"Statement On Behalf Of Lt. Ehren Watada"

NOTE: Formatting problems (below) courtesy of http://www.blogger.com/home

In spite of an oppressive political environment and a media establishment that has shown little courage or integrity, individual citizens continue to express their outrage and opposition to the war in Iraq.

One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves:
Where were the "good" Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The
Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost
exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the
Nazi-terror state even unto death.

Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves:
Where are the "good" Americans? Well, there are some good Americans.
They are getting prosecuted for protesting against illegal U.S. military
interventions and war crimes around the world. First Lieutenant Ehren
Watada is America's equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vaclav Havel,
Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. He is the
archetypal American Hero whom we should be bringing into our schools and
teaching our children to emulate, not those wholesale purveyors of
gratuitous violence and bloodshed adulated by the U.S. government,
America's power elite, the mainstream corporate news media, and its
interlocked entertainment industry.

In international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself
should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy
under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter,
the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its
formulation and undertaking of wars of aggression, crimes against peace,
crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those
perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany. As a consequence,
American citizens and soldiers such as Lieutenant Watada possess the
basic right under international law and the United States domestic law,
including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance
in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal
activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their conduct of
foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to
defense and counter-terrorism. If not so restrained, the Bush Jr.
administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

from the commentary by Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law on AfterDowningStreet.org.