SAN DIEGO – A military judge ordered a Navy sailor on Thursday to complete three months of hard labor for refusing to deploy with his ship in protest of the war in Iraq, but he declined prosecutors’ requests for time in custody.
Lt. Cmdr. Bob Klant also reduced Pablo Paredes’ rank from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest in the Navy.
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Paredes arrived at the Navy pier that day wearing a T-shirt that read “Like a Cabinet Member, I Resign” and handed over his military ID card, telling a military police officer “I quit.” Paredes has alerted the media to his plans and a crowd of TV cameras was waiting for him.
The judge seemed troubled by Paredes’ conduct – wearing a “silly T-shirt” with an incoherent message and staging a news conference that upset sailors and Marines who were saying goodbye to their families.
Klant said Paredes’ actions seemed out of character for the former Catholic altar boy who consistently received positive evaluations from his superiors in Navy. Rather, they resembled the sort of “tantrum” the judge said he saw too often in his court from disobedient sailors.
Paredes requested conscientious objector status after he refused to board the ship. A Navy officer who reviewed his case found that his refusal was based on political opposition to the Iraq war, not a moral opposition to all war and recommended it be denied. The application is awaiting a final decision from Paredes’ chain of command.
But it’s perfectly reasonable for your country to throw a tantrum and invade another for incoherent reasons.
Let’s face it – the state has lost its mind
“The media coverage of this past election was a pastiche. Our right to know what our rulers are doing to people the world over is being lost in the new propaganda consensus.”
By John Pilger
Dr Les Roberts study found that “at least” 100,000 civilians had died violently, the great majority of them at the hands of the “coalition”: women, children, the elderly. He also described how American military doctors had found that 14 per cent of soldiers and 28 per cent of marines had killed a civilian: a huge, unreported massacre.