Have you ever had a plan to do something that you thought would be so great, but as you implemented that plan, you realized you hadn't quite thought everything through?
Like wearing sexy heels to Six Flags. It starts off fine, and you think you're looking real hot, but after an hour, when your feet are killing you and you have six more hours to be there, you realize what a horribly bad idea it was.
Well, apparently that is the fix that Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin finds himself in today. Lakin took a stand against President Barack Obama and refused to deploy to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama is not a legitimate president of the United States. He claims Obama is not a citizen, and thus, ineligible to serve.
The Army rewarded his stand and his political views with a court martial, jail time and the loss of millions in pension benefits.
Once realizing his "stand" wasn't turning out too well, he said, SIKE!
Much like wearing heels to Six Flags, it seems that the colonel's plan wasn't very well thought through. Throwing his career and a bunch of money down the toilet was not quite the result Lakin had in mind.
Lakin, looking like a big dummy, now says that despite his questions about Obama's eligibility for office, he was wrong not to follow Army orders:
"I don't want it to end this way," Lakin told the jury Wednesday under questioning from his lawyer. "I want to continue to serve."
Prosecutors aren't buying it, though.
The prosecutor, Philip J. O'Beirne, said Lakin had other options, such as resigning or asking not to be deployed, if he had issues with his orders.
Instead, he used his deployment earlier this year as a political ploy, O'Beirne said, going to great lengths to create a "spectacle" by informing people of what he was doing.
Under questioning by his lawyer, he admitted that he used his deployment as a way to raise the issue and that he knew when he disobeyed orders that his "career was over."
Friday morning, a military prosecutor asked the jury to sentence Lakin to at least two years in a military prison and to dismiss him from service.
The jury returned with a sentence of six months in jail and dismissal from the armed services.
He'll have a lot of time in jail to study maps.
Maybe during that time, he will finally realize that Hawaii is a part of the United States. Good riddance!