Winter Soldier

Did you catch any of last weekend’s Winter Soldier testimony? Patterned on the Winter Soldier hearings of 1971 where Vietnam veterans testified about their actions during the Vietnam War, Winter Soldier: Iraq/Afghanistan has exposed the the hellishness of life in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan for both civilians and occupiers. If you didn’t know of this event you’re not alone since the major media outlets chose to ignore it – CNN needed extra space to devote (over and over again) to the damage done to its studio in Atlanta from a freak tornado, and the New York Times for the second Sunday in a row wondered what was happening to Iraqi oil profits, in an article that did in fact mention something very important, though you had to read practically the entire expose to find it: amazingly, most of the Iraqis who are taking money in exchange for planting IEDs and otherwise attacking US soldiers do so because they are going hungry, not going Jihadi.

Well, you can wait a few years, until the mainstream media catch up with the testimony of retired and active-duty Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans on the atrocities they committed and the physical and psychic toll it has taken on Iraqis and on the soldiers themselves or you can go to the Democracy Now! website which will feature Winter Soldier testimony for the rest of this week. Then, thirty years from now, when an Iraqi war veteran who participated in Winter Soldier runs for President, the mainstream media will finally catch up.