Free Dating Site    

Please cite which UN resolution authorized the no-fly zones in Iraq. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to; the NFZ's were a unilateral decision made by the US, not by the UN. That's why it wasn't used to justify the invasion of Iraq in the run-up to the war. So this argument is bogus.

The UN was not required to authorize the invasion since we had the cease fire agreement which had been violated.

The cease fire agreement had the no-fly zone requirement.

The UN was not required to authorize the invasion since we had the cease fire agreement which had been violated.

The cease fire agreement had the no-fly zone requirement. That agreement is ALSO a treaty.

Soldiers Against Iraq Desert To Canada
Taking A Cue From Predecessors In Vietnam Era, Some Disillusioned Flee


TORONTO, Jan. 28, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the war in Iraq becoming increasingly unpopular, some soldiers
like Justin Colby are deserting. (CBS)


Quote

"I believe the law says you need not participate in an illegal war.
And so that's the circumstance we're asserting."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeffrey House, a Toronto lawyer assisting American troops who seek
asylum in Canada

WHAT DO YOU THINK?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go To Comments


(CBS) During the Vietnam war, many young men who were drafted and
didn't want to go to war fled to Canada. Today, a small group of
soldiers and Marines are doing the same thing in protest of a war they
say is unjust.

When you contemplate the danger and the violent death that are ever
present factors in Iraq, you may wonder how Americans charged with
fighting the war there can bear it.

The reality is that some of them can't take it. Justin Colby, 23 was
inspired to join the Army to avenge the events of September 11.

"I thought that was something I wanted to do," he told Sunday Morning
correspondent Rita Braver. "So I approached a recruiter and said,
'Sign me up.'"

On July 4 of this year, as his unit was about to be redeployed to
Iraq, Colby became a deserter. And in September, he joined a small,
but growing number of American servicemen who have sought refuge in
Canada. Estimates say there are between 100 and 250 of them.

Before he decided to desert, Colby served heroically in Iraq. Starting
in late 2004, he served a year as a medic there. He received the Army
Commendation Medal for exceedingly meritorious service for his work
while under fire. He said his base was constantly barraged by mortar
and rocket attacks and he had a couple of close calls during his year
there.

"The rocket landed within 15, 20 meters of where I was standing," he
said.

But Colby was becoming disillusioned with the war in Iraq, especially
because it became increasingly clear that Iraq, and its dictator
Saddam Hussein, was not behind the attacks of 9/11.

"When I realized these people we were killing - 'cause we killed a lot
of [them], I saw a lot of dead people - when I realized the people we
were killing had nothing to do with 9/11, that's when I was, like,
'Okay, this is not for me! This, ya know, I was wrong.'"

Colby and the other deserters are the second generation of Americans
to flee here, on the run from an unpopular war. In the 1960s and '70s,
some 50,000 Americans - mostly draft dodgers but also some deserters -
escaped to Canada, refusing to serve in Vietnam.

Lee Zaslofsky was one of those Army deserters. He was drafted in 1969
and fled to Canada in 1970. Today he is the coordinator of the War
Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto - started in 2004 to help
fleeing GIs. He is now a Canadian citizen.

"Provide them with temporary housing until they can get on their feet.
If they need some money - we can give them some money; not a lot,"
Zaslofsky said. "We get them in touch with a lawyer."

He remains confident in the choice he made more than 30 years ago and
says that he is happy to help other young men and women who faced
similar dilemmas.

"I never had the slightest doubt about what I've done," Zaslofsky
said. "What makes me feel good is that I'm able - at my age - to have
the privilege of working with young people who have had the guts and
the decency to stand up for what they believe is right."

One of those young people is former marine Dean Walcott, who served
six years including two tours of duty in Iraq. In between he was
assigned to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, assisting wounded
marines. He said it was there that he fell apart after seeing so many
burn victims.

"A lot of guys whose skin was melted off," he said. "A lot of guys who
you couldn't recognize literally from their face to their feet.
Missing arms, missing legs, couldn't breathe on their own, couldn't
feed themselves. These kids, literally kids - 17, 18, 19, 20. And this
look in their eyes that - Oh, I'm never gonna forget it. The look in
their eyes when they finally come to understand that they're never
gonna walk again. They're never gonna hold their wife and their
children again. And having them ask me, 'Why?' Ya know - a 'big-
picture why.' And I couldn't tell them."

After his second tour in Iraq, depressed and filled with anxiety,
Walcott got himself assigned to a non-combat unit. But to his dismay,
he was assigned to prepare reservists for deployment to Iraq.

"So basically instead of me deploying and me being psychologically or
physically injured," he said, "now we're pulling them away from their
family for over a year - and telling them "Well, while I sit here in
the office drinking coffee and being safe, you go to Iraq!'"

He simply walked out and headed to Canada, which he remembered hearing
was a haven for Vietnam deserters.

But there's a catch for those who flee to Canada. In the era of the
Vietnam war, American draft dodgers and deserters could easily take up
residence in Canada, and stay as long as they liked. Now, however,
Canadian law has changed.

"Well, legally what's changed is that there's a general policy in
Canada now that to apply here you must apply from outside the country.
And that's not really an option that American troops could do," said
Jeffrey House, a Vietnam veteran who fled to Canada. "Because they're
gonna be sent to Iraq next week or next month."

House is now a lawyer in Toronto, trying to help deserters like
Walcott. House is trying to convince Canadian courts that American
deserters of today are, in effect, political refugees. He said he is
currently representing about 35 clients and is trying to establish
permanent residence.

"I believe the law says you need not participate in an illegal war,"
House said. "And so that's the circumstance we're asserting. 'I'm an
American solider, I don't want to participate in an illegal war.
That's why I couldn't apply from the United States. That's why I'm
applying from inside Canada.' And [we believe] people will win their
cases eventually."

But so far, despite all the countless papers House has filed, Canadian
immigration boards have rejected the claim. The country's appeals
court will hear the case this spring.

But the United States military doesn't see desertion as a significant
problem. Army Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said fewer than 1,500 a year
desert. The desertion rate has gone down since 9/11 and Hilferty said
most desert for personal, family-related reasons [compared to] those
motivated by opposition to the war.

"I don't think America really wants an Army where soldiers get to
vote," he said. "'I don't want to attack that hill. I don't think this
patrol is a good idea. No, No I don't really, don't want to go on that
mission.' And that's what these soldiers, I think, are saying. I don't
like this particular mission. You cannot have an army to defend
America - that fights for truth and the American way - if you do
that."

So far, a handful of American deserters who went to Canada have
voluntarily returned to the U.S. One is in prison, another is in
hiding. Several have been discharged. There's no uniform penalty for
desertion. Col. Hilferty says the military issues an arrest warrant
for deserters - but does not actively attempt to track them down -
whether in the U.S. or Canada.

"Primarily people turn themselves in. They return to their duty
stations," he said. "Or if a police officer stops you for running a
red light. Primarily what we do with deserters is we bring them back
in the unit. That's our first course of action."

It's an idea that was rejected outright by Colby:

"What I feared the most was being incorporated back into the unit," he
said. "Ya know, take my rank, take my pay and send me back to Iraq."

In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter announced an amnesty for Vietnam
draft dodgers and deserters, but with the war in Iraq still raging, no
one is talking about how deserters from this conflict will be dealt
with in the future. Theirs is an even heavier burden: with no draft,
everyone in today's military joined voluntarily, including Walcott,
who says he sees the contradiction between leaving the war for moral
reasons and abandoning his mission.

"I do see the contradictions there," he said. "And I realize that as -
again - it not only being illegal, it's also going back on my word
which I swore to when I did it - and did it again. And it's also more
than likely a sin."

But, he said, the images of the dead and wounded from Iraq will not go
away.

"I regret that it became necessary, but I don't see any other way that
I can help those men and women more than by doing what I'm doing now,"
Walcott said, "which is talking about it, raising the issue, getting
it out there for people to debate about it."

© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Watada Mistrial: Here's What Really Happened
By Bill Simpich
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 08 February 2007

First Lt. Ehren Watada knew exactly what his case was about - and that scared the judge.

There was absolutely no reason to stop the Watada trial.

The judge's claim that Lt. Watada did not fully understand a document he signed admitting to elements of the charges is completely untrue (see Melanthia Mitchell, AP, 2/8/07).

The military seized on that claim and complimented the judge for "protecting the rights of the accused" in granting the mistrial.

Here's what really happened.

read on......
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020807A.shtml

Stammering at points in his arguments with the judge and looking extremely frustrated, Army prosecutor Capt Scott Van Sweringen asked for the mistrial after Judge Head, having personally questioned Watada about the stipulation, ruled that he was going to reject the agreement and tell the jurors that is should be disregarded. The judge himself seemed to urge a mistrial request at that point, saying of his direction to the jurors: "How do you un-ring that bell?"

A new trial date was set for March 19, and Piek said the unusual turn of events was proof that the Army "steadfastly protects the rights of the accused."

But it seemed highly unlikely a new trial would actually begin on March 19. Seitz, Watada's lawyer, said there would be scheduling conflicts and that in any case he would file an immediate motion to dismiss the case whenever it was finally reconvened. "It is my opinion that Lieut. Watada cannot be tried again because of the effect of double jeopardy," he said, contending that because it was prosecutors who asked for the mistrial, and because the judge granted the mistrial over the opposition of defense lawyers, the prosecutors could not subsequently retry Watada.

Seitz said Watada was frustrated that the case had ended in a mistrial rather than a verdict, but he also said of the case: "I do not believe it will ever be resurrected."

In the end, Seitz said, the problem was that the military did not want to discuss the reasons for his client's failure to deploy. "I think whenever a prosecutor tries to keep out the substance of why a person acted, when it relates directly to the charges that are there, it creates an untenable series of contradictions," he said.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1587056,00.html

The UN was not required to authorize the invasion since we had the cease fire agreement which had been violated.

The cease fire agreement had the no-fly zone requirement. That agreement is ALSO a treaty.

As for the content of the cease fire.. you won't believe it if I post it so stuff it.

Google works just as well for you as it does for me... Unless you are too ignorant to be able to word a search properly.

(Msg. 389) venusdumilo wrote:
I think the biggest issue here is not the legality of the war or what happened at court,
but the character of the soldier.

He chose to go to Officer's school. He keeped at it. When he was done, they gave him his job assigment.

He did not care that people had wasted their time teaching him ...

... he did not care that people where depending on him.

All he cared about was himself.

... this soldier has proven himself unreliable, undependable. He is of no use in the Army.

... we must be responsible for those choices we made.

He hasn't got a leg to stand on. He's on trial for missing movement. Movement orders cannot be illegal. He can't use as a defence that he was refusing illegal orders because a movement order is always legal.

Even if he's ordered to move and then to smash baby skulls. He can refuse the second order and use as a defense that the baby skull crushing would be illegal.

It is much like the hanging of Saddam for the obscure issue they did and the swift and subsequent killing of his aids.

He was tried over the deaths of more than 148 Shia Muslim men and boys in reprisal for a 1982 assassination attempt on the Iraqi leader in the town of Dujail.

Double jeopardy, which forbids a person from being tried twice for the same crime, does not apply only after a verdict is rendered, but can apply after a jury is empaneled and witnesses have been called

The dramatic turn of events hinged on a stipulation of fact that Watada signed in a plea agreement more than a week ago. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped two charges of conduct unbecoming an officer against Watada. He was being tried this week on two other charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and one count of missing movement when his Stryker Brigade deployed to Iraq in June.

[Judge] Head questioned Watada while the jury was out of the courtroom, which [Defense attorney] Seitz objected to but allowed, and legal experts such as Junker said they would consider that questioning "very unusual" in a civilian trial. [emphasis added]

Head concluded that he could not accept Watada's statement. Although Watada had admitted to failing to deploy with his unit, it was not the same as admitting guilt, which prosecutors considered it to be, Head said.

"What did you understand that (the stipulation-of-fact) to mean? What does that mean to you?" the judge asked Watada after sparring with Seitz over his intention to question the lieutenant.

Of his refusal to get on the plane, Watada said: "To me it means to (not) participate in a war that I believed to be illegal."

Head asked if Watada believed the statement to be "confessional" to the charge of missing movement.

"No, I did not," Watada said.

He is the first U.S. military officer publicly to refuse deployment to Iraq by stating the war is illegal and that he feels duty-bound to refuse unlawful orders..

This is what happened here. The prosecution knew that Lt. Watada was not waiving his right to defend himself against the charges. Again, the stipulation specifically stated that no such waiver was being made.

The judge had just received a new proposed legal instruction from Seitz. Since the judge had recently ruled that the order given to Lt. Watada to deploy to Iraq was "legal," Seitz took the logical next step. Entitled "Reasonable Mistake of Fact/Law," his new instruction was designed to inform the panel that even if Lt. Watada were "mistaken" in his belief that the order was illegal, a defense to the "missing movement" charge would be viable if the panel made a finding that Lt. Watada's belief that the order was illegal was "reasonable."

Shaken by this instruction, the judge tried to claim that Seitz had introduced some error by submitting this instruction, forgetting that the panel had not seen the instruction and hence any error was literally impossible!
Realizing the error of his ways, the judge then tried to speak to Lt. Watada about his understanding of the stipulation without asking Seitz for his permission. After initially warning the judge that he might not let him speak to Lt. Watada, Seitz relented and told the judge that he would let him speak to him over objection.