"Before, I just intellectually thought it was a bad idea to go to war in Iraq. When I saw the faces of the people, the people I was hurting, that I was assisting in hurting I really began to change on a spiritual level...

I looked at these guys and I thought, 'Man, these are young, poor, uneducated guys who didn't have a lot of choices in their life and are forced to fight us'...

And I looked at the guys in my own unit and I thought, 'Man, we're exactly the same... all the guys in my unit were young, poor, didn't have the best education, didn't have the best choices in life'

And when I came to that realisation I felt all my fighting spirit just sort of bleed out of me..."

A consciencious objector talks about his experience in Iraq: Part One and Part Two