“In my brief chats today with a couple of soldiers they tell me the order to rescind can only have come from the very top...”
Not necessarily. I thought about this, and normally what you’d do is stick the Major into pre-trial confinement. You set a date for trial, and then the Army asked the WH for the documents. WH replies, “No problem on that request. We’ll have those documents to you right away.”
At that point, you can keep the major in the brig nearly indefinitely. You can keep filing motions, but the WH continues the speculation on whether the docs exist or not.
That didn’t happen.
What happened was the request was made by the Army, the request was rejected, and the Army decided to rescind the order, which they can do.
Legally, the Army knows what effect that’s going to have. Pretty tough for the MSM to ignore what amounts to legal desertion by anybody that trys this tactic.
The WH responded by making sure the Major lost his job (that was a political, not military move, and if you read Taitz’s blog post on the facts, you can see that pretty clearly).
At this point, my guess is that the military is forcing the issue with a completely valid military legal argument, and promising more chaos if they don’t take responsibility for making the issue a political one.
What’s deft about this is that the Army can defend their actions as being the most politically quiet one they have (You can see the ‘Free Major Cook’ t-shirts being a problem if they went with the pre-trial confinement approach).
Somebody smart has been stacking gradual political, and now military pressure on Obama to answer these questions.
The WH getting Cook fired as a military contractor was a rookie response in my opinion. What does it buy the WH? It makes Cook look more and more like a martyr.
There isn’t a moonbat in the world that will take the position that even though Cook was enthusiastic about deploying, he should NOT have questioned the legality and did it anyway. It means that Nuremberg and the Calley trial would be moot, and you’d open up the possibility of other Mi Lai’s. Mi Lai was a big liberal victory.
There isn’t a liberal in the world that doesn’t think its a ploy, but there again, none will make the argument that he should have blindly followed the order and taken his post.
I think this may have come from the top, but no way would Obama shiv himself like this. Press has pretty much GOT to talk about it now.
You know, now that I think about it, whacking the guy with the loss of his job is only bound to make his case MORE visible, not less. And its not like he didn’t anticipate that possiblity, he had to have know that it was possible, that retaliation was possible.
But think about this for a moment, there are FEDERAL laws against retaliation on a whistle blower... and the DOD did it anyway.... increasing the visibility of the case and giving Taitz MORE ammo for her case..... Maybe the military wants this....
If they wanted it to go away, let the guy keep his job go back to work and disappear.... Why Whack him with his job and make the case bigger and badder?
FOX NEWS story here gives a very different take on this story..
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/15/soldier-claims-obama-isnt-legal-president-doesnt-deploy/
A reserve soldier has been granted his request not to deploy to Afghanistan because he believes Barack Obama’s presidency is not legitimate, the Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer reported Wednesday.
U.S. Army Major Stefan Frederick Cook, who volunteered for duty in May, says he would be committing a crime to serve under Obama because he believes Obama was born outside of the United States, making him ineligible to become president.
Lt. Col. Maria Quon, an Army spokeswoman, told the newspaper that Cook was no longer expected to report Wednesday to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for mobilization to active duty.
Cook filed a request last week in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector through his attorney, Orly Taitz, the newspaper reported.
Taitz, who has challenged the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency in other courts, asked the court to consider granting her client’s request based upon Cook’s belief that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Cook states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command, simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”
Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after it became a state.
Cook is an “individual mobilization augmentee,” or a reserve soldier assigned to an active component unit for duty, the newspaper said. He submitted a formal written request to Human Resources Command-St. Louis on May 8 volunteering to serve on year in Afghanistan.
A hearing on Cook’s request will take place Thursday in federal court in Columbus, Ga.
Incidentally, Cook did not have to hire a lawyer to refuse his orders to go to Afghanistan. As a reserve soldier and volunteer, he has the right to revoke his deployment orders.