Private First Class Kimberly Rivera, mother of four children and pregnant with a fifth, was sentenced on April 29 to 14 months imprisonment, which was lowered to 10 months based on a plea agreement.After serving a tour of duty in Iraq in 2006, she found herself unable to return.
She tells Amy Goodman in the Guardian why:
“I had a huge awakening seeing the war as it truly is: people losing their lives for greed of a nation, and the effects on the soldiers who come back with new problems such as nightmares, anxieties, depression, anger, alcohol abuse, missing limbs and scars from burns. Some don’t come back at all.”
Her attorney, James Branum, who defends soldiers who resist deployment, told me:
“She felt that she morally could not do what she was asked to do; at the same time, she realized that she would put other soldiers in danger if she didn’t pull the trigger when the time came. She talked to a chaplain about it. The chaplain largely pushed her aside, did not give her the counsel that she really needed.”…
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