Soldier refuses Iraq tour, citing 'stomach-churning horrors'

A US Army soldier who served as a military journalist in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Philippines announced on May 15 his intent to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. "As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter service members' stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors of the crimes taking place in Iraq," said Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, 24, in an announcement under the rotunda of the House of Representative's Cannon Office Building. "For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand," he said. Chiroux said he's aware he will likely face prosecution for refusing the deployment, but said, "I choose to remain in the United States to defend myself from charges brought by the Army if they are willing to pursue them. I refuse to participate in the occupation of Iraq." Chiroux is a victim of stop-loss, a controversial wartime power that the George W. Bush administration has used to keep soldiers from leaving the military when their term of service expires. Critics call the policy a "back-door draft." More than 50,000 troops have been stop-lossed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Chiroux said the stop-loss order sent him into a downward spiral of depression. "I became borderline suicidal," he said. "I just went into my room and shut the door and barely emerged for close to a month. I just sat in my room reading news about Iraq and feeling completely hopeless, like I would be forced to go and no one would ever know how I felt. I was getting looped into participating in a crime against humanity and all with the realization that I never wanted to be there in the first place." The turning point, Chiroux said, came when one of his professors at Brooklyn College in New York suggested he listen to the Winter Soldier hearings. The hearings, which were organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, took place in March in Washington, DC. Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of US brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples," but part of a pattern, the group says, of "an increasingly bloody occupation". For four days, dozens of Iraq war veterans testified about the horrors they'd seen and the actions they carried out while deployed. As Chiroux listened to their testimony, he realized he was not alone. "Here's an organization of soldiers and veterans who feel like me," he said. "All this alienation and depression that I feel started to ease. I found them and I've been speaking out with them ever since."