[NV Greens] Fw: [GPUS-PAX] Stryker Brigade Officer Refuses Orders

[Paul Etxeberri L]

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Ann Wilcox <wilcox_ann at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Jun 7, 2006 4:48 PM
>To: GPAX <peace at lists.gp-us.org>
>Subject: [GPUS-PAX] Stryker Brigade Officer Refuses Orders
>
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>            Fort Lewis soldier: Iraq war is morally wrong    01:13 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 7, 2006  Associated Press and KING5.com Staff Reports     TACOMA, Wash. - An Army lieutenant based at Fort Lewis has such grave objections to the war in Iraq, he’s refusing to deploy. 
>  In a pre-recorded statement played at news conference Wednesday, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada said: 
>  “It is my duty as a commissioned officer of the United States Army to speak out against grave injustices. My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not those who would issue unlawful orders.” 
>  Watada scheduled the news conference near Fort Lewis, where he is stationed, but was barred from attending during his duty hours. 
>  
>     KING
>  In a pre-recorded statement played Wednesday, Fort Lewis Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who refuses to go to Iraq, not only called the war in Iraq "morally wrong, but a horrible breach of American law."
>
>  
>  His statement continued: “It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law. 
>  “Although I have tried to resign out of protest, I am forced to participate in a war that is manifestly illegal. As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order.” 
>  He said the war violates the democratic system of checks and balances and usurps international treaties and conventions. 
>  “The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare,” Watada said. 
>  In a letter to his command in January, Watada said he had reservations about the Iraq war and felt he could not participate, his lawyer, Eric A. Seitz, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday from his office in Honolulu. 
>  A couple of months later, at the Army’s suggestion, Watada resubmitted his request to resign, Seitz said. He was told last month that his request had been denied. It would be Watada’s first deployment to Iraq. 
>  Joseph W. Hitt, a civilian spokesman at Fort Lewis, about 40 miles south of Seattle, said Watada is a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2 nd Infantry Division, the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The unit held a deployment ceremony Friday and is set to begin leaving later this month for a second mission in Iraq. 
>  Hitt said only that the Army is aware of Watada’s plans. “We have nothing to say about it because nothing has happened, and we’re not going to speculate on anything,” Hitt said. 
>  Watada, the son of Bob Watada, former executive director of Hawaii’s campaign spending commission, enlisted in 2003 after graduation from Hawaii Pacific University. He reported for boot camp that June and began officer candidate school two months later. 
>  Watada’s commission requires that he serve as an active-duty Army officer for three years ending this Dec. 3, Seitz said. 
>  “By his refusal to participate in the ongoing war, Lt. Watada joins a growing number of high-ranking military officers, West Point graduates and current and former members of the armed services who have expressed their opposition to the actions of the United States in Iraq,” Seitz said in a statement released Tuesday. 
>  Watada could be court martialed if he refuses to serve as ordered, unless the Army allows him to resign his commission or assigns him to duties that are not directly connected to the war, Seitz said. 
>  Watada did not apply for conscientious objector status. 
>  “In order to qualify as a conscientious objector you have to be opposed to war in any form, and he is not. He’s just opposed to this war,” Seitz told the AP. 
>  Paul Boyce, a spokesman in the Army’s national public affairs office, said Watada is “not the first officer, not the first enlisted, nor the first soldier” to refuse deployment to Iraq. An Army fact sheet dated Sept. 21, 2005, the most recent one available, said conscientious objector applications had been approved 87 and 101 denied since January 2003. 
>  Army regulations define conscientious objection as a “firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, because of religious training and belief.” 
>   
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