http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=7755<snip>Perry O'Brien is from blue-eyed, blue-state Maine. In January 2003, as a medic for the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division, he was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Coming from an initial Peace-Corps-with-guns perspective, Perry soon confronted hard questions. Really hard questions.
One day, Perry heard of reports that up to 3,000 Afghan civilians had been killed by American bombs. He found the figure striking: 3,000 was "about the number of people that were killed on 9/11." He asked himself -- "Were we getting even?" Perry "started to feel like an Army mechanic, fixing things that my comrades in the Air Force and Infantry had broken. But they weren't 'things' of course, they were people, and after they left our clinic they were going home to their families."
In June 2003, Perry filed a case with the U.S. Army to become a conscientious objector. Months later, his case was approved. Perry recounted how he asked himself what they were doing in the foreign country: "I used to accept the idea of a war on terrorism, but isn't war a form of terrorism? Are we just laying the groundwork for another attack, and another war, and on and on?" snip
When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his mission was explained to him by his commanding officer in vivid terms: "You're not going to make Iraq safe for democracy. You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you're still going to go, because you signed a contract."
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