The more involved I get in covering the story of the Pendleton 8 the more email messages, phone calls and letters I receive from retired military members from across America.
What I find interesting is that the overwhelming theme to these messages are all consistent: a deep mistrust and lack of respect of the military judicial system by those who have served.
At the same time occasionally I will hear from someone who has served as a military lawyer and here again another trend develops: a great pride for their profession and in the high standards of quality which they believe the military judicial systems strives to adhere to.
How
could two parties to the same system be so far apart? That is a
question I have been asking myself for weeks as I my listener and
reader responses continue to grow.
At first I thought perhaps the content of my blog postings, Washington Times articles
and radio show simply were attracting those who were disenchanted with
the military... but that has not always been the case.At a loss for
an explanation, it came to me during a conversation I had with Craig
Hume the news director at KUSI television in San Diego.
Craig had asked me to bring him up to speed on the Pendleton 8
trial. I explained how the government had the right to pick-and-choose
which evidence the defense had access to, and which it did not. I
described how there were accusations of coerced statements of
confession and psychological threats of rubber hoses to be used during
the investigation, but there were no cameras or videos present in the
investigation room, and so on and so forth.
Craig responded that the system lacked transparency.There was my answer. The system does indeed lack transparency.
Any bureaucracy, organization or business always has an inherent mistrust by it members when decisions are made without the daylight of transparency.
Our military judicial system is no different
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