So, Watada got off.

The court is letting Watada (The blue falcon cowardly scum who wouldn't go fight with his unit) off on what amounts to a technicality.

This is the guy who joined the military, knowing full well that he could receive and order that he didn't like.

He receives an order that he doesn't like. So, he doesn't follow it.

My opinion is that he needs to be smacked down hard. Why?

Well, because he's politicizing the military to an extreme degree. What if every soldier who joins up decides that he or she doesn't want to follow an order to go to something that they call an "illegal" war? Congress has decided that the war is legal, and continues to condone it, so it is not his place to decide whether or not it is a "legal" war, and whether or not he wants to go to Iraq.

The job of the military is to follow the orders of the duly elected civilian leadership regardless of who that leadership is. The military is supposed to be in strict suborbination to the civil power, and by his actions, Watada (he doesn't deserve to be called Lieutenant) is undermining that principle because he is refusing to follow and order for a troop movement to fight in a war that he believes is illegal.

There's a difference between and illegal order and an illegal war. An illegal order would if an officer or an NCO ordered a soldier to commit some manner of conduct that is unethical or illegal, such as torturing inmates in a prison or tossing cyanide pellets into a gas chamber. An order is a directive that is delivered by military leadership (including the president or commander in chief) to military personnel for military personnel to follow. A war is a political decision that is entered into by civilian leadership in the Congress, and has nothing to do with giving military orders, and is a general and unspecific policy of hostility, and not a function of the military, but is a function of the Congress in their function of declaring war under the constitution.

What Watada has done is to politicize the military's following of a policy decision, not a directive that he disagrees with. He has refused to follow a lawful order that was delivered to him because he disagreed with the policy behind the order, not because the order was illegal.

This is a BAD THING because the job of the military is not to determine or to influence policy, but to serve as an instrument of policy of the civilian leadership (Congress and the President) regardless of who is in charge of setting that policy. The civilian leadership should not have to take polls of the military to ensure they approve of the policy(See, Praetorian Guard, Roman, for what happens when politicians aren't sure of the support of the military). By stating that he refuses to carry out a certain policy, he is undermining the civilian government, and by letting him off, the judge is aiding his influence of policy, because it serves to muddy the chain of command(Will the military really follow that order if I give it?)

This is not a good thing.