Posted by
Reeson on Thursday, January 18, 2007 9:21:37 AM
Below are excerpts from a Los Angeles Times article. With the unpopularity of the Iraq war, we are seeing more military personnel speak out against it. What these service members, much of the public, and the media don't understand is that uniformed personnel do not have the same rights as ordinary citizens. The good order and discipline required of a military force, if it is to be effective, means that some protections, like free-speech, do not apply. Everyone who joins the military knows this when they sign up.
By Teresa Watanabe, Times Staff Writer
The nation's first Army officer to refuse deployment to Iraq urged the public in a statement Wednesday to "stop the war so that the death and sacrifices of American soldiers will not be in vain" after a major legal setback in his court-martial proceedings.
First Lt. Ehren Watada, who is based at Ft. Lewis near Seattle, faces six years in prison for failing to deploy to Iraq last year with his Stryker brigade and for criticizing President Bush and the war in statements to the media and at a peace convention.
On Tuesday...Lt. Col. John M. Head, the military judge in the case, rejected Watada's request to debate the legality of the war at his court-martial next month....Head ruled that the war's legality was a political question irrelevant to the charges at hand.
Seitz had argued that the 1st Amendment protected Watada's remarks. But Head disagreed in his written decision, saying that courts have ruled that soldiers do not enjoy the same degree of free-speech protections as civilians.