The U.S. government Monday dropped two charges that carried a maximum of two years in prison against Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who is facing court-martial for proclaiming the Iraq war illegal and refusing to deploy with his unit.

The Honolulu native now faces a maximum of four years in prison instead of six, but his lawyer hopes the end result will be far less time when the case goes to court on Feb. 5 at Fort Lewis in Washington state.

"We're always happy when charges are dropped and the liability decreases — because also, frankly, we don't anticipate anybody getting a maximum sentence who has no (criminal) record, and who has the kind of (military) record he has," Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, said at a press briefing Monday.

The dropped charges were for conduct unbecoming an officer.

Seitz said he and Watada rejected a plea deal that would have resulted in the equivalency of a dishonorable discharge and an 18-month prison term for the 28-year-old soldier.

"We did not feel that that was appropriate," Seitz said, adding the track record shows that military courts have not meted out lengthy sentences in cases similar to Watada's.

As part of the agreement reached Monday, several reporters who had been issued subpoenas to appear before the court-martial will not have to testify, the lawyer said.

"Our part of the deal is that we're going to agree to what they (the journalists) would have said, essentially," Seitz said.

The charges, both stemming from June 7, included Watada's reported statement that as he read about the "level of deception that the Bush administration used to initiate and process" the war, he was shocked and became ashamed of wearing an Army uniform "based on misrepresentation and lies."

Watada, a 1996 Kalani High School graduate, still faces two years in prison on a charge of missing a troop movement, and two years imprisonment on two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for his public statements.

Watada refused to go to Iraq last June with his Fort Lewis Stryker brigade after conducting research and deciding the war was illegal. He said he would have been willing to serve in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment orders to Iraq. His actions have become a lightning rod for a nation polarized over the war.

'VERY SERIOUS CASE'

A Web site was created by supporters, and his father, former state Campaign Spending Commission executive director Bob Watada, has spoken across the country on his son's behalf.

Fort Lewis spokesman Joe Piek said that despite Monday's agreement, serious charges remain against Watada.

"This is still a very serious — from the Army's perspective — a very serious case of a soldier, in this case an officer, who refused orders to deploy," Piek said.

Rebecca Davis, who has a son in the Army in Iraq, is the co-founder of Military Families Voice of Victory and was a previous critic of Watada's decision. On Monday she said "a fair trial is a fair trail, and we want all of our troops (who face charges) to have a fair trial."

But walking away "scot-free" is something she doesn't want to see in Watada's case.

"Somebody had to go in his place, and some of us who have sons or daughters in Iraq right now, it's like, gimme a break," said Davis, whose organization is based out of Maine.

Even if the track record for violating deployment orders is little prison time, "they do finish their careers out (with a discharge), and that's the big deal," she said.

PLEA OFFER

Seitz, who is expected to leave Tuesday for Washington state to prepare for the upcoming court-martial, said he told the Army that Watada would accept a plea deal of three months confinement or longer and dishonorable discharge, but "the Army has not indicated any willingness to go along with that."

"My belief is if they were to dismiss him from the service, that that would really be enough of a message from their standpoint," Seitz said. "I don't think he needs to serve a period of confinement."

He said military panels do not have a history of meting out stiff sentences for Iraq objectors, and cited the 2005 case of a Fort Stewart, Ga., soldier, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who had refused to go on a second deployment to Iraq.

Benderman, 40, could have faced five years in prison, but was sentenced to 15 months. The soldier had sought conscientious objector status and spoke out publicly about his anti-war views.

Seitz said he represented a Schofield Barracks soldier who did not return to Iraq because she had family problems. The prosecution wanted two years imprisonment, but the military panel gave her one month confinement, he said.

In a setback for the defense, a military judge ruled earlier this month that Watada can't justify his refusal to go to Iraq by using the Nuremberg principles adopted after World War II and arguing the war is illegal.

Seitz said the questioning and selection of military jury members, who have to out-rank Watada, will be key to the outcome, with the panel deciding guilt or innocence and sentence. A pool of about 11 officers is available. A minimum of five is needed.

In every controversial case, jurors are second-guessed in their decisions, Seitz said, but he believes there is strong sentiment in the military opposed to the way in which the Iraq war has been carried out.

At the same time, "there aren't a whole lot of high-ranking officers who believe that it is within their prerogative to refuse an order to go (to Iraq)," Seitz said. "So you are on both sides of that in this case. How that's going to play out in terms of a judgment that they are going to make, I don't know."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.