Vietnam, but these patients often face a long struggle to completely recover and return to their former lives.

Dr. Kanter described a study done before the current conflict that illustrates how destructive combat exposure is to soldiers, their families, and the rest of society. 9% of unemployment is attributable to combat exposure. 8% of the divorces are attributable to combat exposure. 21% of spousal and partner abuse is attributable to combat exposure. Combat exposure also plays a part in child abuse, substance abuse, incarceration, and homelessness.

Combat veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide as people in the general population. The suicide rate among active military members is higher than it ever has been.

Every day the war continues, there are additional costs to the country as well as veterans and their families.

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In his closing remarks, Seth Manzel said that there are three reasons that people should support GI war resisters:

(1) Soldiers are in a position to change things -- they can put their hands on the gears of war and slow it down to a screeching halt

(2) Enlisted men and women and their families are natural allies of popular movements. Large numbers of military families depend upon WIC, food stamps and other forms of welfare. Health care is deplorable in the army, and when they get out, health care is even worse.

(3) If the military decides to violate posse comitatus again and send armed soldiers to deal with protesters, they might be less likely to comply with their orders. The military sent soldiers armed with shotguns to the Port of Olympia, and one put down his weapon and walked away from his peers. There can be a whole lot more of this sort of thing if protesters can convince soldiers that they are protesting in solidarity with them rather than as adversaries.

Seth challenged members of the audience to stop being good citizens. He said they should chose to be bad citizens and to teach their children to be bad citizens, too. "Good citizens wave the flag and march in lock step with this government. Bad citizens create sanctuary spaces for AWOL soldiers. Bad citizens blockade ports when they are being used to transport military equipment."

Four and a half hours after Winter Soldier started, everyone poured into the street and marched downtown for a rally.