Honestly, the most contradictory pieces of dialog and characterization I've seen.
The night before she goads kaffy into bringing Jessup at the risk of his career and then right before he examines him, she tells him can get court martialed.
The night before she goads kaffy into bringing Jessup at the risk of his career and then right before he examines him, she tells him can get court martialed.Consider the context (two different circumstances). The night before he was drunk and ready to completely give up and surrender Dawson and Downey to murder charges. He wasn't even willing to put up a fight. And because of that she lost all respect for him. After he changes his mind, he formulates a very risky strategy, based solely on his ability to goad Jessup into saying he ordered a code red. She was perfectly willing to go along with that plan, as long as it didn't involve directly accusing Jessup of a crime without evidence (because that would threaten Kaffee's career). She wasn't telling him not to examine Jessup, she was just telling him to be careful how he did it.
That's utterly ridiculous.
They day before she knew he had no evidence on Jessup and despite that, she told him "to put it on the stand and get it from him" That was the whole point of the argument and why Cruise mocked her idea.
It would be an impossibility to not accuse Jessup either directly or indirectly at that point. Cross Examination (actually direct examination of a hostile witness) is not magic where you can just pull things from witnesses without having meaningful material to impeach.
In actuality, the dialog from Moore's character was there to create drama for the characters. Cruise character had to be in jeopardy or else it would not have tension.
They day before she knew he had no evidence on Jessup and despite that, she told him "to put it on the stand and get it from him" That was the whole point of the argument and why Cruise mocked her idea.There is a big difference between the two. He was already successfully trapping Jessup in a web of lies before he went into his accusation (which really wasn't even necessary at that point).
It would be an impossibility to not accuse Jessup either directly or indirectly at that point.
Cross Examination (actually direct examination of a hostile witness) is not magic where you can just pull things from witnesses without having meaningful material to impeach."If you gave an order that Pvt. Santiago wasn't to be touched, and your orders are always followed, then why would Santiago be in danger? Why did he need to be transferred?" That's not an accusation, that is an unanswerable question that demonstrated the inconsistency in Jessup's claim that's Santiago was being transferred because his life was in "grave danger", reinforces the defense notion of Kendrick ordering a code red, and casts all kinds of reasonable doubt that Dawson and Downey committed murder. The part he tact in on to the end (the actual accusation) was really unnecessary, but done for dramatic purposes.