Sergeant Ricky Clousing Martin Luther King Quote

Sergeant Ricky Clousing, a tactical Army interrogator, who went AWOL from Ft. Bragg, NC in June 2005 left the following quote from Martin Luther King, which explains his rationle:


"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right."

More Info:

Exclusive Interview with DemocracyNow! conducted on the morning of August 11, 2006 before Sgt. Clousing turned himself into the military

Associated press coverage of St. Clousing's press conference on the afternoon of August 11, 2006 before he turned himself into the military.,Web LINK

Interesting Exchange on DemocracyNow! Interview (Bleeder Board?):

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how prevalent, in your experience, were these kinds of incidents of innocent civilians being needlessly killed?

SGT. RICKY CLOUSING: I, myself, only witnessed this particular incident where an innocent civilian was killed, although because I was an interrogator, my security clearance granted me access to the S-2 room, which is the intelligence briefing room. It’s where they have all the intelligence updates. There is a board called the daily intelligence summary, and that holds information on how many times in our area of operation that soldiers have received small arms fire, how many IEDs have gone off and also the number of local nationals or noncombatant Iraqi civilians that are killed. And as I said, I only saw this personally one time, but the number of innocent Iraqis killed on the bleeder board, or on the intelligence board, definitely climbed the whole time I was in Iraq. The number never -- it gradually increased day by day that we were there in the sector.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s called the “bleeder board”?

SGT. RICKY CLOUSING: It’s an intelligence summary board, basically of all the updates in the area of operation that we conduct in, all of the significant events.