How the Military Hides Dissent in the Ranks

[StarfarerBill]

By Nan Levinson, AlterNet

Ever since Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood last month, the hunt has been on for a motive, preferably one the Army could have detected and thwarted and still be held harmless.

It’s a long list, ranging from compassion fatigue to religious militancy, ineptitude to insanity, but it is clear that Hasan was desperate to avoid becoming one of the swarm of soldiers about to be sent to Afghanistan. This includes the possibility that he explored applying for conscientious objector, or CO, status, but Army officials counter that they have no record of any such attempt.



Of course they don’t. 



No reliable count exists of how many soldiers consider themselves conscientious objectors. The Army recorded 39 applications in 2007, the last year for which records are complete (and represents a five-year low). About half were approved. Nobody, however, believes Army statistics on the issue, probably not even the Army itself.

Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a GI rights organization, has developed a maxim: “There are Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, And Pentagon Numbers.” Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office threw up its hands when it tried to complete an independent assessment in 2007, before resorting to quoting the Defense Department’s numbers back to it.



The Army counts only those applications that make it to headquarters, but military counselors, such as Fager and J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, believe that the real number is many times the official figure. McNeil’s center alone helped 50 CO applicants in all branches of the military in 2008. Fager estimated that of the CO applications Quaker House has helped complete, about 15 percent have succeeded. 



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http://www.alternet.org/rights/144702/how_the_military_hides_dissent_in_the_ranks

[hayu_lol]

1. Major Hasan, status as a CO would not have affected...

his shipment overseas to work in his own specialty. He was not a warrior. He would have done THERE what he did here.

Loose use of the English language is responsible for this misinterpretation.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. There are degrees of CO status. It could have been decided to release him from the service

That kind of outcome is more common in the combat branches than in a non-combatant ones. Also Hasan most likely owed the Army time for his training, which makes release less likely.