You wouldn't catch me dead in Iraq

The Sunday Times August 27, 2006


Report

You wouldn't catch me dead in Iraq

Scores of American troops are deserting - even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn't the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters


They are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters - those who have gone Awol from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.


When First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the US Army, who faced a court martial in August, refused to go to Iraq on moral grounds, the newspapers in his home state of Hawaii were full of letters accusing him of 'treason'. He said he had concluded that the war is both morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law. His participation, he stated, would make him party to 'war crimes'. Watada is just one conscientious objector to a war that has polarised America, arguably more so than even the Vietnam war...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2318643,00.html