You Will Anyway: Deserters

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Deserters

PARIS, Dec 04, 2003 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, with many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States, according to the French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine.

The magazine, known for its satires and exposes, said the French intelligence agency obtained the information from what it described an "American colleague."

Citing a senior French official posted in Washington, the magazine also said that 7,000 U.S. soldiers have left Iraq allegedly due to psychological troubles and other illnesses.

Some 2,200 others sustained serious injuries including the loss of limbs, it said. article

I know the psych bit has been reported elsewhere, as well as the high number of injuries, but I hadn't heard any numbers on deserters. Last I read anything, the reports were that soldiers were saying they wouldn't go back after getting out on passes, but the army was denying that it actually happened of course.

That'd be interesting find out. An "American colleage" doesn't sound like much in the way of a reliable informant, but then neither is "White House official" these days. Those figures must be kept somewhere, but they may be hidden. Anybody with any info, please shoot it my way (Nell will take your e-mail - over there in the sidebar), and muchas gracias.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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And other words of wisdom...

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins

[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison, 4th President of the United States

No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn

They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman

When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern

Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. ~Ojibway saying