BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A large number of Americans gathered in Washington D.C. and other US cities on Saturday, protesting President Barack Obama’s plan of launching military strikes on Syria. At a protest in Chicago, one retired veteran who had participated in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told people that by his own experiences, the US government’s reasons for launching military strikes on Syria were totally based on lies.

Aleganaro Villatoro 31, joined the Iraq war in 2003, and was later dispatched to the Afghan battlefield in 2011. However, he gradually discovered that the reasons boasted by the US government to start the wars were out of grounds.

Aleganaro Villatoro, US Retired Veteran, said, "We went there looking for weapons of massive destruction and looking for any terrorist links. And that’s to be false information. Instead, we were in search, searching into people’s home, arresting innocent people and causing more deaths."

Villatoro said he witnessed too many deaths and the destruction of many cities. The pre-war promises of peace and an economic revival failed to be fulfilled. And the damage caused by war was even worse. The US war vet and his fellow soldiers have also suffered both physically and psychologically from the war. Villatoro has even tried to end his life.

Aleganaro Villatoro, US Retired Veteran, said, "These many soldiers coming back, wounded soldiers, not only with physical problems but also mental problems, psychological problems with PTSD."

Villatoro said it was hard for him to understand Obama’s move to launch military strikes on Syria. He said lessons drawn from previous wars had not been learned.

Aleganaro Villatoro also said, "We have failed in Iraq. We have failed in Afghanistan. There are no better situation. So what are we promising to the Syrian people?"

The anti-war protests are continuing across many US cities. Villatoro and other protesters are calling for a more peaceful way to tackle the Syria crisis.

(Source: cntv.cn)