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That, me dearie, was only a little warnin' that you failed to understand.

Well perhaps you need to be a bit more specific. Are you threatening me with bodily injury?

The Supreme Court never took this case. They would be the final authority on whether it was Constitutional or not. Until they take it- and I doubt they will until a sitting President solicits them to do so- you only have the face of the situation to look at. It states in the Constitution that we can enter into treaties. That makes our involvement with the UN legal.

Now, I hate the UN just as much as anyone else- I want to make that perfectly clear. And my time in Macedonia did nothing to change my mind- in fact it only convinced me that the UN was just a huge waste of time and money. Also, understand, I have nothing personal against New. I agree with his assessment that we should not be involved in the UN in any way shape or form.

Anyway, we're in the UN legally. The President is the Commander in Chief of the military. He ordered that mission. That order got carried right on down the line. New refused to carry out the order. You will always get in trouble for refusing to obey a legal order in the Army. Always. It doesn't matter what it's about or who the President is- you refuse to obey a legal order- you're in trouble. Now, this is what New did.

The Army could've chosen to be leniant with him, but then when Bosnia came along a short time later, some joker in his unit would've used this precedent to claim that Bosnia was illegal as well. Pretty soon you'd have people refusing to carry out legal directives in the war against terror. The whole disclipline of the Army could break down over one incident like this.

It also comes back to the process. New would've been informed over and over again that the order was legal. Enlisted men are not Constitutional authorities. When every level of his Chain of Command has informed him that the order is legal- he has exactly two choices at that point: carry out the directive or face the consequences. He chose the latter. Again, this has nothing to do with him personally or even the issue itself. It would've been played out the same way for any other directive he refused to obey (except obviously without the media and congress being involved). If Congress had so wished, they could've simply declared the UN mission illegal and New would've been off the hook. They did not.

It came as no surprise whatsoever in Schweinfurt when he got busted for this. We knew that was coming the second we heard about it. We could see it coming a mile away, so to speak. It was a topic of discussion in my platoon, but not for Constitutional reasons. We were mainly speculating on what was going to happen. Many of us were of the opinion that I expressed earlier in the thread- his commander should've just had him bodily put on the plane. We also resented the fact that the media never showed up when we did our duty- yet they were all over it like flies on sh!t when one soldier refused to obey an order. That's the breaks in the military- the public is all too happy to just forget you until there's some political angle to be exploited.

Also, you say he made the correct choice. Implicit in this is that I made the incorrect choice by following the legal order I was given. You are implying that I and my fellow soldiers who followed that order are in fact criminal. I take issue with that. Had I truly believed the order was illegal, I would not have obeyed it. But it was clearly a legal order, perhaps a disgraceful one for Clinton to issue, but it was legal. If we want to withdraw from the UN, we should do so. I believe we should. But until we do, we are a part of it, like it or not. Them's the facts. New perhaps did a service by bringing this issue to public light, but the Army did the only thing they could've by punishing him.

One issue I have never addressed in this thread is the topic of the article itself- which wasn't about New after all but about this current situation. I think if Bush promised what he did and we have troops currently under UN Command- he needs to be held account for that. I've read the thread and read the author's subsequent remarks, but has this ever been verified yet?