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Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
The War In Iraq
Senate Floor
October 25, 2005
Three years ago when the Congress and the country
debated the resolution to give President Bush the authority
to launch a preemptive war against Iraq, reference was often
made to the lessons of Vietnam.
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Female Soldier Refuses Deployment to Afghanistan
t r u t h o u t | Statement 
Thursday 17 November 2005
Statement made at Fort Benning, GA, by SPC Katherine Jashinski.
My name is Katherine Jashinski.I am a SPC in the Texas Army
National Guard. I was born in Milwaukee, WI and I am 22 years
old. When I graduated high school I moved to Austin, TX to
attend college. At age 19 I enlisted in the Guard as a cook
because I wanted to experience military life. When I enlisted
I believed that killing was immoral, but also that war was
an inevitable part of life and therefore, an exception to
the rule.
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The Cindy Spark
By Lynn Gonzalez
Cindy Sheehan is among many inspirational people I’ve
been privileged to meet in the fight to stop the war. I’ve
known and loved her for the better part of a year and, though
she has always filled me with tender admiration, she’s
just Cindy to me.
But not to the nearly 10,000 people who have come through
Camp Casey. Or the hundreds of thousands that have sent
cards, letters, gifts and money enough to set up a full
kitchen in a football-field sized tent at the new campsite.
To them she is the “new Rosa Parks”; the face
of the mainstream American majority; newly empowered and
resolute in their certainty that we can – and will
– stop this war NOW!
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The Case of Sergeant Benderman
By Camilo Mejia
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 28 July 2005
Fort Stewart, Georgia - When Sgt. Kevin Benderman went to
Iraq on March of 2003, he saw the destruction of a nation,
he saw a little girl with a burnt arm asking the soldiers
for help they were ordered not to provide, he saw people drinking
water from mud puddles, and he saw that Iraqis were regular
people, just like himself, and that our military should not
bring destruction to that country. What Sgt. Benderman saw
in Iraq changed him in a way so profound, that after ten impeccable
years in the Army, he decided to apply for conscientious objection.
But Sgt. Benderman also spoke truth to the people about what
is going on in Iraq, and he spoke about how the war is not
destroying Iraq alone, but our own country as well. He spoke
of how American soldiers are dehumanized by the war.
But today's general Court-Martial did not deal with Sgt.
Benderman's war experience, nor with the dehumanization of
America's children in Iraq; it mostly dealt with a forty-five
minute meeting Sgt. Benderman had with his Sgt. Major just
an hour before his unit was to deploy to the Middle East,
where they were to provide logistic support to American infantry
units, and they were to train Iraqi police officers and military
personnel.
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more...
The toll war takes on U.S. troops
BY CHRIS VAUGHN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT) - Conditions in Iraq - including close-up urban warfare,
harassment from a sometimes-invisible enemy and longer tours
of duty - have created tremendous stress for U.S. troops on
the battlefield, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs
and a study by Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
"Taken together, these unique features of the war in Iraq
create the conditions whereby stress hormones are released
excessively, with unknown, but likely significant, consequences
regarding health maintenance, restoration and coping capacity,"
said Brett T. Litz, author of a VA report.
Here are some facts about the toll on today's military...
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U.S. War Resisters In Canada
By Gerry Condon
Five days a week, Jeremy Hinzman, a native of South Dakota,
rides his bicycle through the busy streets of Toronto. Since
receiving his Canadian work permit this winter, he has been
employed as a bicycle messenger, a job he had “been
wanting to try for eons.” Hinzman is 26 and in excellent
shape. He is a long distance runner and has run a couple of
marathons since he arrived in Canada in January 2004.
This philosophical attitude and the stamina of a long distance
runner have served Hinzman well since August 2, 2002 when,
as a soldier in the U.S. Army, he asked to be classified as
a Conscientious Objector (CO) and to be reassigned to a non-combat
job.
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The Case of Pablo Paredes
"The moment we first sentenced German service
members for not disobeying orders that they “should
have known were illegal” we accepted that the responsibility
to determine which orders are legal and which illegal rests
in the conscience of the service member.
It also, therefore, holds true that to punish service members
who acted on their conscience-with plausible backing from
documents and prominent figures in international law-is not
only unjustifiable and an injustice to those individuals,
but sends a dangerous message to our military: that when given
an order they believe to be illegal they are in a catch-22-
they can be prosecuted if they obey; and they can be prosecuted
if they don’t .
Do we really mean to have the armed foot soldier obey orders
blindly in our name…..and be the fall-guy too? Do we
really trust our government more than the moral compass of
our sons and daughters in uniform?" -excerpt from an essay
by Pablo Paredes
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Read Marjorie
Cohn's Story
Words from Camilo
Just about a year a go I was
tried by a special Court-martial at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
The charge: desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous duty.
My case received a lot of attention from the media, mainly
because I was the first Iraq veteran to have been to combat,
returned on a two-week furlough, and publicly refused to return
to Iraq while denouncing the war as illegal, and who then
surrendered himself to military authorities. For the first
time since the invasion of Iraq the military had to deal with
the delicate issue of public dissent within the ranks.
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more...
6500 Deserters Since the Invasion
The Pentagon
says more than 6,500 servicemen have deserted since the war
started in Iraq.
60 Minutes
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.
Read
the rest.
reprinted from CCCO
Camilo Mejia;
Political Prisoner
On June 3, 2004, Amnesty International
announced that it had adopted Sgt. Camilo Mejia as a "prisoner
of conscience" and calls for his immediate and unconditional
release from confinement. He is the first soldier known to
be tried for desertion after service in combat in the current
Iraqi conflict. In a statement, Amnesty International proclaimed
that it "believes he has been imprisoned for his conscientious
objection to the war in Iraq, despite having taking reasonable
steps to secure his discharge.
In his CO application, Sgt.
Mejia described the conditions of detention and treatment
of Iraqi prisoners, including instances where soldiers were
directed to "break the detainees' resolve" and who took actions
including banging on walls with sledgehammers to enforce sleep
deprivation and loading pistols near the ears of prisoners.
He also described witnessing the killing of civilians, including
children.
Read More about Camilo
Camilo
Found Guilty
Fernando
Suarez talks about Camilo Mejia
These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep
Photo not Matt LaBranche
A
mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning
soldiers afflicted, experts say.
By Esther
Schrader, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Matt LaBranche got the
tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital
here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.
The pain of the needle felt good to the
40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his
nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he
said, "feeling dead inside." LaBranche's back is now covered
in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn
from his neck to the small of his back, it is emblazoned
with the words LaBranche says encapsulate the war's effect
on him: "I've come to bring you hell."
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the rest
Soldier Takes the Military to Court Over
Stop Loss
Attorneys for a decorated
combat veteran serving in the Army Reserve announced Tuesday,
August 17, the filing of a petition challenging a "stop loss"
order that requires the reservist to remain in the military
beyond the term of his enlistment for possible duty in Iraq.
The reservist is identified as "John Doe" for reasons of privacy.
Doe's case is the first legal challenge to Army's current
"stop loss" program.
Under the program, tens of
thousands of soldiers have been prevented from retiring or
leaving the military upon completing their enlistment terms
so that they may be deployed to Iraq. The petition asserts
that the program is arbitrary, unfair, and unauthorized by
law. The stop loss program has been widely criticized as a
"backdoor draft."
Doe, a San Francisco Bay Area
resident, served in combat during the invasion of Iraq last
year, and has more than nine years of active service in the
military. Doe currently serves as a reservist in the California
Army National Guard under a one-year enlistment. He has a
wife and two daughters, ages 6 and 3. The stop loss order
could require Doe's return to Iraq for up to two years, and
possible continued military service beyond that time.
Doe is represented by attorneys
Michael S. Sorgen and Joshua Sondheimer, who are initiating
the action in association with the Military Law Task Force
of the National Lawyers Guild. "This is a case that will be
closely watched by thousands of military personnel and their
families," says Sorgen.
Doe is one of up to 40,000
service members forced to serve beyond the expiration of their
enlistment terms since the war in Iraq began.
"Articles..ems This lawsuit
seeks to stop the forced retention of men and women like John
Doe who have already fulfilled their service obligations to
the country. Their enlistments should have ended, and they
should now be entitled to return to their families," says
Sorgen.
"We are asking the federal
court to uphold their lawful rights and not allow the Army
to create a new category of indentured servitude," says Marguerite
Hiken of the Military Law Task Force.
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