An Iraqi couple and their two small children—a four year old boy and a three year old girl—drive down a desert road near the city of Tikrit. Up ahead, there is a U.S. military traffic control point manned by soldiers in desert camouflage. The checkpoint wasn’t there the day before. In an instant, a volley of .50 caliber rounds shreds car metal and glass, human flesh and bone. They family is killed, their bodies ravaged by more than 200 rounds of ammunition in less than 60 seconds.

A young U.S. machine gunner—his head filled with images and reports of frequent suicide bomb attacks—sees a car approaching his checkpoint. Thinking the car might blow up when it reaches him, he opens fire. His job is to protect his fellow soldiers. He has seconds to act. A mother, father, little boy and girl are killed. No explosives are discovered.

In front of a crowd of about 100 people in a North Campus lecture hall, Geoff Millard, who served as a Sergeant in U.S. National Guard 42 Infantry Division until 2006, recalls preparing a report on the killing of the Iraqi family for his superiors. All reports for his commanding officers came through him before moving up the ladder. He remembers being in a room full of high ranking military officials, being briefed on the incident, when one of his superior officers spoke up.

“If those fucking hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen,” said Colonel Rochelle, the 42 Infantry Division DISCOMM commander.

In a room full of military brass, there was silence. No one questioned Colonel Rochelle’s implication that the Iraqi family was responsible for their own deaths. Millard was dumbfounded.

He was well aware of the fact that many ground soldiers had lost hope. He had, however, held on to the notion that those who were orchestrating the war believed in its altruism.

“I thought at least the upper echelon would think the way that supposedly this whole mission was about, like bringing freedom to the Iraqi people,” he said to the crowd. “When I realized that they didn’t, I couldn’t understand why we could possibly continue a war as a military that none of us believed in any more.”

His talk at the University at Buffalo, titled “From War to Anti-War: A Report on Winter Soldier 2008,” was sponsored by the department of American Studies and the Western New York Peace center. At the talk, Millard gave the same account he had given at the Winter Soldier conference less than a week earlier.

The accounts of about 100 veterans were heard at the Winter Soldier event, which took place at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland between March 13 and March 16, 2008. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) sponsored Winter Soldier; Millard is now president of the D.C. chapter. A forum just like it was held over a three day period in 1971, and was sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).

Topics ranged from violation of the rules of engagement to racism and dehumanization of the enemy. All of these issues were discussed within the context of each soldier’s personal experience—many to the point of self-implication. Many soldiers openly admitted to committing and witnessing war crimes. The forum gave soldiers the opportunity to discuss their personal accounts of the war publicly and to speak out against it—acts that the military does not support.

“They just want you to take your medals and shut up,” said Millard.

Stories told at Winter Soldier presented a debasing panorama of the occupation of Iraq. A panorama in which countless U.S. soldiers are openly disillusioned with a war many of them once believed in. One where American sons and daughters are driven to kill by fear and necessity, leaving scores of innocent casualties in their wake. One in which the political rhetoric that has dominated the dialogue on the occupation of Iraq does not correlate with the experiences of soldiers on the ground. One in which soldiers are refusing to carry out missions—an act of GI resistance known as “search and avoid.”

Millard, an undergraduate African American Studies major at UB when he was deployed, asserted that GI resistance has occurred throughout history. Indeed historical record contains numerous examples of GI resistance, but he posits that “we’ve been convinced by this military that that never happened.”

In reality, GI resistance was one of the major factors leading to the end of the Vietnam War, and forced the U.S. Army to increase bombing campaigns when soldiers refused to carry out ground missions or engage in combat—often moving to completely uninhabited areas.

The disparity between Washington press releases and soldier’s firsthand experiences, apparent at the Winter Soldier Conference, might have created a more informed and widespread dialogue on the occupation of Iraq. Instead, major American media outlets barely covered the event, and it went largely unnoticed by the American public.

“I really wish that a hundred veterans could get together to tell their stories and everyone would stop what they’re doing and pay attention,” said Millard.

Millard—who now works as a journalist and has participated in a number of international peace delegations—repeatedly stressed the importance of understanding what happens on the ground in Iraq, and why it often breeds hatred of Americans in general.

“You have to have that critical understanding of what is done in our names around the world,” he said. “And right now the ambassadors for the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and for much of the world are U.S. soldiers with rifles.”

In an interview with Generation following his speaking engagement, Millard described the paradox that weighs upon so many of these inadvertent ambassadors.

“How can you blame the kid who fears for his life every time a vehicle comes close because he’s seen suicide bombers?” he asked. “But how can you blame an Iraqi for struggling to get to work on time? We’ve all done it…but we don’t have to worry about American convoys on our roads that might be there one day, might not be there the next day.”

One can not blame individuals on either side of the conflict, he says. “All you can do is blame the occupation itself. The occupation needs to come to an end because it is inherently problematic.”

Video and in-depth coverage of the Winter Soldier is available online at ivaw.org, democracynow.org, and truthout.org.