He is not a robot. He is a person with a conscience.
"At that time when I joined up I had no reason to believe that our leaders, the government, the administration would betray the trust of the people........I felt that it was my responsibility as an officer to find out everything I could about war in general in order to better prepare my troops and train them for combat deployment. I also began reading a whole broad base of articles on the Iraq war on what was going on there at the time and what has led us up to that point. What I found was deeply shocking, not only as a person but also as a member of the military......learning that the administration had betrayed the trust of the people, had deceived us into going into this war that was totally unnecessary and unrelated to the war on terrorism."
Watadas reaction was one of shame, "knowing that our government was doing this in our name. I had to come to a decision on what I was going to do; inside I was in a lot of turmoil. On one hand I had my duty as I knew it, to obey every order without question, to do what I was told, what everyone else was doing, going over to Iraq and fight."
"On the other hand I knew that we were not fighting for Democracy, we were not fighting just terrorist, we were fighting an indigenous insurgency who was resisting our occupation. And many lives were being sacrificed for what I thought was nothing. I came to the point where I could no longer look at the pain and suffering of so many members of the armed forces, so many families being devastated by these loses, and the grief and suffering of Iraqi citizens and all for what I felt was an intentional deception, to wage a war without any purpose, without any noble purpose."
He also says that he offered to "go quietly" as a conscientious objector, but that the Army decided that was not an option. I think that deals with the pompous assertion that this "stinks of someone wanting their fifteen minutes of fame". I suspect that whoever posted that finds independent thought a bit threatening.
This is someone who'd rather go to prison in Leavenworth for 5 years than fight in a war he believes, on the basis of wide research and reading, is illegal. He deserves respect rather than the slanders he's received from the patriotic robots that have infested this thread thus far.
[edit on 26-6-2006 by rich23]
