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Iraq War resister Tony Anderson sentenced to 14 months

19 year-old Army private Tony Anderson was court martialed Monday and sentenced to 14 months of confinement and given a dishonourable discharge from the military for “desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty” and “disobeying a lawful order.” The young soldier refused to deploy to Iraq in July of this year on the grounds of conscientious objection to war.

“I know in my heart that it is wrong to wilfully hurt or kill another human being. I simply cannot do it. I don’t regret following my conscience,” he said at his trial as he struggled to compose himself. “I know there must be consequences for my actions and I must accept this fact.”

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Colorado Springs peace organizations attended the Ft. Carson, Colorado court martial to show their support for the young soldier. Immediately after being sentenced, Anderson was placed in handcuffs and taken to the Colorado Springs Criminal Justice Center, where he will be held for a few weeks until he is moved to an army stockade.

The 14 month sentence is one of the longest given to a U.S. military serviceperson for refusing to fight in Iraq.

Who is Tony Anderson?

Hailing from the small city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Anderson says that he was never very attracted to military life, but joined the service at the behest of his father, who had always regretted not joining the military himself. Once in the ranks, Anderson realized that he had made an unfortunate decision. During basic training, he found himself ethically opposed to taking a human life in a military conflict. He was disturbed by seeing soldiers on his base return from Iraq deeply traumatized from their experience in combat. “I didn’t want to mess myself up for the rest of my life doing something I didn’t want to do to begin with,” he says.

Anderson had vague thoughts about filing for conscientious objector (C.O.) status but was discouraged from doing so by his commanding officers, who told him that it would not be possible for him to obtain, and even falsely informed him that he was “not the right religion.” Anderson was led to believe that filing a C.O. application would be futile.

Anderson says that when he was ordered to deploy to Iraq on July first, he “freaked out.” “What upset me most was the thought having to hurt or kill someone else,” he said at his trial. “I know this may be hard to believe, but I never really thought about the idea of hurting or killing another human being before I joined the military. And then in training, it just didn’t seem real. I knew I could be deployed someday but I just never gave it much thought. But when I got to Ft. Carson and heard that I would be going to Iraq, I realized that this was something I would have to resolve.”

Just hours before boarding his flight, he went AWOL, eventually turning himself in after 22 days in hopes of diminishing the severity of his punishment. On his return, Anderson was again ordered to deploy to Iraq immediately. This time, he simply refused, and he says, “they haven’t tried to deploy me since then because they realize I’m not going to go.”

Objection to war

Anderson is not alone: a growing number of U.S. troops are refusing to fight in the so-called “war on terror.” Army soldiers are resisting service at the highest rate since 1980, with an 80 percent increase in desertions, defined as absence for more than 30 days, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the AP Press. Over 150 resisters have come out publicly against the war, and some cases, such as Lt. Ehren Watada, the first army officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq, have garnered widespread support and attention.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of active duty G.I.s have been joining Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), an organization comprised of over 1,200 U.S. veterans who have served since September 11, 2001. With 12 active duty members at Anderson’s base alone, IVAW has taken a position of open support for G.I. resisters.

The rising number of troops who do not want to join the war face a challenge because conscientious objector status is difficult to obtain. C.O.s must prove that they are opposed to war in all forms, that their objection is based on “religious training and belief,” which can include moral or ethical training, and that their beliefs are “sincere and deeply held.” The application process is arduous and includes written applications, a series of examinations, and a hearing with an investigative officer.

A decision on an application can take up to a year, and in the interim a C.O. application cannot forestall deployment to a combat zone, although it can help ensure that applicants are assigned duties which conflict as little as possible with C.O. convictions. Applicants face pressures to drop the issue from commanding officers, who “accidentally” lose the applications, impose informal punishments on C.O. applicants, or give false information about the process, as in the case of Anderson.

There has been no reliable study of the difficulty of obtaining C.O. status. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report finding that between 2002 and 2006, the Marine Corps and Coast Guard approved a third of C.O. applications, Army officials approved 55 percent, the Air Force approved 62 percent, and the Navy approved 84 percent. Critics claim, however, that these figures are grossly misrepresentative, as they do not factor in the number of potential applicants who are deterred at all stages of the process: anyone who did not make it entirely through the application process was not counted by the GAO.

Elizabeth Stinson, Director of the Sonoma County Peace and Justice Center, urges potential applicants not to be deterred by the difficulty of obtaining C.O. status and counsels them to seek support from allies in the peace movement. “Applying for conscientious objector status is hard,” she says. ” Still, I would love to see the amount of conscientious objector applicants go up. For some, it can be the most liberating thing ever.”

“There is a huge problem with people being discouraged by the chain of command from going through the process of applying for C.O. status,” said Andrew Gorby, who was discharged from the Army in May 2007 as a conscientious objector and now works for the Center on Conscience and War, a counselling organization that works to defend the rights of conscientious objectors. “But being granted C.O. status is possible. It is a matter of getting in touch with a qualified C.O. counselling organization.”

Court Martial

The young soldier, who remained in tears during much of the trial, did not have family present at his court martial. His mother sent a statement saying she does not agree with what her son did but believes that he was sincerely trying to follow his conscience.

Anderson’s civilian lawyer, James Branum, expressed frustration with the lack of fair process for cases of conscience and said, “I am disappointed by how long Tony’s sentence was. 14 months is on the high end, but it could have been worse. At least Tony was able to have his day in court.”

At the trial, Tony read a statement explaining that he was sincerely trying to do the right. He told of being deterred from for conscientious objector status at every step along the way, leaving him with the impression that his only option was outright refusal. He expressed regret that he did not initially move forward with the conscientious objector application.

Anderson closed by saying, “I only ask that you remember that I was trying to do the right thing.”

December 2, 2008 update: Tony has been transferred to the Ft. Sill stockade. Write him at: Anthony Michael Anderson, PO Box 305, Fort Sill OK 73503-5305. Thank you to our four dozen friends who donated over $2,200 for Tony’s legal expenses, phone cards, and books for the coming year.

Editorial reference, LINK

by Sarah Lazare, Courage to Resist for AlterNet, et al

FRANKFURT, Germany - U.S. Army Specialist Andre’ Shepherd applied for asylum in Germany Nov. 26, becoming the first Iraq War veteran to pursue refugee status in Europe.

After attending college and failing to find meaningful employment, Shepherd enlisted in the military early in 2004. The promises of financial security and international adventure easily trumped working at a fast food chain. He became an Apache airframe mechanic, hoping to someday qualify up to the role of helicopter pilot.

His first unit was already deployed to Iraq when he completed his training, so he joined them immediately, with only one day at his unit’s home in Germany. Shepherd spent six months on a forward operating base near Tikrit, working 12-hour days to keep the heavily armed Apaches (and their signature Hellfire missiles) in the air.

Though he enlisted in order to bring freedom, prosperity and peace, Shepherd found none of these traits in the locals with whom he interacted.

“Some had the look of fear, while others looked outright angry and resentful,” he said of locals contracted for jobs around the base. “I began to feel like a cruel oppressor who had destroyed the lives of these proud people.

“Our unit did a lot of good things, giving schools books and bringing clothes to children,” he said. “These actions helped my conscience a bit, but I kept thinking to myself, ‘Had we not invaded, would these people need this aid now?’ ”

Shepherd began researching for himself not just the causes of the Iraq War, but the wider War on Terror. As inconsistencies in the official story emerged, the reasons for which he joined the military lost credence. As the myth of Weapons of Mass Destruction evaporated, so too did his faith in the mission.

“Saddam Hussein was admittedly a dictator,” Shepherd said. “However, he was not leading his country to produce any sort of weapon that could be used against the United States government and its citizens.

“When I asked my sergeant about this, he told me that many in the Army also had questions, but it was their duty to serve,” he said. “That may be true, but signing up voluntarily does not mean I should stop thinking or having a conscience.”

Upon his return to Germany at the end of the deployment, Shepherd began to investigate the options available to an American soldier who questions the morality of war. He spoke with a superior about conscientious objection, but was told the process was lengthy and his application would probably be denied.

U.S. military regulations also state a conscientious objector must have an objection to all war in all form. Since Shepherd’s objection was not in opposition to all war, his application would have required lying, which would have compromised the moral composition of his argument.

After months of deliberations, finding no suitable avenue in the Pentagon’s serpentine regulations, he packed his things on April 11, 2007, and went Absent Without Leave from his Katterbach base in the middle of the night.

He has lived underground in Germany for nearly two years, waiting for his unit to return from yet another Iraq deployment, but such a vaporous life can only be lived for so long.

Roughly 200 American service members are currently living in Canada, many of whom are pursuing asylum. Shepherd’s decision to pursue a similar status is the first of its kind by an American Iraq War veteran in Europe.

Seeking asylum in Germany is partially a matter of geographic convenience, but political matters also strengthen the case. A majority of Germans are against the war in Iraq, and German soldiers have never been deployed to Iraq in support of the conflict.

This disposition came to a head in 2005, when the German Federal Administrative Court officially declared the Iraq War violated international law, citing the assault launched by the United States as an act of aggression.

A German army officer had refused an order to develop a computer he feared would be utilized by the United States against Iraq. He was demoted and a criminal complaint was filed against him for insubordination. The federal court reversed the demotion because the charges contravened a paragraph in the German Constitution guaranteeing the right to freedom of conscience.

Shepherd’s application also cites a European Union regulation providing refugee status to a soldier who is in danger of being prosecuted if military service “would include crimes or acts” which violate international law. The application refers to the Nuremberg Trials, stating “It is established that a person cannot defend his or her actions by explaining that they had simply been following orders.”

In effect, Shepherd’s asylum application calls on Germany to clarify the nature of its opposition to the war in Iraq. The United States utilizes German airspace on a daily basis to carry out operations vital to the war, and U.S. bases within the country are home to roughly 60,000 American service members.

“We should not be forced to fight an illegal war, nor should we be persecuted for refusing to do so,” Shepherd said. “During the past five years we have waged a preemptive, internationally condemned war that was shown to be founded on a series of lies. After learning the truth about the nature of my military’s endeavours, I refuse to continue to be a part of this.”

“We are honoured to help support this courageous war veteran turned resister in whatever ways possible,” declared Jeff Paterson, Project Director of Courage to Resist—a U.S.-based organization dedicated to supporting U.S. troops who refuse to fight.

Editorial reference, LINK

by Military Counseling Network, Courage to Resist, et al

Three more Canadian soldiers are dead, coming home in boxes. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for their families and friends. It’s just about impossible to comprehend the level of suffering that a parent who outlives a child must be forced to endure. I’d be surprised if they ever found another moment of happiness or peace of mind in the remaining years of their lives. I also find myself wondering if any of the politicians who sent these boys to their deaths will remember them in 15 or 20 years. Will their hearts still be moved by the “ultimate sacrifice” made by these Canadian soldiers who served their country with “honour and dignity”?

My unfortunate fear and suspicion is that their hearts were never moved to begin with. After all, it must require a particular kind of person to send young men and women to kill and be killed when your “enemy” poses no immediate threat and there are other options waiting to be explored. I’m thinking that these kinds of choices can only be made by people who are sociopaths, with their characteristic glibness, a grandiose sense of self, a tendency to lie a lot, and a disturbing lack of empathy, shame or guilt.

In the world of the “common people”, the sociopath often fills his or her need for stimulation and “living on the edge” with lots of sex or gambling. However, the sociopathic politician seems to enjoy the stimulation provided by blowing shit up and spilling lots of blood (they can barely feign the necessary levels of regret and sadness when the victim is a pile of “foreign” babies or the bulk of a wedding party in the midst of a joyous celebration).

Now, I’m not a high energy, flag waving nationalist. Patriotism doesn’t come naturally to me. The notion of getting excited about being a citizen of a particular country seems a little silly to me. After all, what is a country?

An arbitrary line drawn on a map. It is an abstract notion that has no basis in reality. This country we call Canada was not here a thousand years ago and it will likely be gone a thousand years from now. I tend to avoid clinging to things or ideas that are fleeting and transient. As such, I’m not the kind of fella who only gets upset when “good ol’ Canadian boys” get killed. My heart has a more global reaction to things.

My heart bleeds agony at all of the suffering and death brought about by war. I suppose my heart and mind are still free from the propaganda that has most people living in complete fear and seeing every Arab or Middle Eastern death as a good death (or, at the very least, a death we can live with) and every death of an American or Canadian soldier as a terrible tragedy. My mind is still free enough to imagine how the “collateral damage” inflicted on a village or a funeral march by bombs dropped from the sky could be perceived by the people on the ground as an act of terrorism.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s pretty tough to earn the trust and goodwill of people you are trying to control and bomb into submission. This strategy tends to be counterproductive.

And it’s hard not to wonder if our Government in Ottawa (while it lasts) has any kind of real and identifiable goals in Afghanistan. What is the mission there? What are we trying to accomplish? Their bait and switch from a “humanitarian mission” to a combat mission and an occupation was very successful. Now what? Oh, the silence is deafening.

It would appear that our troops will fight the good fight and try and maintain the status-quo until America can shift the bulk of her war machine from Iraq to Afghanistan and then we’ll get out. In the meantime, more Canadian soldiers will lose their sons and daughters in the name of… what? Freedom? Democracy? Justice? Please. And how many more innocent people in Afghanistan, and elsewhere will be mangled and killed before the West finally grows weary of Imperial adventure and folly.

There was only one good reason to ever get involved in Afghanistan in any capacity: to help alleviate poverty and to promote and protect human rights and the rights of women who want to live like something other than a second class, subservient being.

Our solidarity with those women was (and is) important and we should never forget them under any circumstance. However, the strategy that the West has pursued in Afghanistan was never about these women and it has failed miserably. A lot of innocent people have been killed and Canada has many more enemies today than it did before we sent our troops out under the guise of building roads, schools, and hospitals. It’s time to try something else.

I would also say that it’s time for the Americans, the British, and their allies to stop supporting (or covertly encouraging) both sides in a conflict and then exploiting the resulting chaos and fear to further a geopolitical agenda. All of us who look beyond the headlines can see the truth of things and we are sick and tired of it. It’s immoral, destructive and leading our world to the brink of annihilation.

Warrant Officer Robert Wilson was 27. Pte. Demetrios Diplaros was 25. Cpl. Mark McLaren was only 23. They should have had the opportunity to build years of memories of with friends, family, and lovers. That chance is gone and it’s never coming back. I cut their picture out of the newspaper and put it in a box where I keep special things. If I am still alive twenty years from now (long after the politicians who sent them to die have forgotten their names), I will pull out their picture and remember.

by Spencer Spratley

Since it invaded Iraq in 2003, the U.S. has detained thousands of juveniles—some of whom were tortured and sexually abused, according to published reports. Figures of the number of children behind bars vary. Some estimates put the number as high as 6,000.

While the criminal abuse of male prisoners at Abu Ghraib is well known, child and women prisoners held there have also been tortured and raped, according to Neil Mackay of Glasgow’s Sunday Herald. Abu Ghraib prison is located about 20 miles west of Baghdad.

Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, “suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation” and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of “random” arrests “not based on any legal text.”

Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, “[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners.”

Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw “hundreds” of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, “They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.” He said he heard her whimpering daily.

Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy “who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.” Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of “Report Mainz” quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists “poured water” over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, “smeared him with mud” and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

The Los Angeles Times as far back as August 26, 2004, reported U.S. military police at Abu Ghraib “used Army dogs to play a bizarre game in which they scared teenage detainees into defecating and urinating on themselves.”

And reporter Hersh told the American Civil Liberties Union convention he has seen videotapes of Iraqi boys that were sodomized, “and the worst part is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.”

Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British “The Guardian” this past Sept. 9th, “Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons, sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells, without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards, current and former prisoners say.” Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the “Guardian” he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

As the occupying authority in Iraq, the Bush administration cannot escape legal responsibility for the torture crimes of Iraqi jailers or for the deplorable conditions in the prisons they operate.

Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. The grounds: they pose “imperative security risks.” In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

HRW said the children “are subject to interrogations, have no access to lawyers, and sometimes are held for more than a year without charge, in violation of the United States’ own regulations.” It said children “have very limited contact with their families.” HRW called upon the U.S. to “ensure that children it takes into custody are treated according to their status as children, and given prompt judicial review and access to independent monitors.” Apparently, this has not been the case.

Clarisa Bencomo, of HRW’s Children’s Rights Division said, “The vast majority of children detained in Iraq languish for months in U.S. military custody. The U.S. should provide these children with immediate access to lawyers and an independent judicial review of their detention.”

IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating: “Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured.” IRIN was refused permission to visit child prisoners.

Five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army “showed signs of torture all over their bodies,” such as “cigarette burns over their legs,” she said.

One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep. And 15-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian, was held in Guantanamo for two years without being allowed to see a lawyer or have contact with his family. Khadr has been held for a total of six years. According to the current “Catholic Worker,” Mohammed Jawad was 17 when captured in Afghanistan and was subjected to sleep deprivation at Gitmo day and night for two weeks. Every three hours jailers shackled and transferred him to another cell under a “frequent flier” program, forcing him to change cells 112 times.

Jawad’s defence lawyer Air Force Major David J. R. Frakt said the most likely reason Gitmo authorities tortured the youth (who had attempted suicide five months earlier) was “for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others.”

Officials from UNAMI, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iran, said that children awaiting trial at severely overcrowded Tobchi prison, Baghdad, said they had been tortured and sexually abused while in custody in adult facilities prior to their transfer to Tobchi, and showed the marks to prove it. And at Karkh juvenile prison, children showed skin sores from lying on soggy mattresses in temperatures that average 112 during the day.

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote in “Our Endangered Values”(Simon & Schuster) that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons “107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old.” And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody. President Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon “have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse.”

In an effort to conceal conditions in its Iraqi compounds, the U.S. has closed them to human rights monitors such as AI, HRW, and the International Federation of Human Rights, says Ciara Gilmartin, the Security Council Program Coordinator at Global Policy Forum(GPF), a New York-based organization that seeks to strengthen international law. GPF called for opening the Iraqi detention facilities “to national and international observers” and for establishing clear accountability for U.S. officers and contractors in charge of the prisons.

“The whole abusive system must be thoroughly overhauled or closed down,” Gilmartin said. “U.S. military and civilian leaders are not the only ones complicit in the abuse and lack of due process of Iraqi detainees. All who stay silent in the face of the Iraq gulag allow it to continue.”

In 2005, the AP reported from Geneva that UNICEF was “profoundly disturbed” by reports of abuse of children in Iraq prisons. “Any mistreatment, sexual abuse, exploitation or torture of children in detention is a violation of international law,” UNICEF spokesman Damien Peronnaz said.

According to a report by Felicity Arbuthnot published last June 9th in Global Research, the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomarswarmy, said children are not allowed any outside lawyers and may be held hostage to force an adult family male to give himself up.

HRW said that as of February of this year the length of detention for children was more than 130 days and “some children have been detained for more than a year without charge or trial, in violation of the Coalition Provisional Authority memorandum on criminal procedures. Not surprisingly, “One of the biggest complaints (by Iraqis) is that the vast majority of (U.S.) detainees have not been charged with any crime,” David Enders writes in the October 27 issue of The Nation.

Although President Bush says he reads the Bible, the words about children Matthew ascribes to Jesus may not have sunk in and so are worthy of repeating: “Who so shall offend one of these little ones…it were better that a millstone was hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

About the writer:

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant and reporter that can be reached at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com. Ross compiled this article from news sources he believes to be reliable and is particularly indebted to the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Herald.

Editorial reference, LINK

by Sherwood Ross