JohnnyComeLately's Journal: Former General slandering the sitting President

I haven't posted yet on this topic, because I wanted to find a reference to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Specifically, a negative comment about a superior officer is a serious offense that results in punishment. However, I can't find the reference and I want to mention this before I lose interest.

I can't make the statement, "Captain SoAndSo is a coward and a liar," in a public setting without serious, legal consequences. An officer's integrity must be spotless. In fact, Lt Gen Hubert R. Harmon, the first US Air Force Academy Superintenent, established an honor code that is emphasized in all Air Force sources of commissioning officers. The honor code reads, "I will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate those who do."

With that said, I take exceedingly great exception to Army Gen. Wesley Clark statement Bush, "scrambled and used his family's influence to get out of hearing a shot fired in anger". The more I look into this comment, and Kerry in general, the more morally bankrupt their camp appears. Do I say this to say Bush is perfect or in anyway make him look better? No. Consider the Democrat camp, and what they say and do.

DraftClark2004.com reports,(sorry for cache copy, his site blocks requests from my IP directly)

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a decorated veteran of the Korean War who is backing Clark, said the former NATO supreme commander "is Teflon to the question of being a patriot." Democrats "need someone who'll stand up with Bush and doesn't have to say, 'I'm as patriotic as you are, now let's debate the issues,'" Rangel said. Funny, I don't hear him moving past the patriotic issue. Now let's move on to the next leader, Dean. Vietnamwar.com reports,

February 1970, with the Vietnam War raging, 21-year-old Howard Dean carried a set of X-rays and a letter from a Manhattan orthopedist named Hudson Wilson to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where U.S. military doctors determined that he was not fit for military service because of a back condition called spondylolisthesis. Dean was classified 1Y, according to military records, meaning he was exempt from service for the duration of the war and free to head to Colorado after his Yale graduation, where he skied at Aspen and poured concrete. Spondylolisthesis is a condition caused by an unfused vertebra. When diagnosed nearly four years earlier, he was cleared to participate in all sports except long-distance running."I didn't try to get out of the draft," Dean has said. "I had a physical."

Those in glass houses should not throw stones is a common saying in our culture. I don't understand why Kerry's camp is making such a large issue about military service in general. Kerry openly spoke out against the Vietnam war and called the leaders (of those times) cowards. The very leaders who approved his awards and decorations during the war. He points to those who didn't go, when his camp has people in the same boat. Have we forgotten it was President Carter, a keynote speaker at the DNP Convention, who pardoned thousands that illegally avoided service by going up to Canada?

The final exception is to the implication that serving the in Air National Guard in some way equates to avoiding "real" military service. I will admit that when I was active duty I did not know much about the Guard and Reserve elements. However, now I know that at least a third of every servicemember in Iraq comes from the Guard or Reserve. Maybe that wasn't the case with Vietnam, as I couldn't find a list of deaths in Vietnam which mention Guard, but there are two fatal flaws with the criticism of Bush. 1. Serving as a commissioned officer in the Guard is still military service that reports to the Governor and President. The president could have called the Guard unit Bush was in to the war front. 2. They call the integrity of Bush's leaders into question. If Bush was AWOL or someway fraudulent, his leadership would have been responsible for documenting and correcting it.

I apologize for making all my journals political in nature. It wasn't the original intent, but it's what has been on my mind. Off to bed...start a new block of instruction in training to become a Satellite Operations Officer.

In both cases...

[Ethelred Unraed]

...it's called "speaking your conscience". For that matter, because Kerry and Clark were not serving at the time they made their remarks about their former superiors, I don't see why you raise the UCMJ, which has nothing to do with it.

Surely you should be allowed to criticize the President if you disagree with him, whether you're former military or not!

As to "why they are making military service an issue", it should be painfully obvious. Even if you believe most of the stuff that the right wing is throw

Re:In both cases...

[JohnnyComeLately]

The reason I brought up the UCMJ is because it is a moral compass that I know the General is familiar with. Meaning, if I work at Sprint PCS and make a comment that the CEO doesn't know what the hell he's talking about when he has to slash 20,000 jobs to keep afloat and then states, "What downturn? We're doing fine." Although I'm not showing much respect, there's no direct, measurable consequence because civilians are not held to a higher moral ground. In the military, we're drilled from day one that be

The question, to me, is simple

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If the comment was an untruth, it's slander.

If the comment was a truth, then it would be more dishonorable to NOT say it.

If the soldier in question was still in the millitary, then they are under the Code and should be punished or at least have a trial to determine whether the comment was truth or not.

If the soldier in question is not in the military, they are not under the code and nothing should happen.

Ok, given those guidelines- it's obvious that our current President used family pull to get into the

Re:The question, to me, is simple

[JohnnyComeLately]

The beginning of your comments are covered (with very poor grammer, my apologies) in the reply above, so I'll let you go up and read them.

However, I'm hoping I misunderstood the reference to Nuclear weapons solving this issue for 1600 years. I'm an officer in the career field of launching nukes. 13S, my specialty code, officers sit 90 feet below ground hoping they never have to do their job. If you look over the previous 20 years, you'll see that we've yanked most nukes (rendering them permanently inoper

Re:The question, to me, is simple

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The point is that nukes, even the few we have left, are a great terrorist weapon- and the only way to win the war on terrorism is to generate so much more terror in the enemy than in your own population that they stop being terrorists. If we had nuked Mecca within 48 hours of 9-11, we would have achived that goal. The fact that we didn't even bother to try- shows cowardice on the part of the President and the Joint Chiefs both.

The title of the President is the Commander in Chief- the buck rests with him,