Soldier Gets 3 Months for Desertion - AP

[Eugene]

Soldier Gets 3 Months for Desertion
By Associated Press

February 5, 2007, 7:17 PM EST

FORT BLISS, Texas -- A soldier was found guilty Monday of deserting her Army unit
on the eve of its deployment to the Middle East and was sentenced to three months
in military prison.

A guilty plea by Spc. Melanie McPherson, a 28-year-old reservist from Tofte, Minn.,
to going absent without leave was superseded by a military judge's ruling on the
more serious charge of desertion. McPherson told the judge she hitchhiked to
Minnesota after leaving Fort Bliss the day before her unit was to leave for Kuwait,
in July.

McPherson was also reduced in rank to private and will receive a bad-conduct discharge
after her prison term.

Trained as a military photojournalist, McPherson said she left because she was afraid
she would eventually be deployed to Iraq as a truck driver or military police officer.
She said she feared that if she were sent to war as anything other than a photojournalist,
she would endanger herself and those around her.

McPherson also pleaded guilty to missing her deployment.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-brf-awol-soldier,0,7760219.story

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

1. Serve in BushCo's Imperial Militia..

...or go to prison -- easy choice.

[China_cat]

3. The prescribed penalty for desertion in time of war

is death by firing squad. I'm really surprised...amazed, actually...that it wasn't imposed seeing as how our glorious leader loves bloodshed.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. I think they would make...

... examples out of military personnel who refuse with much tougher punishment if they thought it wouldn't create an overwhelming avalanche of PR problems.

[elocs]

2. Being deployed as a truck driver rather than a photojournalist

is a typical moronic military move. I have a 17 year old nephew in the Army who is on the fast track to going to Iraq. I warned him about that when he enlisted last year, but he wouldn't listen. At least he can never claim that nobody ever tried to warn him.

[bethsandy]

5. Personally...

I would have done the same thing.