Joe Glenton, the soldier drummed out of the British Army for refusing to return to Afghanistan, has praised the website WikiLeaks for releasing thousands of files revealing the truth behind the controversial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr Glenton, 27, joined the army in 2004 but went absent without leave in 2007 after serving as a lance corporal with the Royal Logistic Corps. He was ordered back to the conflict zone just nine months after his previous tour of duty ended, even though military guidelines say troops should not be deployed again for 18 months.
Mr Glenton, who was jailed for nine months at a court martial in Colchester, is now studying global development and peace studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. He said: “It isn’t about liberation, it’s about exploiting the oil resources in former Soviet bloc countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan by using Afghanistan to transport it through. Also, by being in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in military terms Iran is ‘bracketed’, surrounded on both sides and vulnerable to attack. It’s a matter of when, not if, this will happen.
“WikiLeaks has revealed the truth which has been hidden to the public by the mainstream media that generally toes the government line.”
