Why We Fight from Displaced Films on Vimeo.
An Open Letter to Iraq Veterans Against the War Members and Supporters
From David Zeiger, Director of This is Where We Take Our Stand and Sir! No Sir!
Dear Friends,
As I write this, we are getting ready to post the fourth episode of This is Where We Take Our Stand, our six-part web series about last year’s Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan event. You can find the series at www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com, and of course on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.
It’s been a huge struggle, but this series is finally here–and I hope we created something that will bring the truth you revealed at Winter Soldier to thousands, even millions. We strove to make each episode a revelation and a punch in the gut, featuring some of the most important and powerful testimony from Winter Soldier along with the battles so many of you fought to make it happen. Boots Riley of The Coup wrote a killer theme song, Sound Off, that can also be downloaded from the site.
Winter Soldier happened in the last year of the Bush administration, and it was the most powerful condemnation of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that I have seen. Your testimony laid bare the insane, relentless brutality of those wars and the hypocrisy of Bush’s claims that you were there to bring “freedom and democracy” to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. You made it clear that it was the policy of the government and military that was criminal. And you brought into the open the courageous, profound opposition to the wars that exists within the military and veterans’ community.
But what about now? Millions of people expected the Obama administration to change those policies and end the occupations. Well, where is that change? In Iraq, where we have been promised there might be a withdrawal by 2011 leaving 50,000 troops there to insure an “America friendly” government? Or how about Afghanistan, where a
thoroughly corrupt, Bush-installed government is now being propped up with the
additional 20,000 troops that were withdrawn from Iraq? What has changed?
What’s most horrifying for me is seeing the slaughter continue today with hardly a peep from those who would have loudly objected when Bush was in charge. So, perhaps
ironically, Winter Soldier is today more relevant and urgent than ever. This is not about the past, as Obama has often said, but about what is happening right now.
It is your voices that must be heard in this darkness. And it’s in that spirit that we have made this series. It belongs to you, and we hope you will not only watch and show it to others, but use it to spread the impact of Winter Soldier and build your movement. We welcome your thoughts and comments, and urge you to add your own testimonials to the web site. Along with posting the final three episodes through September, we will make the whole series available on a DVD for you to use.
With love and solidarity,
David Zeiger
Except most of their stories are half-truths to our right lies.
As the bleating of sheep, they may be communicating something, but it is difficult to make out what it is.
The lie, mister overly-processed pig, is that you claim to have experienced events in the lives of the men and women of Winter Soldier more accurately than they themselves experienced those events. Doesn’t sound so good, does it?
You have been goading and harassing for some time now. I hope you are getting some personal satisfaction from doing so because you are clearly having zero impact on views here. You are a charlatan.
Yes because their stories to not stand up when examined. Why do you think the people are leaving IVAW like Goldsmith. People who have never left the fob seem to know more those that do. Not likely.
Because people like this have no problems trashing the good names of those that put their lives on the line. I as why do you get a jolly at doing this as well.
You don’t have a single original thought happening, do you? You just repeat what someone else feeds you. “Winter Soldier bad, all lies.” You’re an ignorant fool, spork.
No that is you. I can show how those that have gone on Winter Solider do not show the whole truth. That post will take some time so it will not be up for a while.
Also I know what really happens in Iraq because I WENT there. How about you?
Fuck you, you fucking cretin. I had the moral fortitude to stand up and say, “I will not murder on your orders.” You, on the other hand, are happy to be led by the nose to believe that murder in wartime is fine. It isn’t, and you are a criminal in my book. If you support the illegal war in Iraq, you are complicit and in violation of the Geneva Conventions. You are a fucking war criminal.
Piss on you and your parents for raising you.
You do not have anything, the actions of the majority of those who service in Iraq and Afghanistan is Honorable and legel despite what those in Winter Solider have said.
Once again, you have no idea of the rules and laws that we are bond by in Iraq or Afghanistan. Soldiers can and have been put in jail for murder in Iraq. CID does not take these thing lightly.
Once again.
You have not shown how the war are illegal. Nor have you shown that blanket punishment was given to the Germany Army after ww2. Lastly I will not apologize for anything that I have done in Iraq because it will stand up to all the rules of war. Including the Geneva convention.
So in all you got nothing.
Now back to why Winter Solider should be taken with t a pound of salt.
The first guy that I want to look at is Andre Sheppard. The person who went to Iraq for 6 months as a aviation mechanic. He went AWOL before he was suppose to deploy again for 18 months. Now he has applied for asylum in Germany because he claims that he does not want to be invaliding war crimes that he never saw. He went on Winter solider to talk about how horrible his life was and how it forced him to join the Army. Yet there have been people that have come forward that challenge him on what he did before and during his Army time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_gAxLFWh8w
The first guy knew him before the Army.
The point I’m making here is the guy ran away from everything just as I’m finding out now he ran from the Army and is banned from the USA. WOW, really? I know more about the dude being his friend for 5 years. The dude was a Republican would never join the military unless he had to for financial obligations. Let me tell you when I sit and read all this stuff he makes him self out like some hero. Truth be told he’s doing what he always had run from everything, run from his job, run from his friends. He lived in his car the 6 months he was gone. His bills were piling up so high you couldn’t see half of his door to his room, the door is almost 7 feet tall.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=12871
And the second is one that went with him in Iraq.
The media wants to tell you that were chopping down innocent people in Iraq, that’s bullshit. Andre Shepard wants to tell you this shit, well he spent all of his time in the USO office playing x-box and drinking slushies and pulling a twelve hour shift at the MWR handing out towels and signing people in because he didn’t know his job.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=5697#comment-131176
This is one statement that Sheppard made that is a outright lie.
“It is good that wounded U.S. soldiers receive excellent medical care in Germany,” says Shepherd, “but it should not be forgotten that civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan who are injured by U.S. troops receive no such help.”
I can promise you that we give medical aid to those injured by violence and the majority of the times it is the enemy that does it. But because he went to Iraq to “rough” it for 6 months inside the FOB that it “must” be true.
But the real kicker is that we give a lot of medical aid to the Iraqi people and if he would have it his way, that aid would never reach those in need.
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/06/04-18
More to follow.
Also what make Winter Soldiers suspect is what the people that have leave the IVAW had to say about it.
The first person is Kris Goldsmith. Took part in the OIF1 and recently left IVAW this year. Here is a youtube of him and his letter of why he left IVAW. He asked that the whole letter be posted and not to be taken in clips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uac33XI3X1k
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=10593
The next guy is Casey Porter who also served in Iraq. I also added a youtube link for him also.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5brnetZa8&feature=related
He also Left the IVAW for various reason. One of them was that a IVAW member was trying to get him to break his own equipment putting the lives of those who use it in danger. The IVAW has allowed him to be in the group still even after they knew about what happened.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=10207
Also Jeffrey C. Peskoff is in the group that left. The common theme is that it seems that IVAW is mostly made of people that have never been.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=12612
But wait, there is more.
There the rift between those that are in the ISO and those who are not. The IVAW makes it self out to be veterans group but plays favorites with those who are in the ISO. This website should show that when one of the members suggests the she leave because of her wanting to be a ‘hard core patriot’. . On the you tube link she is on at 1:30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tn3TX7ftrI
http://activedutypatriot.blogspot.com/2009/04/newsflash-if-you-support-anti-iraq-war.html
More on the whole problems with the ISO in the IVAW.
Also it does not help that the past two Executive directors have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Long story short they ere not who they say they are. They have had people go on Winter Solider who have never been in Iraq or Afghanistan claiming that they where ordered to do horrible things.
All of this is being done at the expense of those who risk there lives and do it with honor.
Lies come easy to you, eh?
Care to refute? Or are we done here?
Another reason not to trust the IVAW.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=14177&cpage=1#comment-144967
My goodness, such anger. Can't you two send emails to each other and stop using the comment section to unload your venom???