Iraq War Veteran speaks out on why he became a Conscientious Objector

The text is the partial transcript of Iraq War Veteran Aidan Delgado’s slideshow presentation. The three mp3s contain more information than is transcribed here, and the video even more.

Aidan I 
My name is Aidan Joshua Delgado, I’m 23 years old, I’m a veteran of the
2nd Iraq war, I served one year in Iraq- 6 months in Nasiriya, 6 months
in Baghdad correction facility at Abu Ghraib.

I just want to say that I’m not a politician, I’m not a general- I was
an E4 specialist, I was the least of soldiers, I’m just here to give my
experience and my narrative of what I saw in Iraq and maybe it’ll touch
on some larger issues or bring home a little bit of the reality from
the war.

... Working closely with the prisoners is what really began to change
my mind and my heart about serving in this war... When I saw the faces
of the people that I was hurting, I really began to change on a
spiritual level... I looked at these guys and saw young, poor,
uneducated guys who didn’t have a lot of choices in their life, and now
they’re forced to fight us. And I looked at the guys in my own unit and
thought, "man, we’re exactly the same." All the guys in my unit
were young, poor, didn’t have the best education or choice in
life... and when I came that realization I felt all of my
fighting spirit just bleed out of me.

I looked at these people and I thought why would I hurt them, what is the purpose of me being here?


Aidan II 
About the third or fourth month I was there I began to see a lot of
ugliness, a lot of racism, a lot of anti-arab, anti-muslim sentiment
beginning to surface among members of my unit. We’d all been away from
home for months, we were sick of being there, sick of the heat, sick of
the war, and that brought out the worst in a lot of the guys that were
there.

An army master seargent in my unit, one of the highest enlisted ranks-
a group of children were bothering him for food and water and sodas and
he was tired of talking to them, so he reached back and picked up a
detached Humvee antenna.. and he lashed these children with it...

Guys in my unit used to keep glass soda bottles and they’d drive by in
their humvee and bust iraqi civilians in the head with them. And these
were just normal guys, guys who went to school with me, or lived next
door- but something about being in the war made them change.

And I used to talk to these guys and confront them, and I would get
angry and say, "What are you doing? What the hell does this
accomplish?" And they’d say, "Look man, I hate it, I hate being here, I
hate being stuck in Iraq..."

The Iraqis were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way the
occupation was growing... We squandered the goodwill that Iraqis did
have for us when we initially came to Iraq.

... The Military Police would use the cold as a means of controlling
the prisoners. When they committed an infraction they’d remove the
tents. On the second infraction they would remove their heavy clothing
and blankets, on the third infraction they’d remove almost all of their
clothing. And you’d have groups of prisoners sitting out on these
wooden platforms in their underwear or light traditional robes in 20-25
degree weather and high winds...

I found that the majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib hadn’t committed any crimes against the coalition — they hadn’t committed violent crimes.
They were at Abu Ghraib for petty theft, public drunkenness, forged coalition documents, impersonating a coalition officer,
petty nonviolent offenses and they were inside Abu Ghraib with real murderers, real rapists, real insurgents. In addition, a
large percentage of those at Abu Ghraib hadn’t committed any offense at all. The military had a policy of random
sweeps..."

The Red Cross report, section 7, states that coalition officials
estimate that 70-90% of all prisoners in Iraq had been arrested by
mistake. General Karpinski estimates that 60% of the prisoners at Abu
Ghraib met the conditions for release, but their release was denied.

Aidan III 


Video of Mr. Delgado giving this slideshow presentation