A highly decorated 18-year Army veteran was officially charged with disobeying orders and dereliction of duty after refusing to be deployed to Afghanistan because he questions whether Barack Obama is eligible to be president.
Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, a senior physician with the United States Army, said that his deployment orders were invalid because the nation’s commander-in-chief has failed to prove that he was born in this country, CNN reports. Individuals who were not born in the U.S. cannot be elected president.
"I am not guilty of these charges, and will plead ‘not guilty’ to them because of my conviction that our commander-in-chief may be ineligible under the United States Constitution to serve in that highest of all offices," said Lakin.
"If President Obama is a natural-born citizen, then the American people deserve to see proof, and if he is not, then I believe the orders in this case were illegal," he added.
Lakin, who entered a deferred plea at his court martial arraignment last week, is not alone in his skepticism as to whether Obama was born in Hawaii, as he and the state have claimed. The news source reports that as many as 25 percent of Americans question whether Obama was born in the U.S.
