The war in Iraq is illegal. War crimes have been committed. The U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions have been subverted. Justice must be served.

These sentiments, reiterated dozens of times to an eager audience of close to 400, produced a near-electric charge on the first day of a weekend “Citizens’ Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq,” held Jan. 20-21 at Evergreen State College in Tacoma. Given voice by Iraq War vets and a defense analyst, a retired Army colonel, and international law experts, the statements, issued as parts of testimonies during the hearing, offered the opportunity for citizen representatives to examine the war in the court of public opinion.

Judging by the crowd’s reaction — a brew of whoops, hollers, rounds of applause, and standing ovations — the repeated opinion that the nearly four-year-long Iraq War has little, if any, legal foundation, spoke to a commonly held belief in the room: The occupation of Iraq breaks numerous laws and something must be done, now, to correct the grievous errors.

“We, the citizens of America,” said Zoltán Grossman, Evergreen faculty member, “are putting the war in Iraq on trial.”

While the hearing itself was not an official trial, it did, as the event’s subtitle made clear, refer to a specific trial: the case of Lt. Ehren Watada, a Ft. Lewis junior officer whose belief that the Iraq War is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional led to his refusing deployment to Iraq.

Lt. Watada announced his decision, and the reasons behind it, last June. As a result, he will face a Feb. 5 court-martial where he will be tried on one count of missing [troop] movement and four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Those charges could land him in a military prison for six years.

During a Jan. 4 pretrial hearing, the junior officer, through his pro-bono civilian lawyer, had argued for the right to question the legality of the war as a defense. On Jan. 16, the presiding judge ruled that Watada cannot question the lawfulness of the war during his court-martial, thus stripping him of his main means to defend himself. That ruling appeared to galvanize those in attendance, adding import to testimony of a sort that Lt. Watada will not be able to give himself.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who released the majority of the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000 page chronicle of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War from the mid-’50s to the early ’70s, said that Lt. Watada’s actions go beyond demonstration.

“My life is changed by people who cast their whole vote,” said Ellsberg, referring to how Watada’s action is a full commitment to nonviolent principles.

When asked by one of the 12 members of the tribunal panel what constituted an illegal war, Ellsberg said that the U.N. charter makes it clear that war is not the panacea to settle disputes. While the U.N. Security Council — whose five permanent members are France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — has the power to veto any U.N. decision on war, only wars of self-defense, not those undergirded by preemptive motivations, hold legal basis. “Anything else,” he told the panel and the enlivened crowd, “is illegal.”

Robert Falk, Princeton professor of international law, agreed with the war’s unlawfulness, concluding that the country’s leadership — namely, President Bush — is encouraging the persistence of lawlessness. “What the Iraq War presents is the most flagrant and sustained violation [of international law] in modern history,” said Falk.

Continuing that Lt. Watada’s obligation to refuse an unlawful order was supported by the Nuremberg Principles — which, formulated after World War II, determine what constitutes a war crime — Falk said that his case represented a situation of such urgency to the public, it could not be ignored. “It’s an appeal to all citizens” to end the war, he said.

It is the Iraq War itself that is breeding mounting disquiet in the country’s citizens, spelled out, as it were, in a recent poll. Conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post, the poll, with its three-point margin of error, found that 70 percent of respondents disapproved of the way the president is handling the Iraq War. As for how Bush is managing his presidency, only 17 percent strongly approved. Fifty-one percent of those polled — a random sampling of 1,000 people — strongly disapproved of the job he’s doing. It’s with such in-the-gutter ratings that Bush, in his seventh State of the Union address on Jan. 23, faced a Democratically controlled Congress that has been downright vociferous in its opposition to a presidential plan to send 21,500 more troops to the war-torn, yet oil-rich, Middle Eastern nation.

Providing some of the most poignant testimony of the day was retired soldier Geoffrey Millard, who had been stationed there. Noting that military personnel bear the obligation to refuse any unlawful order, Millard silenced the audience with a tale of how a soldier, unnerved at a traffic control point, had pointed a machine gun at an oncoming vehicle, unleashing 200 rounds. As a result, four Iraqi civilians lost their lives: a mother, a father, a boy, aged four, a girl, three. “If these fucking Hajis learned to drive,” Millard recalled a colonel saying on being briefed of the incident, “this shit wouldn’t happen.”

When asked by a panel member if he thought a pattern of war crimes had been committed in Iraq, Millard provided a one-word reply: “Yes.”

Avoiding the potential of being ordered to commit such crimes, but secure in his refusal of deployment, Lt. Watada surprised the crowd with an unexpected appearance. Though appearing downcast as he stood at a podium, his voice never wavered in his assertion that his decision was the right one. “Sometimes a duty comes with a price,” Watada said.

Indicating that he being denied his right to defend himself was un-American, he said the judge’s decision to disallow his opportunity to question the war’s legality as a defense represented a travesty of justice. “I will fight and always fight,” said Watada, “and take it to the highest court.”

The findings from the citizens’ hearing will be released prior to Lt. Watada’s court-martial. Copies will be sent to every member of Congress.

[Check it out]

To hear what was said at the Citizens’ Hearing, and view what was seen, visit www.wartribunal.org. Audio and video clips are available, as well as updates on the release of the hearing’s findings.