Comments on: The Gods Of War

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:51:05 +0000

Rule of law. It's not only the law, but also a good idea, the notion of civil society is based upon rule of law. Too bad some people would rather we have rule of gun or mob rule rather than rule of law. How... uncivil. The notion that Major Hasan would have had access to media in order to shout about how he was being persecuted if sent involuntarily to the sandbox does not pass the laugh and giggle test. The media has access to chosen military members, the rest are either under orders to keep their mouths shut around the media, or are kept away from the media if they are going to be an embarrassment. There were some incidents that happened at BAFB that I know about only because family of the person involved talked about it and the BAFB community is a tight-knit one where things get around. The media may have heard the same things from the family but, without being able to interview the USAF or the person involved (the USAF making their typical blanket statement of "we do not discuss personnel matters", and the person involved being either in the brig or on house arrest and not available to talk to the media), typically did not write a story. If Major Hassan had no family here in the U.S., the chances of his story getting to the media if he were hauled onto the cargo plane to Iraq in chains was even slimmer than in the stories I heard about second-hand from family of the persons involved. The fact of the matter is that Major Hassan was going to Iraq or Afghanistan, period, whether he liked it or not , unless he chose to commit suicide in some way. That is just how the U.S. military works, you sign away your rights when you sign on that dotted line, ALL of your rights, including the right to free speech. This is especially true if you are an officer, since you cannot even resign from the military unless the military accepts your resignation. From press reports it appears Major Hassan decided to commit suicide in the messiest way possible i.e. by taking as many others with him as he could. If true, he will eventually get his wish. Except that it will be a needle pushing a massive dose of paralyzing drugs into his body, rather than a bullet, that will be the instrument of his suicide. .-= last blog ..Thursday morning dream pop =-.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:09:15 +0000

Trial by jury goes back to 1215 to a document called Magna Carta, and it was part of British law the last time I checked.

It is also enshrined in the US Constitution that people swear to support and defend when they enter public service, as is assistance of legal counsel.

In ten years in law enforcement there was only one person I arrested who wasn’t found guilty, and he was murdered before trial. You get a record like that by following the laws and not cutting corners.

You, Mr. Duff, want to cut corners and mischarge people. That can result in the individual going free. I want to see the guilty punished to the maximum extent of the law, which is why I don’t hand the defense attorneys opportunities to throw out evidence or get charges dismissed. You only get one chance to convict the guilty, so you should never put that chance at risk for political grandstanding.

You are assuming that Major Hasan shot people based on media reports. Making assumptions can cost you in court. There still hasn’t even been an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury, so we don’t actually know if Major Hasan will face a Court Martial, and you have him hanging from a gibbet. He is charged with premeditated murder, but the theory on which premeditation is based, that Major Hasan wasn’t scheduled to work that day, is tissue paper thin, so I hope the actual investigation, which is still on-going, comes up with something a good deal more substantial. Without the ballistics report we don’t actually know who fired the shots that killed 13 people, so it might be a good idea to wait for some facts.

I have no idea what you think the US actually is, but from what you have written it would appear to have more in common with the Soviet Union under Stalin than a constitutional democracy.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:26:53 +0000

What Hassan did is called “Murder”, not “treason”, and it gets the death penalty here in the USA. I am baffled as to why you wish to confuse crimes, other than that it fits your bizarre political agenda which is intended to demonize brown people. Note that Brian was in law enforcement and I, err, well, not exactly, but both of us have reason to know what the law actually is, vs. hysterical bullshit. The OED is not a law book and your quoting of the OED as if it meant something outside of Jolly Olde England is noted as further evidence of intellectual dishonesty.

The notion that Major Hassan would have been given a dishonorable discharge for refusing to obey orders is laughable. We simply do not allow officers to disobey orders here in the USA. We’re not civilized here, unlike Jolly Olde England. Either Major Hassan would have been quietly eased out of the service on a medical discharge as a certified lunatic (so much for his civilian employment opportunities, who wants to hire an insane doctor?!), or he would have been bundled off to Iraq or Afghanistan in shackles and turned loose there to ply his trade or to desert and go home to Jordan. Yes, that has actually happened, I have seen both scenarios play out in reality as vs. the abstract pages of the UCMJ (where Major Hassan would have been subjected to a courts martial then sentenced to hard prison time, that is done sometimes in peacetime but here in wartime your sentence is to be sent to the sandbox in shackles and is enforced without the bother of a courts martial). Your theoretical BS is all nice and pretty, but is not what actually happens in the real world of today’s U.S. military. The U.S. military is not a boy scout encampment, it is a mechanism for turning human beings into corpses, and has no more regard for its individual component human bodies’ whims than it has for the subjects of its exercise.

Btw, this is not “barracks lawyering”. We’ve observed how our military treats these issues in actual practice, vs. your hand-waving sophistry. Your deranged delusions of how things work simply have nothing to do with reality.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:07:33 +0000

It’s a fold in the space-time continuum, probably caused by the Large Hadron Collider. It’s a different world on the other side.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:48:05 +0000

Apparently “serves at the pleasure of the President” is too complicated a term for Mr. Duff to understand, as is the rather strict definition of the word “treason” that is written in the U.S. Constitution. Sad, really, that someone who purports to be an intelligent man would be so willfully ignorant of such fundamental realities even upon being informed about their existence. It is as if he did a Sgt. Shultz and covered his eyes and ears and said “I hear no-think! I see no-think!” when we directed him to accurate information. But then, willful deafness and willful blindness is, I think, a requirement to be a right-winger in today’s day and age, with few exceptions who tend to get dumped upon as “RINOs” by the willfully ignorant.

– Badtux the Law Penguin

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:21:28 +0000

OK, we can agree that you don’t know what treason is.

MDs are commissioned as Captains [O-3], and Majors are O-4. There was almost no chance of his making O-6, Colonel. Resignations have to be accepted, and they aren’t currently being accepted for Medical Officers because, again, there is a stop-loss order in effect.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:44:45 +0000

And oh yes -- the word "treason" has a specific legal meaning here in the United States that is defined in the U.S. Constitution. I suggest, Mr. Duff, that you read that document and the definition therein. It is a very strict and limited definition and because of its narrow definition, the number of convictions for treason here in the USA can be counted on your fingers. It's not like Jolly Old England where simply shouting "Down with the Queen!" can be prosecuted as treason... .-= last blog ..Sunday Music Break =-.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:37:25 +0000

Officers serve at the pleasure of the President. They can turn in a resignation letter, but the President (via his designee, the Secretary of Defense, and SecDef’s designees under that) are under no obligation to accept that letter of resignation. Officers can, and are in fact, ordered to report for specific training duties based upon the needs of the service. For example, a large number of Annapolis grads are being ordered to report for submarine nuclear reactor engineering training school next year because of a shortage of nuke pukes. Officers in the U.S. military are not free to turn down training billets and are not free to turn down the extension of required service duty that comes with training billets. The involuntary nuke pukes are going to have years added to their required service because of the “needs of the service”, and that’s that — they signed on the dotted line to become military officers, and they are military officers until the military says otherwise, and not one minute prior.

Things may work different in Jolly Old England, Mr. Duff, but that’s how it works here in the United States of America. It’s even in our Constitution that the President, and only the President, has final authority over individuals who are in the military — including their terms of service and whether they are allowed to resign or not. And Major Hasan most definitely would *not* have been allowed to resign.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:06:41 +0000

Now that you have proven that you understand nothing, and are doing your best to provide the Major with a defense that shouldn’t exist, you continue your fractured logic by failing to understand the common and legal meaning of treason and comrade. It is a two-way street, and he certainly was not receiving anything approaching comradeship from the rest of the military.

His decisions were made before Bush was President and the Crusade against Muslims was declared.

You don’t know what happened in that clinic, any more than I do. You are executing a man based on rumor at this point, as there has been no evidence presented for anything, and much of the raw information that has come out has been shown to be wrong.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:28:48 +0000

You are not paying attention, Mr. Duff. He entered service in 1995 with an 8 year contract. Six years were added for the Masters in Public Administration and six years for the MD. The soonest he could resign is 2015. He didn’t choose to remain, he had no options. With a stop-loss in place for medical personnel, he would have been held in the military even if his enlistment had expired, that’s what a stop-loss does.

This is a work place shooting, “going postal” in the vernacular, and nothing more, unless you are trying to give Hasan an out. Make this anything other than that and you open the field for the defense.

This has nothing to do with treason, and there is no evidence that Major Hasan was accepted by anyone at Fort Hood. There is, in fact, evidence that Major Hasan was targeted because he was a Muslim, which is why you don’t go there unless you are trying to get him off.