U.S. army deserter knows Iraqi nightmare

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This article was published 26/10/2014 (3462 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The terror and chaos unleashed in Iraq now is no surprise to Josh Key. As a U.S. soldier, he went to Iraq to fight terrorists. What he witnessed was fellow soldiers terrorizing Iraqi civilians.

“To be quite honest, I said we were producing a bunch of terrorists,” said Key, who deserted the military and lives in “limbo” in Winnipeg with no status, no health benefits and the constant threat of being sent back to the U.S., where he’d be court-martialed.

When he served 11 years ago in the “Sunni triangle,” he imagined the complete mayhem seen today in a destabilized Iraq.

“I hated to think what the future would be like for the things we did ourselves,” said Key, who wrote about his experiences in Iraq in his book The Deserter’s Tale.

As an idealistic young conservative from Oklahoma, he enlisted in 2002 to get training to become a welder. In 2003, he was deployed to Iraq when then-president George W. Bush invaded the country on the false premise of going after weapons of mass destruction.

He wrote about seeing Iraqi civilians beaten, shot and killed or maimed with little or no provocation, participating in baseless nighttime raids where homes were ransacked, men were arrested and women and children terrorized. He witnessed the killing of a seven-year-old girl trying to scrounge leftover army rations to feed her family and U.S. soldiers using the bodies from a car full of apparently unarmed Iraqis for sport.

Key is one of about 200 Iraq war deserters who fled the U.S. for Canada.

The Conservative government in 2010 issued Operational Bulletin 202 that instructed immigration officers to consider deserters such as Key criminals despite what international law says about a soldier’s rights and obligation to refuse condemned military conduct.

Key has since been watching Canada remove the Iraq war deserters one by one.

“One was deported this week and one is going next week,” he said Thursday. “I’m never what you’d consider safe.”

He applied for refugee status when he came to Canada and was refused by the Immigration and Refugee Board. He appealed to the Federal Court and lost. His wife applied to sponsor him more than four years ago, and they’ve heard nothing, said Key.

Now, he’s watching his fellow soldiers being sent back to the U.S. to face a court martial and prison time and wonders when he’s next.

“That puts me in limbo.”

In the meantime, he and his wife live “very humbly” with her family. He’s a welder but not allowed to work in Canada and he doesn’t collect any social assistance or health-care benefits. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder but doesn’t qualify for treatment or health care in Manitoba.

Key said he gets psychotherapy for PTSD from a Vietnam vet in New York via Skype, but if he gets sick or hurt, he has to travel to southern Saskatchewan, where a family doctor will treat him for free.

Former NDP MLA Marty Dolin, who until he retired ran Manitoba’s largest refugee-settlement agency Welcome Place, has been advocating for Key to get health-care coverage.

Dolin said he thought for economic and moral reasons the NDP government would cover Key. “If he can’t go for preventive health care, he may end up at the hospital in an emergency and that would be very expensive.” After the federal government stopped providing interim federal health benefits to refugee claimants and privately sponsored refugees, the provincial NDP government stepped up and said it would cover them. When Dolin asked about coverage for Key, who is awaiting determination of his status in Canada, he was told he doesn’t meet the criteria. Dolin asked if Health Minister Erin Selby couldn’t use her discretion and grant him a health card and was told no.

“This is the party of Tommy Douglas and universal health-care coverage?” asked Dolin. “Why are we being mean to this guy?” A spokeswoman for Selby said the minister is aware of the case but won’t do anything for Key until he meets the criteria for residency set out in the Health Services Insurance Act of Manitoba. “This includes the need to be legally entitled to be in Canada, which can include obtaining permanent resident status or temporary resident status under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”

Dolin said the provincial government is acting like the federal government in its treatment of Key. “Why are we playing their game? It’s cruel, unjust and mean.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca