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VANCOUVER — U.S. army deserter Robin Long is slated to be deported back to his army base in Fort Knox, Ky., Tuesday, which would make him the first resister to the U.S. war effort in Iraq to be sent out of Canada. Madam Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada cleared the way for the deportation late Monday, dismissing a last-ditch attempt to delay the process while the 25-year-old pursued further appeals.

For those few Americans who decided to desert their comrades by running off to Canada prior to their deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan and who thought that the Canadian government would give them a safe haven from US prosecution, I've got some great news; you aren't welcome there. Unlike the role the Canadian government played during the Viet Nam War when thousands of young deserters and draft dodgers were welcomed with open arms, this time around it's a different story. The government of Prime Minister Harper has taken the position that these Americans are not refugees which the Canadians define...

Since deserting his unit in Iraq and fleeing to Canada two years ago, Corey Glass has become the poster boy of the war resisters movement. Thursday in Toronto, supporters are planning to protest his scheduled deportation back to the United States. Corey Glass, 25, who deserted the U.S. Army while his unit was in Iraq and fled to Canada has become a cause celebre there. The American's impending deportation has led to protests and a parliamentary resolution. (ABC News Photo Illustration)But it turns out Glass has had little reason to be on the lam, ABC News has learned. Unknown to...

Army deserters told fellow soldier they committed the crime, court papers say. Two U.S. Army deserters were arrested Friday and charged with killing the Rev. Mark McCalla, a former Franklin pastor. First-degree murder charges were filed against Stephen C. Wilson, 19, of Cincinnati, and Daniel R. Smith, 22, of Newport News, Va. The men were captured after 9 p.m. Friday in downtown Columbus, according to Sgt. Dana Norman of the Columbus Police Dept. homicide bureau. The men told a fellow soldier they had shot and killed McCalla, according to criminal complaints filed in Wayne County, W.Va., magistrate court. Wilson and...

A month after US army reservist Matthis Chiroux publicly refused to deploy to Iraq, the former sergeant on Sunday set himself up for possible prosecution by failing to report for active duty with his unit in South Carolina. "Tonight at midnight, I may face further action from the army for refusing to reactivate to participate in the Iraq occupation," Chiroux told reporters in Washington. "I stand here today in defense of those who have been stripped of their voices in this occupation, the warriors of this nation...", Chiroux read from a statement as his father Rob, who had travelled to...

MPs vote to give asylum to U.S. deserters, Tories say no CBC News June 3, 2008 The House of Commons has passed a motion to grant permanent residence status to American military deserters and their families, but it's not expected to help a U.S. soldier recently ordered to leave Canada. While all three opposition parties supported the non-binding NDP motion Tuesday, the government voted it down and is certain to ignore it. There are an estimated 200 Iraq War resisters in Canada, including Corey Glass, 25, who learned last month that his application to remain in the country has been...

BAGHDAD — A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias. The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing. Capt. Logan Veath, a company commander in the 25th Infantry Division, pleaded with the Iraqi major who was leading his troops away from the Sadr City fight, urging him to return to the front. “If you turn...

TORONTO In from the cold they come, gangly young men and graying grandfathers alike, filling a downtown church with the kind of polite anticipation more befitting an afternoon wedding than an antiwar rally. ...Across Canada, the remnants of a lost counterculture are rising up again as hundreds of aging draft dodgers reluctantly leave the quiet comforts of their anonymous lives to help an estimated 200 Iraq war deserters who fled north with no promise of asylum...."You're being stop-lossed!"Phil McDowell tried to absorb his wife's frantic news in June 2006 that the Army was rescinding his discharge. Iraq had left him...

Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of deserters have fled to Canada, fearful of being jailed or forced to return to duty. It’s starting to look like they need not have bothered: Despite troop shortages and problems hitting recruitment targets, Pentagon officials say it would be a poor use of time to go after deserters. “We don’t actively look for a deserter or have bounty hunters who go out knocking on doors,” Army spokesman Major Nathan Banks says. “It doesn’t serve our purpose to lose manpower or focus in the global war on terror to find them, because the...

"Army desertion rate up 80 percent since '03 Iraq invasion," blared The Associated Press headline atop an article that began, "Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980." Sounds pretty bad until one puts 80 percent in context, which the AP didn't try to do, except to frame it to support its premise: Desertions "declined in 2003 and 2004, in the early years of the Iraq war, but then began to increase steadily," reaching "about nine in every 1,000 soldiers" in the year ending Sept. 30. As journalists are wont to...

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year. “We’re asking a lot of soldiers these days,” said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. “They’re humans. They have all...

One of the young filmmakers behind a controversial 9/11 conspiracy documentary was arrested this week on charges that he deserted the Army, even though he claims he received an honorable discharge. Korey Rowe, 24, who served with the 101st Airborne in Afghanistan and Iraq, told FOXNews.com that he was honorably discharged from the military 18 months ago — which he said he explained to sheriffs when they pounded on his door late Monday night. “When they came to my house, I showed them my paperwork,” Rowe said. “The cops said, 'You’re still in the system.'” Rowe is one of the...

There is no crack team of bounty hunters, no elite military unit whose job is to track them down and bring them in. Despite a rise in desertions from the Army as the Iraq war drags on into a fifth year, the U.S. military does almost nothing to find those who flee and rarely prosecutes those it gets its hands on. An Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures shows that 174 troops were court-martialed by the Army last year for desertion — a figure that amounts to just 5 percent of the 3,301 soldiers who deserted in fiscal year 2006....

Failure to track the thousands of deserters may lead to a pool of hit men, critics say MEXICO CITY — The most ruthless gang of drug-cartel hit men in Mexico are deserters from the army's elite. But the Zetas, as the ex-soldiers are known, may not be the only troops who abandoned their posts to work for the cartels. In the eight years since the Zetas were organized, more than 120,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted the army, according to the government's records. Yet the country's defense officials have made little effort to track their whereabouts, security experts said, creating a...

TORONTO -- There is an untold story of the war in Iraq -- a story about soldiers who have gone to Canada to avoid going back to Iraq. Many people think about the Vietnam War draft dodgers when they hear about people heading to Canada to avoid military service, but the soldiers in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War are part of an all-volunteer force. "I signed up before the invasion of Iraq," Corey Glass said in his Toronto apartment. "I joined the National Guard thinking it was a humanitarian organization." Glass is an Army National Guardsman from...

On the morning of Monday, Jan. 9, 2006, a 21-year-old Army specialist named Suzanne Swift went AWOL. Her unit, the 54th Military Police Company, out of Fort Lewis, Wash., was two days away from leaving for Iraq. Swift and her platoon had been home less than a year, having completed one 12-month tour of duty in February 2005, and now the rumor was that they were headed to Baghdad to run a detention center. The footlockers were packed. The company's 130 soldiers had been granted a weekend leave in order to go where they needed to go, to say whatever...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)-A U.S. Army soldier who fled to Canad arather than return to Iraq has disappeared again, this time just a day after surrendering to the military.Pvt. Kyle Snyder, 23, of Colorado Springs, Colo., told The Associated Press he was supposed to return by bus to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., from Louisville on Tuesday byt didn't go. He said he went AWOL after Fort Knox officials told him he would be sent back to his unit, the 94th Engineer Batallion.

MÉXICO, D.F. — The nation’s Defense Secretariat has submitted a proposal that calls for a 60-year prison sentence for soldiers who leave their posts to work for drug cartels.The bill submitted to Congress calls for defecting soldiers, such as those known as “Zetas,” and others who work for organized crime groups or who become guerrillas, to be charged with treason. Defecting in order to join organized crime gangs would become a crime under the Code of Military Justice. The proposal calls for the loss of service benefits and the prison sentence “for a military man who alone or with others...

WASHINGTON — Congressional researchers have identified dozens of AWOL guardsmen and reservists receiving paychecks despite their criminal absence, and said the Army has no reliable system to ensure that those deserters are taken off the service’s payroll. Over the last three years, the Government Accountability Office has monitored 75 cases of guardsmen and reservists who failed to report to active duty when their units were called up, but still received “improper and possibly fraudulent pay” while listed as deserters. The researchers estimated those errors cost the Army nearly $880,000 over that span, and said their calculations “likely significantly understate the...

Toronto -- Army Pvt. Ryan Johnson drove off his Mojave Desert base at 3 a.m. Sgt. Patrick Hart told his Army superiors he was going to watch one last Buffalo Bills football game. Marine police officer Christian Kjar of Santa Barbara got permission to leave his base in North Carolina to visit a mall. Rather than go to the Iraq war, all three went to Canada, where a small community of military deserters is growing as the conflict drags on. They are drawn by Canada's history of helping Vietnam War-era draft dodgers and the country's open opposition to the war....