10/10/07 – Bob Watada – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, you guys are all familiar with the story of Lt. Aaron Watada from, oh no I'm going to get it wrong, I think the United States Air Force who refused orders to deploy to Iraq because in his opinion it was an unjust and illegal war and therefore his duty to refuse orders to move out with his soldiers.
He was court-martialed but there was a mistrial declared earlier this year and there are new developments in the case.
I'd like to welcome back to the show Lt. Aaron Watada's father, Bob.
Bob Watada, welcome to Anti-War Radio.
Thank you very much, Scott.
I really appreciate you coming on today to help clarify for us what's happened in the matter of your son.
First of all, I'm sorry, please set me straight, he's from the United States Army?
The United States Army, yes.
The United States Army, okay.
The original court-martial was going on earlier this year in February, if I remember right.
On February 7th there was a court-martial of my son, a court-martial was held.
And as you correctly stated, the judge after the trial was almost over, feeling that the jury may have quit my son and he called a mistrial, or he asked the prosecutor to call a mistrial, and of course both the defense and prosecutors objected to calling a mistrial but he insisted that the prosecutors had to call a mistrial.
And so the prosecutors called a mistrial and of course now we have the judge saying, well, that wasn't really a trial, we're going to do it over.
But under the Constitution you cannot do that.
Right, it's a question of double jeopardy.
The Fifth Amendment, I believe it is, says that the government may not put a citizen or even a person twice in jeopardy of life or limb.
That's correct, that's in our Constitution.
And now, back there in February, what exactly was it?
Help clarify for me why there was a mistrial declared, something about a stipulation paper that your son had signed that would reduce his possible sentence that he was facing, but then the judge saw that as an admission of guilt even though your son did not intend it to be something?
Is that right?
Yeah, let's go back over that a little bit.
Okay, please do.
There were two charges that dealt with speech, and that would have required the government to call in witnesses that were at the event, some reporters.
But the reporters were refusing to go to the court-martial.
So the government then said, okay, look, if you will stipulate to these facts, and these facts are that you were ordered to deploy to Iraq to get on the airplane and you refused to get on the airplane, if you do that, then we will drop the two charges.
So then they, the government, the prosecutors, drafted the stipulation agreeing to certain facts that my son refused to get on the plane and so forth.
That was okayed by the commander of the base.
Then it was also reviewed by the judge prior to the trial.
In fact, prior to the trial, the judge asked that certain things be changed to make it clear.
Then my son, of course, then, uh, do very well.
He read it several times.
Of course, the defense attorneys also made sure that they read it and it was just a stipulation of the facts.
That's all it was.
Right.
And he wasn't disputing that he had missed his movement.
He was disputing that it was a crime to miss his movement, right?
That's correct.
That's correct.
And so he simply, he signed the statement and in the courtroom, the judge asked him, do you understand what's in there?
And the judge said, yes.
And the judge gave it to the jury and the jury all understood what was in there.
So there was no misunderstanding.
And you said that the defense and the prosecutors both opposed the mistrial.
That's correct.
Right?
They both opposed.
It sounds like he, uh, he used this stipulation as an excuse, as a, you know, a trick up his sleeve in order to throw the trial out if he wanted to, to try again or something.
Because this is something that you, as you just said, was, uh, the judge had seen it before the court martial had ever started.
The jury had seen it, both sides had seen it.
It had been admissible for a while there.
And then all of a sudden it wasn't anymore.
And I think you're correct.
The judge simply used that as an excuse to call a mistrial.
Why?
Well, I think if you go back and look at what was happening in the trial, the judge refused to, or denied the defense, all of their witnesses.
They had about eight witnesses.
Uh, my son's attorneys had about eight witnesses signed up, lined up, ready to testify.
And the judge flat out refused to allow any one of them to, to, uh, testify.
For example, there was a United Nations, uh, diplomat, former diplomat who was going to testify, uh, about the United Nations charter.
And what it says, you know, in the United Nations charter that, um, that you can't, you can't, uh, you can't attack another nation, uh, without any provocation.
So that was, his witnesses that he was trying to introduce were people who are going to testify as to the law being on his side rather than the government's side in the case.
Right.
And there were, there were military, there were military ex-military people who were going to testify that yes, the soldier has the, an obligation to refuse to, uh, participate in an illegal war.
Now, what happened was the defense was left without any witnesses, no witnesses, and the judge was going to, of course, allow the prosecution to have their three witnesses.
Among their three witnesses was an instructor from West Point and under cross-examination by the defense attorney, he was asked, do you teach your students who are going to be officers that they have the duty to disobey, disobey an unlawful order?
And the answer is yes.
And if a soldier is put in a position in which they would be participating in something which is illegal, should they disobey that order?
And the defense, I mean, the instructor said, yes, of course.
So I hate to interrupt you, Bob, but I just like to point out here if I could, that I learned as a young kid that, uh, there's a difference between a lawful order and unlawful order.
I mean, I think all of us when we're kids, right?
And we learned the difference between murder and killing as a soldier for your government and those kinds of technicalities about killing and so forth is we learned that, you know, the Nazis were hung for, and their excuse was we were just obeying orders and that excuse was not good enough.
The precedent was set that an individual is ultimately responsible for his actions no matter who is supposedly in charge of him.
And that it is the duty of an individual soldier to refuse an illegal order.
That's correct.
I like to think we all know that.
Well, I hope, I hope we all know that.
If we don't know that, then people should understand that.
The defense then cross-examining each of the prosecution witnesses and they were basically agreeing that what Aaron did was correct and it did not hurt the army a bit.
And so I think the judge saw this as a possible acquittal.
He was very, very concerned.
And rather than risk an acquittal, he simply said, you know, I'm going to call a mistrial.
Wow.
Now is that the, is that the narrative that is being pushed by the defense lawyers, by your son's lawyers?
Are they, is that what they're telling the military courts of appeal and the, and the federal district court that ruled on this, that it looks to us like this military judge threw this case out because the government was about to lose it?
Oh yes.
The defense attorneys have said that the military judge, judge head was in error.
There was a subsequent to this, there was a hearing in July in which the judge was number one asked to recuse himself because he had called for a mistrial.
And secondly, that the trial could not go on because it would be double jeopardy.
In both instances, he refused.
He refused to recuse himself.
He refused to consider a second trial as double jeopardy.
And so he said, I'm going to set a date and they said October 9th for the next trial.
And of course the defense said they were going to appeal his decision to the army court of appeals and if that didn't work out, they would go to the armed forces court of appeals.
In both cases, they ducked and simply said, no, they weren't going to issue a stay.
But in fact, I think I read that the, one of the military courts of appeal didn't even answer.
The army court of appeals didn't answer.
They simply said, oh, the judge has a lot of discretion denied.
So then the lawyer, your son Aaron, what taught his lawyers went to a federal civilian district court, right?
Right, right.
Where, where they felt that there was the civilian courts would then follow the follow the constitution.
And the constitution is just as the fifth amendment is quite clear in our country.
We have said in our constitution that you cannot try or punish a person two times for the same crime.
And that's exactly what the army wants to do.
Right.
And in fact, from some of the news reports that I read, the federal district court judge said it seemed to him at least that your son's appeal based on the double jeopardy clause was I think the word was meritus and, and did warrant further review.
And that's what we're supposed to have now is a few weeks of hearings to decide.
And then this, this federal court judge is, is he to decide whether this is double jeopardy or he's to decide whether it's sent back to the military courts or do you know?
Well, okay.
Here, the judge has issued a temporary stay because as you said, he says if the facts put forth by the defense or the petitioner my son's attorneys has merit and he went, and even further than that says that the record, the record shows double jeopardy and the army had better come in with some good reasons as to why they did this.
They have until October 12th to submit their argument.
The defense has until October 17th to respond to those arguments.
Then on October 19th, there will be a hearing to determine whether or not the stay will be permanent.
If the stay is permanent, of course, then the army cannot go on with the trial.
Believe me, that's the result we're all hoping for over here at antiwar.com and at Chaos Radio and I think all over the country, I know for a fact actually that your son has served as an example, a fine example to many young people why to quit the military themselves or refuse their unlawful orders themselves, others to not join up in the first place while our country is engaging in aggressive war.
I know, I've talked to dozens of soldiers who have been to Iraq, some who have left the army and a couple who are still in the army who simply say that what we're doing in Iraq is completely wrong.
They're reading about what Blackwater, the so-called contractors, have done, but they're the worst.
I've heard army people tell me that they just go down the street just shooting civilians wherever they are, but there's been some of that by the U.S. army also.
Yeah, well, there's no doubt about it.
Tens, hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even more than a million people have died according to one British study a few weeks ago.
That's correct.
I mean, it's just a massacre, it's a human tragedy going on here in Iraq today, and those of us in the United States particularly have got to try to do everything we can to stop it.
We're proud of our son for standing up and saying he's not going to participate in that kind of massacre.
Now, if I remember this story correctly, Bob, your son, Aaron, became convinced first and then broke the news to you that he was going to refuse his orders, and at that point, you still believed them, is that right?
Pardon me if I remember the story wrong, that's what I thought.
Of course, let's go back a little further.
When he wanted to join the army, I counseled him against that, but he felt that they were terrorists and he had to do his part as a patriotic American, and so that's why he joined.
But later on, when he read about what was actually happening in Iraq, he and I discussed it a number of times.
He would read things and he would send things to me and he would email things to me saying, read this, isn't this terrible?
And of course, I continued to counsel him to stick it out, look for options without having to come out and say that he refused to go.
But that was his decision, he said no, he cannot participate.
He did talk to his commanders several times to either move him somewhere else, have him go somewhere else, or let him go from the military, release him, and they refused.
It really is a tragedy to think that he still could face up to four years in a cage simply for doing what is right.
And you know, it seems to me, I know that this is never a case that you could probably make in court, but it seems to me like your son, Lieutenant Aaron Watada, was defrauded.
They told him, sign here to go fight the terrorists who attacked us, and instead they sent him to a country that had nothing to do with those attacks.
Oh, that's clearly a defraud, defrauding.
I mean, think 150,000 guys, how many guys total have rotated in and out of Iraq who joined up because they thought they were going to fight terrorists who attacked this country?
Yeah, I know one young man who went AWOL after he was over there for almost a year, he couldn't believe what was going on, but he told me, he says he joined up because he thought he was going to go fight terrorists in Iraq.
And when he went over there, he asked his fellow soldiers, well, where's the terrorists?
And they all laughed at him.
And that's a big joke.
Yeah, a big joke.
Just a million people dead, 3800 something American, defrauded American soldiers.
Yeah, absolute tragedy.
I have to tell you, from my point of view, your son is a hero, and I certainly appreciate everything that you've done in order to support him in his brave decision.
He serves as a fine example of just exactly what an American soldier is supposed to do once he's realized he's been defrauded.
He's supposed to refuse to go along anymore.
I agree.
We're very proud of him, Scott.
Well, congratulations to you for raising such a fine young man, and best of luck to you.
I sure hope that the court finds for the truth, which is that they stopped this guy's trial, your son's trial, because he was winning, and now they want to try him again, and that that's against the law.
You can't do that to an American.
President Bush has violated the Constitution himself, and I think that he feels that the Army can continue to violate the Constitution, that we can ignore the Constitution.
They're above the law.
That sure does seem to be the point of view, and of course, they want to pick and choose whichever laws they want and apply them to us, but they're never applied to them.
Well, and if they don't have enough laws to apply against us, then they say, well, look, we have to have a law that says we can torture anybody that is not on our side.
Yeah, then you'll admit you broke the law.
Yeah.
All right, hey, thank you so much.
I appreciate everything you've done, everybody.
Bob Ouattata, the father of Lieutenant Aaron Ouattata, the first American officer to refuse to deploy to America's aggressive war in Iraq.
Thank you very much, Bob.