FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- An Army sergeant who went AWOL from Fort Bragg out of disgust with the Iraq war says he'll turn himself in Friday at Fort Lewis.

Lawyers for 24-year-old Ricky Clousing of Sumner have tried to negotiate a discharge without success. At an anti-war conference Friday morning at the University of Washington, Clousing announced he would turn himself in later at the Army base.

Clousing spent six months in Iraq and says he became confused and disenchanted with the U.S. role in Iraq.

"I stand here before you today about to surrender myself, which was always my intention," Clousing told several dozen friends, family and war veterans -- some conscientious objectors, who gathered in front of a war memorial at the University of Washington campus.

If Clousing turns himself in at Fort Lewis, "he surrenders to military control," Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Hitt said Friday. If military police find that Clousing is either a deserter or absent without leave from the U.S. military, he will be sent back to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the post he walked away from.

KING

Ricky Clousing spent six months in Iraq and says he became confused and disenchanted with the U.S. role in Iraq.

Less than six months in Iraq, Clousing said he witnessed the "baseless incarceration" and the "daily physical, psychological and emotional harassment" of Iraqi citizens.

He said he also witnessed the killing of an innocent Iraqi man by an American soldier in Mosul, but said when he tried to talk to unit leaders he was treated as an inexperienced soldier who "needed to shut up."

"I saw firsthand the abuse of power that goes without accountability," said Clousing, who has refused to participate in a "war of aggression" that has "no legal basis to be fought."

Clousing joined the Army in July 2002 and was trained as an interrogator with the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C. He deployed to Baghdad in December 2004.

"We Americans have found ourselves in a pivotal era where we have traded humanity for patriotism," Clousing said Friday. "We have traded our civil liberties for a sense of security."

Clousing sneaked out of Fort Bragg in June 2005. Beginning last fall, his lawyers said, they contacted Fort Bragg and later Fort Lewis to try to negotiate a discharge. But neither installation claims responsibility for him, said attorney Lawrence Hildes of Bellingham. Finally, Clousing decided to just show up at Fort Lewis.

Clousing is the latest soldier in Washington state to publicly oppose the Iraq war. A hearing is scheduled next week at Fort Lewis for 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who was charged last month with conduct unbecoming an officer and missing troop movement after he refused to deploy to Iraq. Watada has said that after researching the Iraq war, he decided it was illegal.