Posted on 09/21/2007 11:30:49 AM PDT by brent1a
FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 17 — From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sgt. Troy Anderson had a clear shot at the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a village near the Pakistan border last October. When Capt. Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Sergeant Anderson fired a bullet into the man’s head, killing him.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
To your point 2. There is EVERYTHING wrong with a hearing like this. They soldiers were operating within the ROE in effect in the field. They had PID on a known terrorist that gives them a green light to ventilate. This so called general is killing moral, even the lawyers, after investigation signed off on the shot a righteous.
Give me a break. What's recognizable is the fact that you are a defeatist nancy.
It is my understanding that the Sharpshooter was under orders to take the target out. Did anyone else hear that? What do the Geneva rules have to do with people who do not have a clue as to what those rules are?
What on earth is happening at the Pentagon? Congressional and Senatorial rules of engagement?…..a body crippled by Political Correctness………we’re gonna run out of good Marines if this doesn’t stop. These men are fighting a WAR for the lord’s sake….get off their backs.
Translation: brentla admits he knows nothing of either US history or Roman history.
In addition, they were cleared by two military investigations. This general needs to be retired, ASAP.
Wouldn't it be nice if our men and women didn't have to worry about being investigated for actually doing their jobs?
No, wait....maybe we should just assign a NYU/Columbia lawyer to every single military member just so we can fight the war just like the Comrade Liberals think it should be fought.
There is EVERYTHING wrong with a hearing like this.
No, there's not.
If the facts are as presented, it should be a very SHORT hearing, which is the outcome I would prefer.
But now let's look at the circumstances of his death. The bad guy was, in essence, assassinated. I don't have a particular problem with that for specific and well-defined cases, but I also wouldn't want to see assassination become a general tactic: too much opportunity for our actions to go awry, and too much danger that it would turn the Afghans against us.
Accountability is a good thing in that case: it would help to limit assassinations to the "specific and well-defined" category.
If you are going to send the kids into war, then send them. I must be living in bizzaro world.
So we need a hearing for everyone a trooper kills who we don’t actually have footage showing them trying to kill the soldier?
Give me (and them!) a break.
It was and the Berets were cleared......now numnuts General Frank H. Kearney pulls the soldiers out of the field, and tries to convict them for murder. As one poster already stated, if this idiot was my commander, I'd just go home.....
What apparently happened.
(1) The unit was informed that a specific person was a legitimate target who could be shot on sight.
(2) The unit found out where this target was hiding.
(3) They tracked him down to his hideout and verbally confronted him, asking him to identify himself. He came outside and complied with their directions and answered their questions.
(4) Once he identified himself verbally, the warrior who verbally confronted him made a prearranged hand signal to a concealed sniper.
(5) The sniper then killed the target.
The question here is whether or not the unit violated the laws of war by killing a target that they could have captured.
There are many possible reasons why they may have needed to kill him - it may not have been safe to transport him, there may have been nearby terrorists waiting for the target's signal, etc.
I'm sure it was completely justified. But the circumstances aren't as simple as you suggest.
What do the Geneva rules have to do with people who do not have a clue as to what those rules are?
The fact that the US honors the Convention is one of the moral identifiers separating us from the lawless savages we are fighting.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
We cannot win this war until our Soldier, Sailors, Airmen and Marines occupy and conquer Washington DC.
Whatever happened to shoot, shovel and shut up?
That description doesn't really capture the details of the case.
I didn’t say that.
In a notarized statement, Sergeant Haarer told defense lawyers last week that he would not have accused the soldiers of any crime if he had known that the Criminal Investigation Command had determined that the shooting was justified.
Well, I wish I had a good reply to that. As a defeatist nancy who is a former Marine Infantryman and now a Police Officer I guess I have no basis to know what I am talking about.
Let me know when the great and powerful government that protects us is going (for instance) to go ahead and disband the 20+ known private muslim "retreats" that are in the USA. Oh wait, we can't do anything to infringe on their legal rights........Now let me know when YOU are going to do something about those camps and then let me know how you're going to do it and get away with it. Oh wait, you're not going to do anything about them because if you did you would be put in prison for protecting you family.
I personally think that a great big RESET button needs to be hit and the USA and start over from right after WWII. When you can figure out a way to hit that reset button without there being a civil war here in the US let me know.....I wanted to avoid sounding like some crazy kook but it's the truth. If you can't recognize that we're in a downward spiral then I'm obviously talking to a wall.
Go ahead and give me a history lesson then. Because the only way we can stop this downward spiral is if the good and righteous citizens of the US have a physical revolution/civil war.
But, of course, that's just crazy talk.
Whatever the actual merits of the case, that part is just plain strange. Does a Sgt. First Class paralegal have the wherewithal or authority to decide on charges, or to make accusations?
And since he says he did make the accusation, what was it about the facts he had at the time, that made him decide to make the accusation?
The fact that he later changed his mind is interesting, but it dodges the question above. Is there more ambiguity to the facts than are being presented by the soldiers' lawyers?
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