New Haven Independent

Rick Scavetta (pictured) dropped in to share his personal experiences.

The event, organized by the New Haven Peace Council, was a local version of a Maryland event sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War. It was a 2008 version of the”Winter Soldier” hearings leading up to the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq on March 19. The first Winter Soldier hearings gained fame when then-Navy Lt. John Kerry helped organize similar hearings in 1971 against the war in Vietnam and asked who should be “the last man to die for a mistake.”

Henry Lowendorf (pictured), head of the Peace Council, reserved the Community Room at the downtown library and arranged for the live broadcast of the hearings, which began on Friday and ran through the weekend.

Scavetta showed up on Friday. Since his return from Afghanistan two years ago, he has given several talks around town about his experiences running the media operation for the Army in that country and also his years as a civilian reporter with the military newspaper, Stars & Stripes, where he was posted to Iraq as well as many other countries. He was in the Army Reserve and was called up to serve 15 months in Afghanistan when he had only six months left on his contract.

He was “stop-lossed,” in other words. His daughter was an infant when he went to Afghanistan. He said the stress of the war and the separation almost destroyed his marriage, “which is true for a lot of guys,” he added.

Scavetta said he respects the veterans speaking out in the Winter Soldier hearings, but he himself has not taken that step.

“What I have done is try to do informative sessions and give facts and let people make up their own minds. I am best at telling stories and not crossing the line into public protest. Am I against the war? Absolutely. Probably all wars I’m against now after I’ve seen what happens.” He said he’s not “one of those silent, stoic veterans who never talked about the war,” because he thinks that’s one of the reasons wars continue. Click here to hear more.

And click here for some “dark humor” as he recounts a brainstorming session in which soldiers fantasize about the memorial that will be built to their wars. It includes replicas of “Dick Cheney’s fat wallet” and “the eternal oil spout.”

The turnout was small Friday — about 15 people — but Lowendorf said he was glad to see some new faces, like Karen Gibson’s. She listened to soldiers testifying about conditions in Iraq, about the common occurrence of shooting unarmed civilians - including whole families - at checkpoints, and about the role of civilian contractors like employees of Blackwater USA. As she was on her way out of the room, she told a reporter she’d come in while awaiting her turn at one of the library’s computers.

Asked what she thought of the hearings, Gibson (pictured), said, “We only know what we see on the news every day,” so she’d learned some things. She said she had originally thought the war was necessary “because of the people who died on 9/11” but she thought it was no longer worth it. She was surprised to learn that there was no connection between the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and Saddam Hussein, as President George Bush had long maintained (but recently admitted was not the case).