Winter Soldier: US atrocities then and now

Winter Soldier, a documentary comprising veteran's accounts of US conduct in the Vietnam war, has just been released in the UK, 33 years after the last American troops were finally driven from Saigon. The film's relevance to our own era of American warfare is stark and direct. From the Guardian:

"His testimony was shocking, yet he still believed in the war. The year was 1971 and Scott Camil, a marine just back from 20 months in Vietnam, wanted to talk about what he had seen and done there: "My testimony involves burning of villages with civilians in them, the cutting off of ears, cutting off of heads, torturing of prisoners, calling in of artillery on villages for games, corpsmen killing wounded prisoners ... ""

"In agonising, often sickening detail, Camil talked about these things for a long time. David Grubin, whose camera was filming the marine, was stunned. Grubin had come to Detroit, Michigan, to film three days of testimony by soldiers, marines and airmen who had recently returned from south-east Asia and were anxious to speak publicly about war crimes and atrocities they had both witnessed and committed."

"The shattering testimony continued: beheadings, heads on pikes, ears traded for beers, disembowelment, mass rapes, the murder of children for throwing stones at troops, of the elderly, of anyone in the so-called "free-fire zones"."

"Such chastening material proved hard to exhibit, even in those molten times. The event itself snagged a total of three minutes' coverage on the three big networks. The movie couldn't find a major distributor, and the networks refused even to show excerpts. "I remember going to CBS to show them the movie," says Grubin. "I was in the room when they said, 'We can never show this.'"

"After a few arthouse showings in 1972, Winter Soldier simply disappeared. When the movie was rereleased in the US in 2005 - partly in response to attempts, in the 2004 election, to smear John Kerry over his war record - a special screening was held, with the crew and the vets. "We didn't realise that the theatre was also filled with Afghanistan and Iraq vets," says Kopple. "The Iraq guys got up and spoke with the Vietnam vets, and their stories were so similar, the cadences of their voices were exactly the same. It was remarkable.""

"In March this year, Winter Soldier: Afghanistan and Iraq was convened in Silver Spring, Maryland. Much of the testimony, from 200 veterans, offered a chilling echo of its Vietnam forerunner. It was filmed by David Zeiger - who directed Sir! No Sir!, an extraordinary history of insubordination, mutinies and troop rebellions in Vietnam - so it should be in good hands. The only mainstream news outlet that bothered to show up was the Washington Post."

Here are a couple of the Winter Soldier 2008 testimonies; one from a former US marine and one from an Iraqi civilian. You can click here to see more.