Posted on 07/05/2006 3:33:11 PM PDT by pissant
First off, the information in the Affidavit and the MSM regarding this incident in Muhmudiyah does not look good for Steven Green or his alleged conspirators. If he or they are guilty of this crime, then I pray that the Military comes down on them like a ton bricks. The description of what happened is beyond disgusting and evil.
Having said that, I will continue to give the benefit of the doubt to Steven Green and the others, until they confess in a military court or are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
So in the interim, I will try to do my best, like on the Haditha case, to poke holes in allegations, and to publicize the work of others doing the same thing.
In regards to the affidavit (AD) used to charge Steven Green, I have a couple of questions/observations. You can click on the URL above to see the affidavit.
Questions:
In Item #5 in the AD, the CID investigation states that 3 men approached checkpoint 1 (TCP#1) on 3/12/2006 at 5:30 PM and reported that a family had been killed in their house and that it was believed to have been done by Anti Iraq forces or "others".
In Item #12, SOI5 (source of information) says that on 3/11/2006 an Iraqi approached him and told him the house had been burned. The Iraqi said four were dead and one had been raped. An HOUR later, Iraqi army personnel and four US soldiers, including SOI5, went to the scene and presumably took the photos.
So did the event happen on 3/11 or 3/12? If SOI5 is correct, then the bodies would have been in the morgue by 3/12 and a 3/11 report would have been discovered by the CID.
Item #6 says that during a combat stress debriefing on 6/20/06 it was determined that these members of the 4th Infantry division commited this crime. Yet all the previous reports say that two guys were debriefed, neither an eyewitness. One said that he overheard guys talking about it, and another said that he heard that the guys burned their clothes. And it was not until 6/24/06 that the invistigation from CIS started. Therefore Item 6 is factually wrong to say it was "determined" on 6/20/06 that our men did this.
In Item #8, SOI1 says SOI2 and KP1 (known participant) changed clothes before heading to the house. Then he says that SOI2, SOI3, SG and KP1 all burned their clothes when they got back. First, SOI3 supposedly stayed guard at the door fo the house, so why would he burn his clothes? And if he was in uniform, would he really burn his uniform at a checkpoint and stand there in his skivvies? 2nd, was SOI1 really dumb enough to man the checkpoint by himself while these guys went raping and pillaging, especially since one of the M4s they took belonged to SOI1?
In Item #10, SOI2 states "Green went into the bedroom to keep the rest of the family there" and that "KP1 threw a woman to the floor". After Green killed the family, SOI2 states that he witnessed "Green and KP1 rape the woamn that SOI3 had thrown to the floor". So who threw the rape victim to the floor?? SOI3 was supposedly standing guard outside the house.
In Item #11, SOI3 says that SOI2 ordered him to toss the AK-47 used by Green into the canal. SOI2 does not mention (items #9 and #10) that he asked SOI3 to get rid of AK-47.
Item #13 is the photo evidence. If this photo evidence was taken 3/11/06 by the Iraqi and US soldiers that went to investigate per item #12 (SOI5's version) then something is terribly amiss about the timing of this story.
I think that puts into context your feelings about the affidavit and the purpose of this thread.
We can agree on the purpose of the affidavit and of the thread.
It goes without saying that we are sorely lacking all the details.
I assume that they will finish the investigation before charging anyone else.
"I remember him pulling my right wrist but I don't remember what I did," said the woman that the local press has dubbed "Nicole."
"The next thing I remember, someone was on top of me while I was lying down. He was kissing me. It was Smith," she said, adding that she couldn't exactly remember the events that led to the actual rape.
Good grief.
It's sloppy and contradictory. I wanted to expose that.
Since we weren't discussing the MSM, this makes it very clear.
Threads MORPH. Stick around, you will see that.
What is your obsession with the reason for the thread. Yes, it was to poke holes in it, as stated. But a secondary, unstated purpose is to discuss the case. And MY overarching purpose is to give the BOD to the soldiers standing accused.
And the blogosphere and FR ARE a bulwark against the MSM. If you do not agree with that, and think the MSM is even handed and not jumping to convict our men in the court of public opinion, then you have paid no attention to their stories over the last 3 years. The MSM has an agenda. And it is as plain as the nose on your face.
If the MSM was not sensationalizing this story, then I would doubt this thread would even exist. But the MAIN purpose of the thread is to poke holes in the affidavit, the other reasons are secondary. Since there is so little info in the AD, it naturally morphed into a larger themed thread.
If you want to only comment on other comnments directly associated with the affidavit, you can choose to ignore the rest.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.
Now, Now, be nice. We don't want to go around like we did before.
That is generally what I have been doing.
NPR and rumors are not reliable "sources."
But even barring a mention of those, a look at your homepage and your tagline clearly reveals you are here to advocate for the enemy.
Bullcrap. I advocate for jus ad bellam. But that's something the BushBots don't comprehend.
BAGHDAD, Iraq The United States ambassador and the top American military commander here together issued an unusual apology on Thursday for the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and the killing of her family, saying that the crime, in which at least four soldiers are suspects, had injured the "Iraqi people as a whole."
The statement came just hours after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said at a news conference that he might ask the American military to scrap a rule that grants foreign soldiers here immunity from Iraqi prosecution. Such a move would be a direct rebuke to the Bush administration, which has fought tenaciously to ensure that American soldiers are exempt from local or international laws when serving on foreign soil.
"I'm about to talk to the multinational forces to reach solutions that will put an end to such practices," Mr. Maliki said of criminal behavior by soldiers. One possible course of action, he said, would be to "revise the issue of immunity."
"Our people cannot tolerate that every day there is an ugly crime such as that in Mahmudiya," he added, referring to the market town near which the four Iraqis, including a young girl, were killed on March 12.
Mr. Maliki's assertion, which followed similar remarks he made in Kuwait on Wednesday, signaled the growing furor within the Iraqi government over the latest crime. The incident first became public last week, when the Fourth Infantry Division announced that it was investigating the involvement of American soldiers in the rape and slayings.
The rise in political tensions came as sectarian violence continued in Iraq. A suicide car bomber rammed his sedan into a Shiite shrine in the holy town of Kufa, killing at least 12 people, including five Iranians, and injuring dozens, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi and American forces have generally maintained tight security around the southern holy sites of Najaf and Kufa, to which Shiite pilgrims, including many Iranians, flock by the thousands.
The strongly worded apology issued Thursday night by the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad revealed the deep concern among American officials over the criminal episode's potential to damage the entire American project in Iraq.
"We understand this is painful, confusing and disturbing, not only to the family who lost a loved one, but to the Iraqi people as a whole," the two senior officials said in a written statement. "The loss of a family member can never be undone. The alleged events of that day are absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable behavior."
The statement is all the more unusual because no soldiers have been convicted yet or even formally charged. On Monday, a recently discharged Army private, Steven D. Green, 21, was arrested in North Carolina on suspicion of rape and murder. Three soldiers, some of whom are reported to have admitted their roles in the crime to investigators, are confined to base in Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and their weapons have been confiscated.
Mr. Maliki said at the news conference on Thursday that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry into the Mahmudiya crime.
But Iraqi courts have no power to prosecute the soldiers. An order issued under the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq after the American invasion until June 2004, said that foreign troops, missions and their consultants here are immune from Iraqi law. Orders issued by an occupational authority usually expire when the authority leaves, but the Iraqi constitution has extended the decrees.
Mr. Fadhil said that a committee of local officials was prepared to carry out its own criminal investigation but was awaiting orders from the national government. "Now, the subject has many dimensions," he said. "It's become an international affair."
Complicating matters, "the family doesn't want to say where the bodies are," he added. "The family didn't involve the police when the crime took place. We found out about it only when the Americans revealed it."
A senior American commander in Mahmudiya visited Mr. Fadhil and other local officials on Thursday and "expressed sorrow for the killing of the family and the behavior of the soldiers," Mr. Fadhil said.
He added that the local investigative committee intended to examine the victims' home. The American soldiers are accused of trying to cover up the crime by burning both the body of Ms. Hamzeh and the house. But the body was sufficiently intact for local doctors to find multiple bullet wounds, Mr. Fadhil said.
You might want to explain that term.
Then it's agreed, the MSM has an agenda. And the way they report the Iraqi witnesses as gospel truth and always are skeptical of anything the military says is an abomination.
I didn't see a quote where he admitted US soldiers did it. Did I miss something?
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