Apparently they just declared a mistrial.
It was just a procedural thing. The new trial will start in a couple weeks.
I think he should go to jail for the longest extent possible. It doesn’t matter if he thinks this is an unjust war. He was given a lawful order, and he didn’t fulfill it. He was more than happy to accept the paycheck twice a month and reap all the other benefits, just because he’s told to do something he doesn’t want to do doesn’t mean he deserves an out.
Last week at work a rather rowdy Vietnam vet hung up a noose with Watada’s name on it. It was taken down this morning due to a complaint.
Don’t let any of them fool you. They knew what they were doing…any backpedaling at this point is merely CYA on their part. It’s not like Bush ever made any real pretense about what he wanted to do. Congress just wanted a resolution that allowed them to authorize an adventure, post-9/11, without actually appearing to authorize it. It was a wimp-ass move and I hope it haunts each and every one of them in elections for the rest of their careers.
As for Watada, he should be found guilty and take his lumps. I’m all for the man standing on principle, I quite support him. But he knew the risks when he took the oath and he needs to either live up to it or face the consequences of not doing so.
I’d respect him a bit more if he dropped the lame “This is an illegal war!” argument and just said that the war was wrong and he wasn’t going to take part.
He’ll lose because his lawyer’s an idiot.
After the mistrial was declared his lawyer stated that Watada won’t be able to be convicted because of the standard of ‘double jeopardy’. What? I don’t think that double jeopardy has anything to do with a mistrial… you just start the trial over again (IANAL, so I could be completely wrong on this).
No, they voted to give Bush the authority to do it if he thought it was necessary. And he did. Congress may not have agreed with his decision but they were the ones who made it his decision to make. If they wanted to put more conditions on it, they should have done so.
I rather sympathize with his position, but practically he does not stand a chance.
I understand that he is perfectly willing to go to Afghanistan, probably what I would have done is broken him to the ranks and shipped him off there.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Why? It’s an opinion-seeking post that asks whether people think the guy has a chance at acquittal.
Um, contrary to everyone’s posts here, what the defense is being based on is a legitimate argument. Probably not one that will win, but one that makes sense. He is arguing at the order given him to deploy to Iraq was an illegal order as defined by UCMJ – presumably owing to the illegality of the Iraq War (in many people’s eyes; see a plethora of GD threads arguing this point). He is required by his oath as an officer and by the UCMJ not to obey but rather to refuse an illegal order. (Cf. Lt. Calley and My Lai for precedent.)
I strongly suspect that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, in terms of proving his case that the order for him to deploy was an illegal order. But I would think that people posting here, including veterans, would be well aware of that provision and that that is the point he is arguing.
If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff orders a buck private, “Private, shoot that civilian in cold blood” with no justification for the act, the private’s sole legal response is “Sir, no, sir! That is an illegal order, sir!” If he obeys the order, he becomes guilty of murder. (So of course does the Chairman, for giving the order. But it’s the private’s duty that I’m focusing on.)
As I said, I don’t think he’s got Frosty the Snowman’s chance in Satan’s sauna of winning that case. But the argument is something more than political – it goes to the core of his duty as an officer to obey lawful orders and his duty to disobey unlawful ones.
At this late date, I should mention that Airman Doors bolded a remark about the military ignoring orders from the civilian government.
Airman Doors, I salute you. A military allowed to do whatever the hell it wants is what caused Japan to become an aggressor in WWII.
Lt. Watada? As was pointed out on Michael Medved’s radio show the other night, Lt. Watada is staying home while his subordinates have shipped off to Iraq. Way to go, Lieutenant. You’ve abandoned the men who were counting on you to lead them. Dumbass.
For what its worth, in Australia my understanding is that you can be a conscientious objector to a particular war, without having to be a conscientious objector in general.
http://www.aph.gov.au/Library/pubs/rn/2002-03/03rn31.htm
So it sounds like he’d be in a very different situation in Australia than the US with this stance. He’d just be quietly shuffled out without the hoopla that this seems to have caused.
Otara
In the civilian world, your analysis would be wrong.
At a criminal trial, jeopardy “attaches” to a trial the moment the jury is sworn in, or (for a bench trial) the moment the judge begins hearing evidence. Once jeopardy has attached, a mistrial may in fact prevent a second trial. It all depends on the reason for the mistrial. As a general principle, if the mistrial arose at the behest of the defense, the defense may not object to a second trial. If the mistrial comes at the prosecution’s request, over the objection of the defense, then the defense can raise the spectre of double jeopardy as a bar to a second trial.
There are nuances to those rules that complicate the basic principles. For example, if the prosecution’s improper conduct forces the defense to ask for a mistrial, the defense can still object to a scond trial. And even over the defense’s objection to a mistrial, if the mistrial was manifestly necessary in the interests of justice, the bar will not apply.
A mistrial that results from the failure of the jury to reach a verdict does not bar a retrial.
Now, all that is the rule in the civilian world. I have no idea what the applicable standards are in the world of courts-martial.
Are not officers allowed to resign at any time except when in combat?
I don’t really think so, Polycarp. It goes to the nature of the order, which is where the analogy breaks down.
The order to shoot civilians is an illegal order on the face of it. What Lt. Watada was being ordered to do was board a plane with his soldiers - not an illegal order in and of itself. Remember, he is charged with missing movement, as well as a couple general charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
The only way an order to board a plane could be an illegal order would be in the context of the grander war, and its legality. However, as Airman Doors correctly noted above, these are not decisions we allow the military to take for themselves. These are decisions left to the civilian political process.
Watada was not allowed to resign as he had not fulfilled his military obligation, which he became contractually obligated to fulfill when he accepted his commission.
Generally, that obligation is for eight years, for officers and enlisted both, with most people serving at least some portion of that time in an inactive reserve status.
I was subject to it myself. I joined the Navy in 1993, left active duty in 1998, and mustered out of the inactive reserve in 2001.
Ah, OK, thanks.
In that case, Watada is screwed, and by his own hand. I have no sympathy for him.
Even officers who have fulfilled their initial military obligation cannot “resign at any time,” even in peacetime.
There are nuances to the regulations.
In the U.S. Navy, for example, an officer who has fulfilled his initial military obligation generally needs to give 6-9 months resignation notice to the Navy. (A given assignment generally lasts 2-3 years.)
An officer who has received orders to a new assignment generally cannot refuse those orders. This is because the process of putting an officer into a billet has to be worked out by the officer’s “detailer” (who is supposed to represent the interests of the officer) and the billet’s “placement officer” (who is responsible for filling a particular job), and it would be too disruptive to the process if an officer could just resign to get out of a particular assignment.
Officers work with their detailer to get desirable assignments. The detailer negotiates with the placement officer, who needs a qualified person to fill his billet slot. The command that owns that job wants the most qualified person to fill a given slot. Once all of this has been worked out, and orders have issued and signed by BUPERS (Navy Bureau of Personnel), the officer is obligated to accept those orders.
An officer accepting new orders is generally required to fill that new billet for a minimum of one year before resigning.
I’ll give you a concrete example. I had a coworker in the Naval aviation community who wanted some desirable job, and told his detailer that if he didn’t get it, he’d resign from the Navy. (He’d already fulfilled his initial obligation.) The detailer strung him along with assurances that he’d try to get the guy the job. After a few months of this, he got a call from the detailer that he was going to be assigned some crappy job on the deck of an aircraft carrier as the launch and recovery officer (IIRC). My coworker told him to pound sand and immediately fired off a resignation letter. Unfortunately for him, the orders had already been issued, and off he went for a minimum assignment of a year on the deck of a carrier.
Also, if officers accept various educational opportunities, such as tuition reimbursement, Naval Postgraduate School, or any of the various war colleges, they incur additional military obligations.