During the Vietnam War, Canada became the fourth sanctuary for those avoiding the draft. The first three of course were Yale, the Texas National Guard (Failed Pilots' Squadron) and the Cheney marriage bed.
Now Canada is being asked for asylum by serving personnel from the US who have no qualms about serving in general but who do not want to be associated with what's going on in Iraq. Their stories are re-inforcing what has been emerging in the past few days in the US MSM. Service in Iraq is brutalising soldiers who have received inadequate training to stop war crimes being committed.
The headline describes what finally resolved one American to desert. Chris Mogaoay told the BBC (who acknowledge this and other allegations are unsubstantiated) what happened during training prior to deployment to Iraq:
His sergeant showed them pictures, he said, of "what war was really like".
"The first picture he showed me was him lighting a cigarette off of a burning Iraqi's body," he said.
"This disgusted me because this was a man I respected as a marine, someone I'd like to follow into battle"
Mogaoay also told the BBC about a tactic to cover-up the killing of innocent Iraqis, something we have heard a number of times. This suggests it is part of something rather more organised than the odd "rough unit". Remember this is at pre-deployment training.
He said he and comrades were told that if they shot a civilian they should throw an assault rifle down by the body and claim the victim was an insurgent.
Abuses are, if what the US MSM are told, an aberrance by "a few individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path."
Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the commander of U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said the ethical training would emphasize "professional military values and the importance of disciplined, professional conduct in combat," as well as Iraqi cultural expectations.
"As military professionals, it is important that we take time to reflect on the values that separate us from our enemies," he said in a statement. "The challenge for us is to make sure the actions of a few do not tarnish the good work of the many."
In the MSNBC article, the American public are given the comfortable assurance that the emergency extra training
aimed at reinforcing training service members received before coming to Iraq.
However specific evidence given under oath at hearning requesting asylum suggests that this training is long overdue. The evidence of Joshua Key, who had combat experience in Iraq, suggests that even if given, the atitude of Rumsfeld et al towards the conventions of war have trickled down to officers on the ground.
Key, 27, said he was never trained on the Geneva Convention and was told in Iraq by superior officers that the international law guiding humanitarian standards was just a "guideline."
"It's shoot first, ask questions later," Key said of his squad's guiding principles. "Everything's justified."
Key gave further evidence of the casual disregard of the Iraqi population, apparently condoned by officers who should have been controlling the behaviour.
He recalled participating in almost nightly raids on homes of suspected insurgents in Ramadi and Fallujah as a member of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company.
He said that while the raids seldom turned up anything of interest, he often saw soldiers ransack the homes and steal jewelry or money, while superior officers looked the other way.
He also said several Iraqis were shot dead, and that they were cases of soldiers "shooting out of fear and inventing reasons afterward."
In Ramadi, Key said he saw the beheaded bodies of four Iraqis beside a shot-up truck and witnessed several members of the Florida National Guard kick a severed head "like a soccer ball."
Key also said he witnessed one of his "trigger happy" platoon's squad sergeants shoot part of an unarmed Iraqi man's foot off in Khaldia, a village between Fallujah and Ramadi. The man was sitting on a chair outside a store and had raised his foot as a sign of disrespect, he said.
Now while these details could previously be dismissed as hyperbole to justify the asylum case, reading it in the light of the recent stories from such places as Haditha is starting to build up a body of evidence towards what surely must be an inescapable set of conclusions.
1. Discipline in US forces in Iraq is in danger of breaking down.
2. Completely inadequate training is given concerning the rules of war and the Geneva Conventions.
3. The US Army is therefore unfit to conduct occupation operations authorised by the United Nations.
4. Individual service personnel in Iraq are being so damaged by their service that they may be unfit to re-enter US society without intensive treatment.
5. The continued US prescence in Iraqi towns and cities is damaging both to Iraqis and to the USA. The only proper function they appear to have is to guard Iraq from external invasion while the Iraqi army is reconstitued enough to serve that purpose.