Winter Soldier Hearings

This past weekend, Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan occured, which had testimonies of soliers that had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It iwasa chance for soldiers to speak out against the occupations, with photographic, video and sharing personal experiences. From what I've seen, only alternative news outlets seemed to cover the event. You can watch and listen to audio of the event here.

Here is part of the testimony of Jason Hurd, who served in central Baghdad from November of 04 to November
of 05.

I remember we were out on a patrol one day, a dismounted patrol, and we were walking by a woman¹s house.
She was outside in her garden doing somework. We had our interpreter with us, and our interpreter threw up his hand and said Salaam aleikum, which is their greeting in Iraq. It means Peace of God be with you. And he translated back to us what she said. She said, No. No peace of God be with you. She was angry, and she was frustrated. And so, we stopped, and our interpreter said, ³Well, what¹s the matter? Why are you so angry? We¹re here protecting you. We¹re here to ensure your safety.

And that woman began to tell us a story. Just a few months prior to this, her husband had been shot and killed by a United States convoy, because he got too close to their convoy. He was not an insurgent; he was not a terrorist. He was merely a working man trying to make a living for his family. To make matters worse, a few weeks later, there was a Special Forces
team who operated in the Kindi area. And as you know, Special Forces do clandestine operations. And so, even though this was my unit's area of operation, we didn¹t know what the Special Forces teams were actually doing there. They holed up in a building there in the Kindi Street area and made a compound out of it. A few weeks after this man died, the Special Forces team got some intelligence that this woman was supporting the insurgency. And so, they conducted a raid on her home, zip-tied her and her two children, threw them on the floor. And I guess her son was old enough to be perceived as a possible threat, so they detained him and took him away. For the next two weeks, this woman had no idea whether her son was alive, dead or worse. At the end of that two weeks, the Special Forces team rolled up, dropped her son off and, without so much as an apology, drove off. It turns out they had found they had acted on bad intelligence. Ladies and gentleman, things like that happen every day in Iraq. We¹re harassing these people, we're disrupting their lives.