Sunday, February 15, 2009

UCMJ Article 88

In my recent Letter to the Editor I must have hit a nerve with Sam Prince! I believe I pissed him off. You can go to this link and read his rebuttal http://cairomessenger.com. Find “This weeks issues” and tab to page 5. After reading his article / rebuttal scroll down to the bottom of the page and read Ken Wood’s letter to the editor. Ken Wood is direct and to the point.
It appears I am Detractor Number 2; I don’t like being in second place. I’ll have to try harder! So look out Detractor Number 1, I’m gunning for you!
Sam says I insulted him by calling him a “little Rush Limbaugh”. I would like to set the record straight. I said he “sounds like a little Limbaugh”. Sam doesn’t get alliteration. I thought it was hilarious. It really wasn’t an insult; it was more of an observation. If anyone was insulted it might have been Rush Limbaugh.
Sam wanted to know if I had spent a day in the military. Well I haven’t spent a day in the military; I’ve spent 7665 days and for Sam that’s 21 years of active service. He was big on writing about his enlistment and commissioning oaths, well he is not alone. I’ve taken 2 enlistment oaths, my initial commissioning oath and subsequent oaths every time I was promoted. I had the honor and pleasure of administering the oath to my wife when she was commissioned. She also took the enlistment oath as an enlisted soldier before going to Office Candidate School (OCS). As enlisted soldiers we were assigned to Military Intelligence and worked as Intelligence Analysts. After OCS I was branched to Armor and she remained in Intelligence as a Counter Intelligence officer. Sam Prince is not the only one who’s had some life experiences serving his country.
I had to laugh out loud reading his commentary on the UCMJ. Sam Prince wrote, “By oath, I could not then nor can I now be compelled to comply with an illegal order or anything unconstitutional. Even today, if I commit an illegal act, I can be tried by court-martial under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.” If that is correct then Sam should pay more attention to the UCMJ. I call your attention to Article 88 of the UCMJ. “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
Now let’s be honest here, all retired Commissioned Officers are under the UCMJ only in theory. Nobody in the government really cares one flip what Sam Prince has to say. There is a great article by Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Davidson in the July 1999 issue of Army Lawyer, entitled “Contemptuous Speech Against the President.” If you’ve let your subscription lapse to the Army Lawyer, you can Goggle it on the Internets. My point here is Sam Prince engages in embellishments and over statements in all his articles. He never gives examples or proof in his writings. There is always a communist lurking in the shadows ready to pollute our precious body fluids and Obama is taking us into Socialism. But we never know what or how this is happening. He has only rhetoric with no substance; just sound and fury.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Sam Prince is Fucked Up like a Soup Sandwich.

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