09:14 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Associated Press and KING5.com Staff Reports

TACOMA, Wash. - An Army lieutenant based at Fort Lewis says he has such grave objections to the war in Iraq, he’s refusing to deploy.

In a pre-recorded statement played at news conference Wednesday, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada said:

“It is my duty as a commissioned officer of the United States Army to speak out against grave injustices. My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not those who would issue unlawful orders.”

Watada scheduled the news conference near Fort Lewis, where he is stationed, but was barred from attending during his duty hours.

His statement continued: “It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law.

KING

In a pre-recorded statement played Wednesday, Fort Lewis Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who refuses to go to Iraq, not only called the war in Iraq "morally wrong, but a horrible breach of American law."

“Although I have tried to resign out of protest, I am forced to participate in a war that is manifestly illegal. As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order.”

He said the war violates the democratic system of checks and balances and usurps international treaties and conventions.

“The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare,” Watada said.

In a letter to his command in January, Watada said he had reservations about the Iraq war and felt he could not participate, his lawyer, Eric A. Seitz, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday from his office in Honolulu.

A couple of months later, at the Army’s suggestion, Watada resubmitted his request to resign, Seitz said. He was told last month that his request had been denied. It would be Watada’s first deployment to Iraq.

Joseph W. Hitt, a civilian spokesman at Fort Lewis, about 40 miles south of Seattle, said Watada is a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2 nd Infantry Division, the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The unit held a deployment ceremony Friday and is set to begin leaving later this month for a second mission in Iraq.

A statement released to the media by a Fort Lewis spokeswoman calling Watada's "intent to violate military law by refusing to obey orders a serious matter," but says no decision will be made regarding Watada's actions until a review by his commander.

Watada, the son of Bob Watada, former executive director of Hawaii’s campaign spending commission, enlisted in 2003 after graduation from Hawaii Pacific University. He reported for boot camp that June and began officer candidate school two months later.

Watada’s commission requires that he serve as an active-duty Army officer for three years ending this Dec. 3, Seitz said.

“By his refusal to participate in the ongoing war, Lt. Watada joins a growing number of high-ranking military officers, West Point graduates and current and former members of the armed services who have expressed their opposition to the actions of the United States in Iraq,” Seitz said in a statement released Tuesday.

The controversy follows several other high-profile protests.

Last week an Olympia city councilman joined anti-war demonstrators who faced off against police in riot gear at the Port of Olympia over a ship being loaded with war equipment headed to Iraq.

Before that, several former generals spoke out and Watada supporters say the first public refusal to deploy by an officer will encourage more soldiers to resist.

"The Lieutenant's decision to break ranks will hasten the day when his fellow soldiers are out harms way," said Judy Linehan of the anti-Iraq-war group Military Families Speak Out

Other officers say off-camera, if American soldiers got to decide for themselves when an order was unlawful, the chaos of war would be nothing compared to the chaos of going to war.

Watada could be court martialed if he refuses to serve as ordered, unless the Army allows him to resign his commission or assigns him to duties that are not directly connected to the war, Seitz said.

Paul Boyce, a spokesman in the Army’s national public affairs office, said Watada is “not the first officer, not the first enlisted, nor the first soldier” to refuse deployment to Iraq. An Army fact sheet dated Sept. 21, 2005, the most recent one available, said conscientious objector applications had been approved 87 and 101 denied since January 2003.

Army regulations define conscientious objection as a “firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, because of religious training and belief.”

Watada did not apply for conscientious objector status, according to his lawyer.

“In order to qualify as a conscientious objector you have to be opposed to war in any form, and he is not. He’s just opposed to this war,” Seitz told the AP.

Reaction

Customers at Galloping Gertie's café neighboring Fort Lewis find the notion of an Army officer refusing to deploy to war tough to stomach. 

Airman Kevin Peltier calls it a slap in the face to veterans everywhere.

"To try to weasel out of something you signed up to do that you thought was going to benefit you and now all of a sudden you change your mind but the mission hasn't changed -- that doesn't speak very highly of you," he said.

But as the war has become increasingly unpopular on the homefront, even veterans who originally supported the war, like Anthony Albol, can see Lt. Watada's point of view:

"He signed the bottom line to serve his country. And this is where his country wants to send him it's where he ought to be. But from a moral point of view, I wouldn't go either," Albol said.

Joe Colgan's son Ben died in Iraq.

He believes Watada's moral obligation is to do what his conscience tells him and work to end the war.

"To do what he did is coming from a moral background. And I believe he was really following his conscience to be able to come to that conclusion," Colgan said.

Complicating the issue is that unlike Vietnam, soldiers for the Iraq war volunteered.

And the fact that Watada is an officer holds him to a higher standard.

Vets like Alan Doyle, who lost a leg in Iraq say it's a question of commitment.

"When you join the military you're saying 'I'm giving up my life to do what they tell me to do, regardless. If he's a year in the brig or a year in Iraq, it's both hell," Doyle said.

KING 5 reporters Tanya Mosley, Paul Aker and Eric Wilkinson contributed to this report