The article titled “Won’t fight in Iraq” begins by trying to portray Lt. Watada as some kind of hero, saying he was guided by conscience and unwavering convictions. Staff writer Paul Boring quickly twists a lack of disagreement as total agreement due to the fact that Watada was speaking to a sympathetic audience in the far left liberal enclave of Coupeville, and because no one in attendance challenged Watada, thereby assuming that the thousands of honorably serving active military members and over 11,000 veterans in Island County somehow agree with Watada’s statements or actions.

I am a retired/disabled veteran and I am shocked that anyone espousing to be an officer in the United States military would be advocating anarchy and disrespect of the American people for our elected leaders. I swore an oath as did Watada to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to obey the lawful orders of the officers placed over me. This includes elected officials, i.e. the president and the 535 members of Congress.

Watada seems to be in favor of having every military member, officers and enlisted alike, acting independently, choosing which war, battle or conflict they will participate in or not. Military coup d’etat has been avoided up until now, in fact we fought a devastating civil war to prevent portions of our nation from illegally picking and choosing which decisions made by our government would be followed.

How dare Watada assume that it is his duty to speak for the people of the United States? According to Watada’s thinking the first and second world wars were illegal as was Korea, Vietnam and so on, because there was no direct aggression toward the United States, only our allies and economic interests. With this line of thinking we could not justify going to war with Japan in WWII because they did not attack America, just Hawaii which was not a state at the time. So it would only count as a skirmish between military forces on neutral land.

As a junior officer Watada believes he is privy to enough information to disregard the rights of every single American and disrupt our institutions of government and the military that guarantees our rights. I challenge his actions, his motives, and I question his patriotism because if everyone follows Watada’s traitorous thinking democracy in America will cease to exist and so will our freedoms.

In my opinion Watada has little or no conscience and dubious convictions!

Allen Barney

Oak Harbor