Veterans March Against The War In Iraq

As of June 5th 2004, 827 US soliders have died while serving in Iraq.
http://icasualties.org/oif/

Over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

Veterans For Peace believes that the recent allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison, and other places, by U.S. military personnel should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been to war.

In his investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found: “… numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force”.

Some of our members served in Military Intelligence or Military Police units. We were part of a culture that gives lip service to the Geneva Conventions in training but encourages psychological and physical brutality in the pursuit of “intell”. In other words, the problem has been and is systemic.

For many veterans the painful feeling that we have been here before is overwhelming. We recall that such brutalities were commonplace in Korea and Vietnam, wars fought, as is Iraq, in the midst of a civilian populace, where combatants blend into and disappear among the civilian population.

Operating in a foreign land, hostile to our presence, coupled with the administration’s demonstrated disdain for the restraints imposed by the Geneva Convention on prisoner treatment has led, inevitably, to these abuses. Can our soldiers, if captured, expect treatment governed by the terms of an agreement their own government has violated?

The abuse at military prisons is the latest step in the shameful course that our nation has been following in Iraq. It began with an invasion for reasons that have proven to be falsehoods and lies. This is more than the criminal activity of a few “bad apples”, it is the brutal, systemically embedded result of a misguided national policy.

There must be a full and public Congressional investigation and those all the way up the chain of command to General Myers and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who should be held accountable.

The United States government must change course and admit to the unjust nature of this war, the disastrous miscalculations of the response of the Iraqi people to invasion and occupation, begin the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and restore real self-rule.

We expect there will be token dismissals. However we must not hang on to the policies that have led to these horrors, have further compromised our nation’s security and lost us the respect of the world. They must be excised, swiftly and thoroughly.

That is the only way to restore dignity and honor to our military and to our country.

Adopted by VFP National Board of Directors 5/14/04

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Weve_been_here_before_051404.htm