Thanks, Race!
Terry gave me permission to post his response. I thought it might be helpful to bring others, who may not be following all the details in the case, up to speed.
One of this issues we face with this case, much of the information that our guys gathered, evidence they obtained prior to their arrest was classified and still remains so. Sgt. Hutchins defense team is working very hard to get this changed but so far to no avail. It is interesting to note that two more top-notch attorneys have joined his defense team on a pro bono basis.
It should be understood the area they were operating operates as a tribal system. Tribes are groups of families living in close proximity. These tribes can be classified in two ways - friend or foe. That classification applies to every member of the tribe from the elders to the children.
The leader of the tribe in question is a man named Saleah Gowad. His immediate next door neighbor was the victim in this case, Mr. Awad. Gowad has a nickname. The translation of said nickname is "Prince of Jihad". He is the prince, his other military-age male tribe members are his deputies.
Mr. Gowad was known by the authorities, both local police and Marines as a leader of the tribe planting IEDs or "roadside bombs". It happens there is only one road in and out of the area. It is Penguins Road, used daily by our Marines as the only ingress and egress from the area to which they were assigned. There was no other way in or out. Every day they would watch as their fellow Marines in their humvees were blown up by these IEDs. One of their own guys, PFC Jackson, later to become a member of the "Pendleton 8" was himself blown up by one of these devices two weeks prior. He was not seriously hurt and able to return to duty shortly thereafter.
Gowad was arrested three times by the local police as a "suspect" in the bombings. He was released each time within about a day. Our guys saw this going on, they saw other Marines being blown up - they knew they were the only ones up to the job. The rest is pretty well documented in the press.
Our guys were being used as policemen. Without any real police training. They were trained as warriors. One of the police-like duties was to take what they call a "census". Talk to the locals, find out how many military-age males live in each house, how many weapons they have, that sort of thing. Rob was heavily involved in this activity since he had learned to speak passable arabic. They knew who was who and what was what and all their reports and notes remain classified. I take his word for the fact that they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Awad was one of the bad guys.
During Rob's court-martial, his long-time commander through all three combat deployments testified "The world's a better place without Awad." The prosecutor countered "You mean Gowad?" Capt. Diaz replied "No sir, both of them."
Talking to Rob about the rules of engagement "ROEs", he talks about black, white and shades of gray. In his opinion, and I'm sure in the opinion of others, ROEs are mostly gray area. He told his mother recently "Taking out Gowad would have been very very light gray if not white and therefore a 'good kill'. Awad on the other hand, might be a little darker shade of gray but by no means a matter of black and white as the government would have the world believe."
The reason the 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment (3/5) was there in the first place is due to the fact that their predecessors did not get the job done. 3/5 has been known as the ones to get any nasty job done since WWII. They kicked butt and took names in that war, Korea, VietNam etc etc. Then on to the Middle East and the clearing of Fallujah. They are the ones to turn to when you need the "pros from Dover" as Hawkeye Pierce would say.
We're hoping the material we need to show the kill was more white than gray will be declassified. In the meantime military members everywhere are hunkering down hoping not to get shot or blown up rather than taking proactive measures to prevent death and injury.
When this incident occured, one or more members of Gowad's tribe accused our guys of wrongdoing in the death of Awad. In jumps NCIS and the rest is history.
NCIS believed the enemy rather than our Marines, wrote up statements and proceeded to coerce our Heroes into not just signing them, but initialing every paragraph. Our men were denied their constitutional right to have an attorney present during their interrogations. They were deprived of food, water and bathroom breaks for up to eight hours at a stretch. I've heard from family members of Marines involved in some of the other high profile cases the same things about NCIS tactics.
In our opinion the NCIS investigators should be the ones in jail. Our guys deserve medals for saving lives through their actions. Their families deserve reparations of the the money they've had to pay to defense teams, investigators, translators and doctors who have helped with their defense.
Terry Pennington