Soldiers Choose Canada (it's starting already!)

[LynneSin]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0414/solomon.php

Facing Iraq duty, two U.S. G.I.'s head north to seek asylum
Soldiers Choose Canada
by Alisa Solomon
April 6th, 2004 11:00 AM

Iraq and a hard place: Soldiers Hinzman (left) and Hughey
(photo: Andre Souroujon)


TORONTO—Army private Brandon Hughey got in his silver Mustang around midnight on March 2, rolled past the gates at Fort Hood in Texas, and headed northeast. All he had to guide him was a deepening dread and principled objection to the war in Iraq and a promise of help from a complete stranger he'd found on the Internet. His unit was deploying to the Middle East the next morning and, as Hughey, 18, wrote in a February 29 e-mail to the stranger, an anti-war activist, "I do not want to be a pawn in the government's war for oil, and have told my superiors that I want out of the military. They are not willing to chapter me out and tell me that I have no choice but to pack my bags and get ready to go to Iraq. This has led me to feel hopeless and I have thought about suicide several times."

His heart pounding to the hip-hop beat on his radio, Hughey drove for 17 hours straight, keeping an anxious eye on the speedometer, panicked that he might get pulled over. The activist met him on March 4 in southern Indiana, stashed the Mustang (with Hughey's dog tags in the trunk) in Indianapolis, and took the wheel behind his own car for a 500-mile trip to the bridge at Niagara Falls. He gave Hughey a New York Knicks cap to pull on over his crew cut so the guards at the Canadian border would believe they were on their way to see a Toronto Raptors game.

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[bedtimeforbonzo]

1. I wonder why he enlisted int he first place.

At 18 he must be a fairly recent enlistee.

[Mel]

2. check this out

this is disgusting the propaganda channel blaring!
<snip>
Brandon Hughey was 17 when an army recruiter called him at his home in dry, hot, and heavily Republican San Angelo, Texas, to invite him to join up. "I wanted to go to college, and they offered me a $5,000 signing bonus," he recalls with a smile that pulls dimples into his boyish cheeks. "That really caught my attention." Hughey's dad, a computer programmer, had to sign the enlistment papers for his underage son. Then, last summer, shortly after his high school graduation, the teenager left west Texas for Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Hughey trained in bayonets, rifles, and hand grenades, and he learned to drive a tank. At the same time, figuring he should know what he was going to war for, he started to give himself an education in affairs of state. "It wasn't until I joined the military that I began to form political views," he says. On the base, Fox News blared everywhere, but Hughey began reading AP and MSNBC stories online. "When I learned that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, I began to doubt things," he says. He brought questions to his officers, but they told him it wasn't his job to do the thinking. He didn't even know that applying for C.O. status was an option. His first one-month leave came, and Hughey had earned enough cash to finance the Mustang. </snip>

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. They only train for a year???

.
.
.

Heck, I had to train for FIVE YEARS just to be an auto mechanic!

[Columbia]

3. Hope he knows what he's headed for

Years of making big rocks into little rocks at Fort Leavenworth for desertion.

[bedtimeforbonzo]

6. or years of hockey and poutine

n/t

[Columbia]

7. He'll come back

They always do.

[azmesa207]

4. Soldier goes to Canada

If he does that he can be in big trouble that desertion in time of war he should have just told them he was Gay He get out legally

[Mari333]

8. Not necessarily, they are sending everyone over now they dont care

all they want is warm bodies. They dont care who they take. They are sending back kids with horrible medical conditions, PTSD, and injuries from their first stint over there. They sent our kid with scoliosis.
Believe me, they dont care.

http://www.calltoconscience.net

[BiggJawn]

9. He'll have to hide from the Canadiens, too.

They have a treaty with Shrub whhere they have agreed to send BACK all "Persons of Interest" as designated by Calico Johnnie, the Crisco Kid...
An alleged deserter (other than GW Shrub) would be pretty interesting to the Torquemada of Branson...

He should've grabbed the CO's goodies...