Praise and pans, cheers and jeers, more than a thousand people called, e-mailed or penned letters after I wrote this month about whether 1st Lt. Ehren Watada is a hero.

The Fort Lewis army officer is in the spotlight for refusing to take part in the Iraq war because he believes it is immoral and illegal. He has guts to follow his convictions. He is willing to stand up to a military machine that he thinks is killing for all the wrong reasons.

I still believe he is wrong for breaking ranks and not following orders.

People either admire Watada for following what they see as a higher moral law or deem him a coward for letting his fellow soldiers go to war while he stays home.

What struck me was the pervasive and troubling tone in the majority of the pro-Watada messages: a sense that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are unthinking cannon fodder with little understanding of why they're fighting -- or who they're helping.

This perception nagged at me until the other day, when I came across a MySpace page of a U.S. soldier.

His name is Mark Daily.

His entry is titled, "Why I Joined."

Reading it, 2nd Lt. Daily seems every bit as thoughtful about why soldiers fight in Iraq as Lt. Watada does about why they shouldn't.

"This question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts," Daily writes in the October 2006 post. "I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going to Iraq. Now after years of training and preparation, I am finally here."

Eloquently, he discusses how Iraq is the staging ground for one of the largest transformations of power and ideology in the Middle East since the Ottoman Empire.

"Thanks to Iran, Syria and other enlightened local actors, this transformation will be plagued by interregional hatred and genocide," he writes. "I am now in the center of this."

Daily reflects on the overthrow of Saddam and on how people frame the way they see the war around one-word explanations -- "oil" or "terrorism" -- that serve their political persuasion.

"I did the same thing," he writes. "Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war. ... If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me.)"

Daily acknowledges that critics of the war like to point out that the U.S. government once supported Saddam before it vilified him.

"Upon explaining that we did so to ward off the fiercely Islamist Iran, which was correctly identified as the greater threat at the time, eyes are rolled," he writes. "Forgetting that America sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, who was promptly confronted once the Nazis were destroyed ... "

Daily wants us to keep in mind that the problems in Iraq were set in motion centuries ago. He wants us to remember that Americans have a responsibility to the oppressed.

Although I don't agree with all he says, I'm open to his opinions on an issue that deeply divides us.

"Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either," he goes on. "Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction."

He signs off: "So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include 'Good Luck.' "

Daily -- a newlywed, a UCLA grad, a man whose MySpace page mentions his appreciation for bagpipes, "The Daily Show" and "immigrants who risk their lives to achieve a better one" -- was killed when a roadside bomb exploded Jan. 15.

Just before his death he e-mailed family from Iraq: "All is well. ... Having the time of my life."

Born on the Fourth of July, he was 23. I share his words to turn the volume up on another voice of conviction worth hearing.

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