Today is the first day of the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who has refused to redeploy to Iraq on the grounds that the invasion and occupation are illegal. “As his court-martial got under way, military judge Lt. Col. John Head refused to allow almost all defense witnesses to take the stand. Head previously ruled that Watada’s attorney, Eric Seitz, could not debate the legality of the Iraq war in court” (AP).
This ruling makes it impossible for Watada to get a fair trial. What else would you expect, in Bush’s America.
The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:
“I,____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.
During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, “The uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, ‘Members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.’ This principle was considered so important that we-we, the government of the United States, proposed that it be internationally applied in the Nuremberg trials.” (International Law)
By ruling that the defense could not question the legality of the Iraq war, the judge is ignoring The Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is thus clear that the US military justice system is as rotten as the US legal system, with its handing of the Presidency to the losing candidate. Clearly the war is illegal, since under the US constitution, the UN Charter has the status of US law, and under the UN treaty, “pre-emptive” wars are illegal.
There is a Web site dedicated to Lt. Watada here.
(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)
Update [2007-2-7 21:21:45 by Alexander]:
Maybe not so rigged after all.
The judge has declared a mistrial. As far as I can understand what the issue is, Watada had signed a statement saying he did not redeploy, and the prosecution was using that as evidence that he confessed. But in court, it emerged that he did not think that admitting that he did not redeploy was a confession of guilt, since he did not think he was obliged to redeploy, since the order was illegal. So the judge threw the signing statement out. What I don’t undertand is why that required a declaration of mistrial. The only thing I can conjecture is that the signing statement was central to the prosecution’s case.
Mistrial declared in war objector court-martial
The whole thing sounds pretty strange to me. Is this the judge’s way to prevent a miscarriage of justice while covering his but?