by TChris

As TalkLeft noted in March, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia refused to return to Iraq after deciding that he couldn't further an immoral war. The price of that decision: conviction of desertion in a court martial, a year in prison, and a bad-conduct discharge at the end of his prison term.

Sergeant Mejia, 28, has said his experience in Iraq, seeing brutality, senseless deaths and commanders who he said put glory over good decisions, convinced him that the war was "oil driven" and immoral.

After Mejia refused to return to Iraq, he applied for conscientious objector status, but the military recognizes only an objection to war in general, not an objection to specific conflicts. Mejia wasn't allowed to use that application as a defense, nor was he allowed to testify about the mistreatment of detainees that he witnessed.