Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Obligations? Pshh
Things are looking grim for Ehren Watada, military dude who won't go to Iraq. The City Council is backing him.
But Ehren Watada's lawyer, Eric Seitz, said his client had a duty to disobey orders because the conduct of the war in Iraq violates both the international Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Powers Act.
"The U.S. never received authorization from the United Nations to attack Iraq," Seitz said. "It is our contention that war crimes are being committed."
Seitz cited the holding of detainees without charges, deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and what he called the deliberate deception of the U.S. Congress as grounds for declaring the war illegal. I'm not really familiar with the UCMJ, but wouldn't this make more sense as an objection if Watada was actually being ordered to murder civilians, detain people without charges, deceive Congress, etc., rather than simply being ordered to participate in the war?
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