Colorado Citizens for Peace

Images of 'The Surge'

VIDEO: Inside the Surge
Journeyman Films/YouTube.com

Iraq Vets Bear Witness

Below is an excerpt and a link to a very important article/investigation done for The Nation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian. We strongly encourage you to click the link through to the Nation's web site and read the entire report.

T. J. Westphal, featured in the article, was a guest speaker at the Arvada Peace Vigil's first anniversay commemoration.

This is what war and occupation do ... this kind of violence and aggression degrades all involved. In this particular case, the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States, we have are engaged in an especially egregious and immoral act. The citizens of this nation were cravenly manipulated using the terror of the mass murders of September 11, 2001, by George W. Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney and Karl Rove, who lied to us and the people of the world to rationalize an unprovoked attack upon another sovereign country.

Nothing good can come of an action based on such depravity.

Colorado Citizens for Peace hopes that more and more Americans begin to understand that in order to make a start on attoning for these injustices and attrocities, we demand accountability from the men and women who lied us into this horrible situation ... and that we, who let ourselves be misled, also accept that contrition is necessary so that we can begin to again live peacefully with the rest of the world.

Join us every week:

Colorado Citizens for Peace
Weekly Vigil
Every Saturday
Noon - 1:00 p.m.
Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.
Arvada, Colorado
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Link: The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness | Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian/The Nation

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished. ...

... This Nation investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate these assertions.

While some veterans said civilian shootings were routinely investigated by the military, many more said such inquiries were rare. "I mean, you physically could not do an investigation every time a civilian was wounded or killed because it just happens a lot and you'd spend all your time doing that," said Marine Reserve Lieut. Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington, Virginia. He served from August 2004 to March 2005 in Ramadi with a Marine Corps civil affairs unit supporting a combat team with the Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade. (All interviewees are identified by the rank they held during the period of service they recount here; some have since been promoted or demoted.)

Veterans said the culture of this counterinsurgency war, in which most Iraqi civilians were assumed to be hostile, made it difficult for soldiers to sympathize with their victims--at least until they returned home and had a chance to reflect.

"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi," said Spc. Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado. Specialist Englehart served with the Third Brigade, First Infantry Division, in Baquba, about thirty-five miles northeast of Baghdad, for a year beginning in February 2004. "You know, so what? ... The soldiers honestly thought we were trying to help the people and they were mad because it was almost like a betrayal. Like here we are trying to help you, here I am, you know, thousands of miles away from home and my family, and I have to be here for a year and work every day on these missions. Well, we're trying to help you and you just turn around and try to kill us."

He said it was only "when they get home, in dealing with veteran issues and meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then." ...

... Staff Sgt. Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, recalled one summer night in 2004, the temperature an oppressive 110 degrees, when he and forty-four other US soldiers raided a sprawling farm on the outskirts of Tikrit. Sergeant Westphal, who served there for a yearlong tour with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, beginning in February 2004, said he was told some men on the farm were insurgents. As a mechanized infantry squad leader, Sergeant Westphal led the mission to secure the main house, while fifteen men swept the property. Sergeant Westphal and his men hopped the wall surrounding the house, fully expecting to come face to face with armed insurgents.

"We had our flashlights and...I told my guys, 'On the count of three, just hit them with your lights and let's see what we've got here. Wake 'em up!'"

Sergeant Westphal's flashlight was mounted on his M-4 carbine rifle, a smaller version of the M-16, so in pointing his light at the clump of sleepers on the floor he was also pointing his weapon at them. Sergeant Westphal first turned his light on a man who appeared to be in his mid-60s.

"The man screamed this gut-wrenching, blood-curdling, just horrified scream," Sergeant Westphal recalled. "I've never heard anything like that. I mean, the guy was absolutely terrified. I can imagine what he was thinking, having lived under Saddam."

The farm's inhabitants were not insurgents but a family sleeping outside for relief from the stifling heat, and the man Sergeant Westphal had frightened awake was the patriarch.

"Sure enough, as we started to peel back the layers of all these people sleeping, I mean, it was him, maybe two guys...either his sons or nephews or whatever, and the rest were all women and children," Sergeant Westphal said. "We didn't find anything.

"I can tell you hundreds of stories about things like that and they would all pretty much be like the one I just told you. Just a different family, a different time, a different circumstance."

For Sergeant Westphal, that night was a turning point. "I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that's just not what I joined the Army to do," he said. ...

... MORE

New Peace Vigil Location

Patriotic American citizens have started a peace vigil at yet another location in the Denver area.

'Neighbors on the North Side" will gather every Saturday for the hour between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. at the intersection of West 38th Avenue and Federal Boulevard in Denver.

Bring your own sign or use one available at the vigil.

All good folks desiring peace and an end to the war and occupation in Iraq are invited to attend.

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