Anti-War Vets Take the Hill

News: As former soldiers testified about wrongdoing on the battlefield, congressional Democrats scored a fleeting victory in the ongoing war funding fight.

By Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium

May 16, 2008

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While members of Congress debated the terms of the $160 billion supplemental funding bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on Thursday, nearby, in a small conference room in the Rayburn office building, the Congressional Progressive Caucus heard testimony from soldiers who had been on the front lines of those fights.

Adding to testimony given by Iraq and Afghanistan vets during a four-day Winter Soldier conference in March, the panelists, members of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), described wanton shootings, falsified after-action reports, and other misdeeds carried out by members of the US military on the battlefield. Underscoring just how marginalized anti-war voices remain on the Hill, congressional Democrats could only muster an unofficial hearing for these veterans, who were not sworn in under oath and whose comments will not be part of the congressional record.

"I saw and at times participated in the dehumanization and degradation of the Iraqi people," Kelly Dougherty, executive director of IVAW and a former MP in the Army National Guard, told the panel.

Former Marine Sergeant Jason Lemieux was even more explicit. "Throughout my three tours," he said, "I was present on numerous occasions when [we] were ordered by commissioned officers to shoot any Iraqi who seemed suspicious or made us feel uncomfortable with the assurance that the chain of command would 'take care of us.'"

Lemieux went on to describe a confrontation in Ramadi in early 2006 in which, after receiving four rounds of "poorly aimed" enemy fire, his unit fired back with thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosives into an area known to be occupied by civilians. Lemieux claims that his report of the incident was falsified by an executive officer, who changed it to suggest that the Marines were defending themselves from a much more serious attack.

Scott Ewing, a cavalry scout who served in Iraq between 2005 and 2006, described operations in Tal Afar, an Iraqi city that has been held up as a counterinsurgency success story. During his time there, he said, the arbitrary destruction of civilian property, random detainments, and killings of innocent civilians were commonplace. "From my personal experience in Tal Afar," he said "the number of Iraqis killed or injured by the armed forces far outnumber those killed by insurgents."

Despite the war's enduring unpopularity, IVAW members have yet to appear under oath before an official congressional committee. And the Progressive Caucus—with 72 members in the House, most of whom voted against last year's supplemental—has struggled to advance measures to force a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Nevertheless, Thursday's informal hearing coincided with a surprise—though momentary—victory for anti-war Democrats. Aided by congressional Republicans who sat out the war-funding vote in protest over being left out of the process of drafting the measure, they succeeded in voting down the $160 billion appropriation. Anti-war Democrats also succeeded in pushing through a measure that sets the goal of removing all combat troops from Iraq by December 2009. But hours later a Senate committee approved its own version of the war spending bill, and the withdrawal measure seems likely to be stripped out of the legislation before a final version is passed.

With no end in sight to the Iraq War, one IVAW member took matters into his own hands on Thursday. After the informal hearing, Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, whose more than four years of military service included a stint in Afghanistan, announced that he would refuse his orders to deploy to Iraq in June. "I hereby lawfully refuse to participate as I will surely be a party to war crimes," he said.

Photo by flickr user debdivya used under a Creative Commons license.

Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive media organizations, including Mother Jones.

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