Winter Soldier On the Hill Hearings: Iraq War Veterans' Searing Eyewitness Accounts Uncover Human Cost of War

Democracy Now
Memorial Day May 25, 2009
Congressional Progressive Caucus Hearings
May, 2009
59 minutes



AMY GOODMAN: War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill this month to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war. Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered for four days in Silver Spring, Maryland to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, Winter Soldier on the Hill was designed to drive home the human cost of war and occupation, this time to the very people in charge of doing something about it.

Then name “Winter Soldier” comes from a similar event in 1971, when hundreds of Vietnam vets gathered in Detroit. The term is derived from the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis, published in 1776. "These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman,” Paine wrote.

Well, in a packed public hearing this month, the soldiers testified before a panel of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Today, we spend the hour with their testimony. We begin with former Marine sniper, Sergio Kochergin, giving a firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the initial days of the US invasion of Iraq.