Of all the Officers in this story, Watada is the only one NOT betraying his Men or the Constitution.
Iraq War Refuser Will Appeal if Convicted

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Wed Feb 7, 11:41 AM ET

FORT LEWIS, Washington, Feb 7 (OneWorld) - Attorneys for the first commissioned officer to refuse to serve in
Iraq plan to appeal if he's convicted at a court martial this week on a U.S. military base at Fort Lewis, Washington.

"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.

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 (news, bio, voting record); 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.