By Jack Cashill
AmericanThinker.com
July 5, 2012
Former
Lt. Col. Terry Lakin knows what despair feels like. He felt it
full-bore on a late December day in 2010. Having been stripped of his
rank, income, benefits, pension, and authority at court martial, this
much-honored 17-year U.S. Army veteran was about to lose his freedom.
The good doctor
had refused deployment to Afghanistan. He had been there before in his
role as flight surgeon and would have been happy to go again. He had
his bags packed and was ready to leave. All he asked from his
commander-in-chief before boarding the plane was a sign, a nod to the constitutional niceties, a show of his birth certificate. It was not forthcoming.
Now,
Lakin was on his way to Fort Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional
Facility. Of all his hardship deployments, Bosnia included, this would
be the hardest. After he bid a tearful farewell to his wife and three
young children, his military minders chained his hands together and
attached those chains to a band around his waist. They chained his legs
and attached those, too. They then loaded him into a van and drove him
to Reagan National.
There,
Lakin endured his ultimate humiliation: a seemingly endless perp walk
-- a shuffle really -- through a concourse filled with flags and
patriotic bunting and the happy sight of returning soldiers. None of
the display had lost its appeal, but Lakin could not overlook the irony
of his being chained and bound amidst it all.
