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Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz: Portrait of a Traitor
In today’s New York Times I was disturbed to read about another left-wing hero/American traitor. Every once in a while the military finds itself with a turncoat within its ranks and that person is usually dealt with swiftly. Unfortunately, the turncoat usually does significant damage before he is discovered.
That was the situation with Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz who was stationed at the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Diaz enlisted in the Army as a 17-year-old high-school dropout. He had earned his college degree while serving as an artillery sergeant and then completed law school. In 10 years as a Navy lawyer, his performance evaluations had been outstanding.
With another promotion all but certain and his 6-month tour at Gitmo nearing its end, Lt. Cmdr. Diaz decided to throw it all away and betray his country.
Sitting at a secure desktop computer, he printed out page after page of classified information. When he was done, Diaz had assembled a document 39 pages long. In tiny type, it listed names, prison serial numbers and other information for each of the 551 men who were then being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay.
For nearly two weeks after printing the list, he kept it locked inside the safe in his office. He later trimmed the pages down to the size of index cards, and slipped the pages inside a Valentine’s Day card he had purchased at the base store.
Diaz then mailed the classified documents to the New York offices of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-wing legal-advocacy group that was among the most zealous opponents of the Bush administration’s Guantanamo policy.
The center was then suing the government on a range of sensitive issues including the Patriot Act, immigrants’ rights, and of course Guantanamo.
To their credit the Center turned the documents over to the Justice Department. A short investigation by the F.B.I. revealed that Diaz had printed the documents from his computer and had left his fingerprints all over them.
This past May, Matthew Diaz became the only United States serviceman to be convicted and imprisoned for an act of insubordination directed at the Bush administration’s detention policies.
On May 18 this year, after a weeklong trial, a panel of seven naval officers convicted Diaz on four of five counts, including one of disclosing secret defense information that “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.”
After a few crocodile tears in front of a jury he was only sentenced to 6 months in prison, a dishonorable discharge, and permanent loss of his law license.
The article in the NY Times portrays Diaz as some kind of martyr who wanted to do the right thing no matter what the cost.
When you join the military you follow orders and shut the hell up. You certainly don’t release documents that have been deemed classified because YOU think they shouldn’t have been.
Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz is a disgrace to the uniform he wore and to his country. He is extremely lucky to have only received six months in prison, because 10 years would have been far more appropriate.
We have a big enough problem with liberal activists trying to undermine the war effort from the outside without having those people do damage from the inside as well.
By Chris Jones
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7 Responses to “Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz: Portrait of a Traitor”
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you are the king of all tools. CANT WAIT TILL JAN WHEN STUPID REPUBLICANS KISS THE WHITE HOUSE GOOOOODBYE. GO OBAMA!
I may be a tool, but Lt. Cmdr. Diaz is still a traitor.
By Chris Jones’s definition of a traitor, our own Don’t-Tread-On-Me ancestors would be so labeled. He/She would have been a fine citizen of king George’s colony.
WHO is Chris Jones anyway?
Gabrielle,
On behalf of King George’s colony, I want to thank you for reading the article. Please come back again!
The conservatives on this website and others like it are also culpable in the crimes that the Bush administration has committed on the American people. Diaz is a hero… not a a traitor. The traitor are in the White House and on Capitol Hill, hiding behind the flag, the Bible and their deluded “crusade” and will stop at nothing. We live in a Banana Republic, with Bush, Cheney and their ilk as the head monkey, throwing shit at anything that doesn’t help to continue their fascist powerhold on the people through fear, lies and intimidation.
You should all be worried that you are not going to hell! And you should pray the there are more people like Diaz in our military! Long live the unmolested soldier!
STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ!
The government gave this man little choice. Even tho he is out of jail now, he is appealing. He would do it again, and I think he is a patriot for releasing the names of those men this administration is holding, and not proceeding on the habeus corpus they were grant by the Supreme Court.
The government is the traitor, breaking laws, averting the constitution, denying human and legal rights to detainees. And they just change the laws they are breaking so they can redefine them to mean something else.
In order to fight this corrupt goverment, sometimes having the courage to do the right thing, against the pressures of mob mentality like that show on this website, is the only thing you can do.
Thank you Mr. Diaz!
Lt. Cmdr. Diaz is a hero and a patriot. His self sacrifice in the defense of life, liberty and freedom will be remembered.
I’ve often wondered about the mindset of Germans who allowed the rise of the Nazi regime. This article makes me believe that Chris Jones is of a similar mindset. His comment “When you join the military you follow orders and shut the hell up.” reveals something about his nature.
Anyone who agrees with this article should study the Milgram Experiments, then do some soul searching. Is the USA a country of blind patriotism, or a country of principles?