'I can't go to Iraq. I can't kill those children' - Suicide soldier's dyin

[mom cat]

'I can't go to Iraq. I can't kill those children' - Suicide soldier's dying words to his mother
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 25 August 2006

While his peers from St Augustine's Catholic school were this month contemplating university careers or first jobs, Jason Chelsea was preoccupied with a different future: his first tour of duty in Iraq.

The 19-year-old infantryman, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, was tormented by concern about what awaited him when the King's Lancaster Regiment reached Iraq, where 115 British soldiers have been killed since 2003.

He had even told his parents that he had been warned by his commanders that he could be ordered to fire on child suicide bombers.

It was a fear that he never confronted. Within 48 hours of confessing his concerns to his family, Pte Chelsea was dead after taking an overdose of painkillers and slashing his wrists.

On his death bed, he told his mother, Kerry: "I can't go out there and shoot at young children. I just can't go to Iraq. I don't care what side they are on. I can't do it."


more at:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1221649.ece

[Jamastiene]

1. What a waste to see a compassionate person

leave this world rather than go fight an unjust war. Too bad he couldn't find another way to avoid having to kill children for oil. What is this world coming to?

[alstephenson]

8. R.I.P., Young Soldier.....eom

[Coexist]

2. How does one live with the knowledge

that you may have to kill children - even if you know if you don't, you will be killed.

My mother-in-law's boyfriend still chokes up about having to kill children in WWII before they threw their grenades at them.

That is why War is Hell, I guess.

This war has cost another innocent life.

[bronxiteforever]

3. What can you say? He was a boy with a good heart and not a killer

yet he felt out of place in his own country? My God, what does that say about us:cry:

[mom cat]

5. He was so recently a child himself, and did not want to kill his

fellows. :cry:

[MiaCulpa]

4. Gets sadder

The boy tried to kill himself in his barracks in 2004, and they STILL had had him on duty in Iraq. He would've lived if his 19 yr old liver hadn't been so damaged by alcohol that it looked like that of a 20-yr alcoholic. The military watched this boy slowly die, and they did nothing.

[Peace Patriot]

6. This is heartbreaking--and infuriating! I think it bothers me more than

ANYTHING--more even than the torture and death that the Bushites have inflicted. It is the damage to the SOULS of our young people, on both sides, on all sides of this UNNECESSARY war, this war OF CHOICE, that most tests my non-violent philosophy and my conviction (on most days) that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. should not be executed for war crimes, and should not be jailed, but should be made to pay recompense in money and service (for instance, emptying bedpans at Veterans' hospitals), and that "truth and reconciliation" must be our mode, not revenge. It is the only way we can deal with their horror without perpetuating it in the world.

The demoralization and despair of our young people that Bush and Blair have deliberately caused is very close to being unforgivable. Whatever carnage they have perpetrated--tens of thousands of innocents slaughtered--is past. But the young people on all sides are the future. And many of them have been made desperate, suicidal, insane, their souls torn asunder, by the blood they have been ordered to spill, and by the defensive actions they have been compelled to take, in this wholly UNNECESSARY, greed-driven war! As Shakespeare's play "MacBeth" brilliantly reveals, the stain of it cannot be washed off, and murder leads to murder leads to murder--as it has in Iraq with civil war--until all are knee deep in blood, and insanity reigns.

That any politician or leader would DELIBERATELY generate war--without absolutely no need to do so, and with malice aforethought--is the worst crime that any human being can commit. And it's not so much death--which occurs in just wars, as well as unjust ones--it's horrible toll of the human psyche which has trouble recovering from any war, and CANNOT recover from unjust war. Ask the Germans of WW II. Ask Vietnam vets. The pain in unendurable. That is what Bush and Blair have done to the future. And they have no excuse. None! They can't even say they were sucked in (as in Vietnam). They can't plead compulsion (as the Germans in WW II). They freely chose this inflict this horror on the youngest, most vulnerable adults in our society--the poor, who sign up for military service to get an education or a job--and the young men and children of Iraq, who feel compelled by honor to defend their country or their community.

Angry as I am, I don't want Mussolini's fate, or Hitler's fate, for these leaders. We must stop the bloodlust here, now, forever--or humanity will incinerate itself and that will be that. The human species will turn out to be evolution's worst mistake--and the universe will go on without us, and maybe create intelligence somewhere else, that is better and smarter than we are. Peace, my friends. Peace now. And to Jason Chelsea's loved ones, peace now. Peace and love. May your unbearable pain teach us peace.

[mom cat]

9. Thank you for that tender, compassionate reply. Peace to you too

dear heart.

[samsingh]

7. this is frustrating and mindboggling

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

10. A soldier who died as a victim of battle

as certainly as if he'd been shot on the front lines by "the enemy".

[opihimoimoi]

11. Bush bears the responsibility for this tragedy....