Former Pentagon propagandist supports ‘birther’ officer
By Muriel Kane
Friday, April 23rd, 2010 -- 10:41 pm
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0423/pentagon-propagandist-supports-birther-officer/An army officer who is facing court-martial charges after refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan has been attracting support from a number of prominent figures on the extreme right.
The most recent endorsement of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin's claim that no orders issued by the US military are legitimate because President Barack Obama is not a native-born American citizen comes from Maj. Gen. (ret.) Paul Vallely, who stated in a radio interview featured on Friday by the conservative website WorldNetDaily that he believes Lakin has "a valid point."
"I think many in the military -- and many out of the military -- question the natural-birth status of Barack Obama," Vallely remarked. "I'm not convinced that he is (a natural-born citizen)."
Even before Vallely weighed in on the case, Lakin's defiance was coming to be seen as something of a publicity stunt. Dave Weigel, who blogs about the conservative movement for the Washington Post, headed a Friday entry, "Yes, the birther soldier is doing this for publicity" and described WorldNetDaily as "the ground zero for coverage of this stuff."
WorldNetDaily previously promoted an appearance by Lakin and his lawyer on the syndicated radio show of convicted Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy. Jerome Corsi, author of the anti-Kerry Unfit for Command and more recently of a widely-criticized book slamming Obama, has also been publicizing the Lakin case in his role as a WorldNetDaily reporter.