Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) invites you to hear the hard truth about what is really on happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, day in and day out, from American, British and German veterans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sounds pretty impressive. Until you look at who the speakers are expected to be;<\/p>\n
U.S. AWOL soldier and Iraq veteran Andr\u00e9 Shepherd who seeks asylum in Germany.<\/p>\n
Christian Neumann, soldier of the German army and veteran of the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
US Navy journalist Zack Baddorf.<\/p>\n
US-veteran Chris Capps who deserted before deployment to Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Andr\u00e9 Shepherd (who I’ve written about before<\/a>) was a depot helicopter mechanic who never left the hangar. He admits in other interviews that he didn’t know what was going on in Iraq until he returned from his first tour and saw the news broadcasts.<\/p>\n
A German soldier? Really?<\/p>\n
Zack Baddorf – a Navy journalist who spent a month in Iraq on a ship in the Persian Gulf (It was a six month cruise on the USS Peleliu that left San Diego in February and returned to port in August). What is he going to testify to? Other people’s war stories?<\/p>\n
Christopher Capps, the IVAW Chapter president in Germany, who deserted before he was deployed. Is his testimony going to focus on the evils of packing his gear? Well, he did do a tour in Iraq in the 440th Sig Battalion at Camp Victory. But he insists on addressing the Afghanistan campaign;<\/p>\n
Afghanistan has been recording record level opium harvests, action on removing land mines from Afghanistan is all talk with very little action, most Afghans surveyed want coalition forces out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban is experiencing a resurgence along the Afghanistan\/Pakistan border. The idea that continuing to act as a soldier is bringing peace or stability to Afghanistan anymore is a farce, especially when there is rampant corruption inside the fledgling government you are fighting to support. For every insurgent you kill it creates a martyr which means more recruits for the insurgents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He hasn’t been there – he deserted before he went, but he knows all of this stuff and he doesn’t need to provide proof. That’s Winter Soldier – so he fits right in. His tale of atrocities in Iraq consists of hooking up a fiber optic cable labeled Abu Ghraib;<\/p>\n
I ended up working as a cable dog running communications wire within the camp. At first I was pretty apathetic about the war, but I started to understand my complicity in it. I stared to realize what the infrastructure I was building and maintaining was being used for. One day I was working for the combat engineers. They were telling me how important my work was to the mission. But I didn\u2019t believe in the mission anymore. Later I was asked to reconnect a fiber optic cable that was labeled Abu Ghraib. The reality of it all would slap me in the face repeatedly over the course of the deployment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s easy to understand why he was so upset at the Big Army machine;<\/p>\n
I arrived at Camp Victory in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day 2005.<\/p>\n
They were having a giant turkey that day in the DFAC (cafeteria). Some other things they had in the DFAC were made to order. There were Philly cheese steaks, a good salad bar, a juice bar, Baskin Robbins Ice Cream, and food better then anything I had ever seen before. There was a Pizza Hut, a giant PX store, a Subway, an Arby’s, a Greens Beans, and a Popeye’s Chicken too.<\/p>\n
When you’re expecting a combat zone and you walk into something like this you have to wonder “What the hell is going on here?” It was surreal sitting there eating a Subway sandwich, listening to elevator music, and hearing explosions so loud they could knock your drink right off the table, and gunfire in the distance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, that’s some real horrifying stuff, Chris.<\/p>\n
You know Darnell<\/a> Stephen Summers<\/a> will be there, too;
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\nThat’s Shepherd on the left and Capps on the right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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