From Truthout:
Watada Follows Military Rules on Dissent
By Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist
Monday 12 February 2007
Mistrial declared as Army's case flounders.
Courage is not only shown on the battlefield by military personnel. It takes guts and courage for a soldier to refuse to deploy to Iraq with one's unit because he believes the war is illegal. Very few in our country resign from their careers, much less risk imprisonment, on a point of principle and conscience.
First Lt. Ehren Watada is the latest in a series of war resisters. He went in front of a military court-martial for his belief that the war in Iraq is a war of aggression based on untruths told to the American public and Congress. As a war of aggression, Watada has characterized the war as a crime against peace, and hence, according to international law, a war crime. Going to Iraq would make him complicit in a war crime. Two other US Army soldiers will be court-martialed within the next month for their opposition to the Iraq War, making seventeen who have faced jail rather than compromise their conscience.
I attended Lieutenant Watada's general court-martial February 5, 6 and 7, 2007, at Fort Lewis, Washington. The military law judge, Lt. Col. John Head, declared a mistrial on the third day of the trial before the defense had presented its case. While Watada stipulated the fact that he missed his unit's deployment to Iraq, he pled not guilty to the charge, as he maintained he did not have criminal intent in refusing to deploy, but instead his refusal was to prevent his complicity in a war crime. As to the stipulation of fact that he had spoken in a public forum in June and August, he would argue that his statements about the illegality of the war were based on facts provided by international law experts, Congressional testimony and comments by retired general officers.
The defense was to consist of only two witnesses, one of whom was to be Watada himself. Eight witnesses, including leading international war experts and analysts, had been struck from the defense witness list by the judge in a January 2007 pre-trial hearing. The judge ruled that evidence concerning the legality of the war on Iraq was off-limits during the trial. As one can imagine, the courtroom dance of not mentioning the "ultimate question," of whether a soldier can question the legality of a war, proved to be an incredible obstacle to justice in the case of a military officer facing prison time for his beliefs.
The US Army prosecution called only three witnesses to meet its burden of providing evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Lieutenant Watada had failed to deploy to Iraq and had committed conduct "unbecoming an officer" for public statements about the war on Iraq he made in June and August 2006. ......(more)
The rest of the piece is at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021207S.shtml