Media Mythbusters Blog

Crossposted at the Democracy Project:

By: Bruce Kesler

Salon asks, “Will American war crimes be revealed?” at the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s sequel to the fraud-filled Winter Soldier theatre offered in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The event is designed to be another purging of the horrors of war, and another effort to put American military policy on trial in the public eye.

However,

In interviews with Salon, several veterans from the group described incidents in Iraq that they believed constituted wrongdoing by the U.S. military, including disproportionate use of air power resulting in civilian deaths. The soldiers were unable to provide Salon with any conclusive evidence of war crimes.

Not that that stops them from alleging war crimes, anyway.

“I’m pretty sure we saw some pretty fucked-up shit,” said Clifton Hicks, who was a private in the 1st Armored Division in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and will be testifying at the Winter Soldier event.

Gee, that’s surely conclusive evidence!

Salon shows a videotape that Hicks and other IVAWers claim show an aerial attack on innocent civilians. Yet,

Steven Casey, who back then was a scout in the same Army unit, provided Salon with videotape of the strike taken from the roof of a building at Camp Slayer, date-stamped Nov. 13, 2003. While the airstrike can clearly be heard on the tape, darkness and distance render it mostly useless for verification purposes….

But it is not just the darkness on the videotape that makes the story hard to gauge. News clips from that time period claim that the military was evacuating civilians prior to Operation Iron Hammer airstrikes, in an effort to destroy empty buildings that had been used to launch attacks on U.S. forces. Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who commanded the 1st Armored Division at the time, claimed in a Nov. 20, 2003, press conference that “we have had no civilian casualties resulting from Iron Hammer.”

Salon also contacted a human rights group, which said they had staff in Iraq at that time, but they could verify no details about the airstrike or its outcome. And the three soldiers interviewed admit that while they saw the heavily damaged buildings after the strike, nobody got out of their vehicles to see if there were, in fact, dead civilians in the rubble.

The IVAwers aren’t concerned with their lack of evidence. They’re on a propaganda mission:

Still, the vast majority of the American public does not have a clear picture of what has gone on for years in Iraq and Afghanistan due to U.S. military operations. In the coming days, the new generation of veterans gathering for the Winter Soldier event hope to make it more clear.

Leftist media make that propaganda mission clear. The Nation implores its readers to “Help IVAW spread these eyewitness accounts across the country and the world…” AlterNet promises “Iraq Vets Will Detail U.S. Atrocities in Winter Soldier Hearings” and “All week, AlterNet will feature special coverage of the hearings.” The IVAW’s pet “journalist” Aaron Glanz hawks ” Get ready for the horrible, honest reality of the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan like you haven’t heard it before,” which Leftist alternative media is set to broadcast around the world.

Meanwhile, awesome Michelle Malkin presents the acknowledged model for WinterSoldier II, John Kerry, being confronted on video about his role in defaming a generation of Vietnam veterans. (Michelle, also, has the transcript.) Gateway Pundit adds to our understanding.

If the IVAW thinks it will get away with defaming another generation of veterans, its has another thing coming, inbound.