During the first week of June, Congress will be voting on a funding bill for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan through the middle of 2009. On May 15, the House of Representatives voted down a $162 billion funding bill (149-141), largely because 132 Republicans abstained from voting for tactical reasons (not because they are opposed to funding the occupation). On May 22, the Senate approved the funding for $165.4 billion (70-26). A House-Senate conference committee is now working on a compromise bill.

Both Colorado Senators Allard and Salazar voted in favor of the funding on May 22. Boulder's Congressman Mark Udall, along with Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and John Salazar, voted for the May 15 funding bill.

Mark Udall has voted for every funding bill since the occupation began in 2003. Year after year, he has used this same excuse: he has to support the troops. If that is the case, then he needs to remove them from a situation in which they are killing and terrorizing innocent people and are themselves getting killed, maimed and psychologically damaged on a daily basis. If, as he claims, he is truly against the occupation, then he needs to join the 149 colleagues in the House who voted against the funding earlier this month.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace want Congress to defund the occupation now. Their forthright message: "Funding the War is Killing Our Troops". They want Congress to provide funds only for the safe and orderly withdrawal of troops and for the care the soldiers will need when they get home.

In testimony at the Winter Soldier 2008 hearings (ivaw.org/wintersoldier) in March 2008 and in Congress in May 2008, Iraq veterans spoke powerfully about their experiences. The testimony of a few of the soldiers about the inhumanity and dehumanizing effects of the occupation follows:

CAMILO MEJIA:

"But when I arrived in Iraq, the first mission we had was one in which we kept prisoners sleep-deprived for periods of up to three days in order to soften them up for interrogation. And because of the way that our leadership was conducting itself, driven mostly by ambition and with total disregard for the lives of civilians, we ended up killing a lot of unarmed people. And a lot of these things were things that could have been prevented, but that were not, not because soldiers on the ground are bad apples or wake up one day as monsters, but because there's a policy behind everything that we do that is criminal."

SERGIO KOCHERGIN:

"We would shoot their tires out or shoot their windows, putting them on their knees like we're about to execute them and just shoot in the air and laugh and yell at them and tell them that the next time will be worse. Our orders directly from command was to roughen up all the guys up. They would always tell us that everybody is an enemy and that we can't trust them and the only way to keep them in place is to put as much fear as possible and to let them know that we're not playing around."

JON MICHAEL TURNER:

"On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed killed. This man was innocent. He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn't kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. So I took another shot and took him out.".

"House raids -- a lot of the raids and patrols we did were at night around 3:00 in the morning -- and what we would do is just kick in the doors and terrorize the families. If the men of the household were giving us problems, we'd go ahead and take care of them any way we felt necessary, whether it be choking them or slamming their head against the walls."

It's time to stop these atrocities and many more (www.ivaw.org) and end the funding for the occupation of Iraq. Please call your U.S. House member (Mark Udall for Boulder) and Senators Allard and Salazar at 800-828-0498 and 202-224-3121 and ask them to vote against funding. Mark Udall will be at Manhattan Middle School at 290 Manhattan in Boulder this morning at 8:15 a.m. Come talk to him in person. The occupation won't end until we make it clear we won't take no for an answer.

Carolyn Bninski is on the staff of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. "Peace Train" runs in the Colorado Daily every Friday. The opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Colorado Daily management or staff.