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Iraq / USA: "We Have to Share This Pain"

"Evan Knappenberger served one year in Iraq with the Army 4th Infantry Division working as an intelligence analyst. "We are responsible as soldiers, we are murderers of over one million Iraqis," a visibly shaken Knappenberger said. "I participated in burglary, trespassing, knowledgeable negligence, criminal assault and battery, rape by association, and gangsterism, I am standing here today as a criminal -- in a sense of the word that only someone who has worn the uniform can understand."

"While I was in Iraq, I did many things, but nothing for freedom," he added. "We've lost this war on the polemic battleground of semantics. By naming arbitrary rules of engagement, we rationalised murder -- this I witnessed...by calling it liberation, we justified occupation, this I witnessed..."

Knappenberger was just one of many veterans who have returned from duty in Iraq to speak at a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March. This particular hearing, last weekend, was in Portland, Oregon.

The "testimony" of the soldiers makes for sober reading and makes one readily understand the hostility of the Iraqis toward the members of the Coalition of the Willing. Read the full piece from IPS here.

All too sadly the same scenario as it unraveled in Iraq is being played out in Afghanistan.

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