Army ‘Birther’ Pleads Guilty at Trial

We could just settle for this soldier getting what he deserves, but we would miss too much. By all accounts Lieutenant Col. Terry Lakin was good at his job, showed no signs of coming close to pulling a stunt like this. So how does a loyal soldier, smart enough to be a surgeon, end up believing a lie that will cost him everything he worked so hard for?

Army ‘Birther’ Pleads Guilty at Trial

December 14, 2010
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan
FORT MEADE, Md. — Lieutenant Col. Terry Lakin, the Army surgeon who has morphed into the poster child for the so-called “birther” movement, pleaded guilty at a court-martial this morning to violating military law by failing to report for pre-deployment processing at Fort Campbell, Ky.

But in a courtroom at this sprawling base just outside Washington, D.C., Lakin fought a single charge of missing movement by deliberately skipping his April flight to Fort Campbell from Baltimore-Washington Airport in Maryland. Lakin was to report at the Kentucky post of the 32nd Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan.

“I wrongly chose to disobey all orders,” Lakin told Judge Col. Denise R. Lind, who questioned him at length before accepting his guilty plea. Lakin drew a distinction between the charge he pleaded guilty to — failing to report for duty — and the charge of missing movement by skipping the flight to Fort Campbell.

Lakin refused to deploy to Afghanistan this summer because he maintains that if Obama is not legally eligible to be commander-in-chief and therefore any orders he issues would be unlawful.

Whether or not Lakin is convicted on the one remaining charge, he still faces a maximum of 18 months in jail, separation from the Army, and loss of all pay and allowances. One of the four counts of disobeying orders was subsequently dismissed by the court because the same charge is incorporated into one of the other counts. Had the conviction remained he would be looking at an additional six months confinement.
Army Birther Pleads Guilty at Trial

Somehow a tiny group of people managed to convince him that President Obama was not born in this country and the rest of the people in the country simply allowed him to be elected no matter what. Nothing Hawaii officials could do, the President himself, or anyone else, was enough to prove he is a natural born citizen. Do the birthers have any responsibility in this? Will any of them have to pay any price at all for the down fall of this career Army surgeon?

What was the job of the media in all of this to make sure the truth was known so someone like Lakin would believe it? Maybe there is nothing that could have been done if he really wanted to believe President Obama was not his Commander-in-Chief just as maybe there is nothing that will change the minds of anyone else. When civilians believe lies, the price to pay is a vote for the wrong person but in this case, it cost a soldier his career and perhaps even his own freedom.