http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20254/

gg - this is a little snippet of an Alternet interview with the man who used to be the chief neurosurgeon at Landstuhl.

But many of these soldiers are not included in the numbers put out by the Pentagon for soldiers wounded in action in Iraq, which is right now around 7,500. Is there an important distinction between combat and non-combat related injuries?

Well, you should probably look up a military manual to get the definitions exactly right, but here's how I understand it: Say you're on duty, something blows up or you get shot, that's what they call a combat injury. But if you get in a truck accident or a Humvee rolls over you, that's defined as non-combat. So you can get a Purple Heart for the former and not for the latter.

And yes, we don't hear about the non-combat injuries and illnesses. I've seen figures that are now upwards of 30,000. I know that at least 20,000 have been air-evacuated into the Landstuhl system. These are also people who have suffered doing what we as a country are asking of them. As to why they're not recognized, they seem to be of lesser importance in that they're not mentioned. I don't think that's fair.

For Whom the Death Tolls

Deliberate Undercounting of "Coalition" Fatalities
By PAUL de ROOIJ

There is evidence of a concerted effort afoot to obfuscate the number of casualties in the recent crop of US-led wars. May 1st was the day the president Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared the end to the war and the start of the occupation of Iraq [1]. Since then many casualty numbers have been publicized, most of them disingenuous fudges of the real death toll. There are many reasons why the casualty toll is understated, and these are dissected here.

The Bush regime is doing its best to hide the human cost of its recent wars. Publicity of the soldiers' deaths is bad during an election year, and would be bad for the continued justification for the American occupation of Iraq. If they are intent on hiding the casualty figures, then it behooves us to uncover and amplify them.


Are We a "Coalition"?

The US propagandists and the media refer to the term "coalition" when it suits them. When it is important to show that the US didn't act alone without UN authorization, then the virtues of the "coalition" are extolled. When the purpose is to reduce the numbers of casualties reported and to hide the death toll, then it is convenient to count the US casualties exclusively. The fact that British, Danish, Spanish, Polish, and Iraqis working for US aren't added to the casualty tally used by the media is less than honest.

If one found that the US media focused exclusively on US casualties, then this may be understandable. The British are the second most important contingent in the so-called coalition, and one would expect the British media to report casualties of both the US and UK. However, when reporting on the seriousness of the situation the BBC also separates the figures and focuses on the US casualties. BBC Online has numerous articles dealing exclusively with US casualties, and separately there are a few articles on British casualties [2]. One can only interpret this as an attempt to reduce the reported numbers and hide the scale of the resistance against the "coalition". And downplaying the British casualties even in British media is odd to say the least.





Classification Fudge

If a soldier steps on a landmine, should the victim be classified as a "hostile" casualty? How about someone killed clearing mines? In order to arrive at the media-reported fatality statistics, one must actually classify several such deaths as "non-hostile" -- which are thus not reported by most media, as they only report the soldiers killed by "hostile" action. Of course, the major news groups are not required to use the propaganda compliant numbers -- they keep extensive lists too. And if they aren't willing to work out the numbers themselves, they could refer to Lunaville (a good quality data source) [3]. However, the classification currently used definitely results in a reduction of the number of reported casualties. It is also clear that the Pentagon's numbers are used widely; otherwise, one couldn't explain how CNN's figures are the same as those reported by the BBC. Anyone attempting to record casualty figures, distinguishing for cause of death, would most likely have derived a different tally. Since this is not the case with major media, one can only infer that the use of propaganda compliant numbers serves to reduce the reported toll.

There is also clear manipulation of the data. For example, soldiers killed by hostile actions are subsequently reclassified as accidental deaths [4]. The simple fact that this manipulation is evident to anyone willing to investigate this should be reason enough to report all the fatalities irrespective of their reported cause of death, but this is not the case.

The graph below shows a relatively high level of "non-hostile" deaths during May 2003. It looks somewhat suspicious, and it may be an interesting question that intrepid embedded journalists could ask of their Pentagon handlers. Initially there were many deaths due to "Humvee rollovers" -- 17 to be precise; perhaps soldiers now wear seat belts explaining why this cause of death has disappeared. A more likely explanation is that the cause of death was really due to hostile action, i.e., rollovers of an explosive kind. Even a simple eyeball approach to statistics reveals an odd reduction of the "non-hostile" deaths in the graph.

Honest reporting would require tallying a casualty if the victim would be alive today had they not been in Iraq. Dying of heatstroke, unexplained illnesses, clearing landmines, Humvee rollovers, suicide, fragging [5], should all be included in the tally. Only then is it possible to obtain a better picture of what is happening on the ground, and estimate what the real casualty figures may be like in the future. And there is one argument that Americans will surely understand: these numbers also indicate how costly this occupation is going to be in dollar terms.

Some Statistics

It is curious that for a nation obsessed with stock market charts virtually no news organization publishes soldier fatality charts. The chart below merges the fatalities of both the US and uk (yes, lowercase uk -- the British contingent is less than 10% of the total). It is clear that there is an upward fatality trend, and this is surprising because all foreign military forces in Iraq have reduced their exposure. For example, this is what Patrick Cockburn had to say about this:

Overall, the capture of Saddam Hussein seems to have made little difference to the level of resistance. This is not immediately obvious, because the number of attacks on US forces is down to about 17 a day now, compared with twice that two months ago. But this is in large part because, eager to cut their casualties, US commanders cut the number of patrols they carry out by two thirds from 1,500 a day in November to 500 a day in December.
So, if the exposure to potential threats has diminished, and the casualty rate is up, then this only means one thing: the resistance is growing fiercer. The overall average rate of fatalities stands at 1.5 per day for the May 1 through Jan. 27, 2004 period. The rate in the last month stands at 1.8, and the forecast for the fatality rate in May 2004 is 2.1/day. The rate of fatalities is increasing. Whereas during the first four months of the occupation the reported "hostile" causes of fatalities stood at 50%, now this has risen to 66% for the period May 1st thru Jan. 27, 2004.


Curiously, no media organization publishes the racial composition of the fatalities. Find a table below, this refers to the May 1, 2003 through Jan 27, 2004 period.

Race/ethnic group of US-uk soldiers (1/v/03 - 27/i/04) KIA


WHITE 283 67%
BLACK 53 13%
HISPANIC 37 9%
OTHER 8 2%
NA 9 8%
WOMEN 10 2..4%
TOTAL 420 (most recent numbers show 536)
Classification done by author from photographs. This is an imperfect means of classification, but no other source is available.

The racial composition of the casualties remains roughly constant, with a slight increase in the number of whites killed (this has gone from 65 to 68% of the total).

The average age and the average military rank of the fatalities are also increasing. The explanation for this is that frontline troops tend to be younger and have lower rank. So, when the conflict changes from a hot war to occupation there is a shift in the nature of casualties: these go from frontline soldiers to reserve duty soldiers; the latter tend to be older and have higher rank. Furthermore, the Iraqi resistance's methods to attack the troops also explain this pattern. Mortars lobbed into military camps give everyone an even chance of getting hurt; the same holds for military convoys hit by "IEDs" (a new military term for: improvised explosive device).

Finally, for a culture obsessed with financial or weather forecasts, it is odd that no one forecasts the military fatalities. In an article in September 2003, I forecasted that the US-uk fatalities from May 1st to Dec. 31st would be 378; the actual number turned out to be 374. Again, this isn't rocket science, it just requires some basic statistics. The forecast for the May 1, 2003 until May 1, 2004 is of 610 US-uk military fatalities, although it is likely that it will be somewhat lower since the Iraqi resistance is running out of explosives and ammunition. A forecast around 560 fatalities is more probable, unless the Iraqis manage to bring down a transport plane -- the one hit on Jan. 8th had 69 military personnel on board, but fortunately it wasn't shot down.

Today's Miracle Workers

There have been thousands of soldiers transferred to Germany or the US for medical treatment. Initially, one found the occasional report of a soldier who subsequently died of his wounds in hospital. During the past few months, there have been only three reports of such deaths even though the casualty rate has increased. Either such fatalities are now classified as medical malpractice, or the doctors are performing miracles and keeping all wounded soldiers alive. At least two suicides of returning soldiers at a military hospital were treated as local casualties. One thing is certain, there is ample dishonesty creeping into the counting of the death toll by refusing to count those dying at hospitals such as the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington.


Mercenaries

Another important factor influencing the tally are the mercenaries. The number of mercenaries has increased markedly. If one travels to the Baghdad airport one finds many Gurkhas in guard posts. There are 300 Fijian mercenaries in Iraq hired by a private contractor, and there are other private security personnel working elsewhere in Iraq. When these folks are killed, many of them also American citizens, then their numbers don't inflate the casualty toll. A recent BusinessWeek article on the mercenary industry reported the deaths of some of the employees of a Haliburton subsidiary; these deaths will not inflate the death toll statistics. The attitude seems to be that they were just paid to do a risky job; if they were killed, tough luck! With this situation, it is impossible to obtain the true death toll.

On August 20th a translator wearing a full US Army uniform was killed, yet his death doesn't count as a fatality statistic in the CentCom press releases. The translator must have been on a contract with the US Army, and although he was an American citizen, his death won't count. CNN or the BBC also don't count this victim, and this can be easily determined by checking the extensive lists kept by both these news organizations. By excluding such deaths from their tallies, both CNN and BBC remain propaganda-compliant.


Errors and Omissions

Anyone trying to make sense of the casualty numbers reported by CentCom or DefenseLink will find increasingly that there are reporting errors [6]. For example, dates are sometimes wrong, the archive records are incomplete (e.g., DefenseLink October listing is incomplete and until recently one could not retrieve early records) and the number of casualties in one of these sources doesn't match the other. CentCom failed to report altogether the 17 deaths from a helicopter collision on Nov. 15th. On Nov. 2nd, sixteen soldiers were reported killed in the recent downing of the Chinook helicopter, while the initial CentCom report only listed 15, and it was not updated; when one adds up the confirmed deaths in the DefenseLink website, then one only counts 14. The other little errors are simply boring but it points to a concerted effort to obfuscate the death toll.


Only dead count?

It is rather odd only to be concerned about counting the dead.

There are plenty of soldiers maimed and their lives ruined. Although the number of these casualties is putatively available, it is only made available if requested by journalists. One can only conclude that there haven't been too many requests, thus explaining the difficulty in obtaining these statistics.

Some soldiers may not appear in any statistic yet, but many are near areas where Depleted Uranium munitions [aka, DU ammo] were used -- this even occurred in the middle of Baghdad, where even a water treatment plant was demolished with DU-ammo. Vast stretches of Iraq have been poisoned from the reckless bombing of chemical and nuclear sites, and now soldiers are expected to work there. The war departments of both the UK and US are intent on hiding the numbers of new Gulf-War-Syndrome cases, but a court case in London has revealed that there already are some. Given that many more soldiers died from this syndrome than on the 1991 Gulf War battlefield, then one must expect a new death toll to emerge in the months to come, and it will likely not appear on the CNN tally. Soldiers are forced to work in a toxic soup [7] and when soldiers die of horrible diseases this will likely be in the US, and thus will not be counted.

Callousness: Exhibit 1.

President Bush exhibits some unexplained callousness when confronted with the soldier casualties; the likely reason for this may be that he is empathy-impaired. He has not attended any soldier funerals, and he has seldom visited wounded soldiers in the hospital - so much for "supporting our troops". It is also clear that the White House is doing its best to hide the statistics or references to the soldier casualties. The wounded soldiers are flown in at night, and journalists are barred from reporting on the arrival of coffins, or their burial. Again, mention of the casualties is bad for the justification of the continuation of the occupation of Iraq, and it is bad for politics during an election year.

Soon at a Mall Near You.

Military analysts report a very high incidence of suicides in Iraq when compared to other conflicts, and there have been some evacuations of soldiers due to mental distress. The period of service is long, the stress is very high, and therefore we can expect large number of mental disorders to develop. When these soldiers return to the US, to a society that is not supporting them or assisting them with their mental condition, we can then expect a shooting rampage or two. These are true ticking time bombs, soon to boost a death tally.


How about the Iraqis

CNN and BBC rarely report on the "coalition"-Iraqi soldiers or policemen killed. They make a statistic the day a bomb explodes, but then there is no running tally for them. This privilege of appearing in a tally is reserved only for American or British casualties.

The number of other Iraqis killed is also not reported, and journalists are barred from visiting the morgues to determine this side of the ghastly death toll. It is important for us to know this statistic simply to know if the locals have a legitimate grievance and if the occupation is sitting on top of an unmanageable situation. Again, the release of such information is taboo to the new owners of Iraq.


Blood-Soaked Cake

The neocons cheered on the war against Iraq claiming it would be a cakewalk. When questions arose about the wisdom of this war, they recited the "support our troops" mantra, and now they are squabbling among themselves to determine which country to target next. These dogs of war are safely ensconced in their air-conditioned think tanks, not really giving a damn about who is being killed or who is paying for all of this, and now they are banging the war drums for their next foray. The execrable Richard Perle also stated that "we" are in Iraq for the long haul no matter the cost [8].

Unfortunately, there are many Americans who seem to be content with this state of affairs and who don't seem to mind the terrible cost exacted from the people in the area. The only thing that seems to matter is the number of American (and possibly British) soldiers killed, but even that real interest is not adequately answered. As shown in this article, the propagandists are intent on obfuscating these statistics and are even seeking to hide the arrival of the coffins back in the US. To avoid further wars, to truly "support our troops," and to rein in the insufferable neocons, it is essential that the population at large be made aware of the costs of these wars.

Everyone should be made aware of the terrible toll in terms of blood and money.


Paul de Rooij is a writer living in London. He can be reached at proox@hotmail.com
(NB: all emails with attachments will be automatically deleted.)


Endnotes

[1] To be propaganda compliant one would have to state that on May 1st the president declared that the US halted "major combat operations." Given the mounting casualties post-May 1st, the White House emphasizes that it didn't declare an end to the war then, but an end to the hot war.

[2] BBC Online keeps a list of all the fatalities, but then this only refers to the American fatalities!
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3019552.stm

[3] http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx NB: the data used for this report overlaps to a great extent with this data source. The difference between the two is that some errors have been corrected, and some casualties have been added that are not available in the official record, but only in the media accounts.

[4] Predictable Propaganda, CounterPunch September 2, 2003.

[5] Shooting the commanding officer is called fragging. There already has been one such incident.

[6] After a fatality occurs CentCom issues a simple press release. These can be viewed here: www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews. Some days afterwards DefenseLink will issue a press release stating the name of the victims with a brief explanation. These releases can be viewed here: www.defenselink.mil/releases/

[7] Discussed in the January 1, 2004 interview with Doug Rokke, an Army Reserve Major, conducted by Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints (www.flashpoints.net/index.html).

[8] If Perle deems fit to refer to an eminent journalist as the "execrable Robert Fisk", then it is fair game to label him likewise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3019552.stm

http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij09022003.html

http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/

http://www.flashpoints.net/index.html

U.S. accused of reporting less than half its casualties in Iraq

WASHINGTON, May 26 – Prensa Latina informs that official US reports on Iraq reflect less than half the numbers of soldiers killed in that war of aggression, according to an article by El Diario-La Prensa online in New York.

An article datelined San Juan, Puerto Rico, says that troops under the US command have suffered at least 4,076 fatal casualties over 799 days of action.

The information markedly contrasts with reports published by the authorities in Washington, which focus on the fallen wearing US uniforms, which totals 1,649, the article notes.

It refers to the difficulties encountered by the Puerto Rican government in obtaining a figure of total Puerto Rican casualties during the present war.

Even more difficult are estimates of the wounded, which the U.S. acknowledges are in excess of 12,600 troops, and the so-called medical casualties, about which only scraps of information emerge.

Pentagon Casualty Figures in Question
June 2004
Stations, the following is a news announcement. Suggested lead in 3, 2, 1...

(INTRO)

The latest Pentagon figures show over 6,000 American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a report airing Friday on PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers says thousands of soldiers are not being counted because the Pentagon's official tally includes only those whose wounds were caused by combat.

Susan Brewer runs America's Heroes of Freedom that provides aid to the returning wounded.

(BREWER)

I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU'RE NOT HEARING THOSE NUMBERS. I CAN'T REALLY TELL YOU WHY YOU'RE NOT. BUT I'M TELLING YOU THAT THEY ARE VERY LARGE.

Steve Robinson, a former Army Ranger who now runs the National Gulf War Resource Center, says the Pentagon is undercounting casualties to hide the true human cost of war.

(ROBINSON)

THEY BELIEVE THAT BY PUTTING THIS INFORMATION OUT, IT'S SOMEHOW GOING TO AFFECT PUBLIC OPINION. IT'S NOT POSSIBLE THAT THEY ARE NOT AWARE, OR THAT THIS IS NOT A PURPOSEFUL ATTEMPT TO SKEW, OR PREVENT PEOPLE FROM UNDERSTANDING THE BIGGER PICTURE.

(CLOSE)

Some estimate that if non-combat casualties were included, the total count could rise to over 15,000. NOW with Bill Moyers airs Friday on PBS at 9:00 p.m. (check local listings).

###

For your information, what you claim as denigrate towards military personnel in here is really a mistaken observation on your part with those of us who makes aware all possible facts and information that exposes 'anyone' who supports lies and this corrupt BushCon regine. What that stands for is dissent against corruption in behalf of patriotism, the real one and not the plastic nationalism built by the GOP. In fact, most of us who have participated in this thread did so with an open mind and looking to dig into the lies that are out there. Others comes here to spread their own Bush style propaganda and protect it's lies. There's no law against that.... just as there's no law against what we do in this forum that digs for the truth and share in our opinions with what we discover. I sure you understand that freedom of speech and expression that we all share in.

You also defend some of your pals who has posted here but you do so as if others have decided to question their authority or expertise. First of all, there's nobody here that can prove who they really are or say they are. Secondly, I think we all have correct information and some misinformation. I have in fact, found some of those that you feel to support, as providing lies in their time. That I will not discuss any further out of respect of this forum and those. Not that everything in life is the God's honest truth... that's normal, but I personally judge those in how they treat me. I myself, treat others with respect as they treat me. Then there's that 'lifer' thing. I have another thread that explains more with all of that further and will not bore you with those details here. In all, what it takes is common respect. That's right... respect. If for some reason you may sense that I do not treat some others in here with respect.... you can be damn sure that it was they who treated me without respect first! As I have said publicly several times before, I have only responded in the like followed by what is known as 'return fire'. FYI.

I hope that this helped shed some light with your curious posting that you made here. So far, you and I have not crossed paths... or maybe in some 'strange' way we have... but as far as your 'avatar' goes, we'll just say that we haven't for sake of maintaining respect for each other as I will continue to do so until other possible provocations shows differently. As for your pals, better yours than mine. I know who to respect for I have had decades of experiences of those who has earned the right to either hold my respect or lose it.

I welcome your posts and fair open minded views. As for me, I will continue to expose what's out there and return fire when applicable (when fired upon). Civil debates are always fair game. Your 'pals' has brought me to engage in 'special' missions here. I have publicly announced that also. Say, you know what the real hoot is here? The more they litter in threads the more special missions comes about. Kind of like that BushCon word, 'growning insurgents'. The more insurgency, the more missions needed. You'd think lifer intelligence could even figure that out but that's where lifer ego gets in their way.

While you are here, I have a sincere question for you. Is there not medical facilities available to the US military located in these neighboring countries to Iraq that could be used for treating minor injuries that comes from the Iraq/Afghanistan combat areas? Are there not many hospital naval ships throughout this region that can also take on lighter injuries instead of so many going to far off Germany as some articles have reported? Say like Israel, Kuwait, Yemen, Qatar, Oman, and Cyprus. I'm really surprised that many of these light injuries are not taken care of right inside Iraq and Afghanistan! This question is open for all to answer.

Oustanding article Gabrielle! You found an article that supported my 1 of 8 formula that I used earlier for war dead casualty counts in Iraq and Afghnaistan based on the reported 20,000 injured.

That and the fact that 20,000 troops flown to Germany where more than 1/2 are treated for minor stuff simply does not make 'any' good sense at all.

Thanks so far for your fine contributions here.

This article supports approx 6,000 DESERTERS as of Dec, 2004.


http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20...35722-3476r.htm


Washington, DC, Dec. 16, 2004

[Cumulatively, more than 6,000 service members from all branches have deserted the military since fiscal year 2003, when the war with Iraq began. About 3,500 military service members have deserted their jobs in the last 14 months.]


The Army counts 2,520 deserters in fiscal year 1998; 2,966 in 1999; 3,949 in 2000; 4,597 in 2001; 4,483 in 2002; and 3,678 in 2003.

The Marines count 1,297 deserters in 2004; 1,236 in 2003; 1,136 in 2002; 1,603 in 2001; and 1,574 in 2000.

The Air Force had considerably lower numbers of deserters: four so far in fiscal year 2005; 50 in 2004; 56 in 2003; 88 in 2002; 62 in 2001; 46 in 2000 and 45 in 1999.

The Navy did not return its data at press time.

Numbers will conflict somewhat from article to article .... report to report, but some media reports shows that desertions seems to be on the rise and much higher than reported due to this Iraq mess.

http://www.skyhen.org/Focus/draft/desertio...in_iraq_war.php

Desertion huge problem for US in Iraq war

Andrew Buncombe, NZ Herald
May 23, 2005

The most recent Pentagon figures suggest that 5133 troops remain missing from duty. Of these, 2376 are sought by the Army, 1410 by the Navy, 1297 by the Marines and 50 by the Air Force.

But campaigners say the true figure of those who have gone Awol could be much, much higher. Staff who run a volunteer hotline to help desperate soldiers and new recruits looking to get out or else having discovered at basic training that military life is not for them, say the number of calls has increased by 50 per cent since 9/11. Last year alone, the GI Rights Hotline received more than 30,000 calls. At the moment the hotline is receiving up to 3000 calls a month and the volunteers say that by the time a soldier or new recruit dials the help line he or she has almost always decided to get out by one means or another.

It's hard to dertimine the truth when there are April Fools jokes posted as genuine articles.

When you can go to a variety of reliable sources and can get the real scoop this sounds to me as if desperation has set in to get something that will work for them.

The facts hasn't been going their way lately, time for something different.

Thanks, gg!

I just wish that more of this type of info could be presented in the mainsteam media. Maybe, it would nudge a few people to think.

Glad to see you here JT....

I certainly agree. Can you just imagine what ppl would think (those with more than 1/2 a brain...like Bush supporters) to actaully have real news about the information that we are still able to find that exposes the truth? But then, that would upset the political arena here in our country now wouldn't it.... and we sure couldn't have our political base all becoming squared away and on the up and up now could we? Gosh, 100s of $billions couldn't be stolen from the American taxpayers if we did something like that. Besides, where would we put our show ponies who lies through their teeth everyday? Circuses can only hold so many 'performers'.

I like your thinking, Just Thinking.

Words from one US deserter of the Iraq Haze.


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3FB...E6BE0FC0E26.htm

More US troops questioning Iraq duty
By Christian Henderson

Tuesday 12 April 2005


As the tally of American casualties in Iraq continues to rise, so does the number of soldiers uneasy about serving in the two-year-old war.

US army figures indicate that since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, about 5500 military personnel have absconded.

In 2003 an independent advisory service for US military personnel, the GI Rights Hotline, received 32,000 calls, twice as many as in 2001, from soldiers wanting to leave the military.

Some refuse to serve for political reasons, others are just unwilling to go to a country where 1500 US soldiers have been killed and more than 11,000 wounded.

Many soldiers who object have already spent time in Iraq and become disillusioned by their experiences.

Camilo Mejia is one of them. He spent six months in a combat unit in Iraq after the invasion, and upon returning to the US for a vacation decided he would not return for moral reasons.

He subsequently served a one year prison sentence for deserting.

Mejia says his experiences in Iraq shocked him.

"The commanders wanted us to get into firefights because they wanted to put that on their resume to make them look better," Mejia told Aljazeera.net. "Thirty people were killed by my unit. About three of those people had weapons."

"Once you come home it's really hard not to think about it. You start going back to those moments and it's really hard to justify that," he said.

As some soldiers begin their second or even third tour of Iraq, Mejia says many are asking why are they still in the country two years after invasion and after handing over power and overseeing elections.

"'What the hell else are we there for?' Soldiers ask themselves this question. It's like there is no ending," he said.

Both Mejia and Webb have added their voices to the anti-war lobby in the US, attending rallies and speaking about the reasons behind their actions.

"The only way this can be resolved is through protests by the masses," Webb says.

For his part, Mejia says he realised while serving in Iraq that the arguments used to justify the conflict were bogus.

"You go into an Arab nation, you kill people, you steal their oil, you destroy their country and charge them to have it rebuilt," Mejia said.

"You are giving terrorism a whole new life."

Actually methinks he missed one day, eh?

Yeh and you would have to remember Bush spent the whole Vietnam war drunk and some say on drugs. You see it is easy for someone with no combat experience to send others to die. After all Bush thinks Iraq would involve our troops being showered with sweets and flowers. People with actuall military experience would not think like that.

If he missed one day of duty , then I stand corrected.

This is the latest I could find on this guy, eh? Anybody seen anything more recent?

Methinks this case is a good indicater that Canada has no desire to become a haven for American military deserters.

U.S. deserter denied refugee status

Last updated Mar 24 2005 02:15 PM EST
CBC News

A U.S. army deserter who fled to Toronto to avoid serving in Iraq was denied refugee status Thursday by the Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board.

Jeremy Hinzman's application was heard at a three-day immigration hearing in December.

A written decision rejecting his claim was released in Toronto on Thursday afternoon.

Hinzman, 26, tried to argue at the hearing that he left the United States because he was being forced to participate in an illegal war.

When that line of defence was not allowed, Hinzman argued that he feared he would become involved in committing atrocities against Iraqis if he was forced to serve there.

"My life isn't that significant, but it's also not so worthless to be killed or go kill innocent people," he said.

Hinzman's lawyer said his client is "cautiously hopeful" that he'll be allowed to stay in Canada, but doesn't plan to take no for answer.

Lawyer Jeffrey House said Hinzman will appeal Thursday's ruling to the Federal Court.

Hinzman enlisted in the U.S. army three years ago, and served as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.

He moved to Toronto in 2004 with his wife and child.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/06/...ain659336.shtml

Deserters: We Won't Go To Iraq

Dec. 8, 2004

(CBS) The Pentagon says more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war started in Iraq.

60 Minutes Wednesday found several of these deserters who left the Army or Marine Corps rather than go to Iraq. Like a generation of deserters before them, they fled to Canada.

What do these men, who have violated orders and oaths, have to say for themselves? They told Correspondent Scott Pelley that conscience, not cowardice, made them American deserters. "I was a warrior. You know? I always have been. I’ve always felt that way -- that if there are people who can’t defend themselves, it’s my responsibility to do that," says Pfc. Dan Felushko, 24.

It was Felushko's responsibility to ship out with the Marines to Kuwait in Jan. 2003 to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. Instead, he slipped out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., and deployed himself to Canada.

"I didn’t want, you know, 'Died deluded in Iraq' over my gravestone," says Felushko. "If I'd gone, personally, because of the things that I believed, it would have felt wrong. Because I saw it as wrong, if I died there or killed somebody there, that would have been more wrong."

He told Pelley it wasn't fighting that bothered him. In fact, he says he started basic training just weeks after al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington –- and he was prepared to get even for Sept. 11 in Afghanistan.

But Felushko says he didn't see a connection between the attack on America and Saddam Hussein.

"(What) it basically comes down to, is it my right to choose between what I think is right and what I think is wrong?" asks Felushko. "And nobody should make me sign away my ability to choose between right and wrong."

But Felushko had signed a contract to be with the U.S. Marine Corps. "It's a devil's contract if you look at it that way," he says.



House's legal strategy will focus on his contention that President Bush is not complying with international law. But how will he defend volunteers who signed a contract?

"The United States is supposed to comply with treaty obligations like the U.N. charter, but they don’t," says House. "When the president isn’t complying with the Geneva Accords or with the U.N. charter, are we saying, 'Only the soldier who signed up when he was 17 -- that guy has to strictly comply with contract? The president, he doesn’t have to?' I don’t think so. I don’t think that is fair."

Desertion is a pretty hard charge to prove when basically someone just sits down and won't go no where. Two years breaking rocks for missing a movement isn't all that much to celebrate though.

Army Mechanic Acquitted of Desertion


This photo released by the Department of Defense shows U.S. Army Sgt. Kevin Benderman, center, military attorney Maj. S. Scott Sikes, left, and attorney Bill Cassara, walk into a court-martial trial Thursday, July 28, 2005, at Fort Stewart, Ga. Benderman , 40, faces charges of larceny, desertion and missing movement (AP Photo/Department of Defense Photo, Jimmy McSalters)


An Army mechanic who skipped his unit's deployment to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status was acquitted of desertion but found guilty of a lesser charge during a court-martial Thursday.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, faces a maximum sentence of two years in prison on the charge of missing movement. If he had been found guilty of desertion, he could have faced five years in prison.

A judge on Thursday began deliberating his sentence.

Benderman failed to deploy with his 3rd Infantry Division unit Jan. 8, 10 days after he told Fort Stewart commanders he was seeking a discharge as a conscientious objector.

Attorneys on both sides wrapped up their cases within three hours after Benderman's court-martial began Thursday.

Benderman said during the sentencing phase that he didn't mean for his actions to hurt his comrades.

"I am not against soldiers," he said. "I don't care what anyone says. Though some might take my actions as being against soldiers, I want everyone to be home and safe and raising their families. I don't want anyone to be hurt in a combat zone."

Benderman's attorney said that Benderman acted out of confusion rather than defiance, thinking he had been excused from deploying.

But a military prosecutor said Benderman simply wanted to avoid a dangerous mission.

"Sgt. Benderman quit his unit in order to avoid hazardous duty," said prosecutor Capt. Jonathan DeJesus. "He did this at a time when it was impossible for the unit to react. They were hours away from moving. ... They certainly couldn't replace him, and they were in no position to go find him."

15 months in the brig is a pretty reasonable, from the fellows age I'd guess he was a career man. Tis a shame he invested so much of his life to lose any and all benefits from his service.

I'd be inclinded to believe he believed as his lawyer claimed that he believed to be excused, too bad the Army didn't agree. Might have been the big deal the liberal press made out of it that the Army couldn't give him the benefit of the doubt after all the hyperbole the press created out of it. Tis a shame.

Army Mechanic Acquitted of Desertion


Army mechanic Sgt. Kevin Benderman enters a military courtroom for his court-martial trial Thursday, July 28, 2005, at Fort Stewart, Ga. The Army mechanic who skipped his unit's deployment to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status acted out of confusion rather than defiance, the soldier's attorney said Thursday. A civilian attorney for Benderman, said at his court-martial Thursday that Benderman believed he had been excused from deploying. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)


FORT STEWART, Ga. (AP)
An Army mechanic who refused to go to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status was acquitted of desertion but found guilty of a lesser charge during a court-martial Thursday. Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, was sentenced to 15 months in prison on the charge of missing movement. He also was given a dishonorable discharge from the military and a reduction in rank to private. If he had been found guilty of desertion, he could have faced five years in prison.

It is not a total loss for Benderman. He will do his time and will get out with his body intact. Others who are true believers are missing arms and legs. That comes from falty leadership who are fighting the war on the cheap with not enough bodies on the ground or the proper equipment. Would you give up your body for this leadership to save money? I would not.

For a long time, over a month in fact, this post kinda bothered me. Seems the picture was taken from the Vietcong et le Vietnam,vietcongfr,le jeu vietcong,fist alpha mais aussi la realite web site and certainly has nothin' to do with this thread, eh?

I don't speak French, so ain't real sure what this site really stands for. Also not sure why this picture was used in this thread, eh? Does it have a nexus? Any clues would be appreciated!

Le massacre de My Lai

Le massacre de My Lai

Le 16 mars 1968, la compagnie Charlie, appartenant à la 11e brigade de la division américaine Americal, entrait dans le village vietnamien de My Lai. De nombreux soldats de cette unité avaient été tués ou blessés les jours précédents dans des combats. Quand les troupes pénètrent dans le village, leur chef, le lieutenant William Calley, leur dit : « C’est ce que vous avez attendu, une mission, chercher et détruire. » Bilan : entre 200 et 300 morts, presque tous des civils, et parmi eux de nombreux vieux, femmes et enfants. L’armée américaine annonça une grande victoire et la mort de 128 ennemis.

Bien que des informations aient été disponibles sur la réalité des faits, le commandement tenta de les camoufler, et ce ne fut qu’en septembre 1969, à la suite des multiples démarches d’un soldat américain, Ronald Ridenbourg, que des charges furent retenues contre Calley. Mais les faits ne devinrent publics qu’en novembre, quand le journaliste américain Seymour Hersh publia les premiers témoignages sur ce crime. Jugé seul en 1970, le lieutenant Calley fut condamné seul, malgré ses affirmations qu’il avait reçu des ordres de son capitaine de tuer tous les habitants. Il fut condamné à la prison à vie, mais libéré en 1974. Il est retourné à la vie

......


1) What is Vietcong?

Vietcong is a completely immersive first person shooter (FPS) that takes place in the Vietnam jungles during the Vietnam War. You get briefed, issue orders to your team members, crawl thru dark tunnels, de-activate booby-traps, call in air strikes, pick up weapons from dead enemies, drive jeeps and more. Mostly you just try to stay alive; it’s a jungle out there.

Vietcong single-player is a mission-based game. You use squad-based tactics as you fight through realistic environmental dangers. Vietcong multi-player gives the player a choice of nine (9) different maps and seven (7) different game modes, including deathmatch and capture the flag.

To move thru the jungle, you must effectively use cover while keeping your ears open. Get ready to crouch or crawl to stay alive. You can lean around trees, or pop up over a rock to shoot – then duck back behind cover to reload. Found a good sniping spot? Great, … now use your binoculars to find targets. Hehe.

Vietcong’s authentic sound effects steal the show: subtle jungle noises, realistic weapons fire, team members scream when they get shot. The “ringing in your ears ” deafens you when a nearby explosion goes off and has to be heard to be believed.

Not since Doom has a FPS so completely captured a generation of players. Vietcong was developed by Pterodon with assistance from Illusion Softworks and published by Gathering (a Take Two Company).
...
7) What is a blood patch?

There are two versions of Vietcong: the Teen version and the Mature version. The Mature version has more swearing and body parts can get blown off. The Teen version is less gory. The blood-patch makes the Teen version play more like the Mature version. There are different versions of the blood patch depending on what patch you are using. Make sure you get the right one.

WARNING: Un-official patches or cracks may corrupt certain game files or enable the copy protection measures. Blood-patches are not official, use at your own risk. But don't worry -- it don’t take that long to re-install, anyway ....
...
8) Why can’t I buy the Mature version in the United States?

Consider the following e-mail message allegedly from Michal Janecek (Vietcong lead programmer), as posted on the forums. Someone complained about the US Teen version and wanted a patch to upgrade it to the Mature version. Janecek’s e-mail makes it look like it was a marketing decision by the publisher.

----------------------------------
Michal Janacek
Thursday, April 03, 2003 4:27 AM
Re: u.s vietcong retail questions from diablo

Hi, 1) We was tell by publisher it is the must, otherwise we cannot sell the game in supermarkets. There is no possibility to cheat it - we could have a real problem with ESRB...
2) Yes, the framerate is the reason number one for the patch, and some more bugs and problem is fixed
3) Cannot tell the exact day, but is will be VERY soon.
Michal Janacek
PTERODON
----------------------------------
...
38) How do I set a trap? I always blow myself up.

Hehe. I used to do that too. But I learned the following trick at a local Vietcong seminar. Cost me $125, but worth it -- I learned a lot of tricks.

Type “9” to bring out your trap kit. Now left-click to set each of the posts. Left-click to set the first post, move a little bit to one side, left-click again to set the second post with the grenade. The game gives you a few seconds to get away before the trap can be triggered.

You may be killed when trying to set a trap if your ping is above 100 or if there are a large number of players on the server. This is due to lag/latency and does not mean that you are doing anything wrong.

39) My traps are in really good places but they kill my teammates. What should I do?

Yes, anyone can set traps everywhere. The trick to being a good engineer/sapper is to set traps on the enemy approach routes while avoiding the locations that your own team uses. Trap kills do not count as team-kills but that should not keep you from being careful about your team. Good engineers do not kill their teammates.
...
60) Air strikes and grenades always kill me! Anything I can do if I get caught out in the open?

You should go prone. Lie down using your CTRL key. Aside from a direct hit which will kill you, the blast(s) may pass over you. You might take damage but you will be alive.
[ Back to Top ]

61) A VC killed me with an M-16! I heard him coming, too. It sounds to me like he was cheating!

This is a tactic used by experienced players. Grab an enemy gun. When the enemy hears their own gun, they think it is one of their own guys. If the enemy does not catch on, you can shoot as often as you want while the enemy ignores you. This tactic can be used to great effect near the enemy’s flag. Hehe.
[ Back to Top ]
62) I saw someone hiding underwater but when I tried it – I drowned! Is there a trick to this?

Yes, hiding in water is very effective, especially if you are entirely underwater. If you are in just the right spot, you can use your AIM button to pop your head out and breath. Release the AIM button to go back underwater.
...
145) What is a clan?

A clan (a.k.a. squads) consists of several members who enjoy playing Vietcong together. There are social aspects to a clan such as good comradeship. Clans promote good sportsmanship and do not tolerate cheating.

A clan allows you to get a little bit deeper into the game through the use of team tactics and/or strategic gameplay. Clans usually communicate in games using some kind of voice com. Many clans play on competitive ladders/leagues against other clans. Some prefer to be called squads.
[ Back to Top ]

146) I’m interested. Can you provide a list of some Vietcong clan websites?

Yes, look in the Clan Links section of this web site.
...
150) I witnessed Bad Behavior from a clan guy. I think I will make a forum post about it.

Every now and then you will see someone who exhibits bad behavior:

* Foul language/cursing, especially [1-8th] clan or -A- Malone
* Team-killing, especially {VnB} Ciko
* Cheating
* Using a map exploit
* Belittling new players, especially {VnB}Ciko or -A- Malone
* Team-killing the flag bearer so that he could score
* Setting traps to kill his own teammates
* Etc.

It happens.

No, do not post this up on the forums. This should be handled administratively through the clan. Contact the clan leader and he will investigate. Most clan websites provide a means to contact the clan leader. Generally speaking, most clans care about their reputation. And Ciko has been in how many clans now....?

Thanks Duck! As usual, you done a good job explainin' what the site's all 'bout, eh?

Methinks I still gotta wonder why a picture from that site 'bout somethin' happenin' the Nam over 30 years ago was used in a thread 'bout today's military situation. 'Tis a puzzlement!

I'm glad this thread is still open! And I'm glad to see people are still asking questions about this important issue.

I posted the picture in question and I'm not sure exactly why I posted it or what my comment above the photo means, to be honest. My guess is I was cruising various internet sites about military casualties and ran accross this photograph. Honestly, I don't think it is related to this thread but I just happened to be on this thread at the time and didn't know where else to put it. (ie a combination of ADD and OCD)! And possibly, God FORBID, a "senior" moment.

But to be brutally honest, I don't know WHAT I was thinking when I posted this.

MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
July, 2005

Number of Iraq Casualties is Double Official Figures, Says Puerto Rican Government
By Jesœs D‡vila, El Diario


Translated from Spanish by Carolina Gonz‡lez.

Official US. government reports on soldiers under US command killed in Iraq are so fragmented that they account for less than half of the total number, according to information uncovered as part of an inquiry by the Government of Puerto Rico regarding the total number of Puerto Rican war casualties.

This analysis was confirmed by El Diario/La Prensa's review of multiple documents, including official reports issued by the US Department of Defense, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and more than 230 battlefront reports, which reveal that more than 4,076 troops under US command have been killed in 799 days of battle.

This information contrasts markedly with the limited information on casualties generally issued by US military authorities, which focus only on US uniformed troops. These total 1,649.

Military affairs expert JosŽ Rodr’guez Beruff from the University of Puerto Rico said that the figures showing more than 4,000 dead indicate that, far from winning the war in Iraq, "what is happening is that the troops are being worn down." He said that traditional theorists calculate that for an armed invading force to win a guerrilla war, its casualties should be one to ten of its enemy's. In this case, that would require 40,000 casualties among the insurgents.

In addition, Rodr’guez Reduff warned that the reports should be reviewed on an ongoing basis, as he suspects that the number of casualties is even higher.
Calculations are even more difficult when it comes to the wounded, which US authorities number at more than 12,600, and medical discharges -- those maimed or suffering from physical and mental injuries -- about whom only partial reports can be obtained. In this category, large discrepancies in counts have been publicized by news outlets such as the national German Press Agency (DPA), which ran a story reporting on US Army documents putting the number of US soldiers with war-related mental ailments at 100,000.

That issue is more controversial. The Argentine press agency Argenpress reported about 17,000 unreported cases of war-related mental illness. But no matter the scenario, the numbers of wounded and medical discharges are larger than those officially announced, as is the case with casualties.

The figures came to light in the course of an ongoing investigation that El Diario/La Prensa is making on the number of Puerto Rican and Hispanic casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That inquiry prompted Congressman JosŽ Serrano (D-NY) and An’bal Acevedo Vil‡, then Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, to request a full casualty report, which yielded a partial list with 200 Puerto Rican losses, including casualties, wounded and medical discharges.

After his election as Governor, Acevedo Vil‡ renewed his request to the Department of Defense for a total and specific accounting, but as of press time he had yet to receive an answer.

According to documents reviewed by this paper, in addition to the 1,649 fatalities among US uniformed troops, there were 88 from Great Britain, 92 from other coalition member countries, 238 reported by private contractors, and at least 2,000 from members of the Iraqi Army. The biggest defect in published counts is the missing casualties among Iraqi troops under command of the occupying forces.

Methinks, unless you're sayin' you're really underbear1, that you're mistaken 'bout this, eh? You really sure you wanna claim responsibility?

As to the article you put in Post #99 of this thread methinks 'tis a bit confusin' and not fully explained. For instance, it says "This analysis was confirmed by El Diario/La Prensa's review of multiple documents, including official reports issued by the US Department of Defense, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and more than 230 battlefront reports, which reveal that more than 4,076 troops under US command have been killed in 799 days of battle" but provides little real info on exactly what documents and no information on methodology used in analyzing them. Seems a little slipshod, eh? If I did my investigations, epidemiology analysis reports or clinical write ups like this and gave such poor info methinks I'd have been laughed outa town!

Lookin' for more on it I found the story carried all over the place, including Al-Jazeerah and Islamic-World.Net Official Website of Khalifah Institute. 'Twas discouraging I couldn't find any followups though. Guess I'll hafta keep lookin', but if anyone knows any sources would appreciate a head's up.

Tryin' to get more on it I went to the Puerto Rican Governor's web site lookin' for a means to e-mail his staff with a query. Unfortunately 'twas down with a notice "fortaleza.govpr.org temporarily closed for maintenance. Please try again later. We apologize for the inconvenience.", eh? Wrote the webmaster askin' for an alternate site or e-mail for the Governor's staff as I'm curious what the response was. Will let you know what happens.

Anyway, at this point methinks there ain't enough there to really be able to comment on it, 'cept to say there ain't much there, eh?

One of the things we were supposed to have learned from Vietnam, is that you don't judge success by body counts.

As to desertions, we keep pretty good records of that sort of thing, so there shouldn't be any need for estimates.

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/02/IraqDeserter/


US Army Deserter Fled Iraq for New Life in Canada


By Rebecca Craigie
Published: August 2, 2005

Escaping the US Army

Key used his military training to plan an escape route if it was needed. “The military taught us how to evade terrorists and I knew my escape routes to Canada. I was always on alert, and I started to go a little crazy. I wanted something better for my kids.” Key talked to Jeffrey House—the Toronto lawyer who has represented other Iraq war deserters—who said he could help. The Key family arrived in Toronto in March of this year by crossing the border at Niagara Falls. “We had lots of luggage, and they wanted to know why. We told them we had four kids. They let us through and told us to have a nice time in Canada,” he says.

Now Key is touring Canada, telling his story to whoever will listen. “I have taken some major risks in leaving the military and I know that if people listen to my stories, they can’t tell me I have to go back and spend ten years in jail.”

In fact Key could face five or more years in jail if he returns to the United States. He recently applied for refugee status and is hopeful the Canadian government will grant his request. Despite that optimism, federal immigration officials ruled against the first claim by an Iraq war deserter. Jeremy Hinzman had his first refugee application denied last March.

While Key packs up his Dodge Caravan to move on to the family’s next destination, his 6-year-old son Zachary hops into the driver’s seat of the car. “Can I drive Dad?” he asks innocently. Key plucks him from the front seat of the car and tells him he can when he’s older. For now Key is in the driver’s seat, heading towards an uncertain future.

What did you do with that picture of the book on learning how to blush?



I am SUCH an IDIOT sometimes! I mean, that's really scary, actually. Oh, that cracks me up!!! Confessing for sins I didn't even commit! No wonder I became a shrink!



I'm not sure about this. But thanks for looking into it. I'm crazy busy right now but when I get a chance to sit down and breathe I'll look into these links. Thanks again.

You're very welcome!

No response yet from either my e-mail to the webmaster of the PR Governor's site, which is still down, or the PR government info office on how to get in touch with the Governor's staff to get additional info on this, and methinks no joy searchin' the net either. Will keep tryin' though.

This article is a good read on desertions taking place in our military today. Click in link to read all that it has.



http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/AWOL-...rtion1mar05.htm

AWOL in America:
When Desertion is the Only Option

KATHY DOBIE / Harper's Magazine v.310, n.1858 1mar2005


AWOL, French Leave, the Grand Bounce, jumping ship, going over the hill—in every country, in every age, whenever and wherever there has been a military, there have been soldiers discharging themselves from the ranks. The Pentagon has estimated that since the start of the current conflict in Iraq, more than 5,500 U.S. military personnel have deserted, and yet we know the stories of only a unique handful, all whom have publicly stated their opposition to the war in Iraq, and some of whom have fled to Canada. The Vietnam war casts a long shadow, distorting our image of the deserter; four soldiers have gone over the Canadian border, looking for the safe haven of the Vietnam years, which no longer exists: there are no open arms for such refugees and almost no possibility of obtaining legal status. We imagine 5,500 conscientious objectors to a bloody quagmire, soldiers like Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, who strongly and eloquently protested the Iraq war, having actually served there and witnessed civilians killed and prisoners abused, and who was subsequently court-martialed, found guilty of desertion, and given a year in prison. But deserters rarely leave for purely political reasons. They usually just quietly return home and hope no one notices.

Last summer, I read a news account of a twenty-one-year-old man caught by the police climbing through the window of a house. It turned out to be his house, but the cops found out he was AWOL from the Army and arrested him. That story, in all its recognizable, bungling humanity, intrigued me. It brought the truth of governments waging war home to me in a way that stories of combat had not—in particular, how the ambitions and desires of powerful men and women are borne by ordinary people: restless scrapers and tomboys from West Virginia, teenage immigrants from Mexico, and juvenile delinquents from
Indiana; randy boys and girls, and callous ones; the stoic, the idealist, the aimless, the boastful and the bewildered; the highly adventurous and the deeply conformist. They carry the weight.



After reading the story of the AWOL soldier sneaking into his own house, I contacted the G.I. Rights hot line, a national referral and counseling service for military personnel, and on August 23, 2004, I interviewed Robert Dove, a burly, bearded Quaker, in the Boston offices of the American Friends Service Committee, one of the groups involved with the hot line. Dove told me of getting frantic calls from the parents of recruits, and of recruits who are so appalled by basic training that they "can't eat, they literally vomit every time they put a spoon to their mouths, they're having nightmares and wetting their beds." Down in Chatham County, North Carolina, Steve and Lenore Woolford answer calls from the hot line in their home. Steve was most haunted by the soldiers who want out badly but who he can tell are not smart or self-assured enough to accomplish it; the ones who ask the same questions over and over again and want to know exactly what to say to their commanding officer. The G.I. Rights hot line introduced me to deserters willing to talk, and those soldiers put me in contact with others.

I was curious, so I did a little digging, and I was a little surprised at what I found.

Contrary to the impression given by the media, there are not massive numbers of personnel deserting to avoid service in Iraq or Afghanistan; very few, in fact.

Apparently, thousands of people desert the military every year, to the point it's considered part of the routine attrition statistics. Most deserters are youngsters not showing up for boot camp, running away from boot camp, or just out of boot camp. The military doesn’t seem to see it as a big deal, and they don’t even face prosecution because they’ve been less than 6 months. The next largest group are folks in trouble for discipline problems who go UA/AWOL to run away from relatively minor infractions, and they usually face only the original disciplinary action (maybe) and an administrative separation.

The ones who you hear about going to Canada and making a big deal about it are shooting themselves in the foot (figuratively) because the attention they bring upon themselves demands harsher treatment because its detrimental to good order and discipline throughout the military.

I looked at the actual statistics on people over the hill and it's actually down from the late ninties.

I had people in my unit go UA, almost everytime it's because of a personal crisis. Suzie back home sends a Dear John letter and John goes UA trying to get the love of his life back.

Or Mom has a stroke, he's used all of his leave already, and don't think the folks over him have a heart to grant him some time off. If he'd only asked I don't know a single Staff NCO who wouldn't only let him get the time he needs but would help him with travel arrangements if he couldn't afford it. Matter of fact I don't know a single Staff NCO that if he knew the facts before reporting him UA wouldn't try to cover for him until he got back.

I agree 100%

As noted over a week ago I was tryin' to get more on this post. I went to the Puerto Rican Governor's web site lookin' for a means to e-mail his staff with a query. Unfortunately 'twas down with a notice "fortaleza.govpr.org temporarily closed for maintenance. Please try again later. We apologize for the inconvenience.", eh? Wrote the webmaster askin' for an alternate site or e-mail for the Governor's staff as I'm curious what the response to the new Governor's was.

As of tonight there's still no response yet from either my initial e-mail or Tuesday's followups to the webmaster of the PR Governor's site, which is still down, or the PR government info office on how to get in touch with the Governor's staff to get additional info on this, and methinks still no joy searchin' the net either. Will keep tryin' though.Every duty station I went to after makin' Chief I started off by addressin' them that'd be workin' for me to explain what I expected. At that time I also told the troopies that I wanted two items from each of 'em, a signed undated special liberty request and signed undated leave request so that if/when they'd be needed I'd have them to fill in the dates and use, eh?

As long as the youngster let me know what was up I had their butts covered, and with valid paperwork to boot. Got burned for it and even got an Article 15 in 1986 when my Department Head on PELELIU balked at signin' one set of leave papers, but my CO saw fit to just give me a Letter of Reprimand which sounded more like a recommendation for somethin', and written authority to be final approving authority on any future leave requests. The Captain rewarded the Department Head with a less than stellar Officer Fitness Report, with unsatisfactory remarks regarding his leadership, on his transfer two months later.

No good deed goes unpunished they say, eh? Even though I never got selected for Master Chief (E-9) my Department Head got passed over for Commander (O-5) three times, was not allowed to augment to the Regular Navy from the Naval Reserve and got some pretty lousy duty assignments, like Diego Garcia and Souda Bay, durin' the remainder of his active service. Methinks 'twas worth it!

IMHO if your troops know you're lookin' out for 'em and you keep 'em informed they're less likely to do somethin' stupid and more likely to put more effort into gettin' 'er done right, eh? In 30 years I never had anyone go UA on me and only had two get charged for anything that had to go to Article 15.

I'd say these chaps has come to their senses, allbetit a little too late per how the military sees it, but never the less, this article list a few resisters/deserters and sees them as heroes. I see it as truth coming to the surface.

Click on the war resister's link to see their names and stories.

http://www.tomjoad.org/WarHeroes.htm#listresisters

U.S. War Heroes of the Iraq War
War Resisters from within the Military

Real Heroes Home Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6


List of Public Resisters from within the U.S. Military:

Stephen Funk

Jeremy Hinzman*

Dan Felushko*

Carl Webb*

Wilfredo Torres

Diedra Cobb

Perry O'Brien

Joel Klimkewicz*

Chas Davis

Blake LeMoine*

Joshua Despain

Michael Blake

Jessica Faustner*

Camilo Mejia

Brandon Hughey*

Abdul Henderson*

Charmaine Means

Ghanim Khalil

Pablo Paredes*

Kevin Benderman*

Trent Helmkamp

Cliff Cornell*

Eric Riley

Hart Viges

Ryan Johnson*

Dale Bartell*

Jimmy Massey

David Sanders*

Abdulla Webster

Michael Sudbury

David Bunt

Aidan Delgado

Darrell Anderson*

Adam Mowery*

Joshua Key*

Preston Betts

Chris Harrison

Ivan Brobeck*

Jonathan Barriga

Names with * indicate they are presently in legal jeopardy, or currently incarcerated, see these stories to see how you can help. Multiple resisters listed on each page.




Every War has its heroes, those who take risks to protect the values we cherish; this war is no different.

We honor those soldiers who risked loss of liberty, economic deprivation, and social ostracism. Each of these men and women of the military have at some point refused orders in this immoral, illegal, unjustified war the United States is currently waging in Iraq, or the occupation in Afghanistan. They obeyed their conscience over illegal orders.

And that fact has been brought up a number of times here in this forum but some keep on posting articles that impy the desertion rate has increased since the war began.

Well so do the threads frantically screaming a draft is going to be imposed shortly.

I understaand "the draft is fixing to happen" post are meant to scare people and keep them stirred up. I susppose if they can convince some folks everyone is going over the hill then the USA must be losing or something.

I quit trying to figure out some of these people.

Hey David, I spent most of the Vietnam war drunk and I bet some of the Vets who are also protestors now spent a lot of the time either stoned, drunk, or both too.

Don't knock being a reformed drunk David, it takes a hell of a lot of will power to become a reformed drunk. The one thing I respect Bush for is being a reformed drunk because I have walked in those shoes and I know how hard it is to be a reformed drunk.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cf...=40&ItemID=8399

Unravelling of the US Military
by Zia Mian
July 28, 2005

There are problems with desertion. The Pentagon has admitted that more than 5,500 soldiers have deserted since the start of the Iraq war. In comparison, 1,509 deserted in 1995. The cases that have become public have said that they did so because they are opposed to the war. A telephone hotline to help soldiers who want to leave the military has reported that the number of calls it is receiving is now double of what it was in 2001 - they had 33,000 calls last year.

One has to be careful when reading this article because the statistics and facts are a play on words. Reading this article the first impression is desertions have increased in the United States Military. There are two items though which need to be brought to the readers attention to obtain a true characterization of the desertion rate.

First off, the number stated for 1995 is purposesly reported using the strictest definition of desertion as described by the DoD 1,509 is an artificially deflated number. Secondly, the play on words comes into play, notice the measurement periods change from an annual measurement to a peiod covering two and a half times the amount of time used in the period presented for comparison. Thirdly, the arbitrary selection of 1995 because 1995 was an unusually good year when it comes to desertions.

The truth about desertions from the United States Military is the desertion rate on an annual basis, measured by the same criteria for each year, is almost half of what the desertion rate was before 9/11/2001. The reader of this may view actual publish desertion statistics as well as a discussion of how the statics are determined here.

Unlike the writer of the article above I am willing to provide documentation to support what I say which is of benefit to support my statements where as facts only serve to disprove the writer of the before quoted article's contentions.

The intent to deceive the reader is telling of the articles integrity, in order to sway you to his way of thinking these people believes it to be proper to present you with information presented in a manner designed to deceive you.

I would view the assertion of the number of phone calls from Soldiers looking to get out of the military with skepicism due to it being predicated with and attempt to deceive the reader.

Someone tell the president the war is over
The New York Times

MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2005


NEW YORK Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President George W. Bush may be the last person in the United States to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved President Lyndon Johnson's handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as LBJ's ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing America's long extrication from that quagmire.

But the current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News, Bill O'Reilly is trashing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)

As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Bush's top war strategists, starting with Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's uber-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.

That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Bush gave the fateful address that sped congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive.

He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." America's own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on Sept. 11, 2001, and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 Marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio Marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Bush.

These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering television cameras and the blogosphere round the clock.

Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."

But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. Early last year, Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's America's failure to provide that security that has turned Iraq into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.

The endgame for U.S. involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, General George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring.

Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Iraqi democracy than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006. Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). An American citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional U.S. troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom America will then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." Americans have already made the decision for Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made America more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

NEW YORK Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President George W. Bush may be the last person in the United States to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved President Lyndon Johnson's handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as LBJ's ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing America's long extrication from that quagmire.

But the current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News, Bill O'Reilly is trashing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)

As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Bush's top war strategists, starting with Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's uber-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.

That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Bush gave the fateful address that sped congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive.

He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." America's own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on Sept. 11, 2001, and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 Marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio Marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Bush.

These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering television cameras and the blogosphere round the clock.

Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."

But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. Early last year, Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's America's failure to provide that security that has turned Iraq into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.

The endgame for U.S. involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, General George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring.

Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Iraqi democracy than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006. Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). An American citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional U.S. troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom America will then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." Americans have already made the decision for Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made America more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

http://www.iht.com/protected/articles/2005...news/edrich.php

Iraq War Deserters Speak Out:

Jeremy Hinzman, 26

My name is Jeremy Hinzman. I was a specialist with the 82nd Airborne division.

I really liked the Army, the people I worked with, and I wanted to be a part of it all. I was really disappointed with myself that I couldn't be part of it. I applied first for conscientious objector status. The Army turned me down based on my answers to questions that they were not even supposed to ask.

After that, I applied for non-combatant status. You see, I didn't want to leave the Army. But that application was denied, too. So I was left with the prospect of going to Iraq, to continue killing in another country, and this based on a false pretense. There were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; there was not a connection between the Baathist Party, al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists. And the notion of going in to establish a government friendly toward the U.S. didn't seem to me to be very much like fighting for democracy.

I was faced with arbitrary military justice and the possibility of going to Iraq to take part in acts of human rights violations. In a series of long, painful discussion, my wife and I decided to seek refugee status in Canada,


Daryl Anderson, 22

I'm from Lawton, Ky. I was stationed in Eastern Germany with the Army. On Jan. 15, 2004, my contingent was sent to Iraq. We stayed in Baghdad for seven months, where I was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart. After that I was sent back to Germany, where I trained for six months for another tour of duty in Iraq. On Christmas, on leave in the U.S., I decided that I couldn't go back to Germany and from there to Iraq. If I went back to Baghdad I would have been asked again to kill people, civilians, and I just couldn't do that anymore.

First steps you take in Baghdad, you realize that there's death and destruction all over the place. No weapons of mass destruction in sight. We're fighting people that we're supposed to help, but in fact they hate you and every time you walk down the street they shoot at you because you occupy their country. You're asked to get in their houses, in their businesses, block the roads, but you're an occupying power, you're messing up their daily life. You're not a liberator. You raid their houses and kill their family.

If I was in their position, if a foreign power had occupied the U.S., I would do the same. I don't mean to say that they should kill American soldiers, but if I were an Iraqi I would be fighting alongside my neighbor to free my country and to defend my family, my house.

Because you're in Iraq in a kind of war situation and unable to distinguish friends from foe, you adopt these drastic measures. You commit these crimes, these acts that you would never do under normal conditions. And even though in your unit everybody is against what you're doing, nobody can say anything because you'll end up in jail. That's not what I had imagined when I enlisted.


Ivan Brobeck, 19

I was in the Marines. I joined in June 2003, and after boot camp in March of 2004 I was sent directly to Iraq.

All these insurgents, as they call them -- they're not. They're people who have nothing left. There was this guy who was mad at us because we had killed his family. Wife, children; everybody but him had been killed. He was seeking some kind of retribution. That is not an insurgent -- that's a desperate man.

I believed that the war in Iraq was a just war, and it was not. Now, before I get involved again, I really have to see somebody overcoming my country with weapons in hand.

By Paolo Pontoniere, Pacific News Service. Posted July 7, 2005.

http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/23371/

Given the latest trend of the media inventing people, I would look at these fellows with a rather jaundiced eye, especially since their statements echo some of the anti-war movement's rhetoric. Then again, maybe they're just plagurists. If they are real people, then their NCOs haven't trained them very well, and/or they're being coached by the anti-war folks.

After all their NCO's are supposed to brain wash troopers to worship Bush and carry on shooting anyone their not sure of. That is just about anyone in the street based on judgement. What a happy position to be in. I would not be happy in guessing who to kill. Would you ETC? Do you wonder why some troops are not happy as hell about their jobs? You can pick them out. They are the ones with morals.

David, you nailed two points well. The one I support here in this thread is the point about morals of troops in this immoral BushWar. As you said those who understand the corruption behind this lie war, are standing up to it and the govt sheeple who have created and support this immoral war.




http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7739.htm

U.S. Army Specialist David Beals: Why I went AWOL

01/18/05 "Information Clearing House" -- Georgia: Specialist David Beals of the 2-7 Infantry stationed at Ft. Stewart, Georgia has today decided to turn himself in after going AWOL from the Winn Army Hospital following his attempted suicide. Beals plans to return within 72 hours, after taking the time he said was necessary to ponder the few options available to him.

Beals, 25, has already served a tour in Iraq. After witnessing firsthand the killing of innocent civilians by U.S. forces he has decided to apply for Conscientious Objector status. He also stated that he would accept an honorable discharge from the Army.

Remarks made by his platoon sergeant also played a part in Beals’ decision, after being continually told by him that “You guys are gonna die, I don’t want to deal with shipping your s**t back when you are coming home in a box.”

Beals then made a decision, telling his wife Dawn “I would rather die at home with you than go over {to Iraq} with these people and let them get me killed.” He added that he wanted to be with his family when he dies, rather than in Iraq with individuals who obviously wanted him dead.

Well aware of the possible consequences he faces for refusing to deploy, Beals is firmly convinced he is doing the right thing. “I won’t compromise my beliefs for the Army, come what may” he said.