From an American soldier who chose jail rather than return to Iraq

This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/060322soldierasksforgiveness


"Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don't believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things."
-- An American soldier who chose jail rather than return to Iraq

Dear friends,

The below letter was written by a 28-year-old American soldier who chose to go to jail rather than return to what he felt was an unjust and immoral war in Iraq. Before his imprisonment, he had spent over seven years in the military and six months fighting in Iraq. No matter what feelings you might have about the war, you have to admire both the courage and the humility of this young man as he shares his thoughts from prison. May we all be inspired to follow our conscience and to embrace our connection with the entire human family with whom we share this beautiful world. Together, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info team
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton


http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artm...ew.cgi/38/9042

Regaining My Humanity

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors – the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw...an innocent man decapitated by our machine-gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren't helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn't want us there. We weren't preventing terrorism or making Americans safer.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military nor been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, I did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me – they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don't believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill. There was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified; I did not want to stand up to the government and the army – I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

In March of 2004, 28-year-old Sgt. Camilo Mejia turned himself in to the U.S. military and filed an application for conscientious objector status. On May 21st, he was sentenced to one year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. He was released from prison on Feb. 15, 2005. The above letter was written while he was in prison. For excellent, highly revealing information on the deeper reasons behind this and other wars, please visit: http://www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation


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Gator.....I felt it important to add this additional information from that same site.



Leading Journalists Expose Major News Cover-ups by Media Corporations

Below are some astounding statements from a summary of the book Into the Buzzsaw on the informative website http://www.WantToKnow.info. In this eye-opening book, 20 award-winning journalists describe in detail how they were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major, revealing news stories. These courageous journalists have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. This message is sent with the hope of strengthening democracy and building a brighter future for all of us.

Kristina Borjesson—CBS, Emmy award winner. Pierre Salinger announced on Nov. 8, 1996, that he’d received documents proving that a US Navy missile had accidentally downed TWA flight 800. That same day, FBI’s Jim Kallstrom called a press conference. At one point, a man raised his hand and asked why the Navy was involved in the investigation while a possible suspect. “Remove him!” Kallstrom yelled. Two men leapt over to the questioner and grabbed him by the arms. There was a momentary chill in the air after the guy had been dragged out of the room. Kallstrom and entourage acted as if nothing had happened. Jim Kallstrom was later hired by CBS. (pp. 290, 291)

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report on hormones in your milk, Fox fired the general manager of our station. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination. We pleaded with him to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” After we refused, Fox’s general manager presented an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000 in “consulting jobs,” but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. After declining, we were fired. (pp. 213 - 219)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson—Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert Garwood—14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese—was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that he was a monstrous traitor. In 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. (pp. 255, 256)

Gary Webb—San Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: A Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. The story developed a momentum all of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA’s activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series could not find a single significant factual error. A few months later, the Mercury News, under intense CIA pressure, backed away from the story, publishing a long column apologizing for “shortcomings” in the series. The New York Times splashed the apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News after that. (pp. 143 - 153)

For more on these and the eye-opening stories of other leading journalists, go to the two-page summary of Into the Buzzsaw at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mediacover-up Or even better, go straight to http://www.WantToKnow.info/massmedia for the information-packed 10-page summary. For other reliable resources on the media cover-up, visit our Media Information Center. If these stories were reported in headline news where they belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to know more. This has not happened, which is why we feel compelled to provide them here.

To understand more about the impact of all this, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info The entire website is dedicated both to providing a concise, reliable introduction to incredibly important information that is being hidden from us, and to inspiring us to work together to strengthen democracy and to build a better world. You can help to build a brighter future now by educating yourself on these vital issues, and by forwarding this message to your friends and colleagues and asking them to do the same. Thank you for caring. Together we can and will build a better world for ourselves and our children.


The WantToKnow.info team is a group of dedicated researchers from around the world who compile and summarize important, verifiable facts and information being hidden from the public. You can reach us by visiting http://www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php.