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to talk about although we don’t have the time. Everyone sitting up here has these stories, and there’s been over a million troops that have gone in and out of Iraq, so the possibilities are endless.
    The reason I am doing this today is not only for myself and for the rest of society to hear. It’s for all those who can’t be here to talk about the things that we went through, to talk about the things that we did.
    Those four crosses and this memorial service were for the five guys in Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Eighth Marines that we lost. Throughout our unit, we had eighteen that got killed.

Clifton Hicks
Private, United States Army, Cavalry Scout C Troop, First Squadron, First U.S. Cavalry Regiment
Deployment: May 2003–July 2004, Southern Baghdad
Hometown: Gainesville, Florida
Age at Winter Soldier: 23 years old
    Before I begin, I have a brief statement: For the infantrymen, scouts, and tankers of C Troop First Squadron, First United States Cavalry Regiment, there are few words which can express my admiration. I can merely say that I love them with all of my heart and that I would never have made it home alive without such worthy and courageous troopers at my side. These were men who risked everything for a cause they believed was just and true. They left behind their families, their friends, and their lives. They endured the unendurable. They did this not for greed, or jealousy, or hatred, but for the sake of love, and for that they are beyond judgment. I am no judge, and I did not come here to pass judgment either on my fellow soldiers or the officers who once commanded us in war. I’m here today to pass judgment on war itself.
    First item, April 2004, free-fire zone in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood of Baghdad: During Operation Blackjack, I was instructed by our troop commander, a captain, that one sector was now a free-fire zone. He told us there were “no friendlies in the area.” He said, “Game on. All weapons free.”
    Upon arrival in the neighborhood, the streets were littered with wreckage of vehicles. Who knows if it’s a civilian vehicle or an enemy vehicle? There’s no way to tell. In addition, there wasn’t a single building that hadn’t had a hole shot through it or something exploded inside of it. The streets were littered with human and animal corpses. I did not see military gear or weapons of any kind on any of the bodies.
    I did not fire my weapon on this operation, but other members of my unit embraced the weapons-free order by firing indiscriminately into occupied civilian vehicles and at civilians themselves. They used personal weapons like rifles, vehicle-mounted weapons such as machine guns, and coaxial machine guns of various caliber. I swear until the day I die, I did not see one enemy on that operation. Judging from what I saw on the ground, the majority of those so-called KIAs were civilians attempting to flee the battlefield.
    This is what happens when a conventional force such as the U.S. military attacks a heavily populated urban area. We’re not bad people. We were there because we thought that we were gonna make things better, because these people wanted us to be there. We showed up and realized that there’s a whole bunch of people that wanted to kill us. Guess what? They look just like the folks who don’t want to kill us. How were we gonna sort them out? The only way to ensure our survival was to make sure that we put them in the dirt before they put us in the dirt, to put it bluntly.
    In November 2003, an AC-130 gunship attacked a five-building apartment complex: People shot at us from these buildings. We all thought they were calling in mortar fire on our post. There were a handful of enemy fighters who tried to kill Americans out of these apartment buildings, but they were also just regular apartment buildings occupied by families. People were out on the balconies getting fresh air. There was laundry hanging off every balcony. The place was heavily populated. Besides