Dirty Greek - Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, Hero

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Dirty Greek - Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, Hero

War : Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, Hero

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I, at least, see Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia as a hero. While on leave from his tour of duty in Iraq, Mejia ducked out and went into hiding. Now, initially this is a cowardly act in a way and not at all the way I would have gone about it. However, he's turned himself in now, and I saw him on the news tonight say that he's willing to go to jail rather than back to Iraq, because he believes that strongly that the war is unjustified.

^""This is an oil-driven war, and I don't think any soldier signs up to fight for oil," Mejia said Monday after arriving at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport... Mejia said he was particularly upset over an incident in Iraq in which he and others were ambushed and innocent civilians were hit in the ensuing gunfire.

I think it's a heroic act of total valor for this man, who is not even an American citizen, to come forward as a soldier and say "This is not right. We are in Iraq for the wrong reasons, and I refuse to go back."

^"''When you try to find justification and you think about weapons of mass destruction and you think about terrorism and things like that, all you find is lies and you have no justification,'' Mejia said. ''You need that justification to live with yourself.''

Indeed. By the way, did you know that desertion can be punishable by death? It's only happened once since the Civil War, but the idea makes me cringe.