 WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court refused on Friday to overturn the detention of a U.S. Army medic who declared his opposition to war on the eve of his deployment to Iraq. Agustin Aguayo, who enlisted in 2002 during the run-up to the Iraq war, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to release him from a military prison. He had sought an honorable discharge as a ``conscientious objector.''
| And now he gets a dishonorable one as a coward. |
Aguayo, who has been held in a U.S. prison in Germany since going absent without leave, said he enlisted as a way to earn money for his education.
| And he's getting an education, though not the one he thought he'd get. |
Though military operations in Afghanistan were under way and discussions about Iraq were ongoing, he said he never considered that he'd have to fight.
| I'm told that right about the time in basic training that you go to the firing range for the first time and have a rifle put in your hands, is about the time you understand, if you didn't before, what the army does. |
He faces up to seven years in prison on charges of desertion and missing movement and is scheduled to face trial next month, his attorney, Peter Goldberger said. Goldberger said he would ask the appeals court to reconsider the decision. ``It breaks my heart because I think he's sincere,'' the lawyer added.
Goldberger told the court in November that Aguayo's beliefs evolved over time and ``crystallized'' to the point that he could no longer take a life.
| He was a medic. He wasn't being asked to take lives. |
The Army said that wasn't enough. To receive conscientious-objector status, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin K. Robitaille said, a soldier must show a deeply rooted objection to war in any form.
``These cases are hard for people to believe because they involve a change in people's beliefs, but when you think about how old they were when they signed up, it's not that surprising at all,'' Goldberger said Friday.
| Just nineteen and an adult, was he? |
Government attorneys noted that Aguayo applied as a conscientious objector only after receiving his orders to Iraq and did so at the same time as his best friend. They said there was not enough evidence to support Aguayo's argument. The appeals court unanimously agreed, saying it could overturn the Army's decision only in the most extraordinary circumstances. The court found that the military had good reason to deny Aguayo's application.
The three-judge panel said Aguayo had little evidence to support his growing moral conviction against war and said the Army appropriately weighed the suspicious timing of his application. ``Though Aguayo stated that his Army training caused him anguish and guilt, we find little indication that his beliefs were accompanied by study or contemplation, whether before or after he joined the Army,'' Judge David B. Sentelle wrote.
| So we have at least three judges who can't be conned. |
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