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December 16, 2010 06:44 PM UTC
28 Comments
Bull. Had he said, “I’m gay” there wouldn’t be a compromise on his punishment…he would have been unceremoniously discharged.
I expect President Obama, given his track record, to fully pardon him though.
And just as true for a hundreds of other UCMJ violations.
“It’s Obama’s fault! I hates him.”
The good colonel let his personal hatreds interfere with his job performance while the United States is engaged in an international conflict. He was essentially AWOL for political reasons. It was disruptive and unnecessary. I don’t have a problem with him serving time like Michael Vick and I don’t have a problem with yanking the cowardly traitors pension. If you don’t do your job then you don’t deserve your pension.
and had LTC Lakin had counsel that understands the military justice system, and he had plead guilty, I think they would’ve dismissed him. Rank and retirement pay intact.
But Mr Puckett did not help his client at all the last few days – in fact, the various weasel-ly arguments and questions he posed probably did more harm than good. The most damning being that LTC Lakin didn’t “know” he had to be on a particular flight to get to Fort Campbell for his pre-deployment activities. That, and some verbose manipulation of the process of “knowing” he had orders.
Excellent blog here that follows all of the proceedings:
http://www.caaflog.com/
In the end, the Prosecution presented an iron-clad case that a competent officer received lawful orders to deploy to a war zone, and he failed to follow those orders in a disrespectful and evasive manner.
I have no feelings of remorse for a 17-year commission officer getting the maximum sentence possible from this Court Martial. He wasn’t some stupid 19-something enlisted idiot who was hot for the female law student trying to get him to desert from deployment.
He was a military professional who had critical skills necessary for his unit deployed in an armed conflict of the United States. He fucked over his unit, another officer (and his family) who had to deploy in his place, and all the while, whored himself out to the Birther Media where he re-iterated his intent to avoid military duty.
The next 3 1/2 years are gonna suck, PV1 Lakin. You did it to yourself.
we sure don’t need ones who think they are above an order to deploy because they don’t like the Commander in Chief for whatever reason.
birther boyles had retired military generals on his show – calling the President a criminal, etc. some callers identified themselves as soldiers on active duty at Carson (who knows) and talked about soldiers questioning ….. boyles spoke about “revolt in the ranks”…
the Lakin case generated a lot of legal material which the republican congress can use as a base line to “investigate” Obama…
I am more concerned that Lakin, of considerable rank and intelligence, could have been persuaded to involve himself in a political movement or conspiracy…..that is what needs to be investigated….he evidently caved during the trial yesterday….I hope to hell he was offered a chance to to work with the FBI or CID to discover how widespread this “movement” or “conspiracy” might be within the armed forces……undercover.
and ask him why Lakin didn’t challenge the validity of any other link in his chain of command.
HIs commander? no
That guy’s commander? no
The guy above? no
Nope, he went outside his unit, found a weasel lawyer, and challenged the Commander in Chief in way that even if it worked would not likely have resulted in a new definition of an “illelgal order.”
Worse- he didn’t even try.
So the appearance is that he was attempting to score political points in the media because of a President he doesn’t trust. Boo-f-hoo.
But I agree that an “irrational, bigoted, disloyal” soldier has no place in the armed forces.
And the whole conspiracy was hypocritical crap! I know it’s old and done to bring up the failed Cheney/Bush administration, but I thought that was the lowest of any anti-constitutional Republican ticket possible when both Pres/VP candidates were resident (they were employed and lived) in the same state.
But that brazen defiance of the law in 2000 seems almost naive compared to the war-mongering, spy-outing and torture that followed.
Been there done that so I can say this with a personal perspective. Lt Col Lakin’s talent was wasted and that is tragedy. But it was wasted because he had no honor. No code. And God was watching.
No matter what the military jury decided, no matter whether Lakin was found innocent or guilty, he wins (well sort of). If he was found innocent, he would be seen by all his little birther crazies as the guy who challenged the President and won. Now that he’s been found guilty, he will be seen as a martyr. He will be held up as “a real American hero” who stood up for what he believed in and was “persecuted”. The right-wing are experts at twisting reality to suit their needs. Lakin offers the perfect opportunity to reignite the whole Birther bullshit.
The fact that Lakin became a blubbering crying mess at the last does take a bit away from it though. That was a nice touch.
Sure some of the crazier and less facty will burrow into their imagination further, and further and further from the light of what is real.
But a lot of people will start to count and realize that several judges, dozens of lawyers and hundreds or thousands of reasonable people with no agenda are all coming to the same conclusion. There is no there there.
Does Lt Col Lakin get to decide which orders he will obey and which ones he can choose to ignore? No.
A lesson he would have learned after today, wouldn’t he?
I would think so.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. Something Lt Colonelt Lakin spit on to score some cheap political and media points.
It is mind manipulation….a significant portion of Republicans (aprox 30%) and about 20% of all Americans have questions about Obama’s legitimacy. (The stats come from Hardball, from time to time…and I remember them…I cannot link to them and so feel free to dismiss them)
I believe that the Republicans SWEEP is in part the result of the successful campaign to demonize the President and to alienate him from his fellow citizens. The birthers are part of that successful effort.
The only real hope for the end of this propaganda conspiracy is for Lakin to start talking….about who put him up to this and where and how he met all the people who egged him on and funded him. That is how this propaganda myth can be destroyed…only from the inside…..and if Lakin goes to federal prison, I hope to hell he is in protective custody.
From his rank and his duty there is evidence he can think for himself and make decisions. If he lost a screw somewhere and was mental unable to think, sure a few years on the common high dose head meds could possibly help him. And then he can spend his private life out on the street with other vets.
But for all he had going for him and then to somehow believe the BS of the birthers – no way. He wanted to be a heero and a martyr, good for him. He is now ready be that heero and martyr. He has disgraced his command and the U.S. military with his idiocy. I hope he enjoys his walls for the next few years.
And the talk about Obama pardoning him. Yeah I can see that. Obama fights for gays by going to court to kick them out. So why not pardon the idiot who does not believe Obama is a U.S. citizen and legally issuing orders to the U.S. military. It would fit.
I mean how could one be? Lt. Col. Lakin doesn’t believe that President Obama is a citizen and therefore can’t hold his office legally, so how could the President under Lakin’s thinking issue a pardon?
Lakin would have to refuse to recognize it after all.
Lakin was a fool. Let him suffer the penalties that anyone other service member would suffer.
..the convening authority of the Court Martial, which would be the one-star Garrison Commander of the Pentagon, or a 2 or 3 star General commanding the Medical unit he was assigned to automatically reviews all courts martial sentences and can modify or reduce it based on a number of factors he chooses.
In reality, most of the time they leave it intact. IF the Birther movement is as big as the idiots involved in this case claim, you have a new conspiracy theory ready to be hatched – the reviewer reduces his sentence to nothing, or grants full clemency.
Doubt it – but when I was stationed in Germany in the 90’s, there was a feeling that the V Corps commander would reduce the sentence of the soldier who whacked the guy in his unit who was doing his wife.
A variation of the “he needed killin'” defense….
“I don’t want (my career) to end this way,” a tearful Lakin said to military jurors during the sentencing phase of his trial Wednesday afternoon. “I want to continue to serve … It crushed me not to be on deployment. I can be on a plane tomorrow. I’d truly do that.”
http://www.stripes.com/news/bi…
I’m betting tomorrow’s deployment will be somewhere in the middle of wartorn Kansas.
Here’s hoping that Lakin gets his wish . . . serving hot meals on the Leavenworth chow line for the next three years. (After that, it’s FOX network baby — move over Ollie!)
..right behind working in the Commissary bagging groceries and building office furniture for Army officers.
PV1 Lakin? Considering the number of enlisted soldiers who run the Disciplinary Barracks, I’m thinking he’ll be assigned to the “Break Big Rocks into Little Rocks, Little Rocks into Concrete, Repeat” work detail as soon as the first snowstorm hits.
(The military still has “hard labor” as a sentence.)
.
if he’s an Army flight surgeon, then the Army has paid for his pilot training and his medical school.
maybe he even got a free college education at the Army’s expense.
He’ll be OK. Don’t worry about his employment prospects.
.
EVERY company likes people who have a problem taking orders.
who posted something like Democrats didn’t need to bother trying to seek his services. Maybe Lakin can get a job at that clinic when they let him out of the stockade…
Their should be zero level of credibility granted to this craziness via any mitigation of the consequences Lakin chose to bring upon himself.
There is absolutely no legitimate question as to Obama’s having been born in the USA and having provided proof in the form of the kind certificate that is universally accepted as proof of same. The consequences for Lakin should leave absolutely no room for the crazies to argue that there is any possible validity to his claims or subsequent actions based on lenience shown.
I sincerely hope that there will be no compromise offered at this point and no pardon forthcoming. The extent to which our military officers are the product of academies where heavy promotion of a far right religious conservative agenda has been the norm for decades is alarming enough as it is. An all volunteer army already is limited in diversity in political viewpoint among the ranks.
The danger of a military that considers it some sort of sacred duty to reject the will of the people when they determine that the people have elected the wrong leaders is too great. We are already a long way toward Banana Republic status economically. We don’t need to be taking steps towards a Banana Republic relationship between elected government and the military as well. Enough is enough. If this isn’t the time and place for a clear line in the sand, I don’t know what is.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201…
I can’t believe the jury bought this crap that PV1 Lakin was “entranced” by his previous lawyer, and that his “obsession” should trump his military career.
Still, a convicted felon, loss of all pay and allowances and forfeiture of almost all of his military benefits is a painful penalty for all of this. At least he gets a free plane ride in handcuffs to Kansas.
1) He said that he did not accept the birth certificate record produced and verified by the state of Hawaii and the governor of Hawaii.
2) He said that he did not accept the validity of the passport which Obama presented to the Electoral College when they met in December of 2008 to vote to elect the next president of the United States.
3) He reserved for himself the right to determine for himself what government documents were valid and what government documents were not.
He was a dupe of the birther movement, or else he has mental problems. For those reasons alone, he should not be trusted. His many lawyers evidently did not tell him of the constitutional foundation for #1 and #2. As a doctor, he knows damm well that hospital records are not kept for longer than 10-15 years. He should know that there is no way, independent of the process put into place by law, and followed at the time of Obama’s birth, to “verify” a birth certificate. Unless, someone presented clear evidence of fraud, which has not been done.
So there were lawyers and doctors withholding critical information from this sad sack doctor.
Lakin betrayed all three.
Good riddance.
Still, with his repentance, the six months in the can seems about right.
But he will still lose his pension, which is a pretty severe punishment for a man who served faithfully for 17 years before falling for the far-right hate movement.
Let that be a lesson to others who would betray their oaths.