ISBN: 9781933392042 Year Added to Catalog: 2006 Book Format: Paperback Number of Pages: 5 3⁄ Book Publisher: 8, 240 pages Old ISBN: 2006-04-26 Release Date: April 27, 2006 Web Product ID: 68
Clifton Hicks was looking for a body. Specifically, the Army tank driver was fumbling about in the dark, looking for and failing to find the remains of the Iraqis who, moments before, had been firing on his tank. When Hicks's flashlight swept the ground around his feet, he realized he was standing in the remains of a man. Literally. His boots wedged between the rib cage and the pelvis, blood and human organs squishing out from beneath the souls of his shoes.
It's this experience and others like it that made Hicks question the war in Iraq. It also compelled him to support US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada -- the highest-ranking member of the military to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq.
28-year-old Lieutenant Watada disobeyed deployment orders on June 22, several weeks after announcing his opposition to the war at a press conference. He is charged with six violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: one count of missing troop movement, two counts of speaking contemptuously toward officials, and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. An Article 32 hearing is scheduled for Thursday, August 17, to decide whether to proceed with a general court-martial. If tried and convicted, Lieutenant Watada could face over seven years in prison.
Gi resistance is a growing trend
The Army would like to depict Lieutenant Watada as a lone military voice of dissent: a renegade upon whom enlisted men and officers alike look with scorn and derision. But Clifton Hicks is joining a growing number of Iraq war combat veterans who support the lieutenant. And, he says, for every veteran who supports Lieutenant Watada publicly, there are possibly hundreds more who feel they cannot speak out.
Geoffrey Millard is a sergeant in the Army National Guard and has no problem speaking publicly or supporting Lieutenant Watada. He spent eight years in the military, and was in Iraq between 2004 and 2005. He says GI resistance is a growing trend. "American GIs are beginning to respect the Nuremberg principles. They are resisting orders; they are going to jail, going to Canada, and going AWOL. And they're talking about why they're doing it."
When he was ordered to deploy, Millard says he didn't know how to resist the war. "Lieutenant Watada hadn't come forward. I didn't know about Camilo Mejia." This, he says, is the importance of Lieutenant Watada's public opposition to the war. It shows military personnel who disagree with the Iraq war another path.
Millard says it's important that leaders like Lieutenant Watada are supported; the brutality and duration of the US occupation demand it. He remembers a day during his tour of duty when a soldier opened fire on a car, killing an entire family. During the evening briefing, the commanding colonel said, "If these fucking Hajjis would learn to drive, this shit wouldn't happen." This is one of countless examples Millard has of the dehumanization accompanying the Iraq war. "This person wiped out an entire bloodline, and the colonel implied it was the victims' fault, using language designed to offend and demean them."
Conditioned to hate
Army tank driver Clifton Hicks says the military presence in Iraq is clearly not making a difference for the Iraqi people. "We didn't care about Iraqis, because we were conditioned to hate them." He says he knows from experience that Lieutenant Watada's belief that the war is illegal and immoral is the correct position.
Hicks is haunted by his activity in Iraq. He talks about what he calls the "wedding party incident." His unit was on patrol when they heard shooting between US armed forces and what they thought were Iraqi insurgents. While Hicks prepared to go house to house in search of the enemy, what he discovered instead was a wedding. Some of the men had been shooting rifles into the air, as is customary during family parties and celebrations. Three people from the wedding were shot; a 6-year-old girl was killed. When the platoon sergeant called the command center to report the incident, "all they said to us was 'Charlie Mike,' a stupid Army acronym for continue mission."
No one spoke of the incident, and it was like it never happened. "What struck me most was just how callous we had become. I didn't even care myself. Sure some Iraqi kid had been killed; big deal. It's like seeing a dead dog on the side of the road." Hicks said he had no thoughts of shame or regret, no thoughts of the girl's mother or friends.
"We hated them and were happy to have killed one. For as long as I can remember I've been taught to fear and mistrust Arabs. That's how those kids on the news were able to rape the 14-year-old girl, shoot her in the face, and kill her whole family. They just didn't care, they still don't care, they couldn't make themselves care if they tried. Every soldier on the frontlines is capable of that or worse."
Hicks eventually filed for and received conscientious objector status. He wants the US to withdraw from Iraq immediately, and is convinced Lieutenant Watada is taking the only honorable and patriotic action available in the face of what he calls an unjust and illegal war. "The only way to be a patriot is to be against the war. Thomas Jefferson would pat me and Lieutenant Watada on the back."
Feeeling guilt all the time
Indiscriminate violence is only one of the reasons Prentice Reid supports Lieutenant Watada. Reid was in the Army Infantry for one tour in Iraq, between March of 2002 and 2003. He was honorably discharged in May of 2005, and is now a student at Central Texas College near Ft. Hood, Texas. To Lieutenant Watada, he writes: "I only hope all of us can find the balls to stand up for truth when the time comes. You risked not only your reputation, but also potentially your freedom, for truth, and for this we all salute you, sir."
Reid says he questioned the war from the beginning, but his doubts deepened when he arrived in Iraq. "The entire war was a sham from the beginning," Reid says. "There were no WMDs. No connection to Osama bin Laden. I'm over there thinking we have an enemy, but this is contradicted every day by what I'm seeing as I drive around."
Reid was a truck driver in Iraq, and one of his responsibilities was to transport Iraqi prisoners to US-run prisons. "I would see how they were treated; there was so much abuse. There was no restroom for them, and they had to urinate and defecate on themselves." Reid says most were later released without charges having been filed against them.
"The longer we were there, the more things deteriorated. There was tighter security, more check points. Things were not rebuilt. I wish I had had the courage and the platform to speak out," Reid says. "I have insomnia. I have nightmares. I feel guilt all the time about what I contributed."
Reid says families and communities are destroyed due to the length of time troops are required to spend in Iraq, and their insufficient medical treatment when they return. He says he's put his own wife and daughter through hell. He doesn't want others to experience this type of trauma, and believes that leaders like Lieutenant Watada are taking an important and necessary step toward ending the war. He says that rather than feeling betrayed by Lieutenant Watada's actions, he feels encouraged and supported.
Lt. Watada speaks for me
An active duty Army specialist who has asked to use only his initials, DP, stationed at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, joined the Army in April of 2003. He was injured during training, but expects to join his unit in Afghanistan in February of 2007. At Ft. Stewart he's escorted war resisters to their court-martial and is generally sympathetic. But it's different for a lieutenant to make this kind of stand, he says. "To see an officer who recognizes that something is wrong and who would take that kind of heat: I really respect that."
When he joined the Army, DP believed in what was happening in Iraq. "When I learned there were no WMDs, I was pretty disappointed in the military intelligence, the analysts, and everyone who swore up and down that this was a necessary pre-emptive strike," he says. As the US armed forces mission in Iraq disappears, DP says new goals are put in place. The goal of finding weapons of mass destruction turned into the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein as the objective. After Hussein was detained, the military was to help stabilize Iraq. "Our mission isn't clear, and keeps shifting. I feel like a puppet."
Over the phone, you can hear DP talking to his son. He and his wife are also expecting twins. He says that while he doesn't support the Iraq war, protesting isn't an option for him. "I don't have the financial freedom to protest the war. Lieutenant Watada is speaking for me."
DP is the only member of his family with a paying job, and with twins on the way, he doesn't feel he can risk going to prison. But, DP says, the anti-war protests are important. "We in the military don't have free speech. If you've got a problem with the government you need to be able to tell them." DP says he got in trouble recently for talking about Lieutenant Watada. His commanding officers told him that as long as he was in the military and wearing the military uniform, he needed to keep a low profile, and not voice anti-government opinions.
Regretting participation
"It takes real courage to resist the war," says Cloy Richards, a former artillery cannoneer for the Marines. "I was afraid to not go; afraid to say no. I took the easy way out and went to the war. It takes way more bravery to say no."
Corporal Richards did two tours of duty in Iraq, between March and October of 2003, and again between March and October of 2004. Like so many in the military, his initial support for the invasion began to disintegrate as the occupation lengthened and became more brutal.
"I was in the artillery unit. I saw a lot of civilian casualties," says Richards, who has seven nephews and one niece. "I love kids," he says. And his views of the Iraq war began to change as he saw Iraqi children die. He particularly remembers watching some kids play with unexploded ammunition. When it exploded, several of them were killed and several more were disfigured. "It was kind of like everything else over there. I just shoved it to the back of my mind somewhere and forgot about it." Except that Richards couldn't actually forget.
Richards has a hard time forgetting other experiences in Iraq as well. For example, the first time he was ambushed, on March 25th, 2003. "My commanding officer lost his hand that day," Richards remembers. "But he wrapped cloth around the remaining portions of his arm and led us into battle."
By his second tour of duty, Richards says he didn't want to fight. The reason he's speaking out now, he says, is not because he has some kind of agenda. "It's just that I've been there. I've seen it. I feel sorry and am trying to make amends for all the bad things I've been a part of. I should have said no the second time, when my heart and my mind were telling me not to go."
This guilt is part of the reason Richards says it's so important for the people like Lieutenant Watada to take the lead. "As an officer, he lends more credibility to anti-war sentiments among the troops. The lieutenant is leading by example, and this is taken very seriously. An officer's example is what we are supposed to follow." It's only now, Richards says, that he's found an example that he wants to follow.
Listening to the troops
Geoffrey Millard, the 8-year Army National Guard veteran is quick to point out that not any single story is conclusive. Each member of the military has something to tell that folks back in the states can learn from. "Each of these stories means something," he says.
The experiences and the expertise of Iraq war veterans are missing from the media coverage of the Iraq war. "When we turn on the evening news, we don't ever hear about a GI's experience." This leads to a skewed and unrealistic impression of the war. Millard says that if the Iraq war veterans' opinions and experience were valued, the Army would be forced to uphold Lieutenant Watada as a hero, rather than attempt to put him in prison.
For now, there are dozens of members of the military who publicly support Lieutenant Watada. There are likely hundreds more who are watching anxiously in silence, waiting for an outcome in Lieutenant Watada's case. They all say they view him as a true war hero, and believe in his efforts to end the Iraq war. They say he is fighting for what they believe in, and for that they are grateful. In Army parlance, they might say Charlie Mike: continue mission.
Sarah Olson is an independent journalist and radio producer.
Thousands of Troops Say They Won’t Fight
Gannett News Service
By Ana Radelat
August 5, 2006
Swept up by a wave of patriotism after the US invasion of Iraq, Chris Magaoay joined the Marine Corps in November 2004.
The newly married Magaoay thought a military career would allow him to continue his college education, help his country and set his life on the right path.
Less than two years later, Magaoay became one of thousands of military deserters who have chosen a lifetime of exile or possible court-martial rather than fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"It wasn’t something I did on the spur of the moment," said Magaoay, a native of Maui, Hawaii. "It took me a long time to realize what was going on. The war is illegal."
Magaoay said his disillusionment with the military began in boot camp in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where a superior officer joked about killing and mistreating Iraqis. When his unit was deployed to Iraq in March, Magaoay and his wife drove to Canada, joining a small group of deserters who are trying to win permission from the Canadian government to stay.
"We’re like a tight-knit family," Magaoay said.
The Pentagon says deserters like Magaoay represent a tiny fraction of the nation’s fighting forces.
"The vast majority of soldiers who desert do so for personal, family or financial problems, not for political or conscientious objector purposes," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army.
Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan.
Those who help war resisters say desertion is more prevalent than the military has admitted.
"They lied in Vietnam with the amount of opposition to the war and they’re lying now," said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represents Army Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the war in Iraq.
Watada is under military custody in Fort Lewis, Wash., because he refused to join his Stryker brigade when it was sent to Iraq last month.
Watada said he doesn’t object to war but considers the conflict in Iraq illegal. The Army has turned down his request to resign and plans to file charges against him.
Critics of the Iraq war have demonstrated on the lieutenant’s behalf. Conservative bloggers call him a traitor and opportunist.
Joe Davis, spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said deserters aren’t traitors because they’ve done nothing to help America’s enemies. But he rejects arguments that deserters have a moral right to refuse to fight wars they consider unjust.
"None of us can choose our wars. They’re always a political decision," Davis said. "They’re letting their buddies down and hurting morale - and morale is everything on the battlefront."
Because today’s military is an all-volunteer force, troops seeking objector status must convince superior officers they’ve had an honest change of heart about the morality of war.
The last time the US military executed a deserter was World War II. But hundreds face court-martials and imprisonment every year.
Members of the armed forces are considered absent without leave when they are unaccounted for. They become deserters after they’ve been AWOL for 30 days.
A 2002 Army report says desertion is fairly constant but tends to worsen during wartime, when there’s an increased need for troops and enlistment standards are more lax. They also say deserters tend to be less educated and more likely to have engaged in delinquent behavior than other troops.
Army spokesman Hilferty said the Army doesn’t try to find deserters. Instead, their names are given to civilian law enforcement officers who often nab them during routine traffic stops and turn them over to the military.
Commanders then decide whether to rehabilitate or court-martial the alleged deserter. There’s an incentive to rehabilitate because it costs the military an average of $38,000 to recruit and train a replacement.
Jeffry House, an attorney in Toronto who represents Magaoay and other deserters, said there are about 200 deserters living in Canada. They have decided not to seek refugee status but instead are leading clandestine lives, he said.
Like many of the people helping today’s war resisters, House fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. About 50,000 Americans sought legal residency in Canada during the Vietnam era.
"You would apply at the border and if you didn’t have a criminal record, you were in," House said.
He said changes in Canadian law make it harder for resisters to flee north. Now, potential immigrants must apply for Canadian residency in their home countries. Resisters say that exposes them to US prosecution.
First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to the Iraq war at 2:30 Thursday morning. Hours before his refusal, Lieutenant Watada confirmed his steadfast opposition to the Iraq war: "I am opposed to this war and the misconduct within this administration. I am willing to sacrifice my freedom and my good name to end this war and save lives: both Iraqi and American."
Georgia Tagaras-Gordon is a public affairs assistant at Ft. Lewis in Washington state. She says: "First Lieutenant Watada remained within his battalion headquarters during manifest this morning. No charges have been brought against him and none will be brought until his commanding officers can review the facts of the case." She says roughly 4,000 soldiers are deploying with the 3-2 Stryker Brigade combat team. Lieutenant Watada is currently confined to base, and restricted to communicating only with his lawyer.
My name is Ehren Watada. I am a U.S. Army commissioned officer. Currently, I am awaiting charges for refusal to participate in the illegal war and occupation in Iraq.
I was born and raised in Hawai'i. As a child, my family instilled in me a moral sense of right, wrong and giving of one's self. As a young man, I worked my way through college, appreciating the value of earning my own education. I haven't always lived a perfect life, but I have tried to live it to the best of my ability.
When I decided to be military officer, I chose to lead by example and put the needs of others before myself. Joining the Army is a choice I will never regret: My decision to reject unlawful and immoral orders in spite of the danger, has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. I hope that my example shows other soldiers that they, too, have the freedom and the duty to choose right over wrong.
A week ago, Iraq-bound Army 1st. Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, stood up outside Fort Lewis and said he would not fight in what he considers an illegal war.
On Tuesday, Spec. Suzanne Nicole Swift, 21, an Iraq veteran with a Fort Lewis military police unit, returned to the post after being AWOL since January for refusing to go back there with her unit. She was arrested earlier at her mother's home in Eugene, Ore.
Their outright refusal to go to Iraq is likely to be repeated by other soldiers, predicted Peter Laufer, a Vietnam war resister and former radio newsman and author of "Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq," released by Chelsea Green Publishing in May.
"After profiling those in the book, I'm not only not surprised by what Lieutenant Watada did, I expect there to be more cases," Laufer said Tuesday.
... Are we desensitizing them to violence? Teaching them to ignore the needs and pain of others? Are we creating a world where war is part of daily life? Where bombs are heard as often as the songs of birds? What is the human cost of the war–the cost that Franti hoped to shed light on? Are we heading toward what Dr. Galia Golan from Peace Now Israel explains in the film as the “dehumanization” of the enemy?It would seem so, if Peter Laufer's latest book, Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq, bears any truth. A Vietnam War resister and former NBC News correspondent, Laufer has authored many books and won numerous journalism awards. In his latest project, he explores the very same topic Franti addresses–the human cost of the war–but this time on our very own soil. Mission Rejected offers candid, uncensored stories of American soldiers who risked exile and jail sentences in defiance of the war in Iraq. And although Pentagon records show that the number of military deserters has plunged since 9/11, many soldiers are choosing to walk away from what they see as an unjust and immoral war.
Mission Rejected begins in part by looking at the current administration's rhetoric regarding the war, and its effect on American's understanding and comprehension of the facts. Of course we can't forget the favorite phrases “weapons of mass destruction” or “the war on terror” so often heard. There are other subtleties in the war language–romanticized words like “resistance” or “freedom fighters” are typically replaced for the tougher, more dangerous “insurgents” or “terrorists”. Laufer's study of semantics raises yet another important question, one that is also spoken by an Iraqi man in I Know I'm Not Alone: is a man who defends his own country from foreign control undoubtedly a terrorist? If Iraqis were to invade the U.S., would those who fought back be called terrorists? Who, exactly, are we fighting? ...
A young former US Army sniper wearing a desert camo uniform, an Iraqi kaffiyeh and mirrored sunglasses scans a ruined urban landscape of smashed homes, empty streets and garbage heaps. His sand-colored hat bears a small regulation-style military patch, or tab, that instead of reading "Airborne" or "Ranger" or "Special Forces" says "Shitbag"--common military parlance for bad soldier.
This isn't Baghdad or Kabul. It's the Gulf Coast, and the column of young men and women in desert uniforms carrying American flags are with Iraq Veterans Against the War. They are part of a larger peace march that is making its way from Mobile to New Orleans. This is just one of IVAW's ongoing series of actions.
In all, about thirty-five Iraq vets cycled through this weeklong procession of 250. For the young, often very broke, very busy veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, this represents a fairly strong showing. But many casual observers, influenced by memories of Vietnam-era protesting, when veterans mobilized in the thousands, expected that US soldiers in Iraq would turn against the war faster and in greater numbers than they have. An estimated 1 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but so far IVAW has only about 250 members.
An RAF doctor on trial for refusing to serve in Iraq told a court martial yesterday that he refused to go because the war was against "international law, the Nuremberg principles and the rules of armed conflict".
Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, the first member of the armed forces to be charged with disobeying orders to deploy in Iraq, said he had come to his decision after researching the legal advice given to Tony Blair by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.
The New York Times
By Nicholas D. Kristof
February 28, 2006
When President Bush held a public meeting with troops by satellite last fall, they were miraculously upbeat. And all along, unrepentant hawks (most of whom have never been to Iraq) have insisted that journalists are misreporting Iraq and that most soldiers are gung-ho about their mission.
Hogwash! A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq — and soon.
The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"
Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."
That's one more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it — and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further erodes military morale.
While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis.
So what would it take to win in Iraq? Maybe that was the single most depressing finding in this poll.
By a two-to-one ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.
This first systematic look at the views of the U.S. troops on the ground suggests that our present strategy in Iraq is failing badly. The troops overwhelmingly don't want to "stay the course," and they don't seem to think the American strategy can succeed.
It's tempting, but not very helpful, to repeat that the fatal mistake was invading Iraq three years ago and leave it at that. That's easy for a columnist to say; the harder thing for a policy maker is to figure out what we do next, now that we're already there.
I still believe that while the war was a dreadful mistake, an immediate pullout would also be a misstep: anyone who says that Iraq can't get worse hasn't seen a country totally torn apart by chaos and civil war. Mr. Bush is right about the consequences of an immediate pullout — to Iraq, and also to American influence around the world.
But while we shouldn't rush for the exits immediately, we should lay out a timetable for withdrawal that would remove all troops by the end of next year. And we should state clearly that we will not keep any military bases in Iraq — that's a no-brainer, for it costs us nothing, but our hedging on bases antagonizes Iraqi nationalists and results in more dead Americans.
Such a timetable would force Iraqis to prepare — politically and militarily — to run their own country. The year or two of transition would galvanize Iraqi Shiites to find a modus vivendi with Sunnis while undermining the insurgents' arguments that they are nationalists protecting the motherland from Yankee crusaders.
True, a timetable is arbitrary and risky, for it could just encourage insurgents to hang tight for another couple of years. But we're being killed — literally — because of nationalist suspicions among Iraqis that we're just after their oil and bases and that we're going to stay forever. It's crucial that we defuse that nationalist rage.
For now, we've become the piñata of Iraqi politics, something for Iraqi demagogues to bash to boost their own legitimacy. Moktada al-Sadr, one of the scariest Iraqi leaders, has very shrewdly used his denunciations of the U.S. to boost his own political following and influence across Iraq; that's our gift to him, a consequence of our myopia. And many ordinary Iraqis are buying into this scapegoating of the U.S. Edward Wong, one of my intrepid Times colleagues in Baghdad, quoted a clothing merchant named Abdul-Qader Ali as saying: "I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America. Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
Will a timetable work? I don't know, but it's a better bet than our present policy of whistling in the dark. And it's what the troops favor — and they're the ones who have Iraq combat experience. It's time our commander in chief stopped stage-managing his troops and listened to them.
WASHINGTON — At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005, says Capt. Jay Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman.
Desertion records are kept by fiscal year, so there are no figures from the beginning of the war in March 2003 until that fall.
Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters.
"The last thing they want is for people to think ... that this is like Vietnam," says Tod Ensign, head of Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group that offers legal aid to deserters.
Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005.
The desertion rate was much higher during the Vietnam era. The Army saw a high of 33,094 deserters in 1971 — 3.4% of the Army force. But there was a draft and the active-duty force was 2.7 million.
Desertions in 2005 represent 0.24% of the 1.4 million U.S. forces.
Opposition to the war prompts a small fraction of desertions, says Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins. "People always desert, and most do it because they don't adapt well to the military," she says. The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA, Robbins says. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.
Most deserters return within months, without coercion. Commander Randy Lescault, spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command, says that between 2001 and 2005, 58% of Navy deserters walked back in. Of the rest, the most are apprehended during traffic stops. Penalties range from other-than-honorable discharges to death for desertion during wartime. Few are court-martialed.
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