An unfortunate story in the New York Times last week says that a Gulf war soldier was sentenced to 15 months in jail for deserting the war that he no longer believed in.

An American soldier who fled to Canada rather than fight in Iraq pleaded guilty to a desertion charge Friday and was sentenced by an Army judge to 15 months in a military prison.

The soldier, Pfc. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, Idaho, who left his unit in 2005 on grounds of moral opposition to the war, will also be dishonorably discharged and demoted to private E-1, the Army’s lowest rank.

Whatever happened to standing up for what you believed in? What purpose would jail serve in the guy genuinely does not want to fight in the war any longer? And what about the guys who orchestrated the war to begin with?

Revelations a few weeks ago that the Bush administration manufactured a document to make it look like Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with al Qaeda have receded into the memory hole. If you missed it, here's the summary:

Ron Suskind is a heavyweight: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of a well-regarded book on the administration's security policies, The One Per Cent Doctrine. His new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which was published last week, contains the extraordinary new charge. It says that late in 2003 the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to forge a memo dated July 2001 from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, to Saddam himself, affirming that Mohammed Atta, the September 11 2001 bomber, had contacts with the regime and that Iraq had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme.

It was forgeries like this which generated support for the Iraq war. This story had potential to bring down the Bush administration. But it has been swept under the carpet. The Democratic National Convention is taking place this week with nary a word about this blatant fraud on the American people which has cost thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. If someone forges a check and causes havoc as a result, that's a crime, and the guy might go to jail. Evidently, deserting your military obligations will also land you in jail. What about fraudulently starting a war.