Posted on 10/05/2006 6:18:46 PM PDT by World_Events
During two tours of duty in Iraq, Navy corpsman Melson J. Bacos said, he experienced fire fights with insurgents, soldiers dying in his arms, thoughts of whether he'd live another day.
Now he has another unnerving assignment. On Friday, the 21-year-old is scheduled to give testimony that military prosecutors hope will help them convict seven Marines accused of kidnapping and murdering an Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania.
Bacos, a medic who patrolled with the Marines, will have similar charges dropped in exchange for testimony during his court-martial, his attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan III, told The Associated Press.
The military has said Bacos was with the Marines in April when 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad was kidnapped and murdered. Some of the troops are accused of stealing an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel and placing them in a hole with Awad's body, apparently to make it appear he was an insurgent planting a bomb.
Bacos was accused of firing the AK-47 in the air to expend some shell casings as part of the cover-up. He was charged with murder and kidnapping under a legal principle that anyone who didn't try to stop the crime is as culpable as the triggerman.
Bacos recounted his time at war in interviews that were videotaped in August at Camp Pendleton, where he has been held pending his court-martial. The clips, which span more than 25 minutes, show a somber Bacos, talking slowly, sometimes with his head down.
At another point, Bacos described eating with bloodied hands.
"I remember thinking to myself that today was going to be a memorable day," he said. "I'm going to eat with blood on my hands, another person's blood on my hands that died earlier."
(Excerpt) Read more at edmondsun.com ...
Oh, it's ap. Never mind.
'On Friday, the 21-year-old is scheduled to give testimony that military prosecutors hope will help them convict seven Marines accused of kidnapping and murdering an Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania.
Bacos, a medic who patrolled with the Marines, will have similar charges dropped in exchange for testimony during his court-martial, his attorney,'
Maybe it was the same person who gave john murtha his nonexistent breifing on Haditha.
So who is leaking his testimony? If the government, an immediate mistrial is called for.
Good gawd, this is not supposed to be a kangaroo court.
We'll see if the Brass Hats do manage to intimidate someone into lying under oath. They've sure been wroking hard to turn someone seeing as they have no real evidence.
This is such an obvious (and typical) military railroad job.
"The headline is just cheap America hating crap."
You mean there is not a Marine Corp Courts Martial?
You mean this Navy Corpsman isn't testifying?
The news organization just made it up?
How I would love to be defending these young men.
Just trying to drive a wedge somehow, someway, between our military services. Trying to bust the morale of people who are better than they are.
I wonder how many of these MSM/LSM people were beat up and picked on in school. You know A. Cooper was, or at least should have been beaten up a few dozen times. Now, they can get back at those type of people via their widespread lies and misrepresentations.
Take a hint MSM/LSM ass kickings hurt just as bad now as they did when you were in school!
If they dropped the charges against the corpseman, they already know the outline of what he's going to say.
I hope the AP is just hyping this too but the statement about him testifying in exchange for the charges being dropped against him comes from his attorney. Supposedly.
"his attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan III, told The Associated Press."
Savage was right - they flipped this guy in exchange for a deal to nail the others.
there is an cabal inside the pentagon that wants as many "war criminals" as they can get, to serve their political agenda. the are immune from reform, because as we have seen in other agencies (CIA, FBI, State) - this administration doesn't want to play hardball and clean them out.
these kinds of practices are questionable even in US criminal trials - how many times have we seen them give some mob killer a free pass, for testimony against others. its obvious that their testimony is whatever it needs to be to satisfy their plea deal.
these kinds of practices should not be allowed in military trials.
Thanks....I don't know anything about the military, and even less about military justice.
However, I have felt so uncomfortable...and confused about these cases of "murder" that keep popping up in Iraq...
Maybe my ignorance is showing...but, hey it's called war.
Now...I have gotten squirmy when reading about the testimony about the soldiers that allegedly went to that house and raped and murdered that girl....do you know anything about that trial??
I know I called BS on the Haditha thing right off the bat...and I haven't seen anything to change my mind on that...and the more I hear that fat slob, Murtha call the Marines "cold blooded killers"...the more I stand with the Marines.
"charging somebody with murder in this place is like giving out speeding tickets at the indy 500"
I am not sure about that rape case, the context is different in that one.
read the whole article here - its obvious that they broke this guy, read about how they treated him in prison and the stress of it on his wife and new baby.
I tried to read it...and when I punched the site...my yahoo browser kicked me off the computer.
I had to reboot...so, I can't do that...
However, you say they made it really hard on him, huh??
Okay...I will defer to you..and wait and see on this as well...
Re: what you said about the Pentagon, in the other post...I have felt for a while, that Bush MIGHT have gotten much further along in his Bush Doctrine...if he had his OWN intelligence and defense and state departments HELPING him...half as much as they fight him.
"Bacos recounted his time at war in interviews that were videotaped in August at Camp Pendleton, where he has been held pending his court-martial. The clips, which span more than 25 minutes, show a somber Bacos, talking slowly, sometimes with his head down."
"After his first tour, in April 2005, Bacos reunited with his wife, Heather, also a Navy corpsman, for the birth of their daughter, Alyssa. He shipped out to Iraq in January."
"In the videos, Bacos said that after Awad was killed he was initially kept in a cell 23 hours a day and was deemed by the military as "potentially violent and dangerous." He said the last several months have been hard on him and his family, who were heartbroken seeing Bacos handcuffed and kept behind glass. Bacos and the other Marines were granted a more lenient level of restraint in June.
"It was so embarrassing," he said on one of the video clips. "It's psychologically stressful on me and my wife because we didn't even get to spend one loving moment together."
The ap and the msm make a lot of crap up. Ap is the worst. There is a courts martial. Aside from that, we know nothing.
He's not a Marine but he is one with them in blood.
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