“What Have We Done?”





One of them, Alex Ryabov, a corporal in an artillery unit which was in Iraq the first three months of the invasion, asked for some time to formulate his response to the same question.

“I don’t think Bush will ever realize how many millions of lives he and his lackeys have ruined on their quest for money, greed and power,” he says, “To take the patriotism of the American people for granted…the fact that people (his administration) are willing to lie and make excuses for you while you continue to kill and maim the youth of America and ruin countless families…and still manage to do so with a smile on your face.”

Taking a deep breath to steady himself he continues as if addressing Bush first-hand; “You needs to resign, take the billions of dollars you’ve made off the blood and sweat of US service members….all the suffering you’ve caused us, and put those billions of dollars into the VA to take care of the men and women you sent to be slaughtered. Yet all those billions aren’t enough to even try to compensate all the people who have been affected by this.”

These new additions to Veterans for Peace are actively living the statement of purpose of the organization, having pledged to work with others towards increasing public awareness of the costs of war, to work to restrain their government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations and to see justice for veterans and victims of war, among other goals.

I type furiously for three hours, trying to keep up with the stories each of the men shared….about the atrocities of what they saw, and committed, while in Iraq.



Mejia then spoke candidly about why he refused to return:



While the military is falling short of its recruitment goals across the board and the disaster in Iraq spiraling deeper into chaos with each passing day, these are little consolation for these men who have paid the price they’ve had to pay to be at this convention. They continue to pay, but at the same time stand firm in their resolve to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq and to help their fellow soldiers.

Ryabov then begins to tell of his unit firing the wrong artillery rounds which hit 5-10 km from their intended target.

“We have no idea where those rounds fell, or what they hit,” he says quietly while two of the men hold their heads in their hands, “Now we’ve come to these realizations and we’re trying to educate people to save them from going through the same thing.”

After talking of the use of uranium munitions, of which Ryabov stated 300 tons of which were used in the ’91 Gulf War, and 2,200 tons and counting having been used thus far in the current war, he adds, “We were put in a foreign country and fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, ‘what have we done?’ We just rolled right by an Iraqi man with a gunshot in his thigh and two guys near him waving white flags….he probably bled to death.”





The men are using this time to tell more of why they are resisting the illegal occupation, and it’s difficult to ask new questions as they are adding to what one another share.

“I didn’t want to kill another soul for no reason. That’s it,” adds Henderson, “We were firing into small towns….you see people just running, cars going, guys falling off bikes…it was just sad. You just sit there and look through your binos and see things blowing up, and you think, man they have no water, living in the third world, and we’re just bombing them to hell. Blowing up buildings, shrapnel tearing people to shreds.”

Tharp jumps in and adds, “Most of what we’re talking about is war crimes…war crimes because they are directed by our government for power projection. My easy answer for not going is PTSD…but the deeper moral reason is that I didn’t want to be involved in a crime against humanity.”

Ryabov then adds, “We were put in a foreign country to fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, what have we done?”

Michael Hoffman served as a Marine Corps corporal who fought in Tikrit and Baghdad, and has since become a co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“Nobody wants to kill another person and think it was because of a lie. Nobody wants to think their service was in vain,” says Hoffman.

His response to what he would say to Mr. Bush is simple, “I would look him straight in the eye and ask him ‘why?’ And I would hold him there and make him answer me. He never has to deal with us one on one. I dare him to talk to any of us like that, one on one, and give us an answer.”

Hoffman then adds, “What about the 3 year old Iraqi girl who is now an orphan with diseases and nightmares for the rest of her life for what we did? And the people who orchestrated this don’t have to pay anything. How many times are my children going to have to go through this? Our only choice is to fight this to try to stop it from happening again.”

Earlier this same day Mr. Bush said, “We cannot leave this task half finished, we must take it all the way to the end.”


