"We've Seen the Inner Workings and Felt the Consequences": Iraqi Veterans Against the War

Were you critical of the war before you were sent to Iraq? How did your feelings toward the war and occupation change while you were there?

I was definitely critical of the war before it began and I protested it during the build up, after it started, and until I left. When I first got to Fort Jackson (South Carolina) in October of 2001, I was meeting all of these people being called out of the Individual Ready Reserve and they were telling me that an invasion of Iraq was next. I was skeptical at first, but when it hit the papers I realized that those people warning me had honestly known.

Once I got there, what I saw was a lot worse than what I could have ever imagined. All of the things we had been told that we were going there to do were shown unequivocally to be lies. We were told we weren't supposed to treat Iraqi civilians unless they were about to die and only if that injury was a result of an attack directed at us or inflicted by us. Our supervisor told my platoon that "the Geneva Conventions don't exist in Iraq and that's in writing if any of you want to see it."