War resister Dean Walcott received responses to both his Pre-Removal Risk Assessment and Humanitarian and Compassionate applications today. As expected, both were negative. Dean has been ordered to leave Canada by January 6.
Dean joined the United States Marine Corps in 2000, a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday, hoping to get a college education and some structure in his life. Dean knew if the U.S. went to war, he would be expected to fight, and he fully accepted that risk. In 2003, he was involved in the United States’ invasion of Iraq, and was deployed to Iraq a second time in 2005.
Between those two deployments, Dean was stationed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S. military hospital in Stuttgart, Germany. There, families of mortally wounded U.S. soldiers are flown in to see their loved one for the last time.
Alarmed by the high suicide rate among Landstuhl patients, military brass assigned soldiers to act as liaisons for both patients and visiting families. Dean, who had no training in either health care or counselling, was charged with that duty.
He was totally unprepared for what he saw – U.S. soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians, blown to bits, but somehow still clinging to life, burn victims dying in unimaginable agony.
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