Ehren Watada

Ehren Keoni Watada (born 1978) is a former first lieutenant of the United States Army, best known as the first commissioned officer in the US armed forces to refuse to deploy to Iraq.

An Eagle Scout, Watada graduated from Hawaii Pacific University magna cum laude in 2003 with a BA in finance.

Watada joined the Army after the war in Iraq had begun, stating that he was motivated "out of a desire to protect our country" after the September 11 attacks.

He was commissioned by the Army's Officer Candidate School, on November 20, 2003, at Fort Benning, Georgia, as a second lieutenant of field artillery—one month after Security Council Resolution 1511 authorized a multinational force in Iraq.

Watada served one year in South Korea, and was subsequently reassigned to Fort Lewis, Washington.

Soon after reporting to Fort Lewis, Watada discovered that his unit would be deploying to Iraq, in support of ongoing operations there.

In preparation to deploy, he began conducting research on the country, its culture, and the reasons for the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Watada stated that, after reading several books and articles about the history of Iraq, international law, and the evidence used to justify the war, and speaking with veterans returning from Iraq, he ceased to believe in its legality and justification.

Also testifying in Watada's defense were former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, and Army Colonel Ann Wright (ret.), who retired from the State Department in March 2003, in protest of the coming invasion.

Like Boyle, both asserted that the war was illegal and that therefore Watada was within his rights to refuse participation in it.

Also, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an amicus brief, saying that soldiers should not be court martialed for explaining their views.

In June 2006, Watada refused to deploy for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, saying he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes.

At the time, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as a fire support officer.

In January 2006, Watada attempted to resign.

In his letter, he asserted that he was "wholeheartedly opposed to the continued war in Iraq", citing what he believed to be lawlessness and dishonesty in its justification.

He came to the conclusion after doing his own personal research, including reading books by Seymour Hersh and James Bamford as well as learning about the Downing Street Memo, a British government document that stated that war in Iraq was "inevitable" and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of war.

Watada also asserted, in discussions with other soldiers, that he and his fellow servicemen were complicit in war crimes.

Watada stated that he was not a conscientious objector because he was not opposed to all wars as a matter of principle, and he stated that he had offered to serve in Afghanistan, which he regarded as "an unambiguous war linked to the September 11 attacks."

This was refused; Watada, in turn, refused an offer for a desk job in Iraq without direct combat involvement, stating that the point of his protest was not about combat.

In response to Watada's refusal to deploy, the Army initially preferred seven specifications of various offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

After the initial preferral, all but three specifications were dropped; the remaining charges sent to the court-martial were:

When the initial charges were preferred, Watada faced the possibility of a general court-martial and up to seven years in prison, as well as dismissal from the service.

("dismissal" is the only class of punitive discharge for U.S. commissioned officers; it is the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge, to which enlisted personnel may be sentenced.) Faced with these consequences, Watada said that he did not regret his decision, stating that he believed it to have been his moral responsibility:

"When you are looking your children in the eye in the future, or when you are at the end of your life, you want to look back on your life and know that at a very important moment, when I had the opportunity to make the right decisions, I did so, even knowing there were negative consequences."

Regarding the charges, Watada's civilian attorney, Eric Seitz, commented:

"Well, we expected him to be charged with missing movement or violating an order to get on a bus to accompany his unit to Iraq. We did not really anticipate that they would charge him with additional offenses based upon the comments and the remarks that he's made. And that opens up a whole new chapter in this proceeding, because what the Army has clearly tried to do by the nature of these charges is send out a message to people in the military, that if you criticize the war and if you criticize the decisions that were made to bring the United States into this war, that you, too, could be charged with disloyalty, contemptuous remarks and disrespect for higher officers, and in this case, specifically in this charge, the President."

Watada's article 32 hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a general court-martial was held on August 17, 2006.

The investigating officer Lt. Col. Mark Keith presided.

The Army prosecutor, Capt. Dan Kuecker, described Watada's actions as contemptuous of President George W. Bush, and argued that Watada's public statements hurt morale in his unit.

He played video clips from a Veterans for Peace conference.

In that speech, Watada called on his fellow soldiers to stop fighting.

Eric Seitz, Watada's civilian counsel, and Capt. Mark Kim, Watada's military lawyer, raised the issue of the legality of the war.

Over the prosecutor's objections, Seitz and Kim called three witnesses to question the legality of the war.

University of Illinois professor of international law Francis Boyle testified that the war is illegal because it was not authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and asserted that congress approved the war on the basis of faulty intelligence.

On September 15, 2006, the Army announced that it had preferred another charge against Watada of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman".

He was brought before a court-martial in 2007 which ended in a mistrial; the Army subsequently discharged him under "Other-Than-Honorable-Conditions" (OTH) in 2009.

An OTH discharge is the least favorable type of administrative discharge from the Army, and is reserved for a "pattern of behavior that constitutes a significant departure from the conduct expected of Soldiers of the Army."

Watada was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Robert Watada and Carolyn Ho.

His father served for 10 years as executive director of Hawaii's Campaign Spending Commission and himself refused to serve in the Vietnam War.

Ehren Watada attended Punahou School, then transferred in his sophomore year to Kalani High School, where he played cornerback on the varsity football team.