The “Winter Soldier Investigation“ was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War intended to publicize allegations of war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War, while showing their direct relationship to military leadership and the foreign and “anti-Communist” policies of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential administrations.

The treasonous John Kerry (D-MA) was a participant with this band of offbeat veterans with ponytails and scraggly beards.

Drudge is reporting that active duty members of the U.S. Military will be on 60 Minutes to speak out on the war in Iraq.

They say they are not disloyal. They say they are not shirking their duty and that they do not oppose war. But over 1,000 active-duty and reserve members of the U.S. military are against the war in Iraq and have said so in an unusually public way — by petitioning Congress last month.

“I’m not anti-war. I’m not a pacifist. I’m not opposed to protecting our country and defending our principles,” says Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, an Iraq war veteran who, along with another veteran, initiated the petition. A 1995 law called the Military Whistleblower act enables military personnel to express their own opinions about Iraq in protected communication directly to Congress. Hutto and others spoke with 60 MINUTES while off duty, off base and out of uniform as conscientious citizens. “But at the same time, as citizens, it’s our obligation to have a questioning attitude… about policy.”

Marine Sgt. Liam Madden, who helped Hutto to found the organization they call Appeal for Redress that has attracted 1,000 other military members, is more blunt. “Just because we volunteered for the military doesn’t mean we volunteered to put our lives in unnecessary harm and to carry out missions that are illogical and immoral.”

Most troops don’t feel the way these small bands of protesters do.

Other Iraqi war veterans still on duty there believe Appeal for Redress misses a larger point. “As an American soldier, I feel like we took an oath to obey the orders of our commander-in-chief and officers appointed over us,” says Army Spec. James Smauldon. Said another serviceman in Iraq, Army Capt. Lawrence Nunn, “I know what I’m here fighting for, to give the Iraqi people some democracy and hope, so I am 100 percent behind this mission. You don’t sign up to pick which war you go to.”

Some of these troops are no better than the backtrackers in Congress.

“Our leadership gets to choose the mission. Congress gets to choose the mission,” Staff Sgt. Matt Nuckolls says. He’s loyally committed to whatever Congress wants him to do but savors the right to question it. “My Congressman is Lacy Clay. I would like to tell him as a constituent of his, ‘Is the mission in Iraq really what you want us to be doing?’ And then [if] he responds yes, okay, well, we go back to Iraq and keep doing what we’re doing.”

We might point out the mission is up to the President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief and the military commanders in the Armed Forces, particularly those on the ground in Iraq.

These soldiers are misguided and need to recognize they volunteered to serve in the U.S. Military, took and oath and should be committed to all the troops serving with them.

John Murtha (D-PA) and John Kerry would be proud of these protestors who stand alongside Jane Fonda and our enemy in placing our committed soldiers in the hands of our enemy. The Whistleblowers Act wasn’t designed to publicly second guess commanders in the field.

We call that treason.