Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Da Spiegel: US SOLDIERS AGAINST IRAQ

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,468740,00.html
Troppo lungo per postarlo tutto, ma il succo e' che tra i militari
sono in molti oltre a Watada a dissociarsi dal disastro in Iraq
...
Last weekend, shortly before his return to the States, John let DER
SPIEGEL in on his plan over cocoa and ham sandwiches in a Berlin cafe.
He is one of a growing number of American service members now going
AWOL (absent without leave) from units stationed overseas. Though the
US Department of Defense does not keep figures on such cases, a strong
indication of their frequency is the number who receive "Chapter 11"
discharges through Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Knox, Kentucky, the
main processing centers for those who go missing overseas and turn
themselves in, or are arrested, back home. Between October 2002 and
September 2005, the two made an annual average of 1,546 such
discharges. Last year the number grew to 1,988, or more than five per
day.
 ...
"A soldier's duty ends"
Increasingly, soldiers with distinguished records, some a few years
from retirement, are seeking discharge or choosing not to re-enlist,
forfeiting the opportunity for generous pensions. These career
military men and women say neither money nor pride can justify
continuing to fight such a war. "I knew when I came back that I
couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't be the tool to enforce policy
that I thought was fundamentally wrong, if not a little evil," says
Sgt. Bob Evers, a 14-year Army and Navy veteran now living in the
Bavarian hamlet of Schnackenwerth. "It is absolutely devastating to me
to see what we're doing and what we have become."
Evers, 37, is a thoughtful Nebraskan with the manner and historical
insights of a political science professor. This was his second Iraq
War. As a recent high school graduate, he spent 1991 on a battleship
in the Persian Gulf. A decade later, in Kosovo, he saw how people
welcomed American troops. "It was what I thought being in the military
was all about," he says; one home he visited had photos of Bill
Clinton and Tony Blair on the wall.
The Sunni Triangle was an ugly contrast. No one wanted Evers's men
there, and he could see why. Escorting oil trucks up and down roads
where families lack electricity and water, "you're doing more harm
than good," he says, "and to me that stings."
The son and grandson of military men, Evers joined up to defend his
Constitution. Initially, he supported the invasion of Iraq. Before the
United Nations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had staked his
reputation on the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. Evers admired the statesman, "and I thought, if Colin
Powell said it, it's good enough for me."
But on the ground, where he was responsible for the lives of eight
men, where he zipped his best friend up in a body bag and saw things
that made him wake up screaming at night, it ceased to be enough.
There were no WMDs, just scared and angry Iraqis. By the time Evers
was wounded on a raid in November 2004 and sent to a military hospital
in Landstuhl, he felt the terrible futility of what he had been sent
to do.
In the hospital he picked up a biography of Gen. Ludwig Beck. The
former chief of staff of the German Armed Forces publicly resigned
five years after the Nazi takeover; he was put to death after an
attempt on Hitler's life. Evers read Beck's words -- "A soldier's duty
ends where his knowledge, conscience, and responsibility forbid him to
follow a command" -- and thought: Yes it does.
He began to criticize the war to trusted friends. Sympathetic
superiors pushed through his medical discharge. Today Evers can walk
again, but painfully; his right leg lags behind. He has started to
speak publicly about his experiences. "I believe in all the hokey
stuff we tell ourselves about what it means to be American," he told a
crowd of expats, activists, and high school students at the German-
American Institute in Tübingen recently, "and a democracy doesn't
work, and a republic doesn't last, if the public doesn't inform
itself."
...

 sono in molti oltre a Watada a dissociarsi dal disastro in Iraq
Verissimo e gravissimo, ne ho scritto anche sul mio blog
Il dito nell'occhio
http://emilianos.blog.tiscali.it/