GEOFFREY MILLARD: You asked in your question, Congresswoman, what can you do to move forward with veterans coming home with scars that can’t be seen by the eye, ones of mental wounds. Well, in Iraq Veterans Against the War, we didn’t wait for the VA. We started a counseling group called Homefront Battle Buddies. In the Washington, D.C. chapter, which I’m the president of, we meet every Sunday at the Washington, D.C. office, our home, to meet for our Homefront Battle Buddies. That program is expanding nationally. We in Iraq Veterans Against the War have a saying, that we’re not going to wait for politicians to end the war. We ended the war every day in what we do. We also do the same when it comes to our other goals, including taking care of veterans: we’ve started counseling groups.


But what you can do, start simply with getting more Iraq veterans into college with the GI Bill. Even myself, with an honorable discharge and nine years of service, I’m not eligible under the current GI Bill for any benefits. The GI Bill is the start, but also making sure that the Veterans Administration is fully funded, making sure that there is no waiting list for PTSD care. We have seen multiple suicides this year alone on veterans who have been waiting on a waiting list to get mental healthcare at a VA. This is inexcusable. There should never be a waiting list for any veteran, especially not one so young coming home from Iraq, when they ask for mental healthcare. These are the types of things that while we move forward in Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Congress can certainly move more funding into the VA, more funding into our veterans as they come home and out of the occupation. Thank you.


REP. MAXINE WATERS: Let me just try and focus for a moment on Fallujah. I know that there have been a lot of—a lot of confrontations and a lot of fighting in different areas. But for some reason, Fallujah loomed large at the point that we were learning about it and the images that we were seeing coming back about Fallujah. And it looked as if our military was going door-to-door, kicking down doors and shooting anything that moved. Is that a correct assumption? Could you just describe a little bit what happened in Fallujah?


ADAM KOKESH: I believe what you’re referring to was the second battle of Fallujah in November. I was there for the first battle, when the primary military action was the siege of the city, and I was there for the whole interim period in the summer. I left in September of 2004.


But what I saw was that at the Civil Military Operations Center where I worked is that we created the Fallujah Brigade and handed over security of the city to this brigade of Iraqi Security Forces. And we knew, and I as a sergeant knew and all of my Marines knew, that by June of 2004 we were essentially arming and equipping the insurgency in Fallujah by providing supplies for what we called the Fallujah Brigade. And we waited until August to disband—announce that we were disbanding the Fallujah Brigade and ask that members turn in their American-issued ID cards and uniforms and weapons, and told them that if they didn’t, they would never get another federal job. And the reason we were able to say that was because despite the handover of power happening on June 28, we were still handling all payroll for the Iraqi Security Forces, at least where I was.


And we didn’t go into the city of Fallujah for the second battle until after the presidential elections of 2004, because I believe that the President knew he could not get elected with the headline of twenty Marines dead in downtown Fallujah, which I believe is what it would have been had we gone through when we knew, at least by our thinking at the time, that we would have had to go through Fallujah. And not only did numerous Americans die unnecessarily in that battle, because as ignorant as people were to what it meant that there were eight battalions poised outside of the city of Fallujah, the insurgents knew, and they were ready for the soldiers that went in. And as it was, almost a hundred Americans lost their lives in that battle. But not only that, numerous Marines died every single day maintaining that loose cordon of Fallujah throughout the summer of 2004.


But what it’s made clear is that this administration has chosen a policy for this country that values looking good over doing right. And as soon as you choose looking good over doing right, you will fail miserably at both. It is what we are doing as a country right now. It is what our leadership is doing. And it is what the Democratic Party has done, since it took power in 2006, when it decided that it would be more concerned with looking good than doing right, in terms of the policy towards Iraq, in order to secure an advantage for the 2008 election. My apologies to members of the Democratic Party in the room, but it is clear to me that that policy of looking good over doing right has been established firmly by this administration and has poisoned not only the military culture but our entire society and political

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