Winter Soldier in Madison

MADISON, Wis.--"It was while I was serving at Abu Ghraib that I first saw these [photos in the media]," said Benjamin Thompson, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), who served in the Army Reserve from 1999 to 2007 and as a prison guard at Abu Ghraib from February 2004 to February 2005. "They disgusted me and made me question my desire to serve."

Thompson was addressing a crowd of about 300 people who gathered last month for the Madison Winter Soldier event organized by the local chapter of IVAW and a coalition of area antiwar organizations.

IVAW members from around the Midwest came together to provide testimony about their deployments in Iraq, their horror at what they were asked to do there and their mistreatment by the military's dilapidated health care system upon their return. The event was one of several taking place across the country since IVAW's first Winter Soldier held in March in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Thompson went on to paint a picture of the infamous prison that did not make it into the headlines. "When I ask people what they think Abu Ghraib looked like, I hear about these little cells and these little bars, a concrete structure," said Thompson. "I was in a concrete structure, where I slept and I was happy about it."

While some prisoners were in cells, he explained, most of the prisoners were kept in open air--in an indefensible area that was hit frequently by mortars and stray bullets from nearby battlefields. In fact, says Thompson, the base was in the middle of one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq.

Units rounded up whole city blocks of people, he said, and "put them in the most dangerous place. And my prisoners were killed. They were killed by mortar fire. They were killed by stray rounds...My prisoners were killed by malnutrition...by lack of medication and by lack of sanitation. We relied on contracted services to provide the basic necessities, and they failed us every day. The food they provided to these people had rat feces in it...

"We had children in our camps. The youngest I ever ran into was 10. We had an 80-year-old man who was blind. We had people who died from lack of heart medication they'd been on for decades...There's so much horror about Abu Ghraib that I can't even try to share it all with you, but I want to frame it in a way that you can understand."

Fellow soldiers told of similar horrors and incidents they wish they could forget. Others spoke of the inherent racism, sexism and homophobia rampant in the military. All agreed that what they had imagined upon signing up was nothing like what they faced on the ground. They all wanted people to understand what they did experience and why it is so important to speak out about it and stop the war.

Following the soldier panels, the crowd heard from John Stauber, author of The Best War Ever: Lies, Damn Lies and the War in Iraq, and Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi-American based in Minnesota who is working on grassroots humanitarian aid efforts in Iraq.

Vietnam veteran Will Williams closed the testimony by urging the crowd into the streets of Madison to denounce the war. About 100 people, led by the veterans, many in fatigues and uniforms, stopped traffic as they marched through the city demanding, "Troops out now!"

At a wrap-up meeting following the event, the organizers decided to continue to work together to build the antiwar struggle and began planning for Veterans Day and beyond. At a time when much of the country is focused on the election of one of two pro-war candidates, these soldiers are speaking out to remind us where our energies must be spent.