Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan.
Those who help war resisters say desertion is more prevalent than the military has admitted.
“They lied in Vietnam with the amount of opposition to the war and they”re lying now,” said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represents Army Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the war in Iraq [read
more].