But he has claimed no such thing.
Now most news sources I can find say that he was in the Navy for three years, which is different.
Citation needed? I should think so.
Of course not. But that it does happen is not news, any more than "dog bites man" is news.
Here's one for you. It's been nearly 6 years now since this story broke, yet not a single topic started here in the JREF forum, not a peep from Democracy Now, nothing on the national news. IMHO, because the story is all about politics, nothing more.
Now this is where you make the illogical leap to "the government is mistreating people". We have at best evidence that individual soldiers are mistreating people, none at all that this is the policy of the government. And the media is doing a disservice by portraying it as such.
What are the four branches?
Well, n=1 evidence but, I'm in the UK, I have no idea what the SEALs do, other than they are some kind of Naval unit, and I can't even imagine what the 4th branch of your armed forces could be.
Are you trying to start a debate over whether or not the Marines are separate from the Navy?
Yes, I would be very surprised.
No, it's not trivial. Such orders would be illegal, and servicemen are obligated to not obey illegal orders. Giving such an order for a coverup is the kind of thing that can get a president impeached, whereas worst case scenario (everything that this guy claims happened as he claimed it did), it's just another embarrassment which will have little lasting consequence. It doesn't make any sense that there would be a coverup, and little chance that an attempted coverup could ever succeed.
No they can't. Once someone is retired, there's almost no legal way to do anything to their pension, and it makes no sense (for the reasons stated about) that the Bush administration would try, let alone succeed, in doing so by illegal means.
LOL. Yep. But in fairness, it was in response to a person who was trying to sound like he was much smarter than the average American.
It might, to a conspiracy theorist. But the guy had been shooting in other places too, like Afghanistan and Turkey. I'm betting he already has a lot of film in the can. Seems like quite an elaborate setup just to spend some time in prison in order to make the US look bad.
There is little doubt that because of the scandals with prisoner treatment in Iraq, the press is "looking for" another hot story. (Their business is to sell papers, you know.) But this excuse could be used for any story which the press decides to cover extensively while ignoring or lightly treating others. Like the threads here, some stories catch on, others don't. As an editor, you want stories that catch on.