Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Dahr Jamail’s The Will To Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books). The testimonies below were collected at a national conference, "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," held by Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Former U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner John Michael Turner leaned over the microphone, his voice choking with emotion, the words barely forcing themselves out, the tears barely held back.
Get ready for the horrible, honest reality of the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan like you haven’t heard it before. For four days, from March 13 through March 16, hundreds of U.S. veterans of the two wars will descend on Washington and testify in the “Winter Soldier” hearings about what they really did while they were serving their country in Iraq. And their experiences aren’t pretty.