MICHAEL GILBERT, The News Tribune, Feb 24, 2007

The Army refiled charges Friday against Lt. Ehren Watada, resuming the government’s case against the former Stryker officer who refused orders to go to Iraq.

The Fort Lewis soldier again stands accused of missing his unit’s June 22 flight to the Middle East and four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for statements he made to the media and at a speech in Seattle.

Watada faces up to six years in prison and dismissal from the Army if he’s convicted.

His attorney said Friday that he will press the argument that Watada can’t be tried a second time for the same alleged crime.

SEATTLE -- The Army refiled charges Friday against a lieutenant who refused to serve in Iraq, about two weeks after his first court-martial was declared a mistrial. 

First Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, who refused to deploy with his unit last June, faces the same allegations he initially faced - missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer - and could be sentenced to a dishonorable discharge and six years in prison if convicted. The Army has not set a date for a second court-martial. 

"We're back to square one," Fort Lewis spokeswoman Leslie Kaye said.

Emil Guillermo, Feb 16, 2007, AsianWeek.com

Last week's news was dominated by three train wrecks - one of them involving an Asian American.

First, there was that female astronaut involved in a love triangle, who embarrassed NASA partially for her use of space diapers (the ones that soak up all that Tang astronauts drink while in their space suits) while she drove hundreds of miles from Texas to Florida on a mission to "neutralize" her love rival.

Francis A. Boyle, Global Research, February 9, 2007

Lt. Watada's basic defense under international law, US Constitutional law, the laws of war and US Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) is set forth below. You can read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. On 16 January 2007 Judge Head had ruled that none of these arguments could be made at the general court-martial (GCM) proceeding itself. It was clear that the Army was planning to railroad Lt Watada. The obstacle to doing this was that JAG had brought charges that made these legal arguments impossible to exclude at the GCM.  

ABC News, Feb. 13, 2007

Link to Video Statement of Support  

Actor Defends Lieutenant Who Faced Court Martial Over Refusal to Serve in Iraq  

Feb. 11, 2007 - Sean Penn was in Fort Lewis, Wash., this week to support Lt. Ehren Watada, on trial for refusing orders to fight in Iraq. Watada told the court martial, which is steeped in controversy and ended in a mistrial Wednesday.

Sean Penn [partial transcript]: Lt. Watada has made it very clear and in taking the position that he did, he's made it very clear. He's willing to make that sacrifice, he's willing to, quote/unquote, "Pay the price." But the price we'd be asking him to pay is to punish a good deed, is to punish an honest soldier who's a patriot with great integrity and great courage for having courage, for having integrity and for being an American willing to call into question the lies of this administration. ...

Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith, The Nation, February 9, 2007 (web only)

A military judge in Fort Lewis, Washington, has declared a mistrial in the court-martial of Lieut. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer prosecuted for refusing to go to Iraq. A new trial is believed to be unlikely before summer, if at all. The mistrial represents a significant victory for Watada, for the rights of military resisters and for the movement of civil resistance to US war crimes in Iraq.

HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN Editorial Opinion Feb. 9, 2007

THE ISSUE
A military judge has declared a mistrial in the court-martial of the Army officer.

CONFUSION about a pre-existing agreement that resulted in a mistrial in the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada reflects the difficulty of separating his refusal to deploy to Iraq from the reasons for his refusal.

Where the case, which has drawn nationwide attention and energized anti-war forces, heads next remains unclear as Watada's attorney contends a second trial would constitute double jeopardy.
 

Recount of dramatic Seitz-Head clash 

Hal Bernton, Seattle Times, February 8, 2007 

FORT LEWIS - Before his court-martial began this week, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada was packing boxes at his Olympia apartment in preparation for a guilty verdict and prison term.

Instead, the trial ended Wednesday as a mistrial when a judge rejected statements in a crucial pretrial agreement as unintended admissions of Watada's guilt. It is now unclear when - or even if - the 28-year-old Army officer will be tried on charges of missing a troop deployment to Iraq and officer misconduct.
 

Marjorie Cohn, MWC News OPED, Feb, 7, 2007

When the Army judge declared a mistrial over defense objection in 1st Lt. Ehren Watada's court martial, he probably didn't realize jeopardy attached.  That means that under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution, the government cannot retry Lt. Watada on the same charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer.  

MIKE BARBER,Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 7, 2007

FORT LEWIS -- The court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada ground to a halt Wednesday as his lawyer and the judge sparred.

Again the issue was Watada's views on the Iraq war -- opinions that kept him from going with his unit to the conflict and that the judge, Lt. Col. John Head, doesn't want brought up at the court-martial.

The dispute kept Watada off the witness stand Wednesday morning, where he was to testify in his defense, and prompted the judge to suggest there might have to be a mistrial.

First Lt. Ehren Watada's court-martial verdict could hinge on the Fort Lewis officer's own testimony when he takes the stand later this week to testify about why he refused to go to war.

Defense counsels hope Watada can gain the respect of the seven-officer military panel sworn in Monday and persuade the officers to reject an extended prison sentence of up to four years.

"The critical thing is that he be treated as someone who is principled," Eric Seitz, Watada's civilian defense counsel, said late Monday at a news conference. "Someone who is principled and has taken a stand. Not someone who should be treated as a criminal."

THE soldier stands in his living room eyeing all the cool soldier stuff he never got to use in a real fight. Like the helmet with not a single ding and the sleek body armor with not a scuff. The gear piles high on the carpet.

First Lt. Ehren Watada is giving it all back and, out of courtesy, packing it up. The Army had treated him with the utmost respect until the moment it decided to court-martial him. It was nothing personal. The Army does what it has to do.

Balitmore Sun OP/ED
By Paul Rockwell
Originally published February 1, 2007

It is a sad day in American jurisprudence when a soldier of conscience is court-martialed not for lying but for telling the truth, not for breaking a covenant with the military but for upholding the rule of law in wartime.

The court-martial of Army 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada is set for Monday at Fort Lewis near Seattle. The 28-year-old soldier from Hawaii is the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. He is charged with "missing movement" and "conduct unbecoming of an officer," including "use of contemptuous words for the president." He was out of uniform on leave over a year ago when he delivered a moving address to a Veterans for Peace convention. He questioned the legality of the war in Iraq, and he denounced the mendacity of the Bush administration. Although he is not a conscientious objector (he offered to serve in Afghanistan), Lieutenant Watada believes no soldier should give a life, or take a life, for a lie.

Last June, 1st. Lt. Ehren Watada split with the Fort Lewis officer corps by refusing an order to deploy to Iraq.

At a court-martial that begins Monday, his fate will be placed in the hands of at least five of those officers, leaders at an Army base that has sent thousands to fight in the war.

The officers will form a "panel of peers," the military equivalent of a jury, and determine whether Watada spends up to four years in prison in one of the most high-profile cases to be tried at Fort Lewis.

You can jail the resisters, but you can't jail the resistance. George W. Bush, take notice as U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada is court-martialed next week. Congress, take heed. Young people in harm's way are leading the way out of Iraq. It is time you followed.

Watada was the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. He joined the military in March 2003. He believed President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/11 and al-Qaida, and that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States

The Christian Science Monitor
By Dean Paton
February 02, 2007 edition

BELLEVUE, WASH. - Carolyn Ho was at her apartment that overlooks Kaneohe Bay on the windward side of Oahu, on another enviable evening of silk-shirt temperatures, when the phone rang. It was New Year's Day 2006. Her son, Ehren, was calling from Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash., where he was stationed as an artillery officer in the US Army.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Opinion, January 31, 2007

The U.S. Army's decision to drop two charges against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada is a reasonable step, taken in concert with Watada.

Watada agreed to stipulate to the authenticity of media accounts of his statements, avoiding a government attempt to force reporters to testify in his court-martial next week. Forcing the testimony would have raised free speech issues.  

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada volunteered for military service following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our country out of a desire to protect his family and compatriots. His service record has been exemplary, and he was deemed "among the best" by his superiors.

All that changed on June 22, 2006, when Watada was ordered to deploy to the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Opposed to the premise and conduct of the war in Iraq, Watada refused to comply with this order. He now faces a court martial and up to six years in prison.

Lt. Watada has taken a solemn oath of allegiance as a military officer. With the order to deploy to Iraq, he found himself with a dilemma: Either follow this oath or risk the severe consequences of disobedience. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, this young man searched his soul and found himself unable to suppress his conscience and opposition to what he views as an immoral, illegal war.

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times
January 30, 2007

In a deal with defense attorneys, the Army has dropped two misconduct counts against a Fort Lewis officer who refused to serve in Iraq.

The agreement — confirmed Monday by an Army official — knocks two years from a maximum six-year prison sentence that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada initially faced at a court-martial scheduled to begin next Monday at Fort Lewis.