Those poor deserters

New York Magazine decided that they needed to do a piece on those brave Americans that absconded to Canada instead of fulfilling their commitment to the country of their births – the deserters. But, they really should have done their homework. Take for example, Kimberly Rivera;

Kim Rivera, was deported from Canada in 2012. Rivera completed a tour in 2006 as a driver with the Fourth Infantry Brigade Combat Team, but she came to believe the long-term occupation of Iraq was excessive and immoral. In 2007, she left her post in Texas and moved to Toronto with her husband and their two children. Over the next five years, they had two more children and Rivera became pregnant with another. At her court-martial, Rivera’s supporters included Amnesty International, the archbishop Desmond Tutu, and several veterans organizations, but she lost the case and was sentenced to 14 months in military prison.

Kimberly Rivera didn’t complete her tour of Iraq – she absconded during her mid-tour leave. you know when the Army let her go back for a few weeks half way through her deployment. The Army was rewarded by her disappearance. I’m sure that she wasn’t missed given witness accounts of her “service”. She claimed some altruistic anti-war reason for not returning to duty, but she told Marie Claire magazine that she didn’t return because he fat, lazy husband was tired of taking care of their children alone. You know, even though he convinced her to join the Army in the first place while they were living in her parents’ basement and working at Walmart.

They talk to Andre Sheperd who deserted from his Apache repair job in Germany before they deployed his second time. He claimed that it was because he couldn’t stand the thought of the damage that his work was doing to the Iraqis, even though during his first deployment, they put him in charge of their recreational equipment because as a mechanic he wasn’t competent enough at his job fixing Apache helicopters. Folks who knew Sheperd before he joined the Army told us that he had stolen money from friends and was living in his car – so that’s how he paid the Army back for lifting him out of poverty.

In the NY Mag article, they talk to Corey Glass, who left Canada ahead of his forced deportation. Corey Glass isn’t even wanted by the United States. TSO wrote about him in 2008. We even checked with the Pentagon (when they liked us still) and they said that Glass isn’t wanted by authorities. That he had absconded to Canada after the date of his enlistment ended. But, he’s on the run in Europe now;

He spent his days behind a desk, writing reports on field intelligence. Except for the occasional mortar round dropping into camp, he saw little action. The trouble for Glass was what he saw in the field reports delivered to his desk. His job was to read the contents and rewrite them into a coherent narrative for commanders to skim. Instead, he found himself questioning the reports themselves. Like other U.S. deserters, Glass has been careful not to reveal the operational details of what troubled him, but over time, he became convinced that U.S. troops had committed war crimes.

Yeah, so when he came back, he went to Canada and made himself the poster child of deserters, even though he didn’t really desert.

And there’s rocket scientist Dean Walcott who was ordered to leave Canada and instead he imprisoned himself in a Canadian church demanding sanctuary – he hasn’t been able to leave the church grounds since he entered it five years ago.

So, you can see that we’ve lost our best & brightest to Canada. And they can keep them, too.

Category: Shitbags