I feel worst for his wife, because he should have shared his intentions with her - you can't just leave her to fend for your child like that.
While I don't believe in this mission in any way, I don't think deserting is the way to go. I think this issue is a lot more complicated that people on this board seem to understand and I also think that more soldiers should question why they are being used as target practice for a mission that, by definition, was never going to happen. The Iraqis don't really care about democracy and if they did, they should have risen up - it wasn't worth the life of our brave soldiers. We should have learned that nation building is not a productive exercise and that we cannot create a reality to fit our own agendas after the Vietnam debacle - some conflicts are simply not worth being involved in. Has anyone ever heard of Saigon? Oh, I forgot, it is now called Ho Chi Minh City - and we sacrificed 57,000 lives for that.