Soldier Jailed for Rap Lyrics is Discharged

[Hissyspit]

Not sure if this got posted. I didn't see it in doing search of DU:

http://www.truthout.org/soldier-jailed-rap-lyrics-is-discharged58678

Soldier Jailed for Rap Lyrics Is Discharged
Sunday 18 April 2010
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report

Until April 17, US Army Spc. Marc Hall sat in a military brig at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, facing an imminent court-martial for challenging the US military’s stop-loss policy in a song.

Sunday morning, Spc. Hall was granted a discharge by the military.

On December 17, 2009, Hall was jailed for writing a song about the personal impact of being forced to remain in the military beyond the scope of his contract by the stop-loss policy.

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He was charged with five specifications in violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, two of those for wrongfully communicating a threat based on song lyrics. Article 134 is a vague rule that outlaws anything "to the prejudice of good order and discipline."

Lyrics included Hall saying he may "go Fort Hood," a reference to the mass shooting at Fort Hood on November 5, which prosecutors for the Army claimed was a threat of violence.

"I explained to (my first sergeant) that the hardcore rap song was a free expression of how people feel about the Army and its stop-loss policy," Hall said at the time. "I explained that the song was neither a physical threat nor any threat whatsoever. I told him it was just hip-hop."

According to Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting military objectors like Hall, he was not jailed for the song, but was instead jailed "in retaliation for his formal complaint of inadequate mental health services available to him at Fort Stewart. The Army used an angry song that Spc. Hall, a combat veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post-traumatic stress, had produced criticizing the stop-loss policy as the pretext."

What put the 34-year-old New York City native in the brig were, according to Paterson, Hall’s persistent assertions of inadequate mental health care that culminated in a December 7 complaint to the Army Investigator General. Just five days after that, Hall was charged with violating "good order and discipline" at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and was shipped out of the country for a court martial in Kuwait.

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"I think they waited as long as they did to be vindictive. This is something they should have agreed to weeks ago when we asked," Gespass said.

Hall’s discharge is a general discharge under other-than-honorable conditions.

"The VA is a hard system to navigate, so even though he has service-related injuries, he will have to fight for what he gets," Paterson said. "But we’re behind him. We’re going to push to get that discharge upgraded."

Gespass feels similarly.

"We are very, very happy with the outcome, and I think there’s a good chance we can get him benefits for military related disabilities and we can upgrade the discharge, which is the thing I plan on working on next."

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