The three Navy SEALs accused of detainee abuse, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators have broad public support, but are taking a high-risk gamble. NJP carries only limited punitive potential, but a court martial conviction – should one be made – can have a more permanent effect.
McCabe and Huertas both deferred a decision on whether to be tried by a military judge or jury. Lombardi said they couldn’t choose because they still have not received the prosecution’s evidence.
The men could have accepted a nonjudicial reprimand but wanted to go to trial to clear their names, Lombardi said. A reprimand could have resulted in a loss of rank; if they are convicted at trial, they could get up to a year in jail, a bad conduct discharge, or a loss of rank or pay…
Military officials have cautioned against a public rush to judgment, saying a true picture will emerge when all the evidence is heard. However, more than 45,000 people have signed onto a Facebook page supporting the SEALs, and U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said in a letter to Gates last week that the prosecution was an overreaction by the military.
The gamble could well work out: Courts martial have defined rules of evidence and procedure, while a captain’s mast depends much upon the commanding officer’s personal whim as his professionalism. A man who knows he’s guilty would do well to stand before his CO and take his knocks, such as they are. One who knows he’s innocent would do far better to go before CM. In between there is a gray area.
At sea, by the way, a sailor may not choose to refuse mast in favor of court martial.
Still, a court martial is not all beer and skittles, and the service – subject to such intense media scrutiny – may well have its back up. I’m reminded of the final two articles in the Laws of the Navy:
Uncharted the rocks that surround thee,
Take heed that the channels thou learn,
Lest thy name serve to buoy for another
That shoal the “Court-Martial Return”.
Though a Harveyised belt may protect her
The ship bears the scar on her side;’
‘Tis well if the Court should acquit thee –
But ’twere best had’st thou never been tried.
To be fair to all parties, you can at least trust that a military court martial has certain advantages over purely political prosecution decisions.
Its hard to see how this turns out anyway but bad for all involved, including the Navy. As for the bastards with the cut lip – they already got off too easy.
All that this episode says is: “don’t ever again take any prisoners”.
If the CO wants live prisoners for intel, then he ought to call in the JAG officer and tell HIM to go find them and bring them in.
This should never have gotten this far, it should never have gone anywhere but into the dustbin of history.
I have nothing but bad and probably evil thoughts for those called upon to try and judge these Navy heroes. I hope every man jack who had a hand in bringing these good men to trial rots in h3ll.
AW1 – your concern does not apply to this case. They are not being charged with their actions in capturing the prisoner. They are being charged for their actions AFTER the prisoner was already safely in their custody. There is a VERY big difference between the two. I am waiting to see all the details on this one, they may well be innocent and will be exonerated. But it is also possibly that they are guilty and actually did do something that they should not have done. Neither you nor I now the thousands of commentators out there have any idea which is really true, but I have been disturbed to see how many people are jumping to conclusions, twisting facts and ignoring details that go against their desired view. Your comments are a perfect example. You might consider that the people in these men’s chain of command who signed off on those charges are largely special operators of all services themselves. JAGs don’t get to do this without a their CO’s sign-off. Do you wish for all of them to go to hell? Save your hate for the enemy.
I have considered that, and reject in toto your comments. This situation should never have occurred, period.
To place these three SEALs into such a position shows plainly that there was a failure of leadership in their command, and that of a level that should warrant a CNO-level investigation.
AQ’s own manual, available to any who want to read it, instructs anyone captured to complain of assault, torture, abuse, etc, and use our own justice system against us.
I have enough hatred for the enemy to last a thousand lifetimes. In this situation, I am more than willing to spare a little towards those who practice lawfare vice warfare, and who, through this well-publicized situation, are diving direct aid and comfort to our nation’s enemies.
I simply cannot fathom the mindset of anyone like yourself who would defend the actions of these brave SEAL’s accusers.
Stop this trial NOW. Return these men to duty with clean service records. Put the word out to the JAG community to back off. That’s not only my position, but the position of more than a hundred Navy enlisted men I have spoken with over the past 3 days.
The Navy has brought this upon themselves, and they have a serious morale problem vis-a-vis this situation brewing.
Again, you talk as if you know exactly what happened. YOU DON’T. Are you saying that if these guys caught this guy, put him into custody and THEN punched him for whatever reason that that is okay? – that there should be no military control of that sort of action? Again, I’m not saying that they did that, but if they did are you fine with it? Because that is what they are being accused of — and of lying about it as well. And while the only thing that their defense lawyers have talked about is that the bad guy made an accusation against them (I am well aware of Al Q’s tactics w/r/t interrogation and accusations of torture) that doesn’t mean that there is not more evidence that the military has against them. The military is restrained by legal rules in what information it can provide to the public w/r/t an ongoing legal action – the defense lawyer is not restrained in what he or she can say. And let me help you fathom my position on this. First of all, I’m very respectful of and supportive of SEALs — I happen to be married to one. But as a Navy veteran myself, I am also very respectful of the requirement for the military to keep something which is called “good order and discipline”. IF these guys did what they were accused of — if the hit a prisoner AFTER he was in custody (not in the process of capturing him) no matter how bad of a scumbag he was — and if they then lied about it up the chain of command, they deserve some sort of reprimand. If that kind of behavior is allowed to go without any punishment, it will become rampant and we will have the kind of situation that led us to the Abu Ghraib abuses. These guys were offered NJP, they’ve decided to take it up a notch. Now, if they are completely innocent – didn’t do anything they are accused of and this is some sort of bizarre witch hunt based simply on the statement of a terrorist prisoner, then they are wise to chose courts -martial to be totally exonerated and in that case I certainly hope they are. The difference between you and me and so many of the people losing their minds over this is that I admit that I don’t know all the facts and that there is a possibility that these guys, however heroic they certainly were in capturing this guy, might have gone over the line after the fact. You refuse to allow for that possibility and chose instead to attack anyone involved in bringing these charges which, I remind you again, are not just JAGS and AF folks — they are special operators of all the services up the chain of command who have read and seen evidence and investigations that you and I and the thousands of folks commenting on this have not been privy to. It is very unfortunate that so many people are reacting to this in the way that they are rather than waiting to see what the facts are.
http://www.navycs.com/downloads/ChargeSheets.pdf
It was a USAF COL in SOCCENT that sent this up the chain…read the charge sheets above. (h/t CDR Salamander and NavyCS.com)
If you’re surprised a zoomie let this go all the way to CENTCOM JAG, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
yeah.
Read those the other day. Confirms a lot of my beliefs about lawfare trumping warfare.
Time to put ever JAG officer from every service into the front lines with a weapon and a hard hat and flack jacket. See if that changes any attitudes or opinions.
A simple directive that no officer may become a JAG unless or until they serve one or more tours in a combat-arms unit.
Won’t solve all the problems, but it would be a start.
To say that I’m ashamed of my service is an understatement. But typical these PC days-everyone O-6 and up in every branch (sorry Curtis, Lex, et al, broad-brush I know, but…) seems to have internalized the multi-culti “nuanced” “lawfare” party-line by now (both line & staff) as solidly as did Soviet officers in Stalin’s time. Sickening…
As an aside, I would point out that historically there have been plenty of courts-martials heavily mired in politics as well, with the case of Billy Mitchell being the prime example. While Gen. Mitchell did, in the opinion of many military historians, technically and very publicly breach lines of command authority by many of his actions (which is why MacArthur thought he should have been punished) the entire affair was drenched in inter-service politics/rivalry. The Navy demanded, to cite just one classic example, that the fins be cut off the bombs before the famous airpower bombing tests (tests which provoked Mitchell to take the actions he did) conducted on naval vessels.
And then we have the politics of the Truman-MacArthur firings with the secret recording of MacArthur’s remarks at the Truman-MacArthur War-Strategy Conference at Wake Island by Truman–later released selectively out of context by Truman to defend his actions in firing MacArthur. (The higher the rank, the less the use of courts-martial–usually due to the political sensitivity of it all–a classic example being the case of CG 7th AF Gen John LaVelle’s unauthorized exceptions to Pentagon-imposed ROEs in “protective reaction” strikes in Laos & Cambodia.)
“At sea, by the way, a sailor may not choose to refuse mast in favor of court martial.”
There is a way around this, but you’d better be right. Three guys were up for Mast on the Courtney, and they came before the Captain when we were on the way to Rota to outchop the Med. One of the guys was being framed by a JO that had it in for him, and I advised him to demand legal consult. Since DEs don’t carry JAG officers the CO had to wait. We had 4 days in Rota, and he couldn’t see a JAG in that time. The CO brought it up again, but the my buddy stated point blank that JAG couldn’t see him Rota. When we got to NOB NORVA, he saw a JAG officer, who paid a “friendly” visit to the CO, and the charges were quickly dropped.
The other two tried the same thing, but they had those guys dead to rights, and the JAG advised them to take the knocks and get through it. The CO gave them the max he could under article 15. From what the XO let slide to me later, they would probably have gotten less if they had simply taken it when we were back in the Med.
I think bird farms carry JAG officers these days. I can’t remember if they did back in the early 70s.
Unfortunately,we have a system that promotes managers, not leaders. The system is political and always has been to some extent, just more so now. In the last few years of my 23+ on active duty, I attended numerous MANAGEMENT courses/seminars. I decided that I was not political enough to compete for 0-6 and the ensuing probable staff assignment that I had no interest in .I just wanted to keep flying and do the best to support my crews in their mission.
As with VX, the USAF was also my service of choice. That it was a member of the USAF that caused this event to be moved forward adds salt to the wound.
As Jerry Pournelle wrote in his blog recently on a somewhat different topic: “All told, a bit depressing: and another reminder that the Republic is at a fairly critical point. The current Administration and Congressional Leadership seem bent on imposing carbon taxes and government health care despite the unpopularity of these measures: meaning, I presume, that they intend to stay in power through political means unrelated to their policies. Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty. Now more than ever.”
I would explicitly add Military Leadership to Jerry’s comment. I do believe that many, perhaps most, of our leadership are decent people with good intentions, though if they do believe in Duty, Honor, Country, then they had better speak out, and act, soon.
What happens to our Military is not a zero-sum game: a negative event for service branch A is not necessarily positive for service branch B, C, or D.
There is no good day to be ashamed (or possibly even afraid) of our civilian or military leaders, but 7 December is an especially bad day. Some days it is harder to remain optimistic than others.
Point of Interest: SO1 Julio Huertas was, I believe, one of the BUDS class that was followed through training for a television special on SEAL training. (I’m having problems finding any photos of him when I try to look that up to see if I’m right.) IF I’m correct, however, and I obviously believe that I am, I also believe that he was chosen as the honor grad of his BUDS class.
(And another classmate gained ‘fame’ of a different sort when he was later diagnosed with leukemia that required finding someone with a genetic matching for a transfusion – they went to the internet and ultimately found someone for him in Germany….Lt. Justin (last name withheld), was later reported to be cancer free on Blackfive.)
For the commissioned (or previously), and with zero implied meaning, what exactly is in view in the oath when it mentions “enemies” of the domestic kind?
Keeping it simple…from my point of view its a citizen who engages in seditious and or treasonous acts directed against the interests of the United States. Best
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 12/08/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Something keeps bouncing thru my feeble brain. If we are trying KSM in New York as an enemy why not have these SEALS tried there too. Are they not worthy of the same rights and representation as our enemy? Just asking. Smarter folks than me will have the answer.
I don;t know what, if any good this will do but this was called to my attention:
http://www.indianadan.com/savetheseals