In today’s edition of The Province, Michael Brown reports on Iraq war vet turned war resister Joshua Key.
Key is (or was) Private 1st Class in the U.S. Army. He served an eight-month tour in Iraq, decided he couldn’t return for another tour or duty and fled Canada.
Key says “I was pro-government. I was very right-wing,” when he signed up for the Army. He left his minimum wage job as a welder in Oklahoma City and then found himself in Iraq.
At the time he agreed with the “reason and cause.” “Weapons of mass destruction, that pretty scary shit,” Key told The Province. “My wife thought the same thing I did” “You’re going to do the right, so go do it.’ But it was all a lie.”
Key described how as part of “quick-reaction force” he would blast through the doors of Iraqi civilians homes, rounding up men and boys as young as 13, zip-cuffing them and loading them on to U.S. Army trucks to never be seen again.
Key says, “I’d raid these people’s homes with satellite photographs from CIA and military intelligence and I never found anything. There was nothing found in their homes and I did 100 of these raids.”
“In Ramadi, that’s where I saw most of the things that were unreasonable, no reason or justification for it,” he says.
Brown reports that “Key says he saw bodies on one side of the Euphrates River and their heads on the other, and U.S. Army soldiers kicking them about “like soccer balls.”
In July, Key crossed into Toronto and joined the War Resister’s Support Campaign. He is now living on Gabriola Island, home to many American war resisters.
Unlike the the Vietnam era, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared that “Canada should be a refuge from militarism,” thus opening the doors to American war resisters, there has been no similar declaration regarding the U.S.’s illegal war in Iraq.
While Canada does not officially support the war in Iraq, it is providing support in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, as well as 31 “frontline advisors.”
The cases of three American war resisters are currently being adjudicated. Jeremy Hinzman and Bandon Hughey were denied refugee status and have appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. No decision has been released on the case of Ivan Brobeck.
Key’s lawyer points to the uniqueness of his case, since Key can speak to the both the legality of the war and to war crimes allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers because he was an active combatant in Iraq and witnessed atrocities first-hand.
Key’s story, as originally published in Le Monde, can be found here.
Follow
