pictures from winter soldier

Pictures taken this morning at Winter Soldier

Scott and Sherry Camil watching testimony on Rules of Engagement


Cliff Hicks and fellow Soldier form Iraq Steven Casey testifying on Rules of Engagement


Panel on The Crisis in Veteran Health Care


And you can see that the press recognizes that History is being made today!

Corporate Pillaging and Military Contractors

Friday March 14th, 2:00PM - 3:30PM

*Note – We are Live Blogging Winter Soldier Friday through Sunday. *
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2:15 Kelly Dougherty
Kelly served in the military police in Iraq and guarded KBR convoys. Many convoys broke down and conflicting orders would go out about how to protect di sabled vehicles which drew crowds hoping for fuel or other supplies. The vehicles could not be rescued were destroyed by burning the fuel and throwing grenades into engine blocks in front of Iraqis who had to stand in line for hours to get a can of gas. The tragedy of the situation had come home to Kelly in which lives on both sides were risked to protect the profits of a corporation: burning tankers full of fuel, burning an ambulance in front of Iraqis who transported their wounded in pick up trucks, burning a truck load of produce while holding a hungry crowd at gunpoint.
Dougherty points out for every US soldier in Iraq there is at least one contractor which Dougherty describe as US corporations. In reality these corporations are multinationals with no real allegiance to the US. She described living in tents provided by the contractors that were riddled with mold and made the soldiers staying in them sick

2:35 - Luis Montalvan describes himself as having been a warrior for more than half his life. He trained and went to Iraq in 2005 where he commanded 30 - 40 soldiers to man a major check point, patrol many km of border and secure several thousand km of Al Anbar province desert.
He describes the incompetence of the commanders and administrators in Iraq who knew little about the conditions outside of Baghdad.
Luis became known as an expert about some aspects of security in Iraq. American Enterprise Inst invited him to brief them on security in Iraq and he described the corruption in Iraq as out of control. He makes a connection between corruption and the civil war in Iraq.
Montalvan explained that if you follow Iraqi corruption the crumb trial leads to American contractors and if you follow that trail further it leads to high American military commanders, some of them still serving. He describes the forces in Iraq as 160,000 US military, a proxy army of about an equal number of contractors and finally a highly inflated number of Iraqi security forces. Thirty to fifty percent of these last forces do not exist and the salaries of these non existent troops go to fuel the civil war.
Essentially Montelvan is saying that they have lied to us again and again about where our American taxpayer monies have actually gone.
Montalvan holds evidence in the form of memos and SOPs for the contracts for supplies to Mosul and adjacents areas the Petrayus set up no procedures for keeping accounts on these funds. So my question is did Petrayus betray us?

3:05pm Antonia Juhasz is a policy-analyst, author and activist living in San Francisco. She is a Fellow at Oil Change International and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies .
See her blog at http://www.thebushagenda.net/
She calls the war in Iraq and illegal occupation aimed on gaining control of iraqi oil for strategic and economic reasons. Consequently in perpetrating this war crime, American rulers have fired 120,000 oil and resource(ie electric and water works)bureaucrats and 500,000 soldiers were fired followed by a failure to complete 50% or more of the infrastructure projects needed to make Iraq a safe place to live. Consequently the UN has recommended that the 2,000,000 Iraqi refuges not return because it is too dangerous to live there plus there is not fuel, water or electricity.
Today there are moves to finally bring US companies and associated multinationals on board to control and exploit Iraqi Oil. In order to do this these companies will need long term protection from the US Military. What Juhasz recommends is that the military and the contractors and oil companies leave Iraq to the Iraqis who are more than capable of reconstructing their own country using their own oil resources.

3:20 - Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater: The story of the shooting in Baghdad of 17 civilians by Blackwater illustrates only too well the colonial status of the Iraqi government in its relationship with the US military and the Bush Administration. The individuals criminally responsible for those 17 deaths are still walking around free and may never be prosecuted even though the FBI and the military agree that they are guilty of murdering innocent civilians.
170 companies work as contractors in Iraq today protected by the US military. none of their employees have ever been prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians.
Corruption is about looting the Iraqis of their resources, their lives and their sovereignty but it is also about looting the US treasury to pay these contractors to do the dirty work that has to be done if you are an empire.

Background:
Contractor Fraud Unchecked In Iraq , CBS News Takes A Closer Look At Allegations Of Contractor Waste And Fraud In Iraq - CBS News: December 2006

"(CBS) The U.S. has currently spent at least $437 billion on the Iraq war, according to the Congressional Research Service. An estimated $100 billion will be spent in 2007. Much of that money is going to 60,000 civilian contractors involved in reconstruction and providing services to the troops.
But recently, the Pentagon admitted it has a hard time accounting for how billions of your tax dollars are being spent — and the billions that may be lost to contractor waste, fraud and abuse,"
A document — part of a whistleblower lawsuit obtained by CBS News — alleges a blueprint of contractor abuse in Iraq, detailing how the government was billed 10 times more than it should have been when U.S. troops used a recreation facility in Iraq.

That's because they were not billed once per visit, but rather billed repeatedly, every time a soldier used:

a computer

a phone

ping pong equipment or pool equipment

a towel

a bottle of water.

The contractor in question, Kellogg Brown and Root, denies any wrong

Alternet white paper:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/186208/The-10-Most-Brazen-War-ProfiteersAlterNet?ga_related_doc=1

The Crisis in Veterans Health Care

*Note – We are Live Blogging Winter Soldier Friday through Sunday. *
You may see more typographical errers errors than usual
as we type like @$#!
*Please bear with us as we get the news out to you*

11:30AM Tod Ensign reports suffering a back injury while serving in Iraq and being asked to not report this until he returned to the States. He then came home to California where he received immediate and excellent care. At the time of discharge he was assured that the VA system would continue to take care of this injury sustained in combat. He became a student and came into contact with "the realities of the VA health care system". He experienced delays, endless paper work and talk and counseling but no treatment or diagnosis of his problems. He also experienced adjustment issues and needed psychiatric care. It took 2 months to get an appointment and he realized that 2 years of medical care promised by the VA would not be sufficient at the time. His savings and and financial situation and was unable to work due to his injuries. He became another homeless Iraq War and the realization of this led to depression and suicidal thoughts. He finally was helped by a member of IVAW and that is where he found help while the VA system still would not help him.

11:45:

Eli Wright was treated at Walter Reed for injuries in Iraq. He was finally treated for a shoulder injury two years after the injury occurred and the surgery was not successful, probably due to the lack of immediate care. He also recognized symptoms of traumatic brain injury that also was not treated. Kevin sees the problems he experienced as systemic inthe military. He only began to get care for his injuries after going to the press. He then immediately got treatment after 6 months of waiting.

Eli said "After serving our country that proper health care should be a bare minimum ofwhat we should receive in return.

Adrienne Kinne reported on the plan to prioritize care for wounded vets. She pointed out that prioritizing health care for vets means that some would have to go without so others could get care and that is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for veterans and for all Americans to go without health care. She ended with these statements: that hiding behind the red tape at the VA is the fact that there are not enough resources to do the job and that our soldiers should not be sent to fight an illegal immoral war in the first place. (Applause!)

12:05 am: Joyce and Kevin Lucy spoke of their son Jeffrey who returned to from Kuwait in 1993 changed forever. Jeffery was having nightmares, throwing up daily, suffering from hallucinations and panic attacks. He was drinking and was on medication for anxiety and depression. He feared that the stigma of mental illness would get back to his Marine unit and follow him through his life.

He was hospitalized at the VA after a break down and only saw a psychiatrist there once in six months. After discharge he continued to struggle and the family finally took him back to the VA and begged for help but none was forthcoming.

No Family should have to beg for help for their combat veteran sons.

His family tried to protect Jeffrey and others by taking away weapons and his car. Jeffry told stories of death and destruction that he participated in in Kuwait and Iraq and now could not forget. Jeffrey did not make it. His health deteriorated further until his father came home and to take him in his arms one last time as he took him down from the tree in the back yard where he had hung himself.

Background Information:

Critics say U.S. shorts care of veterans -- baltimoresun.com

The number of wounded soldiers has become a hallmark of the nearly 5-year-old Iraq war, pointing to both the use of roadside bombs as the extremists' weapon of choice and advances in battlefield medicine to save lives. About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea.

But with those saved soldiers comes a financial price - one that veterans groups and others say the government is unwilling to pay. Those critics also say that the tens of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq are part of a political numbers game, one they say undermines the medical system meant to care for them.

The most frequently cited figure is the 29,320 soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of yesterday. But there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1.

"The Pentagon keeps two sets of books," said Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard and an expert on budgeting and public finance whose newly published book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, was co-authored with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Another Note on Rules of Engagement

Participants from the Rules of Engagement session are now meeting to debrief with psychologists to try and prevent any harm coming to them. This word is from Scott Camil who says he wishes this would have been done at WInter Soldier 1, but is happy they are doing it now.

Rules of Engagement Part One

*Note – We are Live Blogging Winter Soldier Friday through Sunday.
You may see more typographical errers errors than usual as we type like @$#!
*Please bear with us as we get the news out to you*

Cliffton Hicks who is from our own Gainesville IVAW chapter spoke with Steven Casey who served as a scout in the same unit in Iraq that Cliff drove tank in. CLif spoke of his love for his fellow soldiers which in his mind and heat puts them beyond his judgement. The jugemet he makes is against war itself. It is the nature of war to witness civilian deaths "Bodies of humans and animals strewn in the streets". Steven and Cliff both spoke of hte results for civlians trying to get out of the wayin the area they patroled that had been declared a "free fire zone" in Operation Blackjack in 2004. Steven reported 20 plus vehicles disabled by soldiers firing into the windshields and radiators. These vihicles were drivig the righ way on a street that their unit was gong the wrog way down. Civilians just trying to get out of the way.

Cliff reports that the orders for the unit they relieved who served in 2003 were the same ie a free fire zone was established. He summarized this as "You had to put themin the dirt before they put you in the dirt."

10:30AM -

Just before we arrived they threw an imposter out of the proceedings apparently just one person form the group of about 25 protestors at the entrance of the college had managed to get into the hall and was speedily thrown out when they disruted the proceedings.

Adam Kokesh:

Served in a civil affairs unit in Iraq. Their slogan was "We care so you don't have to" That includes everybody all hte way up and so the American people don't have to. So all the pressure is on the shoulders of the soldiers in the field. A few small projects succeeded but overall the situation is a disaster. The problem he observed in the press and other propaganda machines at the time was that the appearance of success was more important than the reality of what was actually happening on the ground.

Jason Hurd came from a military family. His father was military and showed the symptoms of PTSD, nightmares, uncontrolled rage and flashbacks. Served in Iraq as a medic from 04 to 05. Lived in the Green Zone. He did patrols in Bagdad and witnessed and heard stories of families being searched and their children were taken away arbitrarily. Jason called for "all guns to be melted down and turned into jewelry". Reported a car bomb exploding at a check point that his unit had just taken over that killed many Iraqi civilians. He had a young iraqi boy about 17 yars old placed at his feet with missing arms and a buttock blown off and Jason says he lives with that image everyday. He asked what Americans would do in an occupation. His answer is that every man with a shotgun with come out of the hills to fight for their own self determination". Jason ende with this statement which was met with prolonged applause: The suffering in Iraq in tearing that country apart and the only way to end that suffering is an immediate withdrawal of all combat troops form that country."

In Summary we heard again and again about civilians dying, having their children taken away to prison, how deaths and mistaken detainments entailed o apology and often no report was done. The trauma was suffered by both the soldiers who carry imaged burned into their consciousness and by the civilians who have suffered loss ofter loss.

Background:
Col Dan Smith: Rules of Engagement in Iraq:
Rules to Live...and Die...By
Counterpunch, December 8, 2004

"the Bush 'preventive war' doctrine could be considered a more permissive ROE national security policy statement than any in the past (e.g., no first use of nuclear weapons). It is also a policy that runs counter to the Charter of the United Nations, which the U.S. has signed, that recognizes only the right of 'national self-defense' against an imminent threat of attack, not some possible threat that might or might not materialize in the indeterminate future."

Cost of Iraq War Now Beyond Human Comprehension

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Cost of Iraq War Now Beyond Human Comprehension: "War is Hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost? One Week at War in Iraq and Afghanistan for $3.5 Billion"

Winter Soldier Video

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Winter Soldier is described by IVAW as follows: "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support."

Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan