“no bodies, no names, no grieving relatives, no civilian witnesses, no crime scene, and no physical evidence”
Guilty!/sarc
Nazario was a Drill Instructor. Do you know if that was before or after the battle at Fallujah?
What in the H is a federal Civilian Court doing in military Combat in a foreign country?
The federal anti-American Prosecutor should be fired immediately.
Mad as hell!WTF over.
Another crap law passed by the know nothings in Congress. With laws like this, who the hell would want to volunteer for the Armed Services anymore.
We won't be happy until our ability to use the armed forces grinds to a halt under the weight of litigation SNAFUs like this.
One ugly little word says it all: Fallujah.
Look it up judge.
How did this bill (Senate version PDF) House Version PDF) The House version of the bill, the provisions of which are what made it into law, was sponsored by Rep. Saxby Chamblis (R GA-8, now R Senator from GA) with cosponsor Bill McCollum (R FL-8, Now FL Attorney General) It passed the House by a voice vote, thus no record of who voted for it. In the Senate there was a companion bill sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions (R AL) with cosponsors Mike Dewine (R OH), Zell Miller (D GA (DINO) and Bob Smith (R/I NH). However without doing a side by side comparison, I don't know how it differed from the final bill passed by the Senate, which had the language of the House bill substituted for the original Senate language. That version, with the House language passed "without objection", so again no record of the vote.
Really Lame Duck Billy Jeff (D Ark now Harlem NY) signed the measure on Nov. 22, 2000, after Al Gore lost the 2000 election, but before the Flim Flam in Florida and the Supreme Court's slapping down of that.
So a nice bipartisan screwing of US Servicemen serving in a war zone.
To be fair, I don't think the Congress had actions committed during combat operations in mind when they passed this law. More like crimes committed by troops, DoD Civilians and DoD contractors "in garrison" such as in Korea, Japan, England and Germany at that time.
The law doesn't mention "combat" only "serving outside the United States".
If McCain somehow manages to dodge all the minefields and gets elected President, his first act should be to fire these Assistant US Attorneys peckerwoods.
His next act, now, should be to introduce legislation to amend the law to exclude actions committed during combat or in a combat zone, from trial in Civilian courts. And to make all trials of former service members be conducted in Military Courts, not civilian courts. People can always be recalled to active duty for trial.
“Nazario, now a civilian without any military obligation, was charged under the Military Extraterritorial Extradition Act (MEJA), a law passed by Congress in 2000 to give government prosecutors a mechanism for charging civilians and former service members for alleged criminal acts they committed while serving overseas.”
Now a bunch of ambulance chasers have set themselves up as a full time Nuremburg tribunal ! Is there any statute of limitations on soldiers getting back from a war? How many other MEJA’s are waiting in the bushes?