Via Communist Dreams:

SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they’re planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq.

“The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it,” said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. “That’s left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of American brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples,” as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of “an increasingly bloody occupation.”

“This is our generation getting to tell history,” Madden told OneWorld, “to ensure that the actual history gets told — that it’s not a sugar-coated, diluted version of what actually happened.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War is calling the gathering a “Winter Soldier,” named after a similar event organized by Vietnam veterans in 1971.

In 1971, over 100 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions.

“Initially even the My Lai massacre was denied,” notes Gerald Nicosia, whose book Home to War provides the most exhaustive history of the Vietnam veterans’ movement.

“The U.S. military has traditionally denied these accusations based on the fact that ‘this is a crazy soldier’ or ‘this is a malcontent’ — that you can’t trust this person. And that is the reason that Vietnam Veterans Against the War did this unified presentation in Detriot in 1971.

“They brought together their bonafides and wore their medals and showed it was more than one or two or three malcontents. It was medal-winning, honored soldiers — veterans in a group verifying what each other said to try to convince people that these charges cannot be denied. That people are doing these things as a matter of policy.”

Nicosia says the 1971 “Winter Soldier” was roundly ignored by the mainstream media, but that it made an indelible imprint on those who were there.

Among those in attendance was 27-year-old Navy Lieutenant John Kerry, who had served on a Swift Boat in Vietnam. Three months after the hearings, Nicosia notes, Kerry took his case to Congress and spoke before a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Television cameras lined the walls, and veterans packed the seats.

“Many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia,” Kerry told the Committee, describing the events of the “Winter Soldier” gathering.

“It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit — the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”

In one of the most famous antiwar speeches of the era, Kerry concluded: “Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be — and these are his words — ‘the first President to lose a war’. We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Nicosia says Americans and veterans find themselves in a similar situation today.

“The majority of the American people are very dissatisfied with the Iraq war now and would be happy to get out of it. But Americans are bred deep into their psyches to think of America as a good country and, I think, much harder than just the hurdle of getting troops out of Iraq, is to get Americans to realize the terrible things we do in the name of the United States.”

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Soccer is still a national sport in Iraq and Afghanistan and our enemies understand and appreciate the concept of  “own goal”.

Our enemies determined tribal warriors and fanatical religious zealots are laughing at the propaganda windfall that these traitorous bastards are providing them.

Liam Madden, a close comrade of Marxist monger Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan, steps up his traitorous rhetoric once again in hopes of igniting the fire of discontent with the American people against the US military while emboldening enemies of the US military.

Madden along with his comrades at IVAW have changed their stories about their experiences in Iraq; a few now claim that they too have committed war crimes while serving in the sandbox. In the past it was we only “witnessed” these crimes but never participated. Nor did they ever bother to report these alleged crimes at the time. While spouting their “Bush/Cheney should be tried for war crimes” rhetoric, these IVAW, the new moral compass of the US military, cannot manage to read their own moral compass pointed in the direction of turning themselves in for those specific war crimes they now claim they had committed. Of course, IVAW claims that the Afghanistan/Iraq wars are illegal and immoral wars to begin with and by simply stepping onto Afghani/Iraqi soil as a US soldier you’ve committed a war crime. If they have the courage of their convictions they should write confessions and turn themselves in to a legitimate US judicial mechanism.

There is no honor or bravery in accusing former fellow soldiers of committing war crimes while out of harm’s way from the safety and comfort of US soil especially while those soldiers are still in harm’s way. It’s is an act of cowardice to march up and down US streets while the enemy watches you  hold banners and speeches declaring US troops are war criminals. Explain to soldiers currently in harm’s way how exactly that “supports” them.

Bottom line is Madden and comrades are cowardly traitorous lying bastards; the new John Kerry and John Murtha–Or as we prefer to call them Neojohns.