Related Stories
Patriot missiles: Iraq Veterans Against the War
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: March 11th, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/...
Some of them will be okay. They will live with the secrets. They can dissociate from what happened in combat because it was part of the job. They will keep the secrets out of duty the silence is part of a code, and they honour that code above all else. But for others, the secrets they keep are like a poison, slowly releasing toxins of shame and remorse. Who can they tell anyway? They talk to each other other veterans who have seen what theyve seen, done what theyve done, and who can relate to the burden of carrying these secrets for the rest of their lives. In 1971, the protest group Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered at a hotel in Detroit. More than 100 veterans talked about the atrocities they had witnessed in southeast Asia. The event lasted for three days and was named Winter Soldier after Thomas Paines famous article. These are the times that try mens souls, he wrote of the terrible winter of 1776. This month, for four days in Washington, DC, beginning on March 13, there will be a second Winter Soldier gathering 37 years after the first. Organised by the protest group Iraq Veterans Against the War, US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 attack on New York will testify about their experiences. They will present photographs and videos, recorded with mobile phones and digital cameras, to back up their allegations of brutality, torture and murder. The veterans ... seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by bad seeds as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were tasked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command.
Note: For many revelations of the realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.
Related Stories
Latest News
Key News Articles from Years Past
