Posted on 04/01/2011 5:37:24 PM PDT by Nachum
Army doctor half done with prison term for questioning Obama eligibility
A military doctor who was court-martialed and sent to prison after questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to be president and refusing to follow orders that descended from the commander-in-chief is more than halfway through his sentence.
And now he has asked the nation in his writings to ponder the question of whether it is bound by the Constitution.
Dr. Terry Lakin, an Army doctor who refused to deploy again to Afghanistan when his chain of command refused to verify that Obama legitimately is president, is serving a six-month term at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas.
He remains under the Uniform Code of Military Justice but has been allowed to post online a series of observations he's made while serving his time. Those private communications to the Terry Lakin Action Fund suggest that his focus remains on the foundations of the nation and the rights and responsibilities of its citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
But really, it's too late for Obama. He's exposed, and its getting more obvious daily.
In the end, Lakin will have taken his punches and walk tall. Obama will slither away exposed as a fraud. Obama is a coward and a fraud, and will get his proper recognition as such in due time. Count on it.
And for that he lost his career and his pension, and picked up a new occupation of wheedling for donations on the internet. Hope it was worth it.
In the end, Lakin will have taken his punches and walk tall. Obama will slither away exposed as a fraud. Obama is a coward and a fraud, and will get his proper recognition as such in due time. Count on it.
I expect he will. And when that happens I will give no credit to men like Lakin.
Thanks for ignoring FR posting etiquette and failing to ping me. I, too, have seen heroes in many walks of life, both on the battlefield and off. Lakin is no hero, just a misguided fool. If he had talked to an attorney with the slightest bit of competence, instead of one with a political agenda, he would have known that he had no chance and that the birther issue would never get its day in court. I do hope that he gets a chance to put his life back together.
You, and others, are most welcome to search my posting history on the Lakin case, as well as others on matters military and political. You will encounter responses from JimRob that may surprise you. My consistent point in this case has been that soldiers and officers have a duty to follow legal orders and the orders Lakin received were certainly legal. The military must remain a nonpolitical, disciplined force obedient to its chain of command and not some unruly commie union mob like we have seen recently in Wisconsin. But, I doubt that you could understand that distinction.
All of this has nothing to do with Obama, who demonstrates everyday that he has fairly earned his reputation as the worst President in the history of America. Those bright bulbs out there who want to connect a defense of military integrity and discipline with a love for Obama can continue to demonstrate their limited cognitive skills.
Of course, the debate over Lakin takes place within the larger birther brigade discussions. Obama and his supporters are quite pleased at the willingness of the birthers to carry his water. They are missing the real point. None of us know where Obama was born, but I believe that the odds favor a Honolulu birth. The real issue, is not his place of birth, but rather what version of birth certificate, passport, draft registration, school records existed at what point in time and what that information would tell us about his early life. What evidence do we have that Barack Obama Sr knew Ann Dunham for any longer period than 15 minutes? When did Barack the Younger adopt that name and why? Did he ever take the steps to restore his citizenship, his legal name, his U.S. passport, or he is still legally Barry Soetoro with a ghost written autobiography that creates a BHO myth. The answers to these questions would have kept him out of the White House in the first place and will ensure that he is not reelected. But, instead folks entertain themselves with some Kenyan hospital fairytale. By obsessing over the birth issue, they are missing the real story.
Well, I’ve rambled on long enough and I wouldn’t want to make you late for your rendezvous with all of your hero buddies at the State Capitol in Madison. Have fun.
“Also, his reading material has been highlighted, including Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.”
“It gives great examples of the statists’ ability to redefine law into suiting their ideology when it benefits their goals. Yet they do not see it as infringing upon their liberty or property because they are the intellectuals that know what is best. Levin’s quote of French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat (1850) is great!” Lakin wrote.”
This statement is dripping with irony considering that Lakin is talking about Mark Levin’s book and Mark Levin won’t discuss the issue.
December 14, 2010
LTC Lakin pled guilty to all four of the Article 92 specifications alleged in Charge II (media reports had suggested mixed pleas to these offenses). The accused pled not guilty to Charge I and its Specification, which allege the offense of missing movement.
During the hour-and-a-half long Care inquiry, LTC Lakin acknowledged no less than half a dozen times that the orders he received were lawful, and that he in fact had a duty to obey them. Judge Lind found his guilty pleas to be provident and accepted them. The defense then moved to dismiss the dereliction of duty spec as an unreasonable multiplication of charges in light of the accused’s guilty plea to Specification 3. The prosecution did not oppose the motion, and Judge Lind granted it. She then entered guilty findings on Specifications 1-3 of Charge II and on Charge II itself. end snip...
The problem with what you say is that the burden of proving an order to be illegal lies with the person who chose to disobey it. Lakin could not do so, because the order was legal as he later admitted in court.
An example of an illegal order is an order to shoot unarmed and unresisting civilians. Obeying that order will get you 30 years in Leavenworth. Disobeying a deployment order will get you six months in Leavenworth which is where Inmate Lakin now bunks down.
I have been reading the hurtful manure spewing from your keyboard regarding Col. Lakin for the past year. And you think you deserve normal etiquette? You are a piece of work. You have a pretty high opinion of yourself but you are not so smart, you are a nasty hateful little person.
I attended a leadership class this last week... the instructor had everyone who thought they had "leadership presence" raise their hand and then explain why. I have been working with most of my coworkers for many years. The exercise wasn't intended to be funny, but the people in the room who were most enthusiastic about their own "leadership presence" were the known blowhards. Some of them have good qualities that are related to their inflated opinions of themselves, but most are just blowhards with no more leadership presence or abilities than the most reserved people who were in the room. None of them were the people who I know from experience that I can trust the most.
I have never met Col. Lakin but from what I have read he is a person that his coworkers have learned from experience is very trustworthy and takes his service and his duty very seriously. They have said that he is a person that they can count on. Your repeated judgments here have been unfair, hurtful and inaccurate. I don't know what you are like away from your keyboard, but your posts remind me of people who I know and work with. They are not the people who I have learned that I can count on. They are the people who think they are the greatest, the people who berate others and treat the public like they are dirt and then when push comes to shove they lock up and don't know their jobs. Those are the people I think of when I read your posts.
Since you don't know the man, I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, perhaps using the same logic that led you down the birther bunny trail.
My position is quite simple and has nothing to do with what sort of person Lakin may or may not be. He was a Commissioned Officer of the United States and therefore required to adhere to a very high standard of conduct. He failed to measure up to that standard as he freely admitted at his Court Martial. We, as a nation, cannot abide an officer who chooses to involve himself in politics while in uniform. Spare me all the illegal orders nonsense. Lakin knew his orders were legal and he chose to disobey them in order to cast himself into the political argument over Obama's shady path. That public argument is off limits to serving officers. He failed to advance his foolish cause and he will pay a big personal price, unlike his many birther supporters who walked away from this mess with their publicity goals satisfied at his expense.
I'm not going to pretend that I hold the birther brigades in high regard. You have all formed opinions completely unsupported by facts and evidence and can do nothing but attack those who do not agree with you. That's what Liberals do and I don't care for them either. Obama is a phony, no doubt. But, the facts and circumstances of his early life elude us thanks to his diligent efforts to destroy or hide the evidence. He will never be held to account for his deceptions as long as the loudest voice remains wild speculation about where he was born.
Lakin remains responsible for his own behavior and decisions which were both illegal and improper for a man in his position, but he has you and your birther buddies to thank for helping him down that path.
I hope that you enjoyed your leadership class.
Google Ehren Watada and Yolanda Huet-Vaughn and tell me if you consider them heroic figures too. If not, why not?
I have never claimed to know where Obama was born. None of the questionable documentation that he has been provided to the public can even be proven to have been released by the man himself. It seems doubtful much of it would hold up in court, which is most likely why his administration has fought so hard to keep any of his “documentation” from being scrutinized in a courtroom setting.
I do know that much of Obama’s official narrative has been proven to be pure fiction. I do know that arrogant know-it-alls such as yourself who are willing to accept without question this BS are fools. I believe that President of the United States is still the most powerful person in the world and that the person who holds the office is constitutionally and morally obligated to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they are eligable to hold that office. In Obama’s case this has not been done. Multiple polls have shown that a sizable percentage of the population are still not sure about his origins or background.
With all the lawyer speak and double talk on this issue... I think it is possible that everything on the questionable Certification of Live Birth that was released could be accurate. I believe that the definition of “natural born citizen” commonly accepted by the framers of the constitution specified that both parents must have been citizens of the United States at the time of the child's birth. It is possible that the battle to keep this out of court is merely to keep Obama Sr. from being proven in a court of law to be Jr.s legal father. This could open up a whole new can of worms. At this point all we know is that Obama’s allies have fought very hard to prevent the documentation that could put this all to rest out of a courtroom.
One can reasonably conclude from your comments regarding LtCol Lakin’s actions that you do not believe it is the duty of a military officer to detect, confront and expose corruption in the military chain of command. Such a view appears to disregard the military officer’s oath to defend the Constitution which, I hope you will agree, is a higher duty than participating in a fraudulent chain of command.
The view also seems to hold that the many O6’s and above to whom Lakin appealed over a period of several months had no duty to process his Constitutional concern. His concern was based on the fact that Congress had failed to take even the slightest step toward confirming the CinC’s qualifications for office, notwithstanding evidence in the public record to the contrary, several lawsuits and the substantial public outcry. That was a legal point (a breach of 3USC15), if not a clerical oversight, that could have been easily transmitted by the command structure to members of Congress and easily resolved.
But, lets turn to a more interesting fact. You named 10 highly decorated Viet Nam warriors and claim you “served with them”. More specifically, you state, “I have walked in their company and I know their mettle.” The term is usually taken to mean having been with them on the battlefield either shortly before, during or shortly after their heroics; otherwise, of course, everyone in the community could make a similar claim.
(Here, let me recommend you drop Barry McCaffrey from your list. Shooting noncombatants who are trying to go home, after receiving notice of a cease fire agreement is not the stuff of a hero and for many is an ugly stain on the authenticity of his earlier awards.)
You are most fortunate. Few of us, who do not have occasion to be associated with MOH recipients, have had the honor of formally meeting one, or perhaps even two recipients, if that. You on the other hand, have met a half dozen or so and walked with them.
What is even more amazing is that although these individuals served across a wide spectrum of military activities in different units in different locations in the same relatively narrow time period, you had the chance to walk with them.
The readers of this thread, which includes many who served in Viet Nam, would be very interested in hearing even a modestly detailed story behind your Viet Nam connection to each of the 10 warriors. It must be a hell of a story.
Google Ehren Watada and Yolanda Huet-Vaughn and tell me if you consider them heroic figures too. If not, why not?
Oh those two? They have all been discussed here many times, mostly before your arrival to this forum a couple of months ago. Yeah they are both heros... to left wing trolls everywhere.
...definitely hampered his ability to treat the wounded.
Such testimony should not have been persuasive, it would be interesting to learn what was revealed on cross examination. The effect of the hampering may have been that this surgeon had to work a bit harder or resort to typical wound treatment.
The question is whether there was a measurable reduction in the quality of medical services the replacement surgeon provided or whether there was any unnecessary pain and suffering by the wounded. Surgeons and medical stations are well trained to provide wound treatment in the absence of the patient’s medical records.
“Colonel Lakin received his orders, decided they were not legal, and he had a Constitutional responsibility to NOT follow those orders.”
At his trial, Lt Col Lakin agreed his orders WERE legal.
The military leaders do not “know” Obama isn’t a NBC because there has been no proof of that offered - just Internet accusations. Folks don’t get to disobey orders based on speculation supported by rumor. Orders are assumed to be legal in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
“More specifically, you state, “I have walked in their company and I know their mettle.” The term is usually taken to mean having been with them on the battlefield either shortly before, during or shortly after their heroics; otherwise, of course, everyone in the community could make a similar claim.”
Hogwash. It means you have worked with them and know enough about them to appreciate them. Over the years, centurion316 & I have exchanged many posts on military threads. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes not (Army vs USAF), but it is painfully obvious to anyone with significant military time that centurion316 is genuine.
No military court-martial has any authority to challenge a sitting President. Congress does, but they have not - not ONE person objected to Obama being sworn in.
If you have proof Obama was born overseas, offer it. Until then, he is in the eyes of the law a NBC and the valid Commander-in-Chief. And LTC Lakin agreed under oath.
I hardly know it all, I am learning all the time on this forum, for example. I do know a great deal about military service, military law, and the role of our military in society and I intend to protect it against those forces who would drag it into the political cesspool. Time was when civil service including state and local government, federal civilian service and the military stood above politics and answered to a higher called of service to the public. Franklin Roosevelt, among others considered it paramount to maintain this separation between politics and service to the nation. Only the military stands apart in today's society, the others have become fiercely partisan favoring both unions and the Democrat Party. It is an insidious disease that must not infect military service and I will argue against it every time I see it.
I do know that much of Obama’s official narrative has been proven to be pure fiction. I do know that arrogant know-it-alls such as yourself who are willing to accept without question this BS are fools.
Some of Obama's official narrative has been shown to be fiction, and I certainly think that most of it will be some day. You cannot have examined my posting history as you advised others to do. I am a great supporter of my friend Jack Cashill and his tireless work to expose Dreams From My Father
I believe ... that the person who holds the office is constitutionally and morally obligated to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they are eligable to hold that office.
I agree with this point, but none of the political class share your view. They, and the courts, don't care and that's not likely to change. Obama pulled a fast one, but I don't think he was trying to hide his birth details. Something else, perhaps even more damaging was at stake.
I believe that the definition of “natural born citizen” commonly accepted by the framers of the constitution specified that both parents must have been citizens of the United States at the time of the child's birth. It is possible that the battle to keep this out of court is merely to keep Obama Sr. from being proven in a court of law to be Jr.s legal father. This could open up a whole new can of worms. At this point all we know is that Obama’s allies have fought very hard to prevent the documentation that could put this all to rest out of a courtroom.
You're right again, and this particular issue is one that the courts could take on. There are several arguments on this point, and until the Supreme Court rules, its anyone's guess. I do believe that the political class and most of the judiciary take the view that since the passage of the 14th Amendment, birth on U.S. soil is all that is required. Most of the people who hold this view have studied the issue only superficially, but my guess that the Supremes would consider that good enough and rule in their favor.
And where are they different than Lakin?
Centurion I appologize for the way that I react to some of your posts. At a gut level I respect Col. Lakin a great deal and some of what you post is hard for me to read without flying off the handle. I don’t have any idea what you are like in person... but I would guess you are a good guy. I have read a lot of your posts over the years and I can say with absolute certainty that we agree on for more than we disagree on.
“The military leaders do not “know” Obama isn’t a NBC because there has been no proof of that offered - just Internet accusations. Folks don’t get to disobey orders based on speculation supported by rumor. Orders are assumed to be legal in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.”
Seeing how he didn’t “know” his orders were legal, he had an obligation not to follow them, until he was sure his orders were legal. As for him saying he knew his orders were legal, he only said that at sentencing, once he was in “save his ass” mode. I was disappointed in him for that, but I can’t say I completely blame him either.
Folks can disregard any order they want, if they don’t feel that it’s legal. EVERY order a soldier receives is a judgement call, since we don’t have robotic forces yet.
One last comment, it shouldn’t be up to the military to find out if Obama is legal, it should have been done by the democratic leadership during the election, but since it wasn’t, other measures had/have to be taken. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is.
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