Another Boneheaded Play....

[Sean]

If this is what it appears to be; a case of a soldier going off base to conduct a mass killing, he should be court martialed and face a firing squad.

I disagree Jim. If this is what it appears to be, he has committed a heinous crime against Afghanis in Afghanistan and should be handed over to the Afghani authorities.

[Crackpot]

what you think he'd fare better there?

[Sean]

It's not that CP. I just believe that a crime committed in a given country should be subject to the laws of that country.

[Lord Jim]

I disagree Jim. If this is what it appears to be, he has committed a heinous crime against Afghanis in Afghanistan and should be handed over to the Afghani authorities.

There are times when that is done, (There was a case back in the 90s where 3 US soldiers stationed on Okinawa were turned over to Japanese authorities for prosecution for the rape of a 12 year old girl) but it's not general policy (we were unable to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government over stationing a residual force in Iraq over that very question).

I don't believe it should be general policy either; it depends on many factors, the nature of the regime and its legal system, the nature of the crime, (it would be preposterous for example, to turn over to the Afghan authorities the soldiers who burned those Korans,). This is a judgement that should be made on a case by case basis.

In this case, I can see a good argument to be made for it, but I doubt it will happen.

[Lord Jim]

Apparently imposing the DP in the case is a serious possibility:

Panetta: Death penalty possible in Afghan shooting

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press – 1 day ago

ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the death penalty is a consideration as the military moves to investigate and possibly put on trial a U.S. soldier suspected of gunning down 16 Afghans.

In his first public remarks on the incident, Panetta said Monday the shootings must not derail the military mission in Afghanistan, and pressure to do so from political leaders in Kabul and Washington must not alter that course.

He said the U.S. seems to get confronted every other day with challenges that test U.S. leadership and its commitment to the mission.

Panetta shed little light on what may have triggered the weekend massacre, but said officials will use the military justice system, and that capital punishment is possible.

He spoke with reporters traveling with him to Kyrgyzstan on Monday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... fad2fa48d1

No US soldier has had the Death Penalty imposed since 1961, but as I said, this appears to be a text book case of where it would be entirely appropriate.

[Gob]

The US soldier accused of killing 16 civilians, including women and children, in Afghanistan on Sunday has been flown to Kuwait, US officials say.


They say legal proceedings against the unnamed staff sergeant will now be conducted in another country.

The victims were shot in their homes, causing outrage across Afghanistan.

The transfer coincides with a visit by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. His arrival in Afghanistan was marred by an incident involving a vehicle.

A stolen pick-up truck was driven at high speed onto the runway where Mr Panetta's plane was intended to stop at the British base in Helmand province, Camp Bastion.

The vehicle ended crashing into a ditch and bursting into flames. The Afghan driver suffered burns and has been arrested.

A Nato serviceman was injured when the vehicle was stolen. Neither Mr Panetta nor anyone on board the plane was at risk at any time, officials said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17375761

[Lord Jim]

I find this guy's profile interesting...

38 years old staff sergeant, married, father of three, veteran of three tours in Iraq....

Not at all what one would have expected for a person who had gone off because of the stress of being in a combat zone...(you'd expect that person to be in their late teens or early 20s, little experience, no strong relationships)

That is more the profile of some of the mass killers who lose it stateside when their personal life is falling apart...

I suspect the motive here may have had absolutely nothing to do with the war....

I would bet the guy got some news from home that set him off...

Which of course in no way shape or form excuses this. If found guilty the nature of the crime clearly calls for the death penalty as punishment.

[rubato]

If you read military history you will find that there is a process of mental breakdown which occurs continuously during exposure to combat. Per John Keegan a unit in combat will steadily decline over time in functional ability as more and more of the individuals break down mentally.

It's been 20 years since I read his first books but I think he mentions it in "The Mask of Command" or "The Face of Battle". And again from memory I think he says that after 6 months most units are severely degraded.

During these deployments there was no clear separation between combat areas and 'rear areas' so that the stress of exposure to combat might be continuous.

Opining about what he 'deserves' without learning the facts is pure bloviating.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Here's something:

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/mil ... daddis.pdf

I don't have time to review it for you.

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

More on the guy;

Robert Bales turned his back on civilian life as a financial adviser in Ohio and signed up for the military after the September 11 attacks on the US.

He was a popular combat veteran, twice injured in Iraq, described by a former platoon leader as "one of the best soldiers I ever worked with" and who prided himself on identifying "the bad guys from non-combatants".

Now, though, he has been identified as the US soldier accused of last Sunday's massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, nine of them children, in a pre-dawn shooting and stabbing rampage.

The atrocity has plunged US-Afghan relations to a new low, prompting "Death to America" protests in Afghanistan, and fresh calls for the timetable for the 2014 withdrawal of American and British forces to be accelerated.

As a commander and trained sniper in a frontline US infantry unit, Sgt Bales was no stranger to combat and the stress it can produce in those who wage it. He had witnessed the bloodiest of the fighting in Iraq in the years after the 2003 invasion, earning the praise of his superiors, and was decorated a dozen times during three tours of duty there.

Then in 2010, towards the end of his third deployment, he suffered a minor traumatic brain injury after the vehicle in which he was travelling rolled over. And last year to his disappointment he was passed over for promotion, adding to money worries back home.

But for Sgt Bales, 38, and his wife Karilyn, there seemed at least one reason for optimism on the horizon. They understood he had served his final tour in a warzone, and that they and their two young children would soon move to a non-combat posting. Instead, he was sent back to the front last December, this time to Afghanistan. The consequences were more dreadful than could have been imagined.

Grievances and pressures

What emerged this weekend is a morality story for a nation whose army has been at war for a decade, and at the centre of it is a soldier who, despite an impressive military record, also had a recent history of trauma, grievances and financial pressures.

Court records show another side to the character of a man who was described by stunned neighbours as a loving father and husband and "life of the party".

In 2002, he underwent an anger management assessment after he was charged with assault. And in 2008, witnesses said that he smelled of alcohol after crashing his car and running off into woods.

At home in Washington state, his wife was struggling with the finances as she raised Quincy, four, and Bobby, three. Only this month, they put their home up for sale as they had fallen behind with their mortgage payments.

Sgt Bales, 38, a member of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, was flown back on Friday evening to the military's highest-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where investigators will pore over his military evaluations, mental and physical health records and computer logs as they draw up charges against him.

Work stress and marital strains

An unnamed official briefed US media that Sgt Bales buckled under a combination of work stress, marital strains and alcohol, saying that he had been drinking in violation of military rules.

But the shocking incident raises alarming questions about his emotional and mental stability, and whether he had slipped through the net of care at one of America's biggest bases and the pressures of repeat deployments to combat zones.

John Browne, his lawyer, dismissed reports of domestic problems as "hogwash" but said Sgt Bales had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his deployments and his head injury in Iraq.

He also had seen one of his fellow soldiers lose his leg in an explosion hours before he allegedly committed the massacre.

Sgt Bales and his wife lived at Lake Tapps in Washington state, about a 20-minute drive east of his base at Lewis-McChord near Tacoma in the Pacific North West.

His home was a modest two-story beige wood-frame house with a small front porch beneath tall fir and cedar evergreens in a neighbourhood popular with military families. But three days before the shooting in Afghanistan, Mrs Bales contacted Philip Rodocker, an estate agent, to say that she wanted to sell their house.

Home 'behind in payments'

The property was listed for $229,000, about a $50,000 loss on what the family paid for it in 2005 and less than they owed the bank.

"She told me she was behind in payments," Mr. Rodocker said. "She said he was on his fourth tour and (the house) was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilise their finances."

The house "looked like it had been really, really neglected", he added.

Mrs Bales and her children were moved into accommodation on the army base last week, to protect her from the inevitable media scrutiny as well as the danger of revenge attacks. Boxes, toys, a sledge and a barbecue grill were piled on the front porch this weekend, collected by Mrs Bales as she prepared for the move.

"We are completely in shock," said Kassie Holland, 27, a neighbour.

"They seemed very happy, he was the life of the party and great with the kids. I can't see how this can have happened."

His commanders also evidently had no doubts about his capabilities. Staff sergeants are the backbone of a fighting unit, providing support to their officers and bolstering morale of the troops.

To qualify as a sniper - a position that all but guarantees a close acquaintance with killing - he underwent and passed routine psychological screening assessments.

Bales' own insights

Sgt Bales offered his own insights on the war in Iraq after he fought in a battle in the city of Najaf in 2007 in which 250 enemy fighters died, in clashes described by some participants as "apocalyptic".

"I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day," he said afterwards in a testimony collected for a military training college.

"We discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us.

"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that."

Speaking of the intensity of the battle, he added that "the cool part about this was World War II-style. You dug in. Guys were out there digging a fighting position in the ground."

That vivid account is evidently one that the US military would prefer the public no longer to read. The link to the website that carried it was removed last week, but the article was still available in other archives.

Comrades have been quick to come to the support of the soldier they had known before Sunday.

Capt Chris Alexander, his platoon leader in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday that the sergeant "saved many a life" by never letting down his guard during patrols.

"Bales is still, hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with," he said.

"There has to be very severe [post-traumatic stress disorder] involved in this. I just don't want him seen as some psychopath, because he is not."

Two brushes with the law

But public records show two brushes with the law after he moved to Washington. He was ordered by a judge in 2002 to undergo anger-management counselling for an assault case, but no further details of the incident were immediately available.

He was arrested in 2008 after he drove his car off a road and into a tree, then fled the scene. Witnesses told police that he was bleeding, disoriented and smelled of alcohol, but he was not charged with drunk driving.

He was deployed three times to Iraq: between 2003 and 2004 as anti-US resistance erupted; for 15 months between June 2006 and September 2007, at the height of the brutal civil war and the beginning of what became known as the surge; and for a year from August 2009. As well as the head injury in that final tour, his lawyer said that he had also lost part of his foot in a separate incident.

The massacre has focused attention on the care and vetting given to soldiers who have gone through multiple tours and, in Sgt Bales' case, suffered a brain injury on deployment.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord has come under scrutiny after a series of incidents.

Most notably, rogue soldiers from another Stryker brigade formed a "kill unit" and murdered three Afghan civilians in 2010, and the Army recently opened an investigation into complaints that diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder were being changed or dismissed by the base's medical centre.

Repeated deployment pressures

Some veteran groups have argued that the base, which is home to 40,000 soldiers, is unable to handle the pressures of repeated deployments.

In 2010, Sgt Bales was among 18,000 personnel who returned there from war zones over just a few weeks.

However, commanders insisted on Friday that facilities at Lewis-McChord were not overwhelmed.

Why Sgt Bales snapped in the early hours of last Sunday remain unclear for now; officials say he appears to have only vague recollections of the incident.

But as he stands suspected of perhaps the worst single atrocity committed by a US serviceman in the last decades of foreign wars, a recent US military press release about military's "hearts and minds" operations in an Afghan village has a chilling poignancy.

"How's the security affecting your family?" Sgt Bales asked a village elder relaxing outside of his home. "Much better than yesterday," the man replies.

The release goes on to state that Sgt Bales' company had successfully secured the village to rebuild relations with the local population.

In the words of his commander, "it represents the finest of everything the Army presents".

Nobody, it seems, envisaged that Sgt Bales might ever come to represent anything else.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-bloody- ... z1pQlIUkqv

[Gob]

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, the US soldier accused of shooting dead 16 Afghan civilians, owes $1.5 million ($1.4 million) after he defrauded an elderly couple shortly before he joined the army.

Sergeant Bales was working as a stockbroker in Ohio in 2000 when Gary Liebschner asked him to sell his stocks to pay for medical bills. Mr Liebschner and his wife never received the money. Sergeant Bales faced no criminal charges but the case against him and several colleagues went to arbitration in May 2000. Sergeant Bales never turned up at a hearing and, 18 months later, enlisted in the army.

According to records from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) the case was resolved in 2003 when an arbitration panel found that Sergeant Bales had "engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorised trading and unsuitable investments". The arbitrator ordered payment of $US637,000 in compensation, plus interest, $US637,000 in punitive damages and $US216,500 in legal fees. With interest the total is now $US1.5 million. The arbitrator described Bales's conduct as "fraudulent and malicious" and, when the fines were not paid, he was suspended from the industry.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/massacre-so ... z1pgtMFXOv

[dales]

I'd like to see Bales tried in Kabul under sharia law, but that's just me.

[Crackpot]

He has only one way "out" of this and that is basically an insanity (PTSD) plea that should have been caught by his home base

[dales]

PTSD would NOT be ruled insantiy, perhaps not even "diminished capacity".

[Lord Jim]

No, it wouldn't, but I don't blame his defense lawyer for going there...

When you've got lemons, you try to make lemonade...It's not like he can try to argue that somebody else went door-to-door in the middle of the night machine gunning 16 defenseless people to death in their sleep....

Apparently his strategy is to try to put "the war" and the military on trial...

From everything I've read about this guy, he seems to have led a very complicated dual kind of life...

Perhaps all the contradictions caught up with him....

But that DOES NOT excuse what he did...

If the facts of what he did are as they are publicly known, it is quite appropriate that this should be a Capital case.

[Gob]

How will the people he ripped off get their money back then Jim?

[dales]

Publisher's rights.

[BoSoxGal]

"The life of the party"?

Financially defrauding elderly/sick people?

Failure to attend to financial/legal obligations?

Mass murder of children?


I smell a psychopath.

[Crackpot]

if he is a sociopath I say ship him to Afganistan.

[Scooter]

The question will be whether any of that exhibited itself when he was screened for admission into the army, and whether they chose to let him enlist anyway. It's not as if it hasn't been routine to ignore issues (criminal records, drug abuse) that should normally disqualify people from enlisting.