Kausfiles was predicting a major Kerry discharge story, and it's out in print now. Polipundit had background. Briefly, the military knows five types of discharge:
1. Honorable. The person performed all required service and has no black marks in his records. Bush got this.2. General - Honorable Conditions. This is usually granted for a person who did not complete his service but not for a bad reason, e.g., medical problems prevented completion of required service. We'd give this for chronic obesity. Kerry did serve all his time, so this wouldn't be it.
3. Other Than Honorable Conditions. We used OTH in the Reserves for Marines who quit coming in or popped positive for illegal drug use on urinalysis. Although you COULD get them at a worse level, the OTH did not require a court martial and could be done entirely on paper - a huge advantage for the Reserves who just want the bad egg off the roster and don’t have the time to do the court martial. It’s a black mark, though - for example, you’d have a hell of a time becoming a cop or getting admitted to a state bar. Or even getting hired by the Postal Service. (At least, this was the line we gave kids to scare them into coming to drill again.)
4. Bad Conduct. The BCD required significantly more procedural mess, including officer review, hearings, etc. I can’t recall if it required a court martial (they, too, come in various flavors and levels; kind of like quarks). If you have a BCD, I am pretty certain you’d have grave difficulties getting admitted to the practice of law. At least today. Maybe the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in the 70’s preferred folks with BCDs but I doubt it.
5. Dishonorable. This is tantamount to a felony conviction. I very much doubt that Kerry could have been admitted to the bar or been hired by a county prosecutor with a Dishonorable discharge. In fact, it’s hard to believe that Kerry had one hanging over his head from '72 to '77 and even got in to law school. I was not admitted until 2000, but when I applied, they made some cursory check to insure I would eventually be able to pass the character and fitness examination for the bar. I assume they did the same thing in the '70s.
The implication is that Kerry's involvement with various loonbat [sic] groups while still technically in uniform might have led to something other than (1): by elimination only (3), "other than honorable", remains. It's possible that the story is just pre-election mudslinging, but Kerry's continued refusal to release his entire service records amounts to "putting out the fire while feeding the flames".
Stay tuned for the extended CBS report on all this ;-)
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