opportunity to make the right decisions, I did so, even knowing there were negative consequences. Regarding the charges, Watada's civilian attorney, Eric Seitz, commented: Well, we expected him to be charged with missing movement or violating an order to get on a bus to accompany his unit to Iraq. We did not really anticipate that they would charge him with additional offenses based upon the comments and the remarks that he's made. And that opens up a whole new chapter in this proceeding, because what the Army has clearly tried to do by the nature of these charges is send out a message to people in the military, that if you criticize the war and if you criticize the decisions that were made to bring the United States into this war, that you, too, could be charged with disloyalty, contemptuous remarks and disrespect for higher officers, and in this case, specifically in this charge, the President. Article 32 hearing Watada's article 32 hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a general court-martial was held on August 17, 2006. The investigating officer Lt. Col. Mark Keith presided. The Army prosecutor, Capt. Dan Kuecker, described Watada's actions as contemptuous of President George W. Bush, and argued that Watada's public statements hurt morale in his unit. He played video clips from a Veterans for Peace conference. In that speech, Watada called on his fellow soldiers to stop fighting. Eric Seitz, Watada's civilian counsel, and Capt. Mark Kim, Watada's military lawyer, raised the issue of the legality of the war. Over the prosecutor's objections, Seitz and Kim called three witnesses to question the legality of the war. University of Illinois professor of international law Francis Boyle testified that the war is illegal because it was not authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and asserted that congress approved the war on the basis of faulty intelligence. Also testifying in Watada's defense were former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, and Army Colonel Ann Wright (ret.), who retired from the State Department in March 2003, in protest of the coming invasion. Like Boyle, both asserted that the war was illegal and that therefore Watada was within his rights to refuse participation in it. Also, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an amicus brief, saying that soldiers should not be court martialed for explaining their views. On September 15, 2006, the Army