"It's an atrocity," Lt. Ehren Watada's civilian attorney Eric Seitz told the court of the judge's rulings.
Watada faces four years in prison if he is convicted on all charges, which include refusing deployment to Iraq and "conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman" for speaking in public forums against the war.
Seitz had hoped to call close to a dozen experts on international law, government intelligence, and the situation in Iraq to testify in Watada's defense, but the judge overseeing the court martial, Lt. Col. John Head, ruled their testimony "irrelevant" and refused to allow them to be called as witnesses.
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| Demonstrator supports Watada at January's anti-war rally. © Jeffrey Allen |
Among the experts Seitz had hoped to call were Michael Ratner, the president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents prisoners incarcerated at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; former United Nations Assistant Secretary General Dennis Halliday, who ran the UN's Oil-for-Food program in Iraq during the 1990s; the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers; international-law professors Marjorie Cohn and Richard Falk; and former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Ray McGovern.
"It's becoming clear that there's nothing for us to say in this courtroom," lawyer Seitz complained. "These witnesses have extraordinary credentials and can speak to the political and moral issues at stake."
Head also ruled as "inadmissible" Watada's central defense strategy, based on the so-called Nuremberg Principles, which arose out of trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II.
The fourth of the Nuremberg Principles states that superior orders are not a defense to the commission of an illegal act, meaning soldiers who commit a war crime after "just following orders" are as culpable as their superiors.
With the Nuremberg defense ruled inadmissible, the government prosecutor Capt. Scott Van Sweringin argued Watada "brought shame and disgrace to himself, his unit, the officer corps, and the U.S. Army."
Part of that shame, Van Sweringin argued, derives from Watada's public statements. One of the prosecutions' key pieces of evidence is a speech Watada gave last year to the annual convention of Veterans for Peace, a group of former U.S. military personnel who oppose the war in Iraq.
"It is time for change and the change starts with all of us," Watada told the gathering, a video of which was played as part of the prosecution's case. "Today, I speak with you about a radical idea...that to stop an illegal and unjust war, soldiers can choose to stop fighting it....If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the constitution extols--if they stood up and threw their weapons down--no president could ever initiate a war of choice again.
"When we say...'against all enemies foreign and domestic'--what if elected leaders became the enemy? Whose orders do we follow? The answer is the conscience that lies in each soldier, each American, and each human being. Our duty to the constitution is an obligation, not a choice."
"I was dismayed and betrayed," Watada's commander, Lt. Col. Bruce Antonia, told the court. Antonia, who is currently stationed in Iraq and working to clear Baghdad neighborhoods of suspected insurgents, was flown back to Ft. Lewis to testify before Watada's court martial.
"The most important aspect of being an officer is to lead by example," Antonia said. "If you don't comply with an order, that's not leading by example."
Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, argued that Watada only spoke out against the war because his efforts to argue his case internally within the military failed. Seitz said Watada offered to be deployed to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, and tried to resign his commission as an officer rather than speaking out in public.
"As soldiers we don't get to pick and choose which war we go to and which we don't," Antonia said in response to the prosecution's questioning.
Watada is scheduled to testify in his own defense Wednesday.
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Comments: 10
Terry Gross on NPR did a show on this case. These folks were deemed irrelevant only after the Nurenburg defense was found (separately) to be a non-starter. Their inclusion was part of that defense. If that line of questioning is not a viable defense, it makes sense to not have those folks testify.
We need a two-year National Service Requirement for all our young people before they're granted full citizen responsibilities as Carriers of Freedom. That service should be on a volunteer [no-pay] basis - they should receive room, board, access to free medical care. The service can include military, disaster cleanup, homeless housing, reforestation, etc. Everybody serves, no exceptions. Everybody serves, no rank/no pay.
Those who go ahead into professional military service should then never be required to sell their souls [murdering anyone in cold blood - whether in military service or in private life, is a form of selling the soul] with a vow in exchange for money. NEVER.
There are human laws on the books today which guarantee Lt. Watahda will be convicted - of transgressing human laws.
But his case is actually a case for FREEDOM in the highest sense - and thank God it's public enough that we can debate the Truth and see through some of the less-than-whole-truth rules & regs.
ty phoon and Hugh Jass, I see a singular lack of courage and original thinking in both your posts. I wonder how I could encourage you both to go deeper and think harder? My wish is for you to understand the powers you invoke against yourselves when you deliver such curses.
You join the military to protect your nation, not to go on holiday. When you sign up for the military, you sign your life away to serve your country. You have a duty to serve your nation. There is no choice. He may not agree with the war, but that does not give him the option not to serve. Hell, I don't agree with a lot in this war, but I still serve because its my job and my duty. This guy is not a coward, and he is not unpatriotic, but he has no sense of duty or responsibility. That is why he should be tried and punished.
Lt. Watahda is exemplifying Christlike duty and responsibility to higher law. He's sacrificing himself so that others may begin to see the Truth, and FREE themselves of this web of religious and political and corporate poisons. He's showing every human being what a real WARRIOR is made of.
As a woman, I compare this kind of courage to what it takes to give birth. I liken this kind of courage to what the early feminists had to go through in order to open the door for voting rights for women. Truly - women's suffering /suffrage. But I doubt the jailers will rape Lt. Watahda, or force tubes down his throat....
The REAL war is inside, and should always be inside each individual - the Inner Jihad. What Lt. Watahda has begun is the process of the Inner Jihad insice the groupmind of USAmerica. It's time. Good job.
But there's also karmic slavery. If a country requires its young people to take a vow to kill, that country has condemned its young people to a form of spiritual slavery. Not only are they enslaved during the present-life period of their vow/salary/period of employment as killers [killing is NOT service. Service is done in love. Killing for hire is NOT service.] - but those who do kill are enslaved in soul debt for the rest of their lives; and they're enslaved karmically until they clear that karma, however many lives it takes to do that.
Murder = slavery.
Killing-for-hire in combat = murder = slavery.
Forget the corporate/military legalities for a moment, and think about the soul. What about these youngsters?
You had the last, best word here. Hugh Jass cannot comminucate without name calling....yet. I hope he reads what you write for his own good.
I heard this trial was declared a mistrial. Does the current presidential administration want the legality of the Iraq Occupation tested in open court?
Peace out!