Posted on 07/07/2020 11:45:02 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
The Post and Times along with the rest of America’s formerly great media would make even Joseph Goebbels blush.
If this is a 'civilian' operations where 'civilians' can be charged with murder, then get them out.
Send in BLM and their social worker brigade.
The soldiers in the video are not journalists, or left wing. They were there. They deserve the respect of a fair hearing out.
The video was uploaded to YouTube by the Washington Post, so he was correct in stating it was by the Washington Post.
I know you’re being sarcastic, but he joined the Taliban.
I should have tagged it with a sarcasm tag!!
Exactly.
I will make the allegation. he did the right thing, and the men in question were faced with a quick reality. They could join him as a codefendant, or say they didn’t agree. That was their only choices.
The didn’t like their new replacement Lieutenant and didn’t like taking orders. So they turned on him like a pack of rats.
That’s all there is to it.
I wasn’t there, and neither were you. That’s your theory. It is possible that Hannity and Trump made a mistake. Supporting this theory is the fact that they are saying all this years after the fact. But in investigating the prospect of a pardon, Trump’s team would have interviewed the soldiers and read the trial transcripts. If they did not do this, that would also support that theory. But if they had, then they’ve had their day in court and Trump made a decision after thorough vetting. But without looking at that record, you cannot know their motives. I would like to believe that Trump made no mistake, that he freed an innocent man. I would also like to believe that battle-hardened veterans who did their part for the country are honest in their condemnation of a superior officer. Facts are stubborn things, and must be looked into before deciding.
They make the allegation that he was a green, inexperienced officer, all his time spent behind a desk, and that he ordered them to shoot at Afghans on bicycles, no specific Afghans but any Afghans, and that order seemed unconscionable to them, so they didn’t comply. One man shot in their direction, but missed, perhaps deliberately. The armored vehicle complied and killed two, and one got away.
The video says he didn’t have any combat experience.
Elsewhere I read he was an enlisted man who worked his way up to senior level sergeant, did 15 months in Iraq in a combat zone, then was sent to officer training. Afghanistan was his first duty station after graduating as a lieutenant, but he was clearly not as green as they made him sound.
There seems to have been a lot going on that day, with multiple motorcycle teams shadowing them, some armed, most with radios, one they searched was carrying explosives. So that may have influenced his decision to fire on the men. At the same time, it was his own men who turned him in. So for me the whole thing is a bit murky.
I wonder if *anyone* at the Amazon Compost has ever served in the Armed Forces.
It is indeed, and it happened under Obama’s watch, when everything was murky. That’s why I am unwilling to say what I think the truth really is. I’d love to side with Trump for pardoning him, but these men also deserve the respect of being heard out. They served in the Grand Canyon of sh!t holes. That’s worth something.
Yeats said, “They must, to keep their certainty, accuse all who are different of a base intent.” That’s the trap that the Left has fallen into, and they are eating their own. Let’s wisely avoid it ourselves.
I never went to Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam. I never fired a shot except at the range. So I owe those that did the respect of keeping an open mind and hearing their stories.
Wikipedia says:
Military career
On his 18th birthday Lorance enlisted in the U.S. Army.[1][9] He was deployed first in South Korea for two years as a traffic officer, and then in Iraq, where he served for 15 months guarding detainees.[1][6][12] After graduating from college with his bachelor’s degree, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 2010,[1][13][12] and subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.[6] In March 2012 he was deployed to a small outpost in southern Afghanistan with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, of the 82nd Airborne Division.[1][14][12]
I’m not seeing any combat experience there.
Rest of the wiki is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Lorance
Looks to me like both groups could be right, based on what they knew at the time. Read it and make up your own minds. I have no combat experience, and only a bit of training in what the USAF calls “force protection.” Last little bit of that was in 1996 or 97, and we did not have the communications capabilities it looks like they had, so what experience I have is about useless for their conditions.
I am senior NCO, and I know our lieutenants were taught to pay attention to their senior NCO’s. I presume that is also still true in the US Army. Comments from the Battalion Command Sergeant Major noted in the article would have had considerable weight in a young officer’s response. And having worked for at least one young lieutenant who thought himself the reincarnation of General George S. Patton, I can at the same time understand how his troops could feel otherwise.
I supported the pardon for Lt. Lorance. And I have to support the positions of his former enlisted men, too. I believe the decision cycle he faced did not give him a great deal of time to consider, and he did the best he could with what he knew. I happen to know that the military teaches that the wrong decision make quickly is more likely to be good than the right decision made too late. Also, gotta say, I doubt my Lieutenant would have accepted responsibility for his men’s action under those circumstance. Lorance did. That is probably what shielded them from being held responsible by a court martial. It is too bad that it didn’t shield them from their own disapproval of the actions they took under his command.
Sometimes life sucks, and there is nothing you can do about it.
WRM, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)
“Send in BLM and their social worker brigade.”
Perfect! They might even shoot up a few villages and get massacred in retaliation by the Pashtuns! A fitting end.
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