#SGT RICKY KING PROFESSIONAL#

I looked down when they ripped his shirt open, and his stomach was falling out, and he looked up at me I saw his eyes roll back in his head and I felt inside myself that this kid was asking himself what he had done wrong. I ran up to the car with a few other GIs and we pulled him out of the car. “Just then I heard someone in my convoy fire several rounds, and I saw the boy in the car slump forward on the steering wheel. He slowed his car and started turning around to leave.” “I saw a car turn towards us and drive slowly in our direction so I gestured for him to turn around.

So I got out of the Hum-Vee with my weapon and was watching down the road to make sure that nobody turned down towards our convoy.” “We stopped to see what was happening, and I was ordered to pull rear security. “One day we were driving in Mosul when we saw another convoy stopped by the side of the road,” Clousing said. He spoke of an incident in Mosul where an innocent civilian was killed right in front of him. “One day I heard my commanding officer briefing his superior he told him that we had ’37 terrorists in custody,’ when we had a total of 37 people, few of whom had been linked by any evidence to terrorism,” Clousing said “This taught me that in Iraq there is no black and white as the media would lead you to believe – the use of the word ‘terrorists’ is misleading and attempts to justify an unjust war.”Īs Clousing’s tour of duty drew to a close, the perceived injustices of the war became more difficult to live with. When he arrived in Baghdad and began his work as an interrogator, Clousing was surprised to find that the reality of American operations in Iraq was dramatically different from the image of the war portrayed by the media at home. “I wanted to make good decisions in a position where I could make a difference.”

#SGT RICKY KING PROFESSIONAL#

“I was terrified to be going into a combat zone, but at the same time I was excited, in a professional sense, to be able to do my job,” Clousing said.

In November 2004, Clousing’s unit was ordered to deploy to Baghdad in support of the elections. 5, in front of a crowded audience in the Community Center, Clousing told how his service in Iraq had led him to the belief that the American occupation of Iraq was immoral, and that he could not participate in it.

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.” Sergeant Ricky Clousing of the 82nd airborne division has seen the underside of the American military machine.Over a year ago, Clousing’s experiences in Iraq prompted him to pin the following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., to the door of his barracks, announcing that he had gone AWOL:

Sgt ricky king