Author: CTR

Army National Guard Specialist Ghanim Khalil, 30, of Staten Island, N.Y., announced in February, 2003 that he would refuse deployment to Iraq as part of any unilateral military invasion.

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about all the innocent people who are being killed and the prisons over there where they’ve been torturing people.

I informed my chain of command that I was a conscientious objector and refused to carry my weapons for the remainder of my time in Iraq.

How do you liberate a country? Do you remove the tyrannical leader? Do you replace him with leaders of your choosing? Do you kill thousands of people who live in the country?

He turned himself in August 2006 and in October was sentenced to 3 months confinement before being released with a bad conduct discharge. He has spoken out against the war, calling it a “war of aggression” with “no legal basis.

In 2007, Beacon Press published a memoir of his time at Abu Ghraib and his conscientious objection entitled The Sutras of Abu Ghraib. The book is available from Courage to Resist.