Veterans gather to seek peace

Sgt. Ricky Clousing of Sumner describes what he says is an event that drove him to desert from the Army:

A car turned the corner onto a street in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where he was guarding a convoy in January 2005. The driver raised his arms in surprise when he saw U.S. soldiers and tried to turn around. But a soldier in a nearby Humvee shot the driver.

Clousing, 24, said he rushed to help the wounded man, who was small, maybe 110 pounds, and looked young — 20, perhaps, around Clousing's age.

"He basically looked at me," said Clousing, who said he served as a U.S. Army interrogator in Iraq. "And I looked at his stomach bleeding and falling out on the road. ... There were no words exchanged, but I could just see it and feel him asking in his mind and in his eyes, 'Why was this happening to me?' "

Clousing said he deserted from the Army in June 2005, two months after his unit returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., from a brief tour in Iraq.

He was expected to turn himself in today to Fort Lewis authorities after speaking at a news conference at a national Veterans for Peace convention.

The convention at the University of Washington drew hundreds of veterans and other anti-war activists to Seattle on Thursday and continues through Sunday.

Larry Hildes, one of Clousing's attorneys, said Clousing has contacted military authorities at numerous bases on the East Coast, offering to turn himself in. The officials told Clousing they had no record of him, Hildes said.

Joseph Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesman, said that because the military handles each desertion case separately, he could not speculate on what might happen to Clousing if he shows up at Fort Lewis today.

Piek added that a federal warrant is issued for all deserters, and that it is not unusual for soldiers to desert or for deserters to turn themselves in later.

Among the speakers at the convention Thursday was activist Cindy Sheehan, who drew international media attention when she camped near President Bush's ranch in August 2005, after her son was killed in Iraq. Sheehan announced that she would be opening property she purchased in Crawford to soldiers and families of men and women resisting deployment to Iraq.

Sheehan acknowledged that authorities could detain resisters on her property, but said she plans to start a fund to help them pay for legal services.

Sheehan was one of the bigger names at the conference, but many lesser-known activists had war stories of their own. Billy Kelly, 63, of New York, a convention spectator, said he has returned to Vietnam each of the past eight years.

The veteran, whose platoon killed 37 armed Vietnamese on March 15, 1969, returned last spring to the site of that day's battle, the rural village of Tap An Bac. There, he saw a wall etched with the names of those killed in the war, and nearby, a graveyard.

Kelly says he tries to keep busy in Vietnam, building houses and facilities such as a community center. "When I'm alone here in my solitude, I start thinking too much," he said.

Kelly makes a trip to the village of My Lai each year, leaving behind roses that number 504, a figure often cited as the number of Vietnamese killed in a massacre there a year before Kelly's Tap An Bac battle.

Like Clousing today, Kelly said he felt it was wrong to hurt civilians. He said he once refused orders to burn a village.

Clousing said he left the Army after speaking with chaplains and many others about his concerns. In Iraq, he said, he saw innocent civilians being detained for weeks, and witnessed soldiers in convoys needlessly shattering windows of cars pulled over on the side of the road.

Clousing said he feels at peace with his decision to leave the military. "I listened to my conscience."

Charlotte Hsu: 206-464-8349 or chsu@seattletimes.com