Refusing to commit war crimes—and testifying

The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraqby Joshua Key

Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía by Camilo Mejía

Other books of interest: Letters from Fort Lewis Brig:A Matter of Conscience by Sgt. Kevin Benderman; Mission Rejected:U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraqby Peter Laufer; Dissent:Voices of Conscience—Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraqby Col. (Ret.) Ann Wright and Susan Dixon; Anti-War Soldier: How to Dissent Within the Ranks of the Military by Jonathan W. Hutto

“Trained to kill! Kill we will!” That’s what U.S. Army recruits must shout while marching to the mess hall for a meal. That’s all it took for Pvt. Jeremy Hintzman to know he had to get out. He was the first U.S. war resister from the Iraq war to seek refugee status in Canada.

It took a little longer for Pvt. Joshua Key, but he still was not rabid enough for them. If you fail to show sufficient enthusiasm, you’re “smoked.”

“They made me do push-ups, duck walks, crawl around on my hands and knees, and stand at attention while every man in my platoon hollered that I was a ‘useless asshole’ and a ‘stupid shit,’” says Pvt. Key in “The Deserter’s Tale.”

“One day, all 300 of us lined up on the bayonet range, each facing a life-size dummy that we were told to imagine was a Muslim man. As we stabbed the dummies with our bayonets, one of our commanders stood at a podium and shouted into the microphone: ‘Kill! Kill! Kill the sand n——-rs!’ We were made to shout out [the same thing]. While we shouted and stabbed, drill sergeants walked among us to make sure we were all shouting.”

That was basic training. Key remembers advanced training with the 43rd Combat Engineer Company. His officers repeated warnings, “If you feel threatened, kill first and ask questions later.”

“I had army chants buzzing through my head, like ‘Take a playground, fill it full of kids. Drop on some napalm, and barbecue some ribs.’”

The real thing was yet to come. In Iraq, Key’s first duty assignment was to set off explosives to blast open doors of Iraqi people’s homes, join a six-person assault team storming in to terrorize everyone inside, and take prisoner any male over 5 feet tall. “We put our knees on their backs, pulled their hands behind them, and faster than you can bat an eye we zipcuffed them. Zipcuffs are plastic cuffs that lock on tight. They must have bit something fierce into those men’s skin. … The Iraqi brothers were taken away to an American detention facility for interrogation. … I never saw one of them return to the neighborhoods we patrolled regularly.”

Another vomit inducer from America’s Communist Party newspaper…

Read more of this Marxist drivel here…