Berghdal to plead guilty to desertion

[emailking]

Sad

Desertion needs to be legal, Soldiers should have the right to quit their job at any time just like literally anyone else in the work force.

They have no right to desertion. Service members have little rights to begin with and are subject to the UCMJ and punishable by both military and civilian laws if necessary. Only officers have the right to put in for a resignation and more often than not, it is refused by the CO unless you are at the end of the term of obligated service.

He knew what he was doing when he left the wire and should face the music and Leavenworth.

He's saying they should have the right to desertion, not that they do.

Also, I think there's a difference between deserting in the middle of a battle or even in the middle of a deployment, vs. simply wanting to quit the military before x number of years is up.

[emailking]

Officers can resign (most don't and it likely won't be approved until near the end of commission  date), enlisted members can't. If they do before they EAOS (End of Active Obligated Service), they would be subject to the UCMJ. The only way they can get out is by smoking a joint, other drugs, popping on a piss test, and getting a Gen discharge (I saw this many times at my first command) or committing some other crime but they would be subject to a court martial for higher crimes under the UCMJ and if convicted, they would still be in the military but knocked down to E-1 and sent to a military prison.

I know how it works. I'm saying the way it works is unfair/bad.

[emailking]

Let's be clear, a judge just sprung a traitor explicitly to punish the President for speaking out on the case.

No, it has nothing to do with punishing Trump. It's about fairness to the defendant. The argument was that he could not receive a fair sentence after the President's statement, and the judge agreed felt he was legally obligated to consider it as a mitigating factor in the defendant's favor. Now you may not like that line of reasoning, but it wasn't done to punish Trump.

We also don't even know if that actually affected the sentence or whether or not he received jail time.