pub crawler said:
Dread, a soldier being frustrated with the current presidential administration is different than a soldier having issues with, for example, his or her commanding officer over the manner in which he or she is treated by said commanding officer. If your commanding officer is sadistically pistol whipping you just for the hell of it, of course you take it up the chain of command. But that's a helluva lot different than simply expressing one's opinion about the current presidential administration.
Not so. You are partially correct, however, you are a soldier in the chain of command. The President is #1 then the Secretary of Defence follows down to the lowliest soldier in the chain of command. You do not have a right, while in uniform to go out to a reporter and criticize them publicly. They are part of the Chain of Command. You do not have a right while in uniform to say anything disparaging about them. You can be Court Martialled under the United States Code of Military Justice for such an offence.
pub crawler said:
A soldier is entitled to have views differing from the administration. The comment by the General that soldiers are not free to say "anything disparaging about the secretary of defense, or the president of the United States" is ridiculous.
Yes, a soldier is allowed to have different opinions. They are not allowed to express them while wearing the Uniform of the United States Armed Forces. It is not rediculous, General Douglas MacArthur, was FIRED for publically criticizing President Truman in 1951 over Korea.
Again, these soldiers have been active since September. I think it is WRONG given our history in WWI and WWII to bitch publically to reporters, when others who DID NOT volunteer and were drafted, served overseas for much longer periods of time. I also would like to know if ABC and Peter Jennings went and interviewed soldiers in Bosnia when Clinton promised them that they would only be there for 6 months. I am pretty sure they did not.
ABC was well aware that the soldiers they had interviewed were acting innapropriately. If they gave a
about them, and were interested in giving the American public a view into the moral of the troops they could very easily have not used their names and just played the audio. But Peter Jennings summed it up like this:
[Q]"We've had a lot of questions in the last 24 hours about whether soldiers are permitted to publicly criticize their mission or their superiors, as some did on this program last night. Officially, a soldier could be court-martialed for this, although it is rare and at the discretion of his commander. We were reminded today of a common refrain from drill sergeants to their troops:
'We are here to defend democracy, not to practice it.' Those soldiers who lashed out on this broadcast about the Pentagon are based at Fort Stewart in Georgia. It was, as we've said, a very unusual outburst.?[/Q]
The part that I put into bold is word for word what we learned in Basic Training. When you go into the service, you truly give up part of your rights. I have been unexpectedly called to duty. I have packed my bags being told I am leaving for another country in 24 hours. I remember rounds of drinks being bought for myself and my fellow NCO's by the Command Sergent Major as a good-bye present because we were supposed to be leaving for Hati. President Clinton was not my favorite person that night as I made a phone call to my wife to say good-bye from what was supposed to be a 48 hour drill weekend. Shoot, I totally disagreed with the policy. The laughable part of the whole thing was the leader they wanted to install in Hatti was staying at the Ritz-Carlton Boston at the time, where I worked. Think I wanted to go to Hatti and die, while the future leader was living it up at the Ritz?
I signed my name on a line to serve and follow lawful orders not stand up and speak out against them.
i am getting tired of seeing daily reports of a solider being killed and watching the death rate go up. 
