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Old 02-08-2007, 06:08 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Idiot Judge May have Freed First Lieutenant Ehren Watada

Quote:
The court martial of the first US army officer to refuse to fight in the Iraq war has ended in a mistrial. On Wednesday, a military judge halted the case against First Lieutenant Ehren Watada over possible inconsistencies in a pre-trial agreement Watada made with prosecutors.
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../02/08/1611225

So here we are. Stipulation facts made between the defence and prosecution before the case have caused the judge to declair a mistrial - without asking the defence lawyer - resulting in a strong possibility of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada being protected under Double Jeopardy.

If you're not familair with the situation, First Lieutenant Ehren Watadastepped forward some time ago as the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the Iraqi War and occupation. He faced a court martial (refusing to deploy, conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman). Watada has used his growing fame to act as a figurehead for soldiers who are idologically poopsed to the war, mobilizing grassroots action to allow the freedom of soldiers who believe that the war is illegal to refuse the order to participate.

Yesterday, the Army judge called a mistrail over defence objection in the court martial, and the idiot didn't realize Double Jeopardy. When the Judge declairs a mistrial without the consent of the defence lawyer, the case becomes a mistrail unless something like the death of a juror occours. The jourors are fine, and Watada should be free quite soon.

The judge refused to allow expert defence whitnesses to testify as to the reasonability behind Watada's beliefs about the war, in an obvious attempt to prevent the trial to have anything to do with the legality of the war. Would you want to be the Army judge that ruled that a war was illegal?

So what does everyone think? Was Watada right? How much of an idiot is this judge?
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Old 02-08-2007, 07:10 PM   #2 (permalink)
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I think whatever punishment short of hanging is in order. He joined AFTER the start of the war, clearly with the sole intention of causing all this ruckus. He was not some poor schmuck who wished to pay for college, or some patriot who joined after 9/11 and was upset about being sent to Iraq.

As for why the mistrial was called I do not know. Nor am I aware of the legality of such declarations allowing a new case to be brought at a later date. If it was just the prosecution screwing it up, and the judge not wanting him to go free on account of that, we may never know.

In my opinion he signed up with the single intention of becoming a "hero" to the anti-war crowd. Personally I don't know how you could support him when there are so many heroes out there as it is. If it was to stand up for what you believe in, then it's still null and void because he joined in the first place.
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Old 02-08-2007, 07:35 PM   #3 (permalink)
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No evidence exists to suggest that he joined in order to make a statement, and evidence dows exist, not only in his public statements but from coroborating statements from friends, that he joined the army after and because of 9/11, "out of a desire to protect our country." While it's easy to try and dismiss someone like this as a purposeful figurehead, someone who is anti-war and a coward, it's wholely incorrect and disrespectful. According, again, to his own statements, he joined to fight those who attacked us on 9/11, not Iraq.

Seaver, I would request that, instead of guessing as to his intent and history, you search out the information.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaver
Personally I don't know how you could support him when there are so many heroes out there as it is.
I can support him because he places his duty of defending the counrty much higher than his duty to simply obey an order. He understands the UCMJ and recognizes, correctly, that the war on Iraq is wholely illegal. As such, he has refused to obey an illegal order. It's really that simple. He is a hero for standing up for the princeples of the military.
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Old 02-08-2007, 09:36 PM   #4 (permalink)
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willravel i'm confused by your position here. Your opening post seems to place you against the soldier and angry at the judge but your response to Seaver seems to imply you support the solider. Could you please clarify your position?
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Old 02-08-2007, 09:49 PM   #5 (permalink)
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seaver, I see the core comments in your post are inaccurate, thus, so is your conclusion. Watatda was assured for months before he enlisted, that Saddam's Iraq was making and brandishing WMD at the rest of the world, aiding al Zarqawi and his "poison camp" at Khermal, deploying mobile biological weapons manufacturing "trailers", and that it was "pretty well confirmed" that the lead 9/11 hijacker, Atta, had met with an Iraqi government "agent" in Prague.

In September, 2006, the US Senate SCI, after a delay since Juky, 2004, revealed that:
Quote:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/08/D8K0PV600.html
Senate: No Prewar Saddam-al-Qaida Ties

Sep 08 12:51 PM US/Eastern

By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

The report comes at a time that Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to excerpts of the 400-page report provided by Democrats.

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.
.....
Just two days later, VP Cheney was still making the same, deliberately false statements, despite the senate SCI release:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
September 10, 2006

Interview of the Vice President by Tim Russert, NBC News, Meet the Press


....Q But the President said they were working in concert, giving the strong suggestion to the American people that they were involved in September 11th.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, they are -- there are two totally different propositions here. And people have consistently tried to confuse them. And it's important, I think -- there's a third proposition, as well, too, and that is Iraq's traditional position as a strong sponsor of terror.

So you've got Iraq and 9/11: no evidence that there's a connection. You've got Iraq and al Qaeda: testimony from the Director of CIA that there was, indeed, a relationship; Zarqawi in Baghdad, et cetera. Then the --

Q The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact, Saddam --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I haven't seen the report. I haven't had a chance to read it yet --

Q But, Mr. Vice President, the bottom line is --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- but the fact is, we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02, and was there from then basically until the time we launched into Iraq.

Q The bottom line is the rationale given to the American people was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and he could give those weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda, and we could have another September 11th. And now we read that there is no evidence according to Senate intelligence committee of that relationship. You said there's no involvement. The President says there's no involvement --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Tim, no involvement in what respect?

Q In September 11th, okay? And the CIA said leading up to the war that the possibility of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction was "low." It appears that there was a deliberate attempt made by the administration to link al Qaeda in Iraq in the minds of the American people and use it as a rationale to go into Iraq.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Tim, I guess -- I'm not sure what part you don't understand here. In 1990, the State Department designated Iraq as a state sponsor of terror. Abu Nidal, famous terrorist, had sanctuary in Baghdad for years. Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda. You had the fact that Saddam Hussein, for example, provided payments to the families of suicide bombers of $25,000 on a regular basis. This was a state sponsor of terror. He had a relationship with terror groups. No question about it. Nobody denies that.

The evidence we also had at the time was that he had a relationship with al Qaeda. And that was George Tenet's testimony, the Director of CIA, in front of the Senate intelligence committee. We also had knowledge of the fact that he had produced and used weapons of mass destruction. And we know, as well, that while he did not have any production under way at the time, that he clearly retained the capability.......
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042501554.html
Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A01

...The report, which refuted many of the administration's principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked the official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The team found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. sanctions had destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities and that, for the most part, Hussein had not tried to rebuild them. Iraq's ability to produce nuclear arms, which the administration asserted was a grave and gathering threat that required an immediate military response, had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Investigators found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program.".......
<b>seaver....the war is illegal, not Lt. Watada's refusal to obey a deployment order. Read Cheney's preceding statement excerpt. The crime is in his words, seaver. Compare Cheney's comments to the senate committee conclusions and the Duelfer report on WMD....please stop posting things that cannot be supported, this is getting boring....it's old.....former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz compares his and Justice Robert Jackson's prosecutions of WWII crimes of "aggressive war", with the Bush - Cheney invasion and occupation of Iraq......the same thing, over and over, and none of it sinks in, you give not an inch, and you declare that refusal to follow an order to participate in a illegal "aggressive war" should be punished with a sentence, just short of execution of the US military officer who refuses to obey the illegal order from war criminals commanded by a war criminal, CIC. The definition of "crimes against humanity", and the criteria for prosecution of them, has not changed since the Nuremberg trials, sixty years ago, seaver. Only the perpetrators have changed, abd they mouth the same excuses..."they were only following orders".</b>

Quote:
http://starbulletin.com/2006/06/08/news/story04.html

Watada: Like father, like son
During Vietnam, Bob Watada was able to avoid serving
>> Watada could face prison and discharge for defiance

By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

More than four decades ago, Bob Watada, who lost a brother fighting in Korea, opposed the war in Vietnam.

Instead of running off to Canada, Watada approached his draft board in Colorado and was allowed to serve in the Peace Corps for two years in Peru.

He believed the Vietnam War was illegal.

Now his son, Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, has announced he will not serve in Iraq for the same reason.

The elder Watada said even after spending two years in the Peace Corps, the Pentagon tried to draft him when he returned home, but he did not have to serve because he was able to enter graduate school at the University of Northern Colorado.

Watada, former executive director of the state Campaign Spending Commission, said he had many discussions about Iraq with his son before the younger Watada enlisted in 2003 -- the same month the U.S. invaded Iraq.

"He knew that I had been given the option by the draft board to serve in the Peace Corps for two years in Peru," the elder Watada said. "He also knew I had a brother who died in Korea and what his death meant to the family."

He spoke yesterday at a state Capitol news conference that was supposed to include a telephone hookup with his son. However, Lt. Watada was ordered not to talk to the media while on duty, so he did not participate.

Still, supporters carrying light green placards with the words "Thank You. 1st Lt. Ehren Watada for resisting an illegal war" crowded into the Senate conference room yesterday.

Bob Watada told how of the 10 brothers in his family, seven served in the military, with an elder brother working as a Japanese interpreter at the end of World War II in the Military Intelligence Service.

Ehren Watada "knew that I had a brother who had died in Korea, and I was concerned about him going to Iraq. I didn't want him to come home in a box," his father said. "He told me that he was very proud of his uncle. He was willing to die for his country as his uncle had. He knew the risk.

"He was very, very patriotic. He was very much for his country. He didn't realize then that the president could lie."

Watada said both the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq were illegally done.

Like the anti-war protests of the 1960s, Watada said, pressure has to be placed on the Bush administration by those who are doing the fighting in Iraq.

Carolyn Ho, Ehren Watada's mother, said her son's decision is "an act of patriotism, and act of conscience. ... It is a message that blindly following an order is an option. It is a statement that voices of the people must supersede the voices of the politicians."
Quote:
http://starbulletin.com/2006/06/08/news/story03.html

Watada could face prison and discharge for defiance
Refusing to report for Iraq could elicit a court-martial
>> During Vietnam, his father Bob Watada was able to avoid serving

By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

A patriotic Eagle Scout who had hoped to make the Army his career, 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada says the war in Iraq is illegal and that he will not deploy with his Fort Lewis unit when it leaves in two weeks.

Watada, who turns 28 today, did not tell his mother he had joined the Army until after he signed enlistment papers in March 2003 just before he graduated from Hawaii Pacific University. He reported for boot camp in June.


The 1996 Kalani High School graduate said he enlisted because "I felt the pull of duty, service and patriotism" following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Watada, an artillery officer, said even after enlisting he did not believe that "an invasion was fully justified, but I believed the president's claims should be given a benefit of doubt. At that time, I never imagined that our leader could betray the trust of the people over something as serious as war."

Watada could face up to five years in jail and a dishonorable discharge if he is convicted at a court-martial for failing to join his 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Regiment, unit when it begins leaving for Iraq on June 23.

In a phone interview from Fort Lewis, Wash., Watada said his actions are now closely monitored. "My supervisors have been told to report me as 'failure to report' even if I am a minute late and to report me immediately."

Watada said he does not regret his actions. "I realize it is going to be a difficult and arduous path -- one with a lot of personal risk and sacrifices on my part. I don't think it is any more or any less than the soldiers who are sacrificing and risking their lives over in Iraq. It is what we signed up to do to protect and defend our nation's laws and its people. What I am doing is trying to uphold those principles and values."

Watada told the Star-Bulletin "there is definitely tension with people" in his 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment -- one of seven battalions that make up the 3rd Brigade -- the Army's first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. But no one has confronted him.

To prepare himself for upcoming legal and other battles, Watada said he tries to remember "all the families of the soldiers who are dying for what I feel is a betrayal of trust and deception waged by the highest level of my chain of command. I think that when I chose to be a leader, I chose to set the example of making the right choice even if it was a difficult choice. It was a conscionable choice, and that is something I can live with for the rest of my life.

"I would rather do that than knowing what I know and then go to Iraq."

Watada's defense is that his participation "in this war is not only immoral, but a breach of American law" and that the 2003 invasion of Iraq violates a United Nations charter and the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter.
Quote:
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
......On August 3, 2002, UK military spokesmen briefed the Pentagon and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the status of UK's preparation. The next day they briefed President Bush. Coordinated plans for the attack on Iraq continued, despite a reported private statement by Britain's Foreign Secretary Straw that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." His legal advisers in the Foreign Office had submitted a Confidential 8-page memorandum casting doubt on whether Security Council (SC) resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991), that had authorized members "to use all necessary means" to restore peace in the area" could justify the forceful invasion of Iraq.

Straw made the interesting point that if the SC would again demand that Saddam allow UN inspectors to confirm that he had complied with earlier resolutions to destroy his WMD and, if the inspectors discovered that he had failed to do so, that might justify a renewed use of force. A refusal to accept inspection would also be politically helpful to justify the invasion. The best that could be achieved, however, was SC Res. 1441 of November 8, 2002, again demanding that Iraq disarm and allow UN inspectors to report back within 30 days. The Resolution ''recalled" that Iraq had repeatedly been warned that it would "face serious consequences as a result of its violations". The "decision" taken by the Council was to "await further reports" and then "to consider the situation." Troops were being mobilized for a combined massive military assault but there was still no clear agreement on the legal justification for such action......

.......Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."

Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943)
Eric Seitz, Watada's civilian attorney, acknowledged at a state Capitol news conference that Watada will face an uphill battle in making those arguments.

But Seitz said "there is a lot of support" for Watada. "There are a lot of people who are opposed to the war. There has been a crescendo of opposition against the war in the last couple of months.

"So we have a very, very favorable situation in my view for Ehren to take this position, although it is a very risky situation for anyone to place himself in."

Seitz was hired in April after Col. Stephen Townsend, 3rd Brigade commander, rejected Watada's Jan. 26 request to resign his commission.

Seitz said Watada's request for routine 30 days of leave in April before the June Iraqi deployment also was rejected.

In a written statement, the Army at Fort Lewis said, "For a commissioned officer to publicly declare an apparent intent to violate military law by refusing to obey orders is a serious matter and could subject him to adverse action. No decision regarding personnel actions involving 1st Lt. Watada will be made until a thorough review by his commander occurs in accordance with military law."

Watada, who reported to Fort Lewis in June 2005 after spending a tour in South Korea after he was commissioned in the summer of 2003, was supposed to be released from active duty in December. However, under the Army's stop-loss policy, that obligation was extended until early 2007 when the 3rd Brigade returns from Iraq.

In April, Watada again tried to resign his commission, but the Army rejected it, saying his unit was in the stop-loss category and that he still had not fulfilled his service obligation.

The Army said yesterday that Watada could take his case to the U.S. Forces Command at Fort McPherson in Georgia.

Seitz said Watada was never told that he had the option to make such a request. "That's something new," Seitz said. "We will do anything to avoid a confrontation."

Seitz said that until Tuesday the Army has not responded to any of his attempts to find a solution to Watada's situation, which included Watada's willingness to serve out his obligation in any Army unit not headed for Iraq.

On Tuesday, Townsend ordered Watada not talk to the media, especially while he is on duty. That forced Watada to cancel a news conference in Tacoma, Wash., and a planned teleconference in Honolulu during his duty hours. He did, however, hold a news conference in Tacoma after he was off duty.

Townsend also ordered Watada to "refrain from making statements that are disrespectful to the United States, the U.S. Army, the president of the United States and your commander in chief, other civilian and military leaders in your chain of command."

Bob Watada, former executive director of the state Campaign Spending Commission, said his son began getting doubts about the Iraq war after he studied about the history of the area because his unit was being sent there.

<b>The younger Watada told the Star-Bulletin, "It was my responsibility as a leader to know everything about" where he was being deployed.

He said his research made him believe that "what we were doing there was wrong, and it also was illegal." He said he was "shocked and at the same time ashamed" that Bush had planned to invade Iraq before the 9/11 attacks. "How could I wear this honorable uniform* now knowing we invaded a country for a lie?"</b>

Watada has drawn the support from various anti-war groups and politicians such as former Gov. Ben Cayetano, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, former Lt. Gov. Jean King, former Rep. Sam Lee and state Sens. Clayton Hee and Clarence Nishihara.
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Old 02-08-2007, 09:54 PM   #6 (permalink)
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My positions are as follows:

1) I am for the soldier, wholeheartedly, but I feel that in joining the military he should have done the research to find out that most major military conflicts of the past 50 years are surruounded by lies, deciet, and innocent death, and that not only our enemies, but we ourselves were guilty of those horrible things. His not seriously looking into his decision is what's wrong with a lot of soldiers, BUT I do understand the incredible effect 9/11 can have on someone, so I can forgive him. I respect deeply his brave move to stand toe to toe with the people responsible for the Iraqi war/massacre.

2) The judge has made many mistakes, one of the most glaring of which was in his excluding expert wheitnesses on the legality of the Iraq war, but at least I understand it. Do you want to be the Army judge that rules so as to create a precedent for legal desertion? Of course not. While the right thing to do for justice was to allow them to speak to the illegality of the war and thus the reasonable decision that Watada, the Amry thing to do is to protect what you think is best for the service. I might disagree with that, but at least I respect it. The problem I have is that he's too inept to do his job properly. I can't remember any cases in which the judge forgot to get the acceptance of the defense on a ruling of a mistrial. It's so stupid that it's unheard of. He botched a trial, and any judge that botches a trial that badly should seriously consider another line of work.
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Old 02-08-2007, 11:46 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Will:

1. Watada offered to serve in Afghanistan, but was denied that exchange of service.

2. The judge is being critized by many legal experts at this time. The big question is his intention. The belief is that Watada's defense team found a means to open the door to the question of the legality of the war in Iraq. The judge took some unusual moves to redirect Watada's understanding of his plea agreement, and whether he intended an acceptance of guilt. Watada refused to alter his position with the judge, and also expressed the wish to not declare a mistrial. Nor did the prosecution agree with declaring a mistrail.

There is a very good chance that the judge has given Watada a double jeopardy position, in that only the judge wished to declare a mistrial. This action protects the defendent from retrial on the basis that a trial can't be ended if the judge doesn't like the direction it is going.

Here is a link, but I am sure there are many more:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020807A.shtml

Amazing, isn't it?
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Last edited by Elphaba; 02-08-2007 at 11:50 PM..
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Old 02-08-2007, 11:54 PM   #8 (permalink)
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I wonder how aware Watada is of our operations in Afghanistan. He might not want to serve there, either.

I think that a victory in this would be the double jeopardy, which is all but assured, either honorable discharge or allowing Watada to continue service in a manner more befitting to a noble officer (in other words, not going to Iraq), and the new and exciting precedent to use for anti-Iraqi war cases (anything from illegal detention to the illegality of the war and occupation themselves).

I'd like to shake the guy's hand and congratulate him for a victory on princeple.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:00 AM   #9 (permalink)
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I think that the judge intended a non-victory for anyone, in that he prevented a military assessment of the legality of the war. What a heroic "support our troops" position is that?

Edit: I am fully aware that the legality of this "war" in Iraq will not be decided in a small room at Fort Lewis, Washington. Watada has opened the door to that question, if we have a congress with the stones to persue it.
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Last edited by Elphaba; 02-09-2007 at 12:11 AM..
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:11 AM   #10 (permalink)
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If this was intended as a stale mate, I'd say the judge needs to grow a pair. I think that he may have been overwhelmed to the degree that he made a mistake any first year law student wouldn't make. This was a huge case to have, obviously, and it's possible that he wasn't up to the pressure (I'm sure he felt pressure from his superiors).

I like that Molly Ivins quote.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:17 AM   #11 (permalink)
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I added an edit, but I don't think it changes what your post intended. The cynic that I am is more inclined to believe that the judge dropped this hot potato, knowing that the political ramifications ultimately led to war crimes prosecution.

But hey...that's my happy disposition. ::moons will in the spirit of Molly::
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Old 02-09-2007, 06:10 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Will, did you write the OP? I've never seen you make consistent typos like that, especially "delcair"...
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Old 02-09-2007, 06:44 AM   #13 (permalink)
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How is the legality of the war in question? Our military answers ONLY to the U.S. Government. There was NO part in this war which was handled illegally. "But Seaver, Bush lied!" NO, for the last time there was no lies. It was false information, false information that we had believed true LONG before Bush took office. There were no lies, say it again, there were no lies. If every single Democratic leader, who now claims they were given false information, prior to the 2000 election gave fire and brimstone speaches about Saddam's WMD programs then we can be pretty sure that said information was believed long before this "Republican Conspiracy."

Our military does not answer to foreign powers unless specifically ordered to BY THE U.S. Military OR GOVERNMENT. So why does it matter to the military if a war is deemed illegal by the UN? The UN has no power over the US military which the US military does not allow them to have. So what legality is he arguing about? That's like arguing Canadian Law in the US as a defense, it holds no water.

And no, I don't know exactly why he joined, but it's a damn good guess. You say he wanted to join the fight in Afghanistan. Well guess what, you don't have much of a say in the Military and if you could say when and where you went to war it would have horrid consequences. We are in a war, he joined the military in a time of war and then said he did not want to go to war. Guess what, you signed the dotted line you go when and where they tell you.

Defend all you want about who told him want and where he was going to go. Unless he can provide documentation it's hearsay, and if he CAN provide documentation it still is negligible because guess what? He joined the military in a time of war and then claimed he didn't want to fight.
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Old 02-09-2007, 08:28 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Seaver if the Bush administration knowingly presented false information they lied. They knew there was no 9/11 Iraq connection and they knew there was no Nigir Uranium but they still said there was.

That is the definition of lieing.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:08 AM   #15 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JinnKai
Will, did you write the OP? I've never seen you make consistent typos like that, especially "delcair"...
I was typing while talking on the phone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaver
How is the legality of the war in question?
Article 51 of the UN Charter, which was signed in good faither and therefore (unless there is some contradiction with US law, which there isn't) is US law, says that there are only two situations where it is legal to use force against another counrty:
1) self defence against an actual or imminent armed attack, or
2) when the Security Council has authorized use of force

Neither of those circumstances existed, therefore we were and are in direct violation of the UN Charter. The Iraqi invasion and resulting occupation clearly and specifically illegal. Unfortunately for Bush, there simply is no way to expand 'self defense' to a preemptive strike based on questionable intel (and please don't give me the 'everyone thought they had WMDs at the time argument', there needs to be certian proof of an imminent attack, and that evidence did not exist as there were no weapons to fire). Obviously the Security Council did not authorize force.

As for the excuse of 'regime change', Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits 'the threat of force against he territorial integrity or political independence of any state.", therefore that's illegal, too.

The war is clearly and blatently illegal, and all arguments I've seen to the contrary either say that the UN Charter doesn't apply (which, of course it does. The wording is clear), or that we don't have to follow the UN Charter (yes, we do. Our own Constitution says that treaties that are signed by the government, like the UN Charter, are equivalant to the "law of the land", under Article VI, para. 2.).

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Old 02-09-2007, 09:08 AM   #16 (permalink)
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Does double jeopardy even apply in military court/court martials? I know that a lot aspects of due process that are Constitutionally granted do not apply to military courts and I just wanted to ask if anyone knew for certain that the mistrial without defense consent thing even applies in this circumstance.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:10 AM   #17 (permalink)
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As I understand it, yes Double Jeopardy can apply under military preceedings just as it does under civilian preceedings. There are limitations to things like free speech when dealing with the military, but DJ, as far as I know, works just fine.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:24 AM   #18 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by willravel
idologically poopsed to the war
Best. Typo. Ever.

I believe the whole country could be described as "idiologically poopsed to the war".
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:43 AM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaver
How is the legality of the war in question? Our military answers ONLY to the U.S. Government. There was NO part in this war which was handled illegally. "But Seaver, Bush lied!" NO, for the last time there was no lies. It was false information, false information that we had believed true LONG before Bush took office. There were no lies, say it again, there were no lies. If every single Democratic leader, who now claims they were given false information, prior to the 2000 election gave fire and brimstone speaches about Saddam's WMD programs then we can be pretty sure that said information was believed long before this "Republican Conspiracy."

Our military does not answer to foreign powers unless specifically ordered to BY THE U.S. Military OR GOVERNMENT. So why does it matter to the military if a war is deemed illegal by the UN? The UN has no power over the US military which the US military does not allow them to have. So what legality is he arguing about? That's like arguing Canadian Law in the US as a defense, it holds no water.

And no, I don't know exactly why he joined, but it's a damn good guess. You say he wanted to join the fight in Afghanistan. Well guess what, you don't have much of a say in the Military and if you could say when and where you went to war it would have horrid consequences. We are in a war, he joined the military in a time of war and then said he did not want to go to war. Guess what, you signed the dotted line you go when and where they tell you.

Defend all you want about who told him want and where he was going to go. Unless he can provide documentation it's hearsay, and if he CAN provide documentation it still is negligible because guess what? He joined the military in a time of war and then claimed he didn't want to fight.
Under your criteria, an "I was just following orders" would have been reasonable, and permitted at Nuremberg in 1946. Such a defense, Seaver, was specifically prohibited:

Seaver, Bush and Cheney continued to say things to justify invading Iraq that they had to know were untrue....long after the things that they continued to repeat were demonstrated to be false....Cheney's Sept. 10, 2006 assertions to Russert on MTP, are the most blatant recent example. The US is bound to the terms of the UN Charter, which it signed as one of five founding members:
Quote:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/in...=12530&st=&st1
Harry S. Truman
236 - Address in New York City at the Opening Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
October 23rd, 1946

Mr. President, members of the Assembly of the United Nations:

....The United States of America has no wish to make war, now or in the future, upon any people anywhere in the world. The heart of our foreign policy is a sincere desire for peace. This nation will work patiently for peace by every means consistent with self-respect and security. Another world war would shatter the hopes of mankind and completely destroy civilization as we know it.

I am sure that every delegate in this hall will join me in rejecting talk of war. No nation wants war. Every nation needs peace.

To avoid war and rumors and danger of war the peoples of all countries must not only cherish peace as an ideal but they must develop means of settling conflicts between nations in accordance with the principles of law and justice.

The difficulty is that it is easier to get people to agree upon peace as an ideal than to agree upon principles of law and justice or to agree to subject their own acts to the collective judgment of mankind.

But difficult as the task may be, the path along which agreement may be sought is clearly defined. We expect to follow that path with success.

<b>In the first place, every member of the United Nations is legally and morally bound by the Charter to keep the peace. More specifically, every member is bound to refrain in its international relations from the threat, or use, of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

In the second place, I remind you that 23 members of the United Nations have bound themselves by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal to the principle that planning, initiating or waging a war of aggression is a crime against humanity for which individuals as well as states shall be tried before the bar of international justice.</b>

The basic principles upon which we are agreed go far, but not far enough, in removing the fear of war from the world. There must be agreement upon a positive, constructive course of action as well.

The peoples of the world know that there can be no real peace unless it is peace with justice for all--justice for small nations and for large nations and justice for individuals without distinction as to race, creed or color--a peace that will advance, not retard, the attainment of the four freedoms.

We shall attain freedom from fear when every act of every nation, in its dealings with every other nation, brings closer to realization the other freedoms-freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from want. Along this path we can find justice for all, without distinction between the strong and the weak among nations, and without discrimination among individuals.

After the peace has been made, I am convinced that the United Nations can and will prevent war between nations and remove the fear of war that distracts the peoples of the world and interferes with their progress toward a better life.

The war has left many parts of the world in turmoil. Differences have arisen among the Allies. It will not help us to pretend that this is not the case. But it is not necessary to exaggerate these differences.

<b>For my part, I believe there is no difference of interest that need stand in the way of settling these problems and settling them in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter.</b> Above all, we must not permit differences in economic and social systems to stand in the way of peace, either now or in the future. To permit the United Nations to be broken into irreconcilable parts by different political philosophies would bring disaster to the world. .....
Pre-emptive war is war of aggression, a crime against humanity, Seaver:
Quote:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democra..._law_4028.jsp#
War, law and American democracy
Bryan Long
Chip Pitts
25 - 10 - 2006
The Bush administration has undermined international law and subverted national democracy, justifying both by the cultivation of fear. Chip Pitts & Bryan Long assess the damage and how it can be repaired.
------------------------------------------

"(Every) member of the United Nations is legally and morally bound by the Charter to keep the peace. More specifically, every member is bound to refrain in its international relations from the threat, or use, of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
President Harry S Truman, 23 October 1946

"Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho? We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power - America in an Arab land - with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous."
President George HW Bush, 28 February 1999

<b>"In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th, we must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize."</b>
President George W Bush, 30 September 2004



Oh, that sons would heed the wisdom of their fathers!

In both deed and word, the George W Bush administration has discarded core international laws, ranging from the Geneva conventions, to those against torture, to the laws governing the use of force. These monumental breaks with the past have been accepted with little comment or debate by the Republican-controlled and supposedly "conservative" Congress. Media attention, in the United States at least, has focused on whether the Iraq war was justified or necessary; the wider implications of a policy of preventive war remain largely ignored.

Yet this new, open-ended war is destabilising the world, and corroding democracy in the Unites States homeland. Did the events of 11 September 2001 really justify discarding the rule of law that the US had previously been so careful to nurture?

After the devastation of the two world wars, nations recognised that a world in which they may each wage war based on perceptions of future potential threats is one likely to have many more wars. The United Nations charter thus clarified and codified prior international law against the threat or use of force except in response to actual or imminent armed attack.

Since that time, war has not disappeared, but continued deference given to the principle of non-aggression by the United States and others has been remarkably effective in preventing, moderating, and resolving conflict between nations.

A state of fear

The national-security strategy (NSS) signed by President Bush in September 2002 clearly departed from accepted international law. It acknowledges "centuries (of) international law" that nations may respond with military force to military attack against them or to imminent threat, but elaborates that that "imminent threat" must be "adapted" to new circumstances to allow not merely pre-emptive attack against imminent threats, but preventive attack against "emerging threats." This "adaptation" actually eviscerates prior law.

From the outset, the "Bush doctrine" of preventive war drew attention and criticism from international legal scholars in the United States and abroad. Thomas M Franck observed that "(while) a few government lawyers still go through the motions of asserting" that the invasion of Iraq was legally justified, our political leaders hardly even hold up that "fig leaf" (see "What Happens Now? The United Nations after Iraq", American Journal of International Law, 97/3, July 2003 [subscription only]). Nearly all international law scholars agree with outgoing UN secretary-general Kofi Annan that the invasion was "illegal". There has been little debate about international law in the US Congress, however, and even less on Fox News.

Despite the Iraq "fiasco", the new 2006 national-security strategy still asserts rights to use military action against emerging threats in at least some cases. The concept also lives on in statements from President Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney. President Bush said in 2004: "Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision."

<h3>Cheney affirmed on Meet the Press on 10 September 2006 that even had we known that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the United States would have invaded anyway because Saddam "has the capability ... (he'd) done it before." And everyone has heard the administration's repeated claims that "(we) are safer because we are on the offense against our enemies overseas."</h3>

The national-intelligence estimate (NIE) leaked on 24 September (and later declassified) adds to the accumulating evidence that, far from making the United States safer, the Iraq war has substantially increased the global terrorist threat. Yet the administration remains in denial. President Bush asserts that Iraq is now the "central front" of the war on terror, neglecting to mention that if this is so, it is because he made it so.

The administration shifts the subject to non-nuclear Iran (notably not North Korea, which has expanded nuclear capabilities under this administration's watch). In eerie echoes of Iraq, Iran's intent and capabilities are said to make it an "emerging threat" of the first magnitude, against which the United States must take preventive military action. Unsurprisingly, this sabre-rattling has evoked defiant statements from Iran, which are then seized upon as more evidence of the emerging threat.

The psychological frame of "a nation at war" has been driven into the minds of US citizens by constant repetition. The administration has reified the "war" metaphor for them, creating a patriotic stupor in which they let themselves accept that the blunt instruments of war are somehow best suited to fight shadowy, networked individuals and small cells of terrorists. They have similarly accepted the enemy's continual morphing: from al-Qaida to Saddam, from Iraq to Iran, and from Iran to a generalised but somehow unified "Islamofascism" bent on world domination and now allegedly posing an existential threat that Bush has elevated to "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."

Incessant use of martial language, frequent reference to terrorists with nuclear weapons, and periodic homeland-security "code red" and "code orange" alerts, like air-raid sirens in the night, remind American citizens to fear the "enemy". These fears are manipulated to justify infringement of rights, abrogation of international treaties, and concentration of power in the executive branch.

A politics for change

What becomes of democracy in a never-ending "state of war"? Where are the American leaders who will protest the radical, reckless break in American policy? Even as the mid-term elections on 7 November 2006 approach, when democratic debate should be at its most lively, the view of the United States as "a nation at war" renders many silent. Dissent is denigrated as unpatriotic and as appeasement of the enemy. Any member of congress who objects is effectively deprecated as "soft on terror".

This overbroad, preventive, perpetual war sustained by a climate of propagandistic fear and deception - so reminiscent of the similar state of war in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four - has led to over-broad changes that seriously undermine centuries-old liberties and the rule of law in ways that will not be easy to reverse.

Just before it recessed at the end of September, the Republican-controlled US Congress, joined by a few Democrats, granted still further executive powers requested by President Bush. The signature into law of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on 24 October means that the CIA can continue to use secret torture techniques, the president can continue to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva conventions, and the military can continue to operate tribunals that the US Supreme Court held unconstitutional in June. All this is underpinned by the elimination of the classic writ of habeas corpus (to "have the body" of the prisoner brought before an independent tribunal to justify the detention) with respect to whole classes of detainees.

This confluence of aggressive and unjustified war abroad and subverted democracy at home is no mere coincidence, and should not be a surprise. James Madison observed the "universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." Edmund Burke put it: "the people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."

George Washington's farewell address stressed the need to "avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." In this, he presaged Dwight Eisenhower's caution against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" by the "military-industrial complex" that could "endanger our liberties and democratic processes."

The asymmetric warfare engaged in by modern terrorists renders these classic concerns even more meaningful. The declassified summary of the NIE confirms earlier assessments by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (Strategic Survey 2003/4, 2004), the Rand Corporation, and others: together, they make it obvious that terrorism will not be reduced by military intervention and threats of military intervention, by uncritically supporting Israeli military actions, by establishing apparently permanent bases in Iraq, by expanding rather than closing Guantánamo, or by the unremitting and absurd rhetorical linkage of terrorism, fascism, and Islam.

The transformation of a fight against al-Qaida into a global war may serve the electoral politics of the Republican Party and the profit motives of Halliburton, but it does nothing to improve the security, diplomatic influence and economic strength of the American nation.

The struggle against terrorism requires a community of nations, each committed to the principles of non-aggression. Rather than opposing and withdrawing from treaties such as those relating to landmines, anti-ballistic missiles, biological weapons, global warming, and the International Criminal Court, the United States should return to advancing the framework of the UN charter, international law, and multilateralism that it pioneered and that served US interests so well.....
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Old 02-09-2007, 10:43 AM   #20 (permalink)
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Adding to host's post...
Quote:
"But Seaver, Bush lied!" NO, for the last time there was no lies. It was false information, false information that we had believed true LONG before Bush took office. There were no lies, say it again, there were no lies.
First of all, I find it hard to believe that you honestly think our intelligence community is that ignorant, and in such a convenient way. Secondly, Bush and Cheney constantly made statements wherein Suddam, Iraq, and 9/11 just happened to stick together.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bush
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."—Interview with CBS News, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2006
Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Bush.


I smell a thread-jack...

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Old 02-09-2007, 11:25 AM   #21 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
seaver, I see the core comments in your post are inaccurate, thus, so is your conclusion. Watatda was assured for months before he enlisted, that Saddam's Iraq was making and brandishing WMD at the rest of the world, aiding al Zarqawi and his "poison camp" at Khermal, deploying mobile biological weapons manufacturing "trailers", and that it was "pretty well confirmed" that the lead 9/11 hijacker, Atta, had met with an Iraqi government "agent" in Prague.

In September, 2006, the US Senate SCI, after a delay since Juky, 2004, revealed that:

Just two days later, VP Cheney was still making the same, deliberately false statements, despite the senate SCI release:


<b>seaver....the war is illegal, not Lt. Watada's refusal to obey a deployment order. Read Cheney's preceding statement excerpt. The crime is in his words, seaver. Compare Cheney's comments to the senate committee conclusions and the Duelfer report on WMD....please stop posting things that cannot be supported, this is getting boring....it's old.....former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz compares his and Justice Robert Jackson's prosecutions of WWII crimes of "aggressive war", with the Bush - Cheney invasion and occupation of Iraq......the same thing, over and over, and none of it sinks in, you give not an inch, and you declare that refusal to follow an order to participate in a illegal "aggressive war" should be punished with a sentence, just short of execution of the US military officer who refuses to obey the illegal order from war criminals commanded by a war criminal, CIC. The definition of "crimes against humanity", and the criteria for prosecution of them, has not changed since the Nuremberg trials, sixty years ago, seaver. Only the perpetrators have changed, abd they mouth the same excuses..."they were only following orders".</b>
Host let me quote Saint Ronald to you, "there you go again", with your crime this and illegal that, what part of the cease-fire from GW1 dont you understand?
Do I need to post all of 1441 and then 1446 for you?
Iraq WAS in breach of the terms of the cease-fire that had us stop firing on him, so we had every right to resume firing on him.
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Old 02-09-2007, 11:29 AM   #22 (permalink)
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Quote:
Pre-emptive war is war of aggression, a crime against humanity.
By that logic, removing Iraq from Kuwait was a pre-emptive war.
Was Iraq posing a direct threat to the US by invading Kuwait?
Did the US, by way of the UN, have any business interferring militarily in a conflict that allegedly was not a direct threat to it?

Was the invasion of Kuwait a direct threat to America?
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Old 02-09-2007, 11:33 AM   #23 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaver
How is the legality of the war in question? Our military answers ONLY to the U.S. Government. There was NO part in this war which was handled illegally...
Our military does not answer to foreign powers unless specifically ordered to BY THE U.S. Military OR GOVERNMENT. So why does it matter to the military if a war is deemed illegal by the UN? The UN has no power over the US military which the US military does not allow them to have. So what legality is he arguing about? That's like arguing Canadian Law in the US as a defense, it holds no water...
Under the Constitution of the United States all international treaties and resolutions adopted by the United States Congress is the law of the land. We answer to the UN through our adoption of certain charters and conventions that we agreed to and we can not renig on just because we feel like it. Our adoption of international agreements, like the Geneva Convention, are binding law and to simply disregard them because it is convienent is a violation of not only the international agreement but, by way of the Constitution, also a violation of American law.

So, yes Seaver, our military does have to answer to foreign powers because we have agreed to certain ways of conducting our military operations internationally. Our occupation is Iraq may well be illegal because of accusations being made about US forces violating the Geneva Convention both in our military engagement and in our treatment of prisoners resulting from the war. Furthermore, our initial invasion may be illegal because of certain standards agreed upon via our position on the UN Security Council.

I'm sure you've noticed that both of those arguments conclude in that we 'may' be acting illegally. The only reason there is a 'may' about it is because there has been few trials held against the US or its troops either at home or internationally because for the most part we won't allow it. Even in Hamdi and Rasad the Supreme Court was very sure to touch only enough on the international law issues to say that the Geneva Convention did amount to binding law and that the military tribunals needed fixing to be legal. The problem then and now is that finding something illegal sometimes won't change a thing. Even if certain aspects of this administrations approach in Iraq were found to be illegal (and they most likely would be) it would have almost no effect on the war. At most we could cart a few people off to prison but that would just spend more money and not stop the 'illegal' war from continuing. Only after the war itself is over might these types of charges actually make any difference in an attempt to restore legitimacy to the executive office.

So I guess the question about the legality of the war comes down to whether a law has to be immediately effective in halting a crime to be truly considered law. Many would say it does, but I happen to think that just because the law was too weak in the frontier west, a little over a hundred years ago, doesn't mean that all the bank robbers, cattle thieves, railroad bandits, and outright murderers were still criminals even though they were never brought to justice because their gangs were stronger than the law.

Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
By that logic, removing Iraq from Kuwait was a pre-emptive war.
Was Iraq posing a direct threat to the US by invading Kuwait?
Did the US, by way of the UN, have any business interferring militarily in a conflict that allegedly was not a direct threat to it?

Was the invasion of Kuwait a direct threat to America?
That isn't exactly what pre-emptive war means. The Iraq War I was retaliatory against Iraq's aggression against Kuwait. The principle of pre-emption doesn't have to be against a direct threat to self it's about attacking because we don't want our targets to attack first (either us or a third party). Attacking Iran because we are afraid they might attack us or Israel would be pre-emption. Attacking Iran if they had actually attacked Israel would not be.
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Last edited by MuadDib; 02-09-2007 at 11:37 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 02-09-2007, 11:54 AM   #24 (permalink)
 
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since the question of the legitimacy of the war lay behind the watada case itself (not the procedural fuck ups indicated in the op directly though), this article from today's washington post is of some interest (despite the threadjack risk):

Quote:
Official's Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted
'Dubious' Intelligence Fueled Push for War


By Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 9, 2007; A01


Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."

An unclassified summary of the full document is scheduled for release today in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs. In that summary, a copy of which was obtained from another source by The Washington Post, the inspector general concluded that Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship" was not fully supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers.

At the time of Feith's reporting, the CIA had concluded only that there was an "evolving" association, "based on sources of varying reliability."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general's conclusion that his actions, described in the report as "inappropriate," were not unlawful. "This was not 'alternative intelligence assessment,' " he said. "It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."

Feith, who was defense policy chief before leaving the government in 2005, was one of the key contributors to the administration's rationale for war. His intelligence activities, authorized by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and coordinated with Vice President Cheney's office, stemmed from an administration belief that the CIA was underplaying evidence of then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's ties with al-Qaeda.

In interviews with Pentagon investigators, the summary document said, Feith insisted that his activities did not constitute intelligence and that "even if they were, [they] would be appropriate given that they were responding to direction from the Deputy Secretary of Defense."

The report was requested in fall 2005 by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Although the committee and a number of official inquiries had criticized the administration's prewar intelligence, Democratic senators, led by Levin, demanded further investigation of Feith's operation.

"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq," Levin said yesterday. "The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."

The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.

Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration."

It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments "inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be "intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus view.

In particular, the summary cited the defense policy office's preparation of slides describing as a "known contact" an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and an Iraqi intelligence officer.

That claim figured heavily in statements by Cheney and other senior administration officials alleging a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, but it has since been discredited.

Three versions of the briefing prepared by Feith's office were presented in August and September 2002 -- months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff; Rumsfeld; and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, the summary states.

But only "some of the information" in those briefings was "supported by available intelligence," the summary said. The version of the briefing presented to senior Bush officials, it said, contained different information than a presentation to the CIA. Left out of the version for the CIA, the inspector general said, was "a slide that said there were 'fundamental problems' " with the way the intelligence community was presenting the evidence.

While Pentagon officials said in responses cited in the summary that no senior policymakers mistook these briefings as "intelligence assessments," the inspector general said that administration officials had indeed cited classified intelligence that allegedly documented a close al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship.

The policy office, the summary stated, "was inappropriately performing Intelligence Activities . . . that should be performed by the Intelligence Community."

The summary recommended no action within the Defense Department because, it said, the current collaboration under new leadership at the Pentagon and the intelligence community "will significantly reduce the opportunity for the inappropriate conduct of intelligence activities outside intelligence channels."
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...020802387.html

this is interesting from a number of angles--(1) it is simultaneously a strong condemnation of the bush people's rationale for war and a muddying of the waters concerning the question of whether the (obviously false) rationales for war were in fact "lies". it is clear that this was a politically motivated report. it is clear that it was handled in a manner that is improper. it is also clear that the administration was predisposed to rely on it, given their "case" for war. feith is clearly covering his ass in the above. the question of whether false claims are lies or not i suppose comes down to the question of how this report came about. the way it was commissioned indicates that the report was geared from the outset to present "evidence" for the administration's "case" for war--but what i do not know is whether this particular chain of authorizations is in itself unusual. what seems clear is that once this material entered into the regime of infotainment that must have been circulating prior to the iraq debacle's outset, it came to play a fundamental role. i doubt very seriously that there was a preamble attached to it saying that this was a political operative's political report, commissioned for political reasons by political operatives within the administration who for political reasons wanted to start an unnecessary war. but without that kind of preamble, this report appears to have been disinformation.

but is this report a lie?
it was obviously wrong. it's methodology was shabby, its evidence arbitarily assembled and it conclusions fucked up. it was a political action undertaken by the central neocon players within the administration. it looks like fiction to me.

i can see the right trying to claim that this was an informational element amongst others and was therefore part of the "faulty intelligence" that led a well-meaning administration to make poor choices--all that as a way of attempting to shield the administration from having to accept any responsibility for its actions and to protect the legitimacy of an ideology more broadly within which it is possible to act in this manner without contradiction.

but it is not an easy matter to sort out in a clear-cut way.

all this is linked to the watada case via backstory.
but i sense a threadjack in it: if that happens mea culpa will.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:05 PM   #25 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MuadDib
That isn't exactly what pre-emptive war means. The Iraq War I was retaliatory against Iraq's aggression against Kuwait.
OK, but how was Iraq a threat to America by invading Kuwait?
Why is it ok for America to spend blood and treasure fighting someone else's war?
Are you saying that Iraq's aggression towards Kuwait was, by extension, aggression towards America as well?
If so, wouldn't this by definition be an act of preemption?
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:31 PM   #26 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
OK, but how was Iraq a threat to America by invading Kuwait?
Why is it ok for America to spend blood and treasure fighting someone else's war?
Are you saying that Iraq's aggression towards Kuwait was, by extension, aggression towards America as well?
If so, wouldn't this by definition be an act of preemption?
I do not think that argument needs to be made. We can justify the war as a matter of law. Iraq's invasion was clearly unprovoked and illegal, as a matter of international law we had a duty to defend Kuwait. Moreover you could simply make the argument that there was a moral justification to involve ourselves in the conflict. While either an international law or a moralistic argument might have applied to Iraq II, those justifications were never offered and instead the WMD/pre-emption justification was offered up.

However, I think you could use the extension argument and still not come to the pre-emption conclusion. You could make a strong argument for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait possibly destabilizing the region plus you could throw in some discussion about oil prices/reserves being jeopardized by Iraq's invasion. If I wanted to make that argument and say that those actions were, by extension, aggression towards the US then that would still not be the same as pre-emption because if we considered those actions against Kuwait to extend to actions against us we would merely be retaliating to those actions already committed against Kuwait/ourselves.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:51 PM   #27 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MuadDib
While either an international law or a moralistic argument might have applied to Iraq II, those justifications were never offered and instead the WMD/pre-emption justification was offered up.

...If I wanted to make that argument and say that those actions were, by extension, aggression towards the US then that would still not be the same as pre-emption because if we considered those actions against Kuwait to extend to actions against us we would merely be retaliating to those actions already committed against Kuwait/ourselves.
It seems we have a scenario where both GF1 and the current IW both could possibly satisfy the definition of retaliation, one based on violation of 1441 (and 9/11), and one based on UN Resolution 660, and 678 where the invasion of Kuwait constituted an existential threat to America. In the case of the IW, I agree that violation of 1441 wasn't explained clearly enough, and was poorly and overzealously sold. Great post MuadDib.
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Old 02-09-2007, 02:26 PM   #28 (permalink)
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Iraq never attacked us and was never a real tyhreat of attacking us. It's that simple. Can we please end this threadjack now>? This is about Ehren Watada and the judge, and the information and opinions surrounding them.
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Old 02-09-2007, 03:37 PM   #29 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
Iraq never attacked us and was never a real tyhreat of attacking us. It's that simple. Can we please end this threadjack now>? This is about Ehren Watada and the judge, and the information and opinions surrounding them.
willravel, if the following was an OT response:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seaver
I think whatever punishment short of hanging is in order. He joined AFTER the start of the war, clearly with the sole intention of causing all this ruckus. He was not some poor schmuck who wished to pay for college, or some patriot who joined after 9/11 and was upset about being sent to Iraq.

As for why the mistrial was called I do not know. Nor am I aware of the legality of such declarations allowing a new case to be brought at a later date. If it was just the prosecution screwing it up, and the judge not wanting him to go free on account of that, we may never know.

In my opinion he signed up with the single intention of becoming a "hero" to the anti-war crowd. Personally I don't know how you could support him when there are so many heroes out there as it is. If it was to stand up for what you believe in, then it's still null and void because he joined in the first place.
...how can one adhere to your request?

It seems to me that the core claim of Watada's defense, and the pre-trial ruling of the judge to prohibit a "Nuremberg defense", is the premise that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq are illegal. Considering that, under the UCMJ, an accused is presumed guilty until he proves his innocence to the satisfaction of the court martial panel, it is incumbent upon the accused to prove that he refused to obey an illegal order.

I provided information that supports the idea that when Watada enlisted for military service, inspired by the 9/11 attacks, there was no "public knowledge" that contradicted the accusations of Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, et al, that Saddam's Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of it's neighbors and of the US.

I provided excerpts of the opinion of the premier authority in the world, with regard to the crime of aggressive war, or pre-emptive war, former Nuremberg prosecutor, Ben Ferencz.

None of this information convinces those who believe that Watada is guilty of disobeying a lawful order, of anything to the contrary. There can be no discussion, IMO, of whether the court martial judge intentionally ruled the proceedings against Watada as a mistrial, IMO, if there is no agreement that it is even reasonable to believe that the Iraq war is illegal.

I don't see how we can confine this discussion to Watada and the judge, if some participants here believe that Watada should receive a punishment just short of execution, and that there is no basis for the idea that the war is an illegal, crime against humanity. Trying to discuss Watada and the judge alone, is like trying to discuss reasons for no WMD being found in Iraq, if some participants refuse to believe that WMD were not found.

I think that all participants must agree that it is not unreasonable to believe that the Iraq war and occupation are illegal, if a discussion about Watada, his motivation, his defense, and the judges rulings before and during the court martial, is to be coherent or productive....
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Old 02-09-2007, 04:44 PM   #30 (permalink)
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The point is that it's already been discussed in other threads. Everyone knows that one camp correctly believes that the war is illegal, and the other camp is not familiar with the Constitution, UN Charter, or possibly even the Neuremberg trials. It's being covered. I want to keep this about Watada and the judge.
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Old 02-09-2007, 04:57 PM   #31 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by willravel
Would you want to be the Army judge that ruled that a war was illegal?
I'm not sure why you're pissed at the judge, willravel. Declaration of war, legal or illegal, falls under the jurisdiction of the US Congress, not the US Military. It would be a conflict of interest tantamount to mutiny for a military judge to in effect overrule Congress, thus the mistrial. Do you see it differently?

It looks real bad that this guy: 1) has a Democratically connected dad who dodged Nam for the same reasons, 2) Joined the military after the war had already started.
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Old 02-09-2007, 05:20 PM   #32 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
I'm not sure why you're pissed at the judge, willravel. Declaration of war, legal or illegal, falls under the jurisdiction of the US Congress, not the US Military. It would be a conflict of interest tantamount to mutiny for a military judge to in effect overrule Congress, thus the mistrial. Do you see it differently?
The job of the judge was to determine whether Watada's thought process was reasonable, not whether the war was illegal or not in the real world. In order to do that, however, he would have been required to hear the testimony of some of the best and brightest of the anti-war movement. He wasn't prepared to let them take the stand in such a prominant case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
It looks real bad that this guy: 1) has a Democratically connected dad who dodged Nam for the same reasons, 2) Joined the military after the war had already started.
How so? As Host pointed out, he was going to be deployed to Afghanistan, not Iraq. As soon as his orders changed, he did research, like a responsible soldier, and discovered that the war was illegal. My father is a pastor, and I'm an atheist. Once the apple is seperate from the tree, the apple is it's own organism. Watada made his own stand.
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Old 02-09-2007, 07:02 PM   #33 (permalink)
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Ahem...

He may have hoped he was going to deploy to Afghanistan, but agreed to serve the needs of the Army when he signed on the dotted line. Military contracts are quite clear on that point....You agree to go wherever the military tells you too.

Even if he was able to serve outside of Iraq, he would still have contributed to the war effort as a whole.

If he disagreed with the actions of our military he should never have joined. But since he was not conscripted and he voluntarily signed on the dotted line, he should have shut up and worried about serving the men he was responsible for as an officer.

And Willravel: I am confused because you seem to be applauding the actions of Mr. Watada and his decision to refuse to fight. However, in a previous discussion with me I asked what you would do should you be drafted to serve in the Iraq war. you stated:
Quote:
I can't be drafted because of a severe heart condition, but if that were not the case I would have to fight. While I would make it abundantly clear that we were in an illegal war, and I would do what I could to hold those responsible for going to war responsible for their actions, but I would fight none the less. It's my responsibility as a citizen. I would not torture, murder in cold blood, rape, etc., though. If I was given an order to waterboard someone, I would need to be relieved of my duties.
If this is what you would do if you were forced to serve, then how can you defend a man who volunteered to serve and then refused?


I have nothing against people who believe differently than me. I have many friends who are vehemenantly anti-war. They are welcome to protest as much as they want and it doesn't bother me. However, to shirk duties you have taken an oath to fulfill is not something I am OK with. The military cannot allow people to 'sit this one out' simply because they realize they might actually have to go do something unpleasant.

He wasn't being asked to go bayonet kids. He was tasked with helping to secure and rebuild Iraq so we can end this conflict and come home.

Personally, I think his actions are nothing short of treasonous. I don't think our current crisis is so desperate that it warrants the execution of those who fail to obey orders, but I think he should be punished and severely so.
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Old 02-09-2007, 07:15 PM   #34 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
If this is what you would do if you were forced to serve, then how can you defend a man who volunteered to serve and then refused?
Watada would have fought in Afghanistan. He would have gone anywhere but Iraq. He didn't refuse to fight, he refused to fight in Iraq. There's a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
I have nothing against people who believe differently than me.
Thank god.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
I have many friends who are vehemenantly anti-war. They are welcome to protest as much as they want and it doesn't bother me. However, to shirk duties you have taken an oath to fulfill is not something I am OK with. The military cannot allow people to 'sit this one out' simply because they realize they might actually have to go do something unpleasant.
I'm sure as an enlisted officer, you know someone who has served in Afghanistan. It's not a walk in the park. 357 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan, which by percentage is at least on par with Iraq. Watada isn't suggesting that he sit anything out, he wants to serve his country by fighting and/or bringing to justice those blamed for 9/11. It makes sense to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
He wasn't being asked to go bayonet kids. He was tasked with helping to secure and rebuild Iraq so we can end this conflict and come home.
Watada was making a similar point to that which I was making in the aformentioned thread: the war in Iraq is illegal, and thus it is the duty of a soldier to refuse the illegal order to serve there. According to the letter of the law, he is absolutely right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
Personally, I think his actions are nothing short of treasonous. I don't think our current crisis is so desperate that it warrants the execution of those who fail to obey orders, but I think he should be punished and severely so.
Again, the UCMJ is clear about illegal orders. Watada satisfied himself, through serious study and investigation, that his duty was to refuse to fight in Iraq. His actions may seem cowardly to some, but they do follow the law. In my mind, he is a hero for saying in public what so many soldiers say in tents or barraks. He's hardly the only military officer that thinks the war is illegal.
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Old 02-09-2007, 07:56 PM   #35 (permalink)
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You don't have the luxury of signing a conditional contract.

The odds have always been against him serving in Afghanistan. Without trying to quote troop counts, there are far more involved in Iraq than Afghanistan, and still more stuck in the United States (or elsewhere). So by signing a contract he was rolling the dice on a less than 50% chance he would go where he wanted.

That doesn't make sense to me. Why would anyone do that? If I were offered a job with a large company which produced two main products, one of which was an illegal drug, I would choose not to work for them at all rather than cross my fingers and hope I wasn't asked to do wrong.

If you have never suffered through the military inprocessing experience then you may find it hard to believe, but they do a pretty thorough job of explaining that you are literally signing your life away. They can send you anywhere, and while some tentative promises are made for enlisted soldiers (you can choose infantry, artillery, etc.) officers are allowed only to make requests, and those are only honored if it is convenient for the Army.

Watada states among his reasons for refusing to deploy:

Quote:
"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,"
This simply isn't happenning, and he wouldn't know since he refused to even deploy. Once in Iraq, should he be given an order to slaughter and mistreat the Iraqi people, he would be entirely justified to refuse that order. However, to refuse to deploy out of fear that he may be told to do something wrong is ridiculous.

Also:
Quote:
the war violates the democratic system of checks and balances and usurps international treaties and conventions.
It in no way violates checks and balances. It is a war approved by congress and the president. If either the legislative or the executive branch decided that the war simply needed to be terminated they both have the power to do so.

As far as violating international treaties: Most arguments for this center around a war of agression being in violation of international treaties, etc.

However, from Wikipedia (take it for what it's worth):
Quote:
A United Nations factsheet on the ICC states:
What about aggression? Isn't it in the Statute?
Aggression has been included as a crime within the Court's jurisdiction. But first, the States Parties must adopt an agreement setting out two things: a definition of aggression, which has so far proven difficult, and the conditions under which the Court could exercise its jurisdiction. Several proposals have been considered. Some countries feel that, in line with the UN Charter and the mandate it gives to the Security Council, only the Council has the authority to find that an act of aggression has occurred. If this is agreed, then such a finding by the Council would be required before the Court itself could take any action. Other countries feel that such authority should not be limited to the Security Council. There are proposals under consideration that would give that role to the General Assembly or to the International Court of Justice, if an accusation of aggression were made and the Security Council did not act within a certain time. In September 2002, the Assembly of States Parties to the Court established a special working group, open to all States, to elaborate proposals for a provision on aggression.

Another UN paper, states that there are two definitions of aggression under consideration for presentation to the 2009 Rome Conference:
And more importantly:
Quote:
The Definition of Aggression was a definition of the term "aggression" adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 1974. The definition was adopted without a vote during the General Assembly's 2319th plenary meeting and attached as an annex to General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX). Although often cited in opposition to military actions, it has no binding force in international law. Perpetrating an act of aggression remains uncriminalised, though it is intended that the International Criminal Court will exercise jurisdiction in this area in future.
So we have agreed to make a war of agression illegal...after we agree on what that really means, who will enforce it, and what the penalties for waging one will be...which hasn't happenned yet. So so far a war of agression is not criminal and is not a violation of international law. Like it or not, right by conquest is still valid legally (if not morally).

Also, Watada references Command Responsibility, which places responsiblity for the actions of subordinates on the commander. It was used to prosecute high-ranking officials after WW2 for the atrocities committed by the men under them.

It is true (and justly so) that an officer is held responsible for the actions of his men. However, as an officer it is Mr. Watada's responsiblity to ensure that his men don't commit war crimes rather than simply throwing up his hands and refusing to lead them.

He also seems to use command responsiblity to infer that he could be held accountable for the actions of his superiors. This doesn't work however because command responsibility places responsibility up the chain of command, not down. You don't blame a private because a general made a bad decision.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:15 PM   #36 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
You don't have the luxury of signing a conditional contract.
...and the military doesn't have the luxary of picking and choosing which laws to obey, and in that there lies the issue that Watada was bringing up.

Watada joined up in order to fight those who attacked us on 9/11, unaware that the President and members of the President's club were incorrect in their correlation between Iraq and 9/11. It's true, after all, that many people still erounously believe that Iraq was involved (just ask powerclown). He was also unaware of the legal facts surrounding the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This was, as I pointed out above, a huge mistake. I feel comfortable blaming people for their ignorance because I aknowledge that I am also guilty of ignorance from time to time but I always strive to gain knowledge. Watada also took the time to seek out information about the situation that he was going to be in.

He came to the conclusion that the war was illegal based on facts. He also knew, from the UCMJ, that you are responsible for obeying legal orders, and thus equally responsible for not following illegal orders. As such, with his new found knowledge about the situation, he refused the order to deploy and explained his reasoning, which I belive is basically sound.

Forgive me for saying so, but most embedded reporters have supplied information about kidnappings and murders (be they involuntary manslaughter or first degree), and even rape. While the latter is not the result of order, the former two are often done in following an order. This has happened for the past 3 and a half years there, so Watada is reasonable in his thinking that because of 3 years of precedence and no evidence of this behavior stopping, he would be putting himself in a situation where he could have to do these things which he knows to be morally and legally wrong. It's not an unreasonable fear at all.

Speaking to checks and balances, I think that we can agree that the President mislead Congress. While I may think he did so willfully, and you may think he did so accedentally, the fact remains that Congress authorized the war under false pretenses, the main, of course, being the existence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons of mass destruction and links to the terrorists that attacked on 9/11. That was the first breach of checks and balances when the executive branch provided bad intel to Congress and it effected their decision to the benifit of the executive branch. This is highly suspect and should have been ruled on by the Judicial branch, but the Supreme Court is stacked with justices that have proven that they will support Bush no matter what (see 2000 election). That is the second failing of our checks and balances.

I'd like to clarify on the point of the UN Charter further. I started looking into Article 51 of the Charter back in 2003-2004, but I only recently came across a report written by Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, and Jules Lobel, Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh called "The United Nations Charter and the Use of Force Against Iraq" This report makes clear the point that I cannot make as eloquently that Article 51 is very clear in it's meaning and that the US has breached the whole Charter by ignoring it.

Here is Article 51:
Quote:
Originally Posted by UN Charter, Chapter 7, Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
To which the report replies:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The United Nations Charter and the Use of Force Against Iraq
Under Article 51, the triggering condition for the exercise of self-defense is the occurrence of an armed attack ("if an armed attack occurs"). Notwithstanding the literal meaning of that language, some, though not all, authorities interpret Article 51 to permit anticipatory self-defense in response to an imminent attack.
Specifically under the letter of the article, one can only take military action if one is attacked. It has later been intepreted that this also includes anticiatory self-defence to an imminent attack. The report continues:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The United Nations Charter and the Use of Force Against Iraq
A generally recognized guide to the conditions for anticipatory self-defense is Daniel Webster’s statement regarding the Caroline affair of 1837: Self-defense is justified only when the necessity for action is "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." (Letter from Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, to Lord Ashburton, August 6, 1842, reprinted in 2 John Bassett Moore, A Digest of International Law 409, 412 (1906)). A modern version of this approach is found in Oppenheim’s International Law: Ninth Edition, 1991, p. 412 (emphasis added):

Quote:
Originally Posted by Oppenheim’s International Law: Ninth Edition, 1991, p. 412
The development of the law, particularly in the light of more recent state practice, in the 150 years since the Caroline incident suggests that action, even if it involves the use of armed force and the violation of another state’s territory, can be justified as self defence under international law where:

1. an armed attack is launched, or is immediately threatened, against a state’s territory or forces (and probably its nationals);
2. there is an urgent necessity for defensive action against that attack;
3. there is no practicable alternative to action in self-defence, and in particular another state or other authority which has the legal powers to stop or prevent the infringement does not, or cannot, use them to that effect;
4. the action taken by way of self-defence is limited to what is necessary to stop or prevent the infringement, i.e. to the needs of defence…
The application of the basic law regarding self-defense to the present U.S. confrontation with Iraq is straightforward. Iraq has not attacked any state, nor is there any showing whatever that an attack by Iraq is imminent. Therefore self-defense does not justify the use of force against Iraq by the United States or any state.
The language of this is very clear, in my opinion (and probably he opinion of Watada or whomever he has spoken to), about the meaning of the UN Charter's 51st Article. Another point to address was one that was brought up earlier by poweclown (ty, pc) about the first Gulf War and it's effect on this. The effect is, in fact, very direct. The US was granted permission by the UN Security Council to act in defence of Kuwait in 1990. We went in, with legal permission, and ended the imminant threat. Under Article 51, the UN had taken the appropriate measures to protect the international peace and security. Under the UN Charter, there are, as stated in the aforementioned thread, two circumstances in which it is legal for a member to use force against another soverign state:
1) Article 51 allows for force to be used against a soverign state in the occurrence of an armed attack by said state, or the attack is imminent.
2) According to Chapter 7 of the Charter, if the measures provided by Article 41 have been found by the Security Council to be inadequate, then the Security Council may permit action (typically this is a naval or ground blocade, but it can on occasion lead to direct military confrontation like Desert Storm)
Quote:
Originally Posted by The United Nations Charter and the Use of Force Against Iraq
It was under Chapter VII that in 1990 the Security Council by Resolution 678 authorized all "necessary means" to eject Iraq from Kuwait and to restore international peace and security in the area. Following the formal cease-fire recorded by Resolution 687 in 1991, there has been no Security Council resolution that has clearly and specifically authorized the use of force to enforce the terms of the cease-fire, including ending Iraq’s missile and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.
Neither of the two circumstances has been met, therefore the Invasion and occupation of Iraq is unlawful.

*phew* Moving on...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg700
Also, Watada references Command Responsibility, which places responsiblity for the actions of subordinates on the commander. It was used to prosecute high-ranking officials after WW2 for the atrocities committed by the men under them.

It is true (and justly so) that an officer is held responsible for the actions of his men. However, as an officer it is Mr. Watada's responsiblity to ensure that his men don't commit war crimes rather than simply throwing up his hands and refusing to lead them.

He also seems to use command responsiblity to infer that he could be held accountable for the actions of his superiors. This doesn't work however because command responsibility places responsibility up the chain of command, not down. You don't blame a private because a general made a bad decision.
Ah, but Command Responsibility goes both ways. Watada is responsible for his subordiantes, but Watada isn't a general. He will have a commanding officer of some kind, depending on his responsibilities, and that officer could simply pull rank in the case of Watada keeping his men from committing crimes. Unless he's commanding a group of Watadas, they will probably just obey the superior officer. I think, and don't quot me, he is suggesting that the superiors are already guilty. An example would be the Abu Gurabe prison scandal. That was a bunch of irresponsible children misbehaving, but the command above them was also heald responsible for their actions, and rightfully so. You shouldn't be in command if you can't control your troops. Delegate your authority to other capable commanders down the line, and things like that can be avoided.
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Old 02-09-2007, 11:39 PM   #37 (permalink)
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A few things first about Watada: bottom line, he was wrong to base his defense on the illegality of the war. He can't challenge the judgement of congress in a military court, which is why the judge refused to allow witnesses (pertaining to the il/legality of the war). The prosecution mishandled the case when they brought in Watada's conflicting stipulation of fact because arguing the il/legality of the war before a military jury is not permitted. Thus a mistrial. And Watada is a weasel.

As to the UN: If the idea is to nitpick and ignore world affairs, true enough. The questions remains as to why the UN wouldn't find Sadaam in violation. When in actuality, they did. Repeatedly. They have seventeen resolutions, and each of the last sixteen started with the preamble that Iraq was in violation of 1441 and needed to come into compliance.

The issue wasn't whether Iraq was in violation -- it was -- or whether the UN would find it in violation -- it did. The issue was whether the UN would back its word by actually doing something about it other than another sternly-worded resolution. If one wants to be a nit-picking grain-lawyer one can continue to complain that what the US did under 'international law' was wrong because we didn't ask 'mother may we' from the UN.

And perhaps you know the reason for that: Saddam had succeeded in bribing the French and Russians to the point that they would vote 'no'. The French certainly weren't principled about this (for them it was all about oil), and the Russians had any number of secrets to hide, arms smuggling foremost if the past is any guide. So the question for you to answer, in turn, is whether you would allow unprincipled, lying, thieving states to stymie you from doing what you believe must be done.

So to the chorus of "unilateral and illegal war of aggression", I say: Yes unilaterally, with a couple dozen other countries in support. Legally, per our Constitution. George Bush didn't allow the lying, thieving French and unprincipled Russians to stop him from doing what he knew had to be done. Bravo.
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Old 02-09-2007, 11:47 PM   #38 (permalink)
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Old 02-10-2007, 12:27 AM   #39 (permalink)
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Old 02-10-2007, 12:34 AM   #40 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
A few things first about Watada: bottom line, he was wrong to base his defense on the illegality of the war. He can't challenge the judgement of congress in a military court, which is why the judge refused to allow witnesses (pertaining to the il/legality of the war). The prosecution mishandled the case when they brought in Watada's conflicting stipulation of fact because arguing the il/legality of the war before a military jury is not permitted. Thus a mistrial. And Watada is a weasel.
Having a familiarity with the law, I will try to explain this point.

Watada has a legal right to claim that an order is illegal. Watada has a right to defend his thought process and thus himself for not shipping out. He was charged with Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer and a Gentleman. To clarify, the charge of Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer and a Gentleman is applicable in an instance when an officer commits a violation of the UCMJ that dishonors or disgraces the officer personally and thus calls into question the person's standing as an officer. During these types of trials, the defendant is allowed to 'defend his honor' and offer proof in support and explaination of his or her thought process. The Article 32 hearing, similar to a prelim or grand jury peoceeding, promises that the accoused is allowed presentation prescribed in subsection (Art. 32, Paragraph C). In this case specifically, that means that the trial should have explored the reasoning behind Watada's actions. Whitnesses supporting Watada's stance would be called by the defence to elaborate on any points not made clear by Watada. Instead of allowing the trial to run correctly, the judge declaired that the war was legal (objection your honor, relevance), thus taking Watada's right to defend himself.

No Watada cannot challenge the legality of the war in court, but he can provide proof that he believed that the war was illegal. That would have been his defense, and it would have proven very difficult for the prosecution and the idiot judge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
As to the UN: If the idea is to nitpick and ignore world affairs, true enough.
The idea is to follow the law.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
The questions remains as to why the UN wouldn't find Sadaam in violation. When in actuality, they did. Repeatedly. They have seventeen resolutions, and each of the last sixteen started with the preamble that Iraq was in violation of 1441 and needed to come into compliance.
The UN was obviously succesful in preventing Saddam from developing a weapons of mass destruction program.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
The issue wasn't whether Iraq was in violation -- it was -- or whether the UN would find it in violation -- it did. The issue was whether the UN would back its word by actually doing something about it other than another sternly-worded resolution. If one wants to be a nit-picking grain-lawyer one can continue to complain that what the US did under 'international law' was wrong because we didn't ask 'mother may we' from the UN.
You're hurting your argument with "mother may I" type statements. We commited an unlawful act. The UN Security Council has to rule in favor of something like the invasion of Iraq in order for it to be legal. Do you know why they didn't? Look at Iraq. Where there was once a bad government with a bad leader, there is now several different large scale wars going on. Look at the world. Global terrorism is on the rise. The US has not acted in the best interest of international peace, and it is only in that interest that the Security Council is allowed to rule. Had we listened to the UN, we would have 3000 more US soldiers and 100 British soldiers alive today, and there would be tens to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis alive. We have failed and continue to fail, just as Korea, just as Vietnam, just as Cambodia, and the hundreds of other places we've seen fit to militarily destroy in the past 50 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
And perhaps you know the reason for that: Saddam had succeeded in bribing the French and Russians to the point that they would vote 'no'. The French certainly weren't principled about this (for them it was all about oil), and the Russians had any number of secrets to hide, arms smuggling foremost if the past is any guide. So the question for you to answer, in turn, is whether you would allow unprincipled, lying, thieving states to stymie you from doing what you believe must be done.
You mean in the way that the US allows Israel to commit crimes against humaity against the Palestinians? Yeah, we're hardly the good guys here. At least the Iraqis didn't have WMDs and nukes. Israel is poised to strike, and the proof is dead in the rubble of Southern Lebanon, right next to a good friend of mine who lost his life. The US govrenment's foriegn policy is hypocritical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powerclown
So to the chorus of "unilateral and illegal war of aggression", I say: Yes unilaterally, with a couple dozen other countries in support. Legally, per our Constitution. George Bush didn't allow the lying, thieving French and unprincipled Russians to stop him from doing what he knew had to be done. Bravo.
Our Constitution does not allow for wars of aggression, therefore the UN Charter is the rule of law. Article 4, paragraph 2 makes it perfectly clear that the treaties we sign are US Law. Bravo indeed. It's entirely possible that, after he is finished raping the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he will move on to something you care about. Will you wait until that day to finally let your support in him be shaken? Or will you turn on what you care about in order to serve the President?
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