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Date Posted: 01:21:02 04/19/03 Sat
Author: Weird_Engima
Author Host/IP: 67.30.199.111
Subject: Conscientious Objectors

This is the only news article I have read about conscientious objectors since the buildup and attack phase of this Persian Gulf war II/Iraq U.S. war or whatever the frick they will call this war years from now. Thousands of military and civilian Iraqis dead and wounded. I heard more news coverage of conscientious objectors during the first Gulf War, they are covering it up during this one for some unknown reason. About 150 U.S. and British troops dead. Or is the official term Great Britain or United Kingdom(UK) instead of Britain, and something like 700 or more wounded. No telling the number of psychological traumas and disorders on both sides for years to come. Last year 4 solders that where in Afghanistan last, came back to their home base of Fort Bragg NC and killed their wives, 3 of them committed suicide while in custody. No telling how many more solders coming back from the Afghanistan war, at bases in other states and killing people. The National media must have some sort of ban on any psychological disorders, conscientious objectors and the like.

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Hot line advises desperate soldiers
War has increased calls to Siler City site
DIANE SUCHETKA
Staff Writer

SILER CITY -When soldiers in the Southeast decide they want out of the armed forces, they call a 100-year-old farmhouse in the middle of cattle and cornfields outside Siler City.

That's where the GI Rights Hotline rings.

To get to the phone, you walk past chickens and a quarter-acre vegetable garden through a patch of wildflowers and in the front door. At the dining room table, just past the poster of a little Iraqi girl in pigtails -- "is she our enemy?" written over her head -- sits Lenore Yarger.

For more than two years in this town about 75 miles northeast of Charlotte, she and her husband have taken calls from men who realize they can't shoot another person; from lesbians who want to live more open lives; from enlistees who say basic training is just too hard. Some are awaiting deployment, some have gone AWOL, some are back from fighting overseas.

Yarger, like counselors at eight other hot line offices across the country, explains military discharge policies, calls lawyers to help and sometimes accompanies GIs to conscientious objector hearings.

Since the United States began threatening war with Iraq, the phone has rung more than at any time since the hot line began, about nine years ago.

In February, Yarger opened 123 new cases, compared with 98 a year earlier. January saw a similar rise, from 120 new cases in 2002 to 150 this year -- a 25 percent jump.

The number of troops on active duty increased during the same time period, but by less than 2 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

"If we were able to charge for our services, we'd be one of the few growth industries in North Carolina," says Yarger's boss, Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, one of several organizations across the country financing the hot line.

Calls are up at all the GI Rights Hotline offices in the country. In February, workers at all eight took 3,118 calls -- nearly double the 1,593 from February 2002.

"The number of people interested in CO (conscientious objector) status has shot through the roof," says Teresa Panepinto of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Oakland, Calif., which oversees the network. Hot line offices -- in Boston, New York, Seattle and other cities -- are staffed by paid workers and volunteers, some Quakers, some not.

More reservists and national guard members are calling, too.

"Ninety percent of people who join the military do so to get money for college or to learn a trade," Panepinto says. "They don't join to go overseas to kill people."

A spokeswoman said the Department of Defense would not comment.

Panepinto expects more calls as this war winds down and GIs return home. It's a trend they saw when fighting ended in Afghanistan.

But the GI Rights Hotline does not keep data on soldiers who leave the military with its help. Often, callers have gone AWOL and want to remain anonymous. Many don't call back after getting the advice they need.

About 25 percent of all the calls -- from 13 Southern and Midwestern states -- are routed to Yarger. On a recent rainy afternoon, she took three in 45 minutes.

The Duke University public policy graduate works in jeans and a sweater, her hair in a ponytail, sitting at a dining room table that seats 10.

In addition to this being the Southeastern home of the hot line, it's a Catholic Worker House. That means Yarger, 34, her husband, Steve Woolford, and friend Dan Schwankl take in homeless women and children, giving them a place to stay and meals until they get back on their feet.

They support the house on their hot line salary, Schwankl's teaching income and donations.

The Catholic worker movement is rooted in social justice, so Yarger and Woolford push to change economic and government policies they say hurt the poor. That's how they ended up taking the hot line job.

"Militarism saps enormous amounts of resources from the poor," Yarger says. "The poor always suffer the most from war. They don't have anything to fall back on. And they're the ones who fight as soldiers."

That's why she and her husband drive to New York and Washington to protest the war. (Her husband is serving six months in prison now for pouring blood onto the Pentagon on Dec. 30.)

It's why Yarger has been arrested more than a dozen times for demonstrating against policies she says kill social programs that help those who need them most.

It's also why she often finds herself on the other side of barricades from men and women in uniform.

She looks at them differently, now that she staffs the hot line.

"This work gives us insight into what the soldiers go through," she says. "It's certainly enlightened me to the fact that many, many people in the military don't want to go to war.

"... Maybe we're more alike than we are different."


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TO REACH THE GI RIGHTS HOTLINE:

Call (800) 394-9544

------------------------------------------------------------Diane Suchetka

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