Deserter - Idiot? Coward? Politico? - Part 2
By Blackfive on Military Stuff
Blackfive Blog
Back in March, I said this about Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia:
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Maybe Mejia is being used. Maybe he's dumb. Maybe he's a coward. One thing's for sure, though, is that he abandoned his men. <font size=3>
Whether he abandoned them because he was scared, had a bad commander, or was opposed to the war is not a relevant issue.
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He needs to be punished. And George Bush has nothing to do with it.
That was in response to his lawyers threatening to use the "George Bush went AWOL" as a defense.
Fox News has an update (from AP). Meija has hired former Attorney General Ramsey Clarke to defend him. His attorneys have begun to use the prisoner abuse scandal to try to get their client off of the hook.
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Prosecutor: Anti-War Soldier 'Abandoned His Men'
FORT STEWART, Ga. — <font size=4>A U.S. soldier who said he refused to report to duty because he opposes the war in Iraq walked away from his unit "when they needed him the most," a prosecutor told a military jury Thursday.
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Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, an infantrymen with the Florida National Guard, is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after a two-week furlough in October.
"It's about a squad leader who abandoned his men when they needed him the most," Capt. A.J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, said in his opening statement.
Mejia claims he deserted his unit in part to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners. His attorney, Louis Font, told jurors that members of Mejia's squad will testify that the soldier of nine years was a fine officer and "a good squad leader who took care of his men."
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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, one of Mejia's lawyers, said Mejia's unit was ordered to use sleep-deprivation tactics with blindfolded Iraqi detainees, in at least one instance by loading a pistol next to their heads.
Clark, attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson, said Mejia was protected by international law to avoid duties that would have constituted war crimes. He compared Mejia's claims of prisoner mistreatment to the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"The United States is seeking to court-martial soldiers in (Iraq) for outrageous abuses at the same time it prosecutes a soldier halfway around the world because he did what he had a duty to do under international law," Clark said.
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While he said publicly that he became upset after seeing Iraqi civilians hit by gunfire during an ambush on his unit, he never mentioned witnessing abuse of Iraqi detainees. He instead described those allegations in his objector application, filed March 16....
His duty, if there was abuse of prisoners, was to report it up the chain of command and continue the mission.
That would be difficult for his lawyer, Louis Font, to understand. He went to West Point but was a Conscientious Objector to avoid duty in Viet Nam.
Notice also that he filed his CO paperwork after he was caught deserting.
I changed my mind. He's all three - he is an idiot, coward, and politico. |
