At Least 8,000 Members of All Volunteer Military Deserted During Iraq War!

[kpete]

8,000 desert during Iraq war
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Since fall 2003, 4,387 Army soldiers, 3,454 Navy sailors and 82 Air Force personnel have deserted. The Marine Corps does not track the number of desertions each year but listed 1,455 Marines in desertion status last September, the end of fiscal 2005, says Capt. Jay Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Desertion records are kept by fiscal year, so there are no figures from the beginning of the war in March 2003 until that fall.

Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-07-deserters_x.htm?POE=click-refer

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Well, guess the volunteer army is less likely to desert than a

drafted one.

"From January of '67 to January of '72 a total of 354,112 GIs left their posts without permission, and at the time of the signing of the peace accords 98,324 were still missing."

http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/vietnam-gi-resistance/index.php