 My name is Camila Mejia. I am an Iraq War veteran Resister and conscience objector. I served in the military from 1995 Through 2010 my original Military contract of eight years would have ended in the year 2003 It didn't because I was stop-lost Stop-lost is an extraordinary power given to the commander-in-chief to hold Members of the military in the military pass their military commitment During times of national emergency or war Because of that I my my contract was extended In order for me to be deployed to the Iraq war in 2003 and As a result of my refusal my to return to my unit after a two-week furlough I was court-martialed and between the time served in jail and the appeals that followed my My conviction I ended up staying in the military until 2010 when I first deployed to Iraq my Opposition to the war Went from being political and abstract to being more Personal and more heartfelt and more moral Due to our first mission in Iraq Which was to run a prisoner of war camp in a place called al-Assad Where we had occupied A former bunker of the Iraqi Air Force that had been turned into a detention facility our job was to basically guard prisoners and keep them sleep deprived in order to prepare them for interrogations the sleep deprivation occurred through a number of tactics that amounted to psychological torture and included mock executions through pistols and explosion-like sounds Created with sledgehammers also included sensory deprivation and Mistreatment basically this was my first mission in Iraq and it was the beginning of a transformation in my opposition to the Iraq war from abstract and political to an opposition grounded and on the ground experience and My moral values from the very beginning of our time in Iraq It became clear That we were not there To follow the rules of engagement or the laws of war which would require members of the US military to limit our tactical and strategic military operations To places where there are no high numbers of civilian Rather than following those rules. We set up traffic control points and conducted patrols in highly civilian and populated areas such as mosques schools Public plazas markets you name it and we were there and the the result was that we killed mostly unarmed civilians in our Firefights and and patrols and various different interactions with Members of the Iraqi resistance for the first time after Seven months in the Middle East and five months in combat in Iraq. It became pretty clear There was no justification for all the things that we had done in Iraq I realized that there had come a point in my life where I had to choose between being a Person of conscience and being an obedient soldier and I chose to be a person of conscience and to put my weapons down and say no and that's what I Decided to apply for a conscience object to discharge and surrender myself to the military after Being absent without leave for five months in the US. I believe President Obama should initiate a commission on truth on the Iraq war and Accountability and without having a truth commission. I think that there's too much that will remain unsaid. We have to talk about this openly and to learn from the many mistakes that we have made and we continue to make and It will take leadership from the highest Levels of government to change and that would help establish a More more peaceful way for nations to relate to one another and resolve conflict