So as long as I get home from the bar without hitting anything, the DUI charge will be thrown out, right? I mean, if I make it home and nobody got hurt, what harm did I do? Unless you’re going to bring up the potential of societal harm. Then I’d have to counter that if the shit hit the fan while he was supposed to be on watch, and wasn’t there, people could have died.
I’d have to agree that a year is too short a sentence, but maybe that’s why I’m not in charge. However, wasn’t it a dishonorable discharge? That’s gonna fuck his prospects all his life. You can’t shake that without knowing some powerful people.
Like I said, the guy in the White House failed to apear for duty during a war. Should he have been held accountable? Should he have been shot?
Really, I find calls for the death penalty to be way over the top and ridiculous. The guy just didn’t come back from a furlough. He didn’t abandon the field during combat.
No, he didn’t abandon his post in the face of the enemy, but his unit, his people were counting on his presence, his skills.
Please know that I didn’t, and I don’t, call for the death penalty. I just think that one year in jail and a bad conduct (a world different than dishonorable) discarge is tantamount to a slap on the wrist.
I will neither confirm nor deny anything about that. I get what Bush puts out there, what the DNC puts out, and what, of that, is reported. I simply don’t know exactly what happened. But if you insist on going back to the '70’s, I’ve never seen a letter he wrote declaring he loathes the military. How far back shall we go?
Keep in mind, Kerry was in country for 4 months. Even I figured out quickly why he was so insistant on getting his medals. It got him sent home sooner. Smart? Yup. Hero? Eh, too many people saying no that were there.
Man, talk about bullshit.
A. Clinton never wrote such a letter and
B. It’s not illegal to say you loathe the miliytary (which Clinton did NOT say)
It’s the military that says that Bush never showed up at the Bama ANG, btw, not the DNC
A silver medal a bronze medal and three Purple Hearts say otherwise. His written evaluations are outstanding. No, people who were there are not saying otherwise. Don’t believe evertything you hear on the radio or read in some right wing butt rag.
So that you know, a Bad Conduct Discharge (what this fellow got) is very different from A Dishonorable type. Bad Conduct can be dismissed/changed eventually, but a Dishonorable will follow you around forever, I think.
Come on, Diogenes everybody knows Kerry took that shrapnel on purpose. He coulda ducked! You know, just like John McCain insisted on getting the Executive Suite in Hanoi. :rolleyes:
I’m guessing he served in some alternate universe where soldiers award medals to themselves, then. You’re right, that is smart. Perhaps he’s Sam Beckett. You’ve got to admit, that’s one hell of a vote-getter.
On topic, I don’t know about sentencing guidelines, but just a discharge for refusing to turn up for duty seems like a recipe for disaster to me. What sort of Army could survive with a rule that essentially says, “but if you don’t want to fight we’ll send you home”?
I mean, apart from the obvious problems, the grammar is atrocious.
Bush declared and end to 'major combat operations" on that carrier last year, NOT an end to the war. You’ll notice the lack of massive bombing campaigns and battalions of soldiers and Marines fighting battalions of Iragi Army units lately? What is happening now is called Low Intensity Combat (it may seem odd to have so many deaths in Low Intensity Combat, but that is what it is.)
And what is this “war time pay” of which you speak? “Hazardous Duty Pay”? “Imminent Danger Pay”? Or the ADDITIONAL pay package set up by Congress that had a self-imposed expiration date? Neither of which Bush had squat to do with. The troops are still getting paid AT LEAST the normal bonuses for Imminent Danger and Family Sep.
Diogenes, come on man, you should know better. Don’t get into the “if it was OK for Bush it should be OK for this guy” argument.
Each case like this should stand on it’s own merit. What we’re talking about here is the millitary setting a precedent for future deserters. Can’t be tolerated.
Any/All deserters should be treated harshly. I think this guy got off easy. I would have given him at least three years and a dishonorable.
If it’s true about Bush, I would have given him the same punishment back then. The fact that he may have gotten away with it has no bearing on this case now, today.
Lord only knows. I fear for our beloved Army. Hell, I am toying with mailing my old uniform back to the Cos when I next get to the States. I no longer want to be buried in it.
But seriously, folks. I agree that GeeDubya’s war record or lack thereof is irrelevent. But equally, we should keep in mind the remarkable flexibility of the guidelines here.
I have personally known a couple of men who were actually charged with desertion. They didn’t convert to a Stalinist ideology, they simply couldn’t get the snakes back in thier cages in the morning without $5 of Saigon smack. So they wandered away. The desertion charge was primarily leverage to force them into a treatment program. Both were given honorable discharges and quietly rushed out the door.
As well, don’t I recall the Lt. Calley, of My Lai notoriety, did one year of house arrest for his murder conviction?
And shouldn’t desertion have an element of malice? Do we still mean to apply such a term to someone who cracks under the strain of combat and runs away? Such behavior is perhaps worthy of our disdain, but is it criminal? Do you really want your back watched by a man who’s main interest is an exit strategy?
As well, we should consider that if the soldier in question were really determined not to return to Iraq, but unwilling to directly confront the issue, he probably could have found a way (foot injuries and mysterious back ailments become pandemic in times of war…). I think he took a considerably more honorable course. But if Rusty Calley can do a year for what he did, this guy should get a Saturday’s detention.
Idn’t it crazy how we have thousands of killers locked up in cages, and we punish the regular guys who don’t wanna do no killin? Just irony is all. I’m not saying we should give rifles to the murderers & let this guy go pick daisies in the mountains.
Dude was a member of a volunteer army. And I might add, it’s a pretty easy job to quit legitemately without leaving your buddies in the lurch by deserting. If he’s a E-6 he’s made the decision to reenlist at least once, probably twice–on both occasions he could have recognized that he was not a killin’ machine and accepted an honorable discharge at the end of his enlistment.
Someone who deserts like that tells me that he was only after a paycheck and a plastic badge saying, “I did *my * bit.” I have no sympathy and no use for this guy either. I think he should have a big yellow dtripe tatttoo’d on his back–for being afraid to get out of the Army and get a real job.
No. And that’s the point of the death penalty for desertion in combat: if you stay, you might die, if run you will die.
This guy didn’t desert his unit during combat, he failed to return to duty, while seeking CO status. This seems fairly minor to me, and BCD and a year of prison sound about right. He didn’t show any malice (treachery), or cowardice (desertion), he simply became disgusted with what he saw being done in the name of the service he had joined. I’m not certain I wouldn’t have sought the same status had I witnessed what he did while I was serving. I know that I couldn’t take lightly watching my brothers in arms killing civilians, or allowing a child to die when treatment was available.