Dear EmailNation Subscriber,

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

The abuses documented in the article, often fatal, usually go unreported and almost always go unpunished, according to these veterans. Those interviewed, who stress that these acts were perpetrated by a minority of US troops, describe a military operating without clear rules of engagement and without adequate training.