A soldier who deserted from the US Army in Iraq because he found the war morally objectionable – partly because of the treatment of prisoners – faces the same punishment as those who abused the prisoners at Abu Ghuraib. I turn to those more knowledgeable: Can he plead that he deserted because the orders were illegal?
Related Posts
100,000 down. How many more to go?
It seems that the number excludes Fallujah, and the count may actually be closer to 200,000 if Fallujah is included…. Iraq Body Count all of a sudden looks like a conservative website telling us how wonderful things are in Iraq.
Unicycle Afghanistan
Several older articles. Good to read. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510195 http://www.partypics.com/ver2/EventImages.aspx?eventid=130490&bib=2757 http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/12.08/17-circus.html Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Unicycles
Commemoration
Below the fold are the detailed notes of comments I gave at St. Bart’s yesterday in an inter-faith commemoration of 9/11. I began with the Fatihah. The first prayer is from Abdullah Ansari of Herat. Technorati Tags: 9/11, prayer
2 thoughts on “Is it the same?”
Comments are closed.
With the caveat that I’m not familiar with the military code of conduct, I don’t think his claims are a defense to a charge of desertion. If he was given an illegal order,then there probably is a process to object to that order and refuse to carry it out. Deserting isn’t a legitimate option to an unlawful order and can cause serious consequences to military discipline.
The article also indicates that he now claims conscientious objector status against an ‘oil-driven’ war. To my understanding, that claim doesn’t give him conscientious objector status. To gain that status, one must object to war on any basis, and not pick and choose based on one’s view of the the political reasons for the war. In other words, one cannot be a conscientious objector only to this war, and perhaps not others.
Obviously you can’t have soldiers decide which wars they want to fight.
Thank you. That’s what I thought. It seems bad form on the part of the defense attorney to let his client run at the mouth. The story has been buried pretty far on most of the cable news outlets, so I wonder how much we’ll hear about it in the future.