Winter Soldier (30 page)

All battalions’ Humvees were in very poor shape. After Donald Rumsfeld was called out for sending troops to Iraq with unarmored Humvees, all the Humvees were up-armored but they did not upgrade the engines. So you had these very old beater trucks with thousands of pounds of steel bolted to the sides running on dirt roads in Kuwait. We could only go ten to twenty miles an hour even while flooring it. We’d overheat and have to pull to the side.

When I returned from my deployment, I developed chronic depression. After everything had a chance to sink in I was just destroyed emotionally. One day I started crying for hours for no reason. It took my unit months to address my request for psychological help and my depression worsened. I had multiple NCOs and staff NCOs yelling at me for having depression. Just people with the IQ of automated voice machines: “If you require an ass-chewing press 1, if you know someone else who needs an ass-chewing press 2, if you require some sort of empathy or understanding, please hang up and grow a ball sack.”

After I’d missed several months of training because of being on light duty for depression, I was instructed by my first sergeant that I either had to get better or take an administrative separation within two weeks. He refused to transfer me to another occupation even though the battalion mail clerk was open and I’d volunteered for it. Because I knew that I wasn’t going to get better, I accepted the administrative separation.

I was not allowed to ship my stuff home so I had to give a lot of it away. The morning I received my letter to go home I had to leave within the next couple hours. I was escorted off the base like a criminal and not even given a chance to say goodbye to my friends. After being discharged I was denied benefits from the VA; I’ve still not received education benefits because I received a general under honorable conditions discharge. I have not heard back from the committee to get it upgraded to full honorable.

I was forced to wait six months after applying for VA benefits for service-connected depression before they would give me any medication or therapy, and at this time I still need to schedule VA appointments approximately one month in advance. And even when I get there it’s fifteen minutes of talk, how am I doing: “You want to try new pills? How are the pills you’re on now working?”

Lastly I’d just like to say if the president is watching: “The command was uphold and defend the Constitution. Correct yourself!”

In September 2003 I was put in charge of eighty soldiers bound for Iraq deploying to a theater of war with no weapons. We traveled into Iraq without any weapons or ammunition.Then we were mortared for three days in Balad before arriving in Anbar province for link-up with our unit. How could the greatest army in the world send soldiers into battle without weapons?

Later that month I was put in charge of a key strategic location—the port of entry at al-Waleed, between Syria and Iraq. I was given thirty to forty troopers to secure a hundred kilometers of Syrian-Iraqi border and between five to ten thousand square kilometers of al-Anbar desert. Additionally, we had to secure the enormous border crossing point and recruit, train, and equip Iraqi security forces and redevelop the local infrastructure and economy. I wrote countless memoranda to my superiors requesting more resources and personnel but they went unanswered.

In Iraq I witnessed many disturbing things. I witnessed waterboarding. Two counterintelligence officers stopped a truck full of fake medicine being smuggled into Iraq and brought the driver in for questioning. They lifted his legs. They laid him down. They blindfolded him. Then they lifted his legs again and started pouring water down his throat. After seeing that, I know that’s something that we ought not be doing. It’s torture.

Separately, I was given unlawful orders by superiors to not offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between the Syrian and Iraqi borders. I disobeyed those orders. I witnessed and participated in countless massive operations led by American commanders whose metrics for success were the number of detainees apprehended. These commanders had no regard for the tribal, ethnic, and sectarian strife caused by American taxpayer–funded militias the U.S. military calls Iraqi security forces.

Most reprehensible was that we never had even close to the amount of troops we needed in Iraq. Yet from 2003 until today Generals Ricardo Sanchez, George Casey, and David Petraeus (among others) did not heed the requests of their subordinate officers for more resources and more troops. Instead, they perpetually painted a rosy picture of the situation while the country fell into civil war. These generals consistently overstated the strength and number of Iraqi security forces to Congress and still do. Their misrepresentation of the facts should be grounds for courts-martial and criminal indictments.

I lost many friends in Iraq—American and Iraqi. Many Iraqi friends continue to suffer as refugees inside and outside of Iraq. As a matter of fact, an Iraqi friend, whom I consider a brother, fled to Jordan and has been stuck there for two years. As of this testimony, he is meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Jordan to process his application for asylum under the United States Refugees Admission Program. My comrades in the U.S. Army and I have sent him letters of support as he frequently risked his life to help us in 2003–04. I pray that Ali and many others are quickly helped.

While at the port of entry at al-Waleed in 2003, I submitted a report to my superiors expressing the need for an automated tracking system for immigration and emigration.

General Ricardo Sanchez and L. Paul Bremer sent a delegation to al-Waleed to assess the installation of a Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) to provide tracking of trans­national movement. When the team departed, they informed me that the facilities would support the installation of PISCES. By the time I left Iraq in late March 2004, PISCES was not in place.

In 2005 I returned to Iraq for a second tour, as the Regimental Iraqi Security Forces Coordinator. My duties include oversight of the development and security of the northern half of the Syrian-Iraqi border and the border crossing at Rabiya.

In June 2005, Commander Guy Vilardi, working for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq informed me that the Civilian Police Assistance Transition Team (CPATT) had possession of a dozen PISCES in containers located in Baghdad. He also informed me that they “would install the systems in the near future.”

Upon return to western Nineveh province, I informed my superiors that the PISCES were in Baghdad and would be installed soon. In August 2005, General Joseph Fil, commander of CPATT, visited Rabiya to be briefed on the status of the Syrian-Iraqi border. We briefed General Joseph Fil, who scoffed at the notion of installation of the PISCES and stated that “[t]he system is no good and we do not have them anyhow.” I informed General Fil of my conversation with Commander Vilardi to which General Fil replied, “[t]hat’s not true and the PISCES is no good anyhow.”

In January 2006, Colonel Carl Lammers, responsible for Department of Border Enforcement issues at CPATT, sent me an e-mail on a secure network indicating that “the PISCES systems were in fact in containers in Baghdad.” I was outraged.

As of March 2006, when the 3rd ACR departed western Nineveh province, no PISCES or equivalent tracking system had been installed at the Rabiya border crossing.

From 2003–2007 no computer systems for tracking immigration or emigration were installed along the Syrian-Iraqi border. This surely contributed to the instability of Iraq. Foreign fighters and criminals were free to move transnationally with little fear of apprehension. It is probable that significant numbers of Americans and Iraqis were wounded or killed as a result.

In January 2007, as a member of American Enterprise Institute’s Iraq Planning Group, I discussed this strategic issue. I recommended that PISCES be installed at every border crossing in Iraq immediately and that an investigation be launched into how and why this had not yet occurred.

Nearly four years into the war in Iraq and three years after assessing the need for a transnational movement tracking system, no systems had been installed by coalition forces despite having the capability and understanding the strategic necessity. This strategic blunder has yet to be exposed by the mainstream media and no accountability has transpired. I continue to recommend that General Joseph Fil and General David Petraeus be held accountable.

Also in 2005 a very large part of my job was providing logistical support to American and Iraqi units. In that capacity I developed strategies for improving operating procedures and also procuring hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment. This was essential work as it directly impacted the day-to-day operations of forces serving in very dangerous conditions.

During this time I incessantly tried to get our Division HQ to give us information about the Lee Dynamics International (LDI) warehouse in Mosul. LDI was an American contractor hired by the Department of Defense to provide logistical support to coalition forces across Iraq. The LDI warehouse was the single largest supplier of weapons and equipment for Iraqi police and border police. The personnel involved in that operation were disorganized and utterly incompetent. This directly impacted my ability to do my job and directly affected the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. 

After many months of this fraud, waste, and abuse, General Kevin Bergner of our Division HQ took a trip to Baghdad and met with the deputy commanding general of CPATT. I possess a copy of the notes taken between them outlining the lack of accounting practices and operating procedures.

The notes clearly contribute to the compendium against LDI and their gross negligence as contractors in Iraq. LDI should be held accountable for their negligence. I strongly believe that the Department of Defense is covering this matter up to protect senior military leaders. The notes clearly reveal that neither General Fil nor General Petraeus implemented systems of accounting for millions of taxpayer dollars’ worth of equipment and weapons during their tenure in command from 2004–2005.

General Petraeus, among many other generals and colonels, has been nearly impervious to scrutiny for his failures in Iraq. On the contrary, many of them have been promoted again and again.

Perhaps the greatest lesson this country did not learn from Vietnam was that accountability is essential lest we allow history to repeat itself. Sadly, no generals or administration officials were held accountable then. Ultimately, I believe this is how members of this administration, diplomats, and high-level military leaders got us into the Iraq (and now Middle Eastern) disaster and continue to proctor it with arrogant obstinateness and incredible incompetence.

The “surge” in Iraq was an effort contrived to gain some measure of stability in Iraq while political reconciliation and governing capacity were enhanced. Over one year since the “surge” strategy was proposed, Iraq is no better off than it was. General Petraeus and his “brain trust” of officers and diplomats have made every effort to convince the American and Iraqi people that progress has been made, but the reality is that their metrics are wrought with fallacious assumptions and they offer skewed propaganda.

The government of Iraq is riddled with corruption due to years of American mismanagement and horrible oversight. This is best evidenced in House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform testimony given on October 4, 2007, by former Iraqi commissioner of public integrity, Judge Radhi al-Radhi, who is now in asylum in this country. In his testimony, Judge Radhi spoke about the rampant corruption among U.S. allies, including the Maliki government, and the theft of billions of dollars. He explained that reconstruction had almost stopped, that the lost money was propping up a terrorist movement that was ripping his country apart, and that the current Iraqi government could not be trusted.

In keeping with the spirit and dedication to our nation, for the past year and a half I have authored and co-authored numerous articles with fellow Iraq veterans that have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle, among other media outlets. The topics have ranged from corruption to complacency and from dereliction of duty to the woeful state of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I dedicate my testimony today to the life and death of Colonel Ted Westhusing, the U.S. Army’s top ethicist and a professor at West Point who volunteered for a deployment to Iraq in 2004. On June 5, 2005, you were found dead from a bullet to the head. Investigations conducted by the army deemed your death a suicide but the circumstances are highly controversial.

In the note, addressed to Generals Petraeus and Fil, found by your body, that the army says is your “suicide note,” you stated:

You are only interested in your career(s) and provide no support to your staff—no [mission] support and you don’t care. I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves.