BLOCKBUSTER HEARINGS BEGIN THURSDAY. IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN WAR VETS TO TELL ALL ABOUT ATROCITIES

On Thursday, March 13, at least 300 Iraq and Afghanistan war vets will descend on the nation's capital to tell lawmakers what they saw with their own eyes about atrocities committed by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The gathering will be reminiscent of the famous "Winter Soldiers" hearings during the Vietnam War when 100 Vietnam vets, including former Presidential candidate John Kerry, talked about what they had witnessed in Viet Nam.

The question is whether the press will cover it. It is a foregone conclusion that FOX NEWS, the Bush administration press lapdog, will pretty much ignore the hearings.

Hopefully, the mainstream media will not turn their back on the Iraq and Afghanistan vets as they have done lately in covering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

AlterNet Editorial: Iraq Vets Will Detail U.S. Atrocities in Winter Soldier Hearings

By Editorial Staff, AlterNetPosted on March 11, 2008, Printed on March 11, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/79286/

This week, on March 13-16, a new generation of "Winter Soldiers" -- veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq -- will descend on the nation's capitol to tell America in their own words what they saw during their service in the "war on terror," the Bush administration's signature policy.

They'll give a ground's eye perspective on the occupation's toll on the people of those countries and the costs to the military, and they'll tell stories of what it was really like in places like Fallujah and Ramadi -- places that are just names on a map to most of the people back home.

They'll be following large footsteps. In the early months of 1971, a group of Vietnam vets, organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), gave two days of testimony about the Vietnam that they had seen, up close and all-too-personally, in the original "Winter Soldier" investigation.

While largely dismissed by the political establishment, their wrenching testimony redoubled the peace movement's efforts to end that war.

In his opening statement 37 years ago, William Crandell, a 26 year-old lieutenant who served in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division -- the division that committed the infamous My Lai Massacre -- told the hushed room, "The Winter Soldier Investigation is not a mock trial. There will be no phony indictments; there will be no verdict against Uncle Sam." He promised "straightforward testimony -- direct testimony -- about acts which are war crimes under international law. Acts which these men have seen and participated in. Acts which are the inexorable result of national policy."

And they did just that.

Over two days, more than a 100 vets of the Vietnam conflict bore witness to the horrors that they had seen with their own eyes -- "the inexorable result of national policy." One panel examined the question, "What are we doing to Vietnam?" and another asked "What are we doing to ourselves?"

Click on link above to read the full AlterNet editorial.