Suicide Letter from Iraq War Veteran Says He Was Made to Commit War Crimes

During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of. To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. — Daniel Somers, whistleblower

By: Kevin Gosztola

Dissenter June 22, 2013

“The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity.” Those are the words of Daniel Somers, according to a letter posted at Gawker.

Daniel Somers, when he was on active duty

Somers served in Joint Special Operations Command in a unit in Mosul from 2006-2007. He ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center and was a senior analyst for Levant, which oversaw operations in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and part of Turkey.

Prior to that, the short biography attached to the letter he wrote indicates he was a part of an intelligence unit called Task Force Lightning. The unit was a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq. He was a “machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee” and “ran more than 400 combat missions.” He also “interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects.”

Bradley Manning’s Nobel Peace Prize

[While some of the Nobel Peace Laureates over the years have made genuine and significant contributions to the people’s movements against war, in recent years the awards given to such shameful imperialist masters of warmaking as Barack Obama and the European Union have destroyed the legitimacy and credibility of the Nobel Peace Prize.  For all to see, the award has come to be a cynical endorsement of imperial power.  Only a bold endorsement of a very selfless and sacrificial activist against war crimes, who has earned the enmity of imperialists everywhere, may restore the respect for the Nobel Peace Prize.  We do not believe the Nobel Committee has the capability to make such a historic move.  But a growing and passionate number are pressing them to make this move:  Award Bradley Manning the Nobel Peace Prize this year. — Frontlines ed.]

——————————–

By David Swanson

26 March, 2013
Warisacrime.org

Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize , and he should receive it.

No individual has done more to push back against what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism” than Bradley Manning. The United States is the leading exporter of weapons and itself spends as much preparing for more wars as the rest of the world combined.  Manning is the leading actor in opposition to U.S. warmaking, and therefore militarism around the world.  What he has done has hurt the cause of violence in a number of other nations as well.

And right now, remaining in prison and facing relentless prosecution by the U.S. government, Manning is in need of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Alfred Nobel’s will left funding for a prize to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

The intent of the prize was to fund this work. As a result of enormous legal expenses, Bradley Manning is in need of that funding, unlike some other peace prize recipients.  In addition, his secret trial — with a potential death sentence — could use all the attention that can be shined on it.

The people of the United States and the rest of the world have learned more about the intentions of the U.S. government from Bradley Manning than from anyone else.  “Thanks to Manning’s alleged disclosures, we have a sense of what transpired in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We have an image of how Washington operates in the world,” author Chase Madar wrote in his book about Manning’s whistleblowing.

“Thanks to those revelations we now know just how our government leaned on the Vatican to quell opposition to the Iraq War. We now know how Washington pressured the German government to block the prosecution of CIA agents who kidnapped an innocent man, Khaled El-Masri, while he was on vacation. We know how our State Department lobbied hard to prevent a minimum wage increase in Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest nation.”

Manning revealed a secret U.S. war in Yemen, U.S. records of massive civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, video of a U.S. helicopter attack on civilians and their rescuers in Baghdad, and facts about the corruption of numerous governments including those of the United States, Tunisia, and Egypt.  In those last two nations Manning’s revelations contributed to nonviolent pro-democracy movements.

Iraq, the American Mission, from the Beginning — “Falluja – The Hidden Massacre”

The Massacre that took place in the city of Falluja in 2004 and how the authorities respond to that.

The Legacy of the American ‘Mission’ — “Iraq: Living With No Future”

By Dahr Jamail, TomDispatch.com

26 March, 2013

Back then, everybody was writing about Iraq, but it’s surprising how few Americans, including reporters, paid much attention to the suffering of Iraqis. Today, Iraq is in the news again. The words, the memorials, the retrospectives are pouring out, and again the suffering of Iraqis isn’t what’s on anyone’s mind. This was why I returned to that country before the recent 10th anniversary of the Bush administration’s invasion and why I feel compelled to write a few grim words about Iraqis today.

But let’s start with then. It’s April 8, 2004, to be exact, and I’m inside a makeshift medical center in the heart of Fallujah while that predominantly Sunni city is under siege by American forces. I’m alternating between scribbling brief observations in my notebook and taking photographs of the wounded and dying women and children being brought into the clinic.

A woman suddenly arrives, slapping her chest and face in grief, wailing hysterically as her husband carries in the limp body of their little boy. Blood is trickling down one of his dangling arms. In a few minutes, he’ll be dead. This sort of thing happens again and again.

Over and over, I watch speeding cars hop the curb in front of this dirty clinic with next to no medical resources and screech to a halt. Grief-stricken family members pour out, carrying bloodied relatives — women and children — gunned down by American snipers.

One of them, an 18-year-old girl has been shot through the neck by what her family swears was an American sniper. All she can manage are gurgling noises as doctors work frantically to save her from bleeding to death. Her younger brother, an undersized child of 10 with a gunshot wound in his head, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomits as doctors race to keep him alive. He later dies while being transported to a hospital in Baghdad.

10 Years Later, U.S. Legacy in Iraq : Death, Disease, Devastation, Displacement

By Larry Everest 

Countercurrents.org, 26 March, 2013

Ten years ago, on March 19-20, 2003 , the U.S. invaded Iraq , overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime, and then occupied the country for the next eight and a half years. President George W. Bush said the U.S. went to war to liberate Iraq and “free its people.” This March 19, President Barack Obama issued a statement saluting the U.S. military for their service and giving “the Iraqi people an opportunity to forge their own future…”

What did this U.S. war mean for Iraqis? What does it mean for their future?

• Iraqis killed between March 2003 and December 31, 2011 (when U.S. military forces withdrew): at least 121,754.
• Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, directly and indirectly (due to the destruction and disruption of the war, including to water and power systems, to healthcare and food production): 655,000 according to a 2006 Lancet study; 1 million according to 2008 Opinion Research Business study; current estimate: 1.2 to 1.4 million.
• Iraqis injured: 4.2 million.
• Iraqis driven from their homes: 4.5 million.
• Number of U.S. military personnel killed through 2012: 4,486
• Investigations by the U.S. military, government, or media concerning the number of Iraqis killed, wounded, displaced or who died as a result of the war and occupation: None.

Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Protest, Throw Their Medals at NATO Summit!

May 20, 2012 CHICAGO (Reuters) – Nearly 50 U.S. military veterans at an anti-NATO rally in Chicago threw their service medals into the street on Sunday, an action they said symbolized their rejection of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Devastation of Iraq by the US Military: 1991-2010 Balance Sheet

Mission accomplished: One soldier flashes the victory sign as he watches the Strykers cross into Kuwait

Iraq: The Age Of Darkness

By Dirk Adriaensens

20 September, 2010,  Countercurrents.org

Part I : “Success”, a devastating balance sheet

In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the triumphalist verdict of the mainstream media was that the war had been won; Iraq was assured of a benevolent, democratic future. The Times’s writer William Rees-Mogg hymned the victory: “April 9 2003 was Liberty Day for Iraq. (…) It was achieved by “the engine of global liberation”, the United States. “After 24 years of oppression, three wars and three weeks of relentless bombing, Baghdad has emerged from an age of darkness. Yesterday was an historic day of liberation.”[1]

“The problem with this war for, I think, many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid, that is Saddam having weapons of mass destruction,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters while visiting Iraq.

“So when you start from that standpoint, then figuring out in retrospect how you deal with the war — even if the outcome is a good one from the standpoint of the United States — it will always be clouded by how it began.” [2]

So here Robert Gates acknowledges that this war was illegal according to international law, because there was no “casus belli”. But in the same sentence he says that the outcome has been good for the United States. What does he mean exactly? How can all the killing and destruction be a good outcome for the USA? And what about responsibilities? If you know that Iraq is still paying reparations for the invasion in Kuwait in 1990, how about the payment of reparations by the USA for the destruction it inflicted upon Iraq?

“The End of Combat”: More War Lies

By David Swanson

02 September, 2020
Warisacrime.org

Lies aren’t used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening.

Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then “terrorist” Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently caught up in. Uh huh.

U.S. participants in this crime are heroes, always and everywhere. That’s sacred. The troops’ mission has involved protecting the Iraqi people, and by golly they’ve done a superb job, as long as we don’t mention the complete devastation of Iraq, the million dead, the millions of refugees, and the intense resentment of those remaining toward our country for what we’ve done to theirs.

The Iraqi people now (dead, in exile, in a ruined nation) have a chance that they supposedly didn’t have before we destroyed their country, a country that was actually a better place to live in in every way in 2003 than it is now, and in 1989 than in 2003. To hear President Obama, this war has been for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and these wars have been about al Qaeda and 9-11.

Fort Hood soldiers protest repeated deployments

GIs, veterans, military families & supporters picket outside Ft. Hood

August 7, 2010

By Michael Prysner

Obama declares Iraq war over, but GIs don’t see it

While Pres. Obama is touting the Iraq war as all but over, thousands of soldiers continue to be sent to patrol Iraq’s streets, where violence is climbing to its highest level in two years. Among those thousands of GIs are a very large number who have previously been deployed, and as a result are suffering psychological trauma.

The rising trend of active-duty military suicides culminated in June with the highest monthly total in U.S. military history. There is no debate over the cause of the suicide epidemic: repeated deployments with severely inadequate treatment in between.

The U.S. military has been exposed for intentionally denying GIs a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis to keep the number of deployable troops at a high level. But even those who are diagnosed with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, or military sexual trauma (as a result of sexual harassment or sexual assault during military service) are not exempt from deployment. The Army and Marines are sending wounded troops with recognized psychological trauma from previous deployments on more tours.

Sending traumatized soldiers back to the place they were traumatized to endure another grueling tour, further deepening their wounds, is the type of cruel treatment of GIs that has characterized the handling of the wars by the generals and politicians.