U.S. Sergeant Refuses to Go to Iraq: "This Occupation is Unconstitutional and Illegal"
By Karin Zeitvogel, Middle East Online
Posted on May 16, 2008, Printed on May 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85612/
Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American U.S. military recruiters love.

"I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old said.

"I was 'filet mignon' for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade," or around 16 years old, he added.

Chiroux joined the U.S. army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant.

He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq.

On Thursday, he refused to go, saying he considers Iraq an illegal war.

"I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.

"My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation… I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.

Minutes earlier, Chiroux had cried openly as he listened to former comrades-in-arms testify before members of Congress about the failings of the Iraq war.

The testimonies were the first before Congress by Iraq veterans who have turned against the five-year-old war.

Former army sergeant Kristofer Goldsmith told a half-dozen US lawmakers and scores of people who packed into a small hearing room of "lawless murders, looting and the abuse of countless Iraqis."

He spoke of the psychologically fragile men and women who return from Iraq, to find little help or treatment offered from official circles.

Goldsmith said he had "self-medicated" for several months to treat the wounds of the war.

Another soldier said he had to boost his dosage of medication to treat anxiety and social agoraphobia -- two of many lingering mental wounds he carries since his deployments in Iraq -- before testifying.

Some 300,000 of the 1.6 million US soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from the psychological traumas of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or both, an independent study showed last month.

A group of veterans sitting in the hearing room gazed blankly as their comrades' testimonies shattered the official version that the US effort in Iraq is succeeding.

Almost to a man, the soldiers who testified denounced serious flaws in the chain of command in Iraq.

Luis Montalvan, a former army captain, accused high-ranking U.S. officers of numerous failures in Iraq, including turning a blind eye to massive fraud on the part of U.S. contractors.

Ex-Marine Jason Lemieux told how a senior officer had altered a report he had written because it slammed U.S. troops of using excessive force, firing off thousands of rounds of machine gun fire and hundreds of grenades in the face of a feeble four rounds of enemy fire.

Goldsmith accused U.S. officials of censorship.

"Everyone who manages a blog, Facebook or MySpace out of Iraq has to register every video, picture, document of any event they do on mission," Goldsmith said after the hearing.

"You're almost always denied before you are allowed to send them home."

Officials take "hard facts and slice them into small pieces to make them presentable to the secretary of state or the president -- and all with the intent of furthering the occupation of Iraq," Goldsmith added.

Chiroux is one of thousands of U.S. soldiers who have deserted since the Iraq war began in 2003, according to figures issued last year by the US army.

But while many seek refuge in Canada, the young soldier vowed to stay in the United States to fight "whatever charges the army levels at me."

The US army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for 30 days.

Chiroux stood fast in his resolve to not report for duty on June 15.

"I cannot deploy to Iraq, carry a weapon and not be part of the problem," he said.

Ridiculous. He is commited to go there.

Everybody should do that.

yeah. i'm sure there are ways he can be "talked into" being deployed. he signed the papers at the recruiters office officially making him a part of the military. he has to do what they tell him to do until he is told otherwise

Soldiers are obligated not to follow unlawful orders. He's arguing (I'm assuming) that the occupation of Iraq is illegal, and thus his orders are unlawful. Not that this defense has a shot in hell of actually working.

Well if he indeed doesn't go to Canada and stays here and faces the music, it'd seem he stood up for what he believed despite the consequences. It seems clear he'd rather go to jail than Iraq.

The problem with going to prison in the military is you get to serve the rest of your enlistment when you get out. That includes being deployed.

where's the thumbs down come in?
i was hounded by recruiters after high school. they'd show up at my house every once in awhile with pamphlets and shit. my mom convinced me to go and listen to them and i did. the guy that i talked to was really down to earth and non pushy at first (the "good cop") and then when i was almost done talking to him, telling him i was weighing my options his boss comes in...this huge, hulking hispanic guy and shook my hand HARD, picked up a piece of paper with my name and phone number on it and says "so private truax***, when are we sending you to cleveland for your physical? we have some recruits going up two days from now. you going to be on that bus?" and he kept calling me "private" even though i still kept saying i was pretty undecided. i had gone back a few times and listened to them some more because i was going to be getting pretty good money and get to go to college for free...but the iraq war had already started so that was a huge drawback so i was trying to weigh my options. i was unemployed at this time. they actually were gonna send me to cleveland to get my official physical and then afterwards i would have signed on. but the day before i was to go i finally grew some balls and told those fuckers no.
long story short, recruiters are hawks and will go for every kill they see, but even a pussy like me can say no.

***my last name, obviously