So....if you REFUSE a direct order, you should be court-martialed?

All these folks writing and calling in to complain about the GIs in Iraq who refused to deliver contaminated fuel in unarmored vehicles...do they really feel
that they should be court-martialed?

Would their refusal be analogous to refusing to take a flight physical?

:eyes:

i've noticed.

i think that you can safely ignore an unlawful order i.e. contaminating your own troops :crazy:

peace

this was word of mouth - not official

To me, it is precisely analogous. To a wingnut? Probably not.

Yes, the GI's who refused to obey the lawful order to deliver the fuel
(the jury is still out on whether the fuel was contaminated - that has
turned into a 'he-said, she-said' fight), need their gonads held over
the fire. They knew when they signed up that they might get shot at,
and just because you are a truck-driver, that doesn't give you a waiver
to whine 'I might get shot at!' Suck it up dude!

As for refusing to take a physical, I'm not sure. The job required that
a physical be taken, to make sure that he was physically up for the
job slot that he was holding. By not taking the physical, he became
disqualified for the slot, and unable to perform the duty. In this
case, the AF could have pulled the 'and other duties as assigned' card
that the military is always good about using, and he could have been
manning a supply counter in BFE, Wyoming, dispensing toilet brushes
from the supply room. But, the family had $$, so......

I was.

Refusing a direct order is serious business. Applying a "Suck it up, dudes!" platitude to the situation reveals your understanding of military matters.

As far as refusing to take a physical: I was 40 minutes LATE for a flight physical once, and there was talk of an Article 15. In my 8 years active duty, I NEVER heard of someone refusing a flight physical.

I'd like to see you come say that at the funeral of a returned soldier (under cover of night..no photos, please). Say it to the family, ok?
Look up the one guy in the family who looks like me...the guy who's 6'4" and 280 lbs. Be sure to identify yourself as the person who thinks his nephew or his son's death can be framed in terms of "sucking it up"......explain it to them.....mmmmmmkay?
oh, and make sure someone has video running. We'd all like to see what transpires.

Where their grievances can be aired in a UCMJ court. There are good reasons to disobey a direct order and the only true and correct way to remedy them is in the court. Justice will prevail. It appears the military is doing a tap dance to avoid this during the election circus.

Hmmm, flight physical? Seems that justice wasn't served well.

and not descriptive of this situation 'refusing a direct order', not trying to take over command.

though the powers that be realize that a court martial won't look good if it turns out that troops were looking out for other troops and i agree, there's certainly a 'tap dance' goin on.

peace

yet the media chose to use that slanted word. Perhaps the UCMJ has a better definition.


My family rises up against my authority through mutinous actions all the time because we are a democracy (and mostly because they are smart) ;)


mutiny

\Mu"ti*ny\, v. i. 1. To rise against, or refuse to obey, lawful authority in military or naval service; to excite, or to be guilty of, mutiny or mutinous conduct; to revolt against one's superior officer, or any rightful authority.

Disobeying a direct order is not necessarily mutinous or seditious.

But it is grounds for courtmartial

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-1.htm

Port Chicago Naval Magazine Explosion, 1944

<snip>
Port Chicago would also lead people to examine their society. There was growing resentment toward the policies of racial segregation throughout the nation. The Navy opened its ranks to African-Americans in 1942, but men served in segregated units supervised by white officers, and opportunities for advancement were extremely limited. The men assigned to the ordnance battalion were African American.

The explosion had shaken all of the men, but especially those surviving men who worked on the pier. Of the 320 men killed, almost 2/3 were African-American from the ordnance battalion. What had been minor grievances and problems before the explosion began to boil as apprehension of returning to the piers grew. On 9 August, less than one month after the explosion, the surviving men, who had experienced the horror, were to begin loading munitions, this time at Mare Island. They told their officers that they would obey any other order, but not that one.

Of the 328 men of the ordnance battalion, 258 African-American sailors refused to load ammunition. In the end, 208 faced summary courts-martial and were sentenced to bad conduct discharges and the forfeit of three month's pay for disobeying orders. The remaining 50 were singled out for general courts martial on the grounds of mutiny. The sentence could have been death, but they received between eight and fifteen years at hard labor after a trial which a 1994 review had strong racial overtones. Soon after the war, in January 1946, all of the men were given clemency and an opportunity for an honorable discharge. On 23 December 1999, President William Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles, one of the few still living members of the original 50.
<more>

of people begin disobeying an order, it can become a mutiny.

If you join the army you volunteer to die. After signing on the dotted line it's too late to save yourself.

There are rules in the UCMJ that deal with lawful orders. I think it is Article 92. I'll look it up.

I think in this case the GIs who refused to drive unarmored trucks have at least as good a leg to stand on as Bush who seems to have never given a satisfactory reason for refusing a direct order to take a flight physical.

The UCMJ requires that LAWFUL orders must be obeyed. Now that these reservists have alledgedly disobeyed an order, the burden is on them to prove the order was indeed unlawful. Stupid, misguided, silly, or dangerous is no defense. The order must be unlawful. Shrub, in his failure to take his flight physical did not disobey a direct order, BTW.

I am looking through the UCMJ and other sources to see if there is an Army officer equivalent of "first, do no harm" or something like that. I'm sure that intentionally sending folks into harm's way UNNECESSARILY is illegal.

Like I said, it may be stupid, but not illegal.

:hi:

BUT i think it is a very valuable study to consider that you can always judge the validity of a military movement by the willingness of the soldiers to do their duty. in WWII, how many US soldiers even volunteered for suicide missions, because they knew they were doing something to stop a genocide? but, in this "war," it seems that the soldiers know they're not dying for anything worthwhile. and while i agree with another poster that when you sign up, you know you'll have to perform dangerous missions, i can see and understand that even the soldiers think this war is a disgusting waste of human life.

so, personally, i applaud these soldiers. although, in a way, i'm sad that they had to break the law to share their point of view.

I actually have been thinking about this sine the story broke.


if you're troops arne't willign to go along with your mission, what does that say about your mission?