Replies

ME: "Interesting declarative presupposition of guilt."

YOU: ""No, the military justice system goes into action based on a report of criminal activity; the purpose of the military justice system is to determine whether said report is actually fact."

The tone and tenor of your comments in this thread and others on this subject indicate you do, indeed, assign guilt--now. That is a fact.

ME: "We don't want warriors that obey orders. . .we want warriors to obey lawful orders (there is a difference)."

YOU: "ROEs are lawful orders."

What does that have to do with what I said? And besides, you are not actually correct, as LOAC (Law of Armed Conflict)" are lawful, whereas ROE (Rules of Engagement)" are not necessarily so.

One day you can do this, the next day you can't, does that mean you behaved unlawfully the previous day? No. It merely means the "rules" have been modified but the legality of your action (in accordance with LOAC) remain unchanged.

Again, and you know this (or should know this), you obey lawful orders---regardless of ROE. Period. You have the duty and obligation to ignore ROE that are unlawful. You do NOT merely follow orders. You follow lawful orders.

You are expected to think and to behave lawfully, and if that means not following orders or stepping outside ROE, so be it, and you will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

The tone and tenor of your comments in this thread and others on this subject indicate you do, indeed, assign guilt--now. That is a fact.

I'm inclined to believe that there's a strong probability of guilt for a few reasons, specifically:

1. The USMC is not in the habit of doing these investigations for giggles.

2. The accused hired Charles Gittin, which is the military equivalent of an accused celebrity hiring Mark Geragos.

3. Gittin is conducting his defense in the court of public opinion, and not the court of law. (When defense attorneys spend more time pounding the table than they do pounding law books and prosecution witnesses, it's a sign that either the defense case is weak, or that the defense attorney is incompetent.)

But I'm perfectly willing to accept the outcome of the investigation, whatever it is.