Convicted yesterday, leftist peacenik and so-called serviceman Pablo Paredes was sentenced today.
A military judge ordered a Navy sailor on Thursday to complete three months of hard labor for refusing to deploy with his ship in protest of the war in Iraq, but he declined prosecutors’ requests for time in custody.
Lt. Cmdr. Bob Klant also reduced Pablo Paredes’ rank from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest in the Navy.
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Prosecutors had asked Klant to sentence Paredes to nine months in confinement, three months less than the possible maximum, and a bad conduct discharge.
“He is trying to infect the military with his own philosophy of disobedience,” prosecutor Lt. Brandon Hale said. “Sailors all over the world will want to know whether this will be tolerated. Sailors want to know whether doing what he did is a good way to get out of deployment.”
Prosecutors left the courtroom without making any statements, but Sam Samuelson, a Navy spokesman, said Paredes’ guilty verdict sent a message.
“His actions were in conflict with his duty and taxpayers’ obligations that the Navy maintain good order and discipline,” Samuelson said.
Paredes got off way too easily. His lawyers know it and consider it a victory.
Paredes’ lawyer, Jeremy Warren, called the judge’s lesser sentence “a stunning blow to the prosecution.”
“This is an affirmation of every sailor’s and military person’s right to speak out and follow their conscience,” he said.
Actually, a guilty verdict is exactly not that, jackass.
Paredes and his ilk are cancers to the service and our society. Paredes himself is even worse — he’s a publicity whore of a cancer.
Paredes arrived at the Navy pier that day wearing a T-shirt that read “Like a Cabinet Member, I Resign” and handed over his military ID card, telling a military police officer “I quit.” Paredes has alerted the media to his plans and a crowd of TV cameras was waiting for him.
The judge seemed troubled by Paredes’ conduct – wearing a “silly T-shirt” with an incoherent message and staging a news conference that upset sailors and Marines who were saying goodbye to their families.
With all that, I say again this immature little punk got off way to easily. I do wonder, though, how his fellow sailors will treat him in the future.