How widespread is opposition to the war in Iraq among the military?
We can’t quantify how many soldiers are opposed to the war. We can find some, and some of them are spotlighting themselves and saying, “I am against the war.” But they’re telling me that they had all kinds of buddies in the service who were against the war, but who decided to just mark their time and try to get out in one piece. But unless you could survey all the members of the armed forces, there’s no way to know how many are against the war. One of the motivations I had in writing this book was to bring these stories together and show that there is a critical mass, even if we don’t know how many there are. If you remember from Vietnam, this was slow-building. And the soldiers opposed to the war were a critical aspect of the antiwar movement. And this thing has not been going on nearly as long as Vietnam and, unfortunately, it seems it’s going to be going on for a while. It struck me as I was reading your book that the issues raised by the conscientious objectors are not just the imm
