One of the lessons of the Nuremburg war crimes trials of Germans after Germany's defeat in World War II was that obeying orders is no excuse for war crimes. U.S. prosecutors took the position that the German military should have refused to obey Hitler's orders.

Chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson established that military aggression was a war crime.

U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada took the Nuremburg lesson to heart. He refused to deploy to Iraq on the solid grounds that the war is i ...

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