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Iraq War Veteran speaks out on
why he became a Conscientious Objector
Aidan Joshua Delgado
July 15, 2005

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: Audio Download (MP3)
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: Audio Download (MP3)
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: Audio Download (MP3)

Video of Mr. Delgado giving this slideshow presentation