politics

As U.S. Sen. John McCain, a highly decorated veteran, is about to be nominated as the Republican candidate for president in St. Paul next week, hundreds of other veterans, many of them recently deployed to Iraq, are staging their own event at a Bloomington hotel.

But unlike McCain, these veterans are vehemently opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq, in what they say is a fast-growing movement of dissent among soldiers in and out of uniform.

The Iraq Veterans Against the War group is holding a four-day convention with Veterans for Peace at the Ramada. Both groups plan to join the antiwar march Monday from the state Capitol to the Xcel Energy Center, site of the Republican National Convention.

"I joined the Army as a direct result of Sept. 11," said Ryan Lockwood, 24, a veteran from San Francisco. "I believed we had to do something. I believed that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks of Sept. 11. I really didn't research it. I believed the president."

But after being in Iraq in 2004-05, he came to oppose the war: "We weren't helping these people, we were oppressing them. We were just raiding people's homes, going through their personal possessions, looking for weapons of destruction."

Lockwood is one of about 160 Iraq war veterans attending the conference.

The Iraq veterans group began with six vets four years ago and has mushroomed. "Now we have 50 chapters and 1,300 members in the United States, Canada, Iraq and other countries," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director and cofounder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. She was a medic and MP in the Colorado National Guard in Iraq in 2003-04.

Its youthful members are generally more active than older Veterans for Peace members, who are mostly from the Vietnam War era, says Barry Riesch, an activist in the Vets for Peace chapter in Minnesota.

"We are getting burned out and we need that energy," Riesch said.

There seemed to be plenty of energy Friday, as members went to various workshops, sharing stories and strategies.

Seth Manzel, 28, of Tacoma, Wash., said he enlisted in the Army infantry in 2002 because he needed the money. He had a wife and daughter and was laid off from his job at a gun store.

In Iraq, said Manzel, he was a driver and machine gunner, and later a vehicle commander. He didn't like what he saw. "We patrolled the streets," he said. "If they didn't get out of the way, we'd shoot their vehicles. We kicked in their doors, we rifled through their possessions." He said he also shot and killed two Iraqis.

"As soon as I got out of the Army I went to Evergreen State College [in Olympia, Wash.] and got involved in Students for a Democratic Society and joined Iraq Veterans Against the War."

Randy Furst • 612-673-7382