Lt Watada claims he has a constitutional right to be a deserter coward traitor oathbreaker protester. 

Ok, that’s not what he said, but it comes close enough.

I admit my bias here and now.  The guy makes me want to hurl.  He is an embarrassment to the uniform he wears.

I feel better now.

Judge hears motions during officer’s pretrial hearing

An Army lieutenant who called the Iraq war illegal and refused to deploy with his Stryker Brigade has a constitutional right to debate such political issues, his lawyer told a pretrial hearing Thursday.

Seeking to reduce the charges against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, his attorney, Eric Seitz of Honolulu, said the soldier should not be penalized for statements he made explaining why he refused to go to Iraq and why he was challenging the Bush administration’s reasons for going to war.

Watada, 28, is charged with missing movement after refusing to deploy with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The Army also proceeded with charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for statements he made to journalists and at a veterans convention.

Here is a round up of news stories concerning the New Direction Congress.

From Huffington Post:  Murtha plans to try and cut off funds for the war.

…To this end, Murtha, the incoming Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is planning to hold wide-ranging hearings, starting January 17th, that will focus on the depleted state of our military readiness , as well as contractor corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goal is to turn the spotlight on how drained the military has become, and on how any talk of a troop surge is utterly irresponsible (as well as strategically misguided). "The public," he said repeatedly, "is already ahead of us on all this.

He says he wants to "fence the funding," denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq "as soon as we can."

Now that’s a great way to support the troops.  Sadly he is not alone with that brilliant idea:

Dems might block funds for Iraq war

Iran, the newest loose cannon trying to join the mushroom cloud club has it fingers deep in the quagmire of Iraq, documents show.

U.S. Finds Iran’s ‘Smoking Gun’ in Iraq

American forces have found a "smoking gun” that proves Iran is supporting the insurgency in Iraq — captured Iranian documents showing the country is abetting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists.

News that U.S. forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was reported in December. But now it’s come to light that the Iranians were carrying documents revealing their country’s activities in Iraq. An American intelligence official confirmed that Shiite Iran "is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups,” The New York Sun reported in an article headlined "Iran’s Secret Plan for Mayhem.”

The documents disclosed how the Quds Force — Iran’s elite revolutionary guard unit that supports Shiite Hezbollah and Shiite death squads — also supports individuals associated with al-Qaida in Iraq and the Sunni terror group Ansar al-Sunna.

So one could ask how clear are these documents?   How deep does this go?

Deep: