Posted on 09/04/2006 6:43:39 PM PDT by SandRat
The media coverage has included full-text reports of a long affidavit filed with a federal court by the FBI, which has been conducting a joint investigation with US military investigators. The affidavit details interviews by these investigators with three US soldiers who were involved -- two actual participants (one of whom witnessed the rape and murder of the girl, and heard the shots that killed her parents and younger sister followed by Green's announcement that he had killed them), and one who was left behind at his post (after hearing the intentions of the others, and who saw them return wearing bloody clothers which they proceeded to burn). I'm sure the military and FBI would have raised a public stink if the media had doctored the text of the affidavit.
You really ought to get a clue about this. These monsters are almost certainly responsible for the subsequent kidnapping, torture, and beheading of two innocent US soldiers from the same regiment (Pfc Kristian Menchaca and Pfc Thomas Tucker, 502nd Infantry Regiment), which occurred in the same area and has all the hallmarks of an act of revenge (and has been claimed as such by Iraqi thugs). It was guilt over the fate of these two that led one soldier to tell what he knew about the rape/killings during a stress counselling session, even though he was incrminating himself for not having reported it earlier or attempted to stop it while it was in progress (he was the one left back at his post).
there you go again, "the media coverage". what media do you get your fool proof intel from? abc,nbc,cbs,fox,cnn, aljazera, msnbc etc. get a clue yourself, lets wait until a trial is held to convict these men. if they are guilty, they will be punished. unless you were there you can not know what truly happened.
The first "investigation" was a cursory affair which did not consider the possibility that US troops had been involved, started with the assumption that insurgents had been responsible (not an unreasonable assumption in that area, and one that the perpetrators were counting on), and quickly decided that assumption was correct -- and one of the perpetrators was a participant in this "investigation". Since then, two soldiers who did not participate, AND one who did, have given a great deal of detail to military and FBI investigators, with no inconsistencies between their stories or with the physical evidence available. This detail is publicly available from facsimiles of the FBI affidavit filed with the federal court which is handling the case of the participant who had been discharged from the military (for "antisocial personality disorder) prior to the charges being brought. One of the interviewees is facing the death penalty for his involvement. What possible reason is there for these guys to get together and invent all this (in the case of the participant-interviewee, including accurate details of the locations/positions of the dead bodies in the house), so they can end up spending most of their lives in a military prison or dead?
Our military and FBI investigators, along with military officers with the 502nd Infantry Division, believe these guys are guilty. I have no reason to believe that these people are lying, or have had the wool pulled over their eyes by a group of soldiers spewing some suicidal fantasy tale.
As for Iraqis making an initial accusation, what I've read is that almost immediately afterwards, some Iraqis asked the US military to look into the incident, mentioned that there had been some US soldiers in the area, but didn't actually accuse them and readily accepted the quick determination by US military personnel that insurgents had been responsible. I know that the uncle of the raped/murdered girl has said publicly that until military investigators came to him, which was AFTER the first US soldier had told what he knew in a counselling session, the uncle and his family thought insurgents had done it, despite a few people claiming Americans had done it. Needless to say, with what's going on in this area, there's probably not a single one of the many atrocities that doesn't get some anti-American types trying to claim the Americans did it, whether they really think so or not. The US military absolutely dropped any investigation into this incident until a US soldier told them it had been done by US soldiers (and I believe the first "investigation" took place entirely on the same day the incident happened). Iraqi accusations had nothing whatsoever to do with the 502nd's officers calling for outside military investigators to get involved, which led to the charges against these soldiers.
The only reliable "intel" is from the affidavit filed by the FBI with the federal court, which was based on a joint investigation by FBI and military personnel. "abc,nbc,cbs,fox,cnn, aljazera, msnbc etc." do not get one word of input into what these investigators put in an affidavit to the court about what soldiers told them. Perhaps you should read the actual affidavit http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/usgreen63006cmp.html instead of worrying about what spin various media outlets may have put on the story.
unfortunately I am old. I have observed (during and after the fact I will give you) the FBI in "action" for many many years. I do not trust their honesty or truthfulness to any degree. any affidavit they are involved with in my view has a good chance of being "worked" to their own political beliefs. I still say lets wait until a trial is held and transcripts are made public. would you not want YOUSELF (or your loved ones) a day in a court of law before your peers before guilt or innocence was judged?
Keep in mind that this is not the FBI acting alone. They are investigating jointly with the military, and the whole investigation was initiated by the military. I believe the only reason the FBI is involved at all is because of the one soldier (apparently the perpetrator-in-chief) who had been discharged from the military prior to any charges being brought. This is first and foremost a military investigation/prosecution, and the same interviews will be detailed in the court martial proceedings.
There is just to much evidence here to pretend this didn't happen. The details of exactly who did what, and excatly who knew what and when, remain to be ferreted out during court proceedings. But the horrific event did happen with US soldiers as the perpetrators. This is quite different from the other group of soldiers currently facing court martial, for executing Iraqi civilian men. In that case, it is entirely possible that the soldiers were following order from higher-ups, and believed that the men they were killing were really violent insurgents. In that case, it's virtually certain that someone is guilty of a horrible crime, but it's not entirely clear who. In the Mahmoudiya case, there's no real conflict, nobody saying "it wasn't us, it was some other guys" or making a plausible claim that they thought they were carrying out valid orders against enemy fighters.
The judge in the federal court case just turned down a request for a gag order, so apparently we will have opportunity to know the details of those proceedings. I don't know if military court martials operate the same way, routinely making records of all proceedings and filings available to the public. But in this case, we'll get plenty of info from the federal court proceedings to clarify the roles of all involved.
these men will get what is coming to them if shown guilty in a mil. tri. or any other court of law. why can you not wait until ALL the facts are in, documented, sequenced and transcripted from all the groups involved? I will ask you again since you didn't respond to the prior question: wouldn't you like your day in court, to be judged by your peers in a case like this before your guilt was determined? if you trust the FBI and the mil. br. so much I hope your fate is never in their hands.
ping
Aw just like Jihad Jack.
Sounds like they've been framed. Don't we have any antidote for this?
It is a given that they will be getting their day in court. Sure I'd like my day in court before being sentenced to the death penalty. But I wouldn't expect the general public to ignore mountains of incriminating evidence against me, and act like they have no idea whether I'm actually guilty or not, until the court hands down a decision. It's not like courts always come to the right conclusion, and it's important for citizens to use their brains to monitor what courts are doing. Do you really think OJ Simpson didn't commit the murders that he was found "not guilty" of in a criminal court proceeding?
I don't find it necessary or advisable to refrain from forming conclusions about things going on in the world, until some court tells me what conclusion I should reach. There are plenty of things going on in the world that will never be subject to any court proceeding, and I must form conclusions about many of those things too. Same process in either case.
John Kerry lied about some key details of his military service during the Viet Nam war. There will never be a court proceeding to determine his guilt or innocence in this matter, and I'm sure as h*ll not going to "presume him innocent" in perpetuity for lack of a court proceeding and formal finding of guilt. I have plenty of evidence from what I consider to be reliable sources (including relatives and friends who served in the Foreign Service and CIA in that region around the time in question, one of whom spelled out a lot of the relevant facts in a long letter published in the Washington Post), to reach what I believe to be a valid and reasonable conclusion. I'm not going to act like the idiots at CNN, whose post-9/11 coverage kept referring to the "alleged hijackers".
Now this is the bunch that needs capital punishment, not the Marines that killed the three men in the village during battle.
Of course the trial will determine that they are innocent or guilty, and any judgement prior to that is only speculation. However, the documents from the affadavits and the hearing indicate pretty clearly that even the defense has accepted that these soldiers actually did what they are accused of doing.
The main defense seemed to be that they were in a bad situation, and suffering from war stress, so they should not be held accountable. If the defense is not arguing that they didn't do it, then it is pretty safe to assume that they did.
Good lawyers.
I appreciate your response on this, but I have been following this from the beginning and the public reports contradict themselves and the evidence.
I am choosing to let the courts decide this. If the courts do a good job, the truth will be known. If these men are innocent that will be the determination and if they are guilty, they will pay the proper price.
In what respects do "the public reports contradict themselves and the evidence"? The chief evidence is the affidavit, with the details of the soldier interviews it contains. The only other evidence I give serious weight to is the aggressive way the military has been handling this, and the fact that the investigation is being conducted jointly by the military and FBI, thus minimizing the chance that either one is engaging in institutional butt-covering at the expense of the truth.
I cannot fathom any reason why the military would be handling this the way it has, except that they (who know much more detail about the facts than any of us do) are convinced these guys did what they're accused of. It would be awfully easy to attribute this to insurgents, since vicious killing by insurgents have been so common in the area, and even the victims' relatives were originally inclined to believe that. There were no direct witnesses except the accused soldiers themselves; any local residents who say they saw US soldiers (who were out of uniform, per every account in the affidavit) heading towards the house could be either dimissed as mistaken due to the lack of US Army uniforms, or as having mistaken after-the-fact investigation of the scene by US soldiers for their presence during the rape/killings.
Furthermore, unlike the case of the Marines accused of killing 24 civilians in Haditha, there has been no alternative version of events offered by the defendants. Perhaps given the procedural rules of military court martials, this hasn't yet been possible for those be tried in that system, But the defense attorney representing Steven Green requested (unsuccessfully) that the federal judge presidiong over Green's trial place a gag order on the proceedings, suggesting that having more evidence come out would not be helpful to his client. Even after that motion was denied several days ago, Green and his attorney have offered no alternative version of events to counter the affidavit, and there is certainly nothing preventing them from doing so. If there is another story to be told, why don't they want to tell it, instead of letting the prosecution's version stand unopposed for months? My suspicion is that Green and his attorney are planning an insanity defense, not a didn't-do-it defense -- and this has a good chance of succeeding, both because the proceeding is in a federal rather than military court, and because Green had indeed been discharged from the army with an honorable discharge for anti-social personality disorder (essentially a formal determination by those in his chain of command that his behavior was well outside the bounds of what is acceptable, and simultaneously that he couldn't be held fully responsible for it due a mental illness diagnosis).
I also can't fathom any reason why the soldiers whose interviews are detailed in the affidavit would be so eager to incriminate themselves as having perpetrated or helped cover up such a heinous crime. The only explanation which could account for those strongly corroborating accounts all being false, would be that all three were fabricated under extreme coercion, which would have to have been perpetrated and/or knowingly condoned by BOTH the FBI and military investigators. If that were the case (which I don't believe), we could certainly kiss goodbye the possibility of a fair trial elucidating the truth. But what would be the motive for multiple US government agencies to fraudulently promote worldwide belief that US military personnel had committed atrocities in Iraq, which obviously undermines the war effort? Wouldn't there be a peep of "hey, slow down here" from the Bush administration?
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