Could there be a more desolate, chilly expression? The Winter Soldier was about the boiling, unwintery Vietnam war. A three-day gathering organised in 1971 in Detroit by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was used to publicise war crimes by the U.S. forces. It generated a documentary by the same name.

With Iraq, this expression was reborn. The Winter Soldier embodies the fight of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans against the war, and their efforts to provide testimony on what really happened during the invasions and after. Hundreds of veterans and soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars met last March for Winter Soldier hearings modeled after the 1971 conferences. While this story was totally ignored by the mainstream press, IPS was one of the very few media outlets to cover it.