Mike Prysner describes a mission he took part in which his unit forced Iraqis out of half a dozen homes, with no compensation, so the US military could use them. “One family in particular, a woman with two small girls, very elderly man, and two middle-aged men—we dragged them from their houses and threw them onto the street, and arrested the men because they refused to leave.” Since he left, he has been plagued by guilt “anytime I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home, …anytime I see a young girl like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.” Prysner also describes the physical abuse of a wounded prisoner, with a sandbag over his head and his hands tied behind his back. “We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation.”

Jason Washburn’s unit was told to shoot anyone digging near the side of the road because they might be planting a bomb. They carried spare weapons and shovels in their vehicles. If they killed an innocent Iraqi, they could throw a shovel on the corpse and say the person had been digging. At one point, Washburn’s commander called the unit together to praise Marines for accurate shooting, his pride apparently undiminished by the fact that the victim was not an insurgent but the local mayor.

In Iraq, the rules of engagement are being loosely defined and broadly enforced at the expense of the Iraqi people, says Jason Lemieux. "Anyone who tells you different is either a liar or a fool." When he got to Baghdad, he says he was explicitly instructed by his commanders that he could shoot anyone who made him uncomfortable and refused to move when he ordered them to do so. "Better them than us," was the prevailing philosophy, he says, and everyone on the street was considered an enemy combatant who could be killed.

Goldsmith saw the World Trade Center towers collapse on September 11, 2001. He enlisted in the Army and went to Iraq in 2005. In Sadr City, he witnessed abuse of Iraqi civilians. He was assigned to take pictures of Iraqis found in a shallow grave, ostensibly for intelligence purposes, but they were only used as trophies by those who received them. After repeated commendations, he was expecting to return to civilian life and college when President Bush announced the “surge,” and the military adopted its stop-loss policy, essentially making Goldsmith a prisoner of war. He tried to kill himself rather than return to Iraq, but survived. He was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, but then was discharged for misconduct as a malingerer. He now delivers pizzas and struggles to overcome his persisting symptoms with treatment through the VA.

Garett Reppenhagen served with Jeff Engelhart in Iraq and co-authored the blog "Fight to Survive". Garett points out that through their entire GI resistance process, they stayed within the boundaries of UCMJ and were granted honorable discharges. Garett was the first active-duty member of IVAW. Seventy-five percent of the veterans of this war are still in the military; they are career soldiers. That is what makes anti-war organizing difficult in the military. Yes, they oppose the war, but they also want to remain in the military.

The military’s family atmosphere, the safe environment of a military base for raising children, the school benefits, the health care, and the bonuses all make GIs reluctant to risk their position. But Garett says soldiers can use their First Amendment rights to speak out without getting in trouble, and IVAW stands ready to help them learn how. IVAW is asking soldiers and veterans to join a fight to make America better, says Garett.

Jesse Hamilton, who'd been in the Army since 1998, was entirely against the war when he signed up to go and serve as an advisor to the newly formed Iraqi army. But the Arabic speaker wanted to do what he could to expedite the war's end. Hamilton found untrained Iraqi soldiers who often resorted to "spray and pray" techniques in which they would shoot indiscriminately and hope it hit their target, and who would abuse their prisoners. "It is a lost cause in Iraq," says Hamilton.

Antonia Juhasz is the author of several books about the oil industry and a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. She notes that even Alan Greenspan, in his memoirs, wrote that “the war in Iraq is about oil,” although he later retreated from that statement under attack from the right. Juhasz says giving control of Iraqi oil to Western companies was a central part of the Bush Administration war plan. “This oil is sitting there like a gleaming prize at the end of the finish line,” she says. Juhasz also says US military planners wanted to employ 500,000 Iraqi soldiers for reconstruction, but the Bush Administration wanted to use private contractors. The soldiers were fired—“half a million men with guns made unemployed without jobs, without money, and their families left without hope,” she says, creating an enormous, hostile group that, including the families, may amount to 10 percent of Iraqis.

Eli Wright, an active duty solder at Fort Drum, was injured in the back and neck in a vehicle accident in Iraq and then injured again in the shoulder during physical training back in the United States. He had minimal care—mostly Motrin—even after he developed symptoms of traumatic brain injury such as memory loss, headaches, and dizziness. He finally got proper care at Fort Drum two days after he spoke to the media. “Soldiers are afraid to speak out, but it’s most important that they start speaking out about that,” he says. “It has worked for me. Don’t keep it quiet.”
“We stepped up to serve our country, and we haven’t asked for a whole lot in return. But proper healthcare should be at a bare minimum what we’re entitled to.”