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I hear more expressions of sorrow that Lakin chose the wrong vehicle for his protest.

Would that the comments were so clean. It's as if the ruling against him came from God and cannot be critiqued, or that the restrictions against him in court were somehow justified.

So many "military people" act as if there is no law for military personnel - or if there is, it consists in the single line "obey or die." But the UCMJ has more than one page, it has due process and evidence trains and required argument structures. And it specifies that orders must be legal, and that it is illegal to follow illegal orders.

None of these things are taken lightly, and none of them are presumed to be violated until strong evidence can be shown at the very least. But when you have an honorable, combat-experienced military officer questioning the legitimacy of a president who cannot provide a simple birth certificate and - get this, all you grunts: creating Rules of Engagement that are getting many, many more military people killed in combat, and restricting them from even defending themselves, than ever before (GOT THAT?) - then to legally challenge that president, from military jurisdiction, is an act of COURAGE and HONOR.

And now, this so-called "judicial sentencing" against this man, who was obviously sabotaged and broken into a plea-deal, will only serve to continue to protect the ROE-expanded death toll being currently suffered by OUR TROOPS who can't even shoot back against known, fleeing Muslim terrorists anymore.

So celebrate if you want - I'll pass.

Every ROE gets people killed. Anyone who thinks some of the ROE in Iraq under Bush didn't get people killed is dreaming. Anyone who thinks the lucky devils who came in Second in the Vietnamese Olympics of yore didn't find themselves in some no-win situations where we took hypothetically needless fire is dreaming. That's the price we as a nation pay for deciding, correctly in my view, that we don't want to be Nazis.

In the moment, with adrenaline pumping on the bad side of a nasty bell curve, being a Nazi for a few minutes might not have seemed so bad. Afterwords, one is a little more grateful that some degree of institutionalized restraint held sway. Of course, I can't speak for those who didn't make it.

So war is a nasty thing. ROE get people killed. It's all just a question of degree. Maybe Obama’s are bad, but I wouldn't give a warm bucket of spit for Johnson and Nixon as war leaders, either. Elections happen, and as Rumsfeld might have said, you go to war with the President you've got, not the one you wish you had. Believing in legal tooth fairies won't change that.