Soldier disciplined for lying about Iraq war experiences
An Army sergeant who lied to Dennis-Yarmouth High School students that he had killed a 10-year-old boy in Iraq has been demoted and sentenced to extra duty by the 82d Airborne Division.
Dennis Edwards, 23, a graduate of Barnstable High School, has been reduced to the rank of specialist and ordered to perform unspecified extra duty for 45 days, said Major Amy Hannah, a division spokeswoman. Edwards pleaded guilty on Jan. 5 to one count of making false official statements and waived his right to a court-martial, Hannah said yesterday.
Edwards stunned an audience of 100 high school students and staff when he told them Nov. 23 that he had shot and killed an Iraqi boy who had pretended to be wounded before suddenly firing an AK-47 rifle as Edwards stood guard. The soldier, who criticized President Bush's motives for going to war, said the boy was found to have explosives strapped to his body.
Edwards then lied to his superiors when they asked whether he had made up the remarks, which came to their attention after being published in Cape Cod newspapers. ''He made up the statements, lied about it, and accepted punishment for those statements," Hannah said.
Edwards, a veteran of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan who spoke at Dennis-Yarmouth High School in uniform, was applauded at the time for what teachers described as an evenhanded, captivating account of his overseas experience. Edwards praised the US reconstruction efforts in Iraq, but criticized Bush for pursuing a ''personal vendetta" to finish the military campaign against Saddam Hussein that his father, President George H.W. Bush, had begun in the 1991 Gulf War.
''The first Bush couldn't get it done, so it's time for the next Bush to do it," the Cape Cod Times quoted Edwards as saying in the speech.
In a later interview, the Times reported, Edwards said that ''we went over there for one reason, and because that fell through, we're stuck over there for another reason."
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com
