Earlier today
I posted the news that a Fort Lewis soldier is poised to become the first U.S. military officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. I also posted this in my very first diary entry at Daily Kos
here.
We now know his identity:
(Thank You LT) Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada will become the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq war and occupation. He will announce his intention to disobey the illegal order to deploy to Iraq in coordinated press conferences in Tacoma, Washington and Honolulu, Hawaii.
So it has come to this.
Lt. Ehren Watada is a brave man. He has taken on what will be as trying a fight as any he is protesting against participating in in Iraq. This war that was initiated by men who this country somehow rewarded by re-election two years ago, and that has been a disaster from the start, even while early appearances were that the quick dispatch of the Iraqi forces in the first three weeks might be harbingers of a promising future.
When I asked Kossacks if a soldier is right to refuse deployment, 84% of 139 respondents said "Yes".
A press conference is scheduled for Wednesday at noon PT. I have more on this at On The Road To 2008, and the Seattle PI is also reporting on it here.
The PI story includes this info:
Paul Boyce, a spokesman in the Army's national public affairs office, said Watada is "not the first officer, not the first enlisted, nor the first soldier" to refuse to deploy.
An Army fact sheet dated Sept. 21, 2005, the most recent one available, said the Army had approved 87 conscientious objector applications and denied 101 since January 2003.
That may be true, but I cannot recall any such refusal being so well organized and public.
Meanwhile here is a slightly different poll question for readers to answer: