Save the Navy SEALS

[Sarge]

OK, I've been a good boy. I haven't even so much as posted that Obama is an illegal immigrant space alien sent here by the Klingons to destroy the country thread.

But this is a load of PC crap

These guys risk life and limb to go get this asshole, and this is the thanks they get?

Here's a petition. And give your Congressman and Senator some hell as well

http://www.savethenavyseals.com/Navy.html

 

[Hog Fever]

I avoid political discussions online as a rule, but I have direct connections to this issue. The story most people have read is incomplete and I'd rather not go in to all of the details. These guys are getting railroaded, trust me. Any support is appreciated.

 

[Sarge]

I know what's happening, in part. Technically speaking, these guys aren't getting the bone for roughing up the throat cutter, they're getting the bone for covering up for each other.

Either way it's a load of crap. I pummel Webb and Warners office with this at least once a week. Haven't heard much from Warner (shocking) but Webb seems on top of it.

They should have just shot him

 

[riggins44]

These SEALS do deserve our support.

 

[beamish]

i am physically ill just reading this. how do we expect our best & bravest to fight a war without physical injury to the enemy?

 

[Sarge]

Support swells for 3 accused SEALs

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...seals-accused-of-assault/?feat=home_headlines

When a small team of Navy SEALs set out to capture one of Iraq's most-wanted terrorists in September, they never dreamed it would go so smoothly.

After all, Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of a 2004 atrocity against U.S. contractors in Fallujah, was holed up in a safe house in Anbar province. Intelligence reports, which identified his location, said he kept a revolver under his pillow.

A helicopter set the SEALs down miles away. They silently approached the house and burst in to surprise a sleeping Abed. He never had a chance to pull the gun that, indeed, lay under his pillow. Subdued after a brief scuffle, he was marched to a landing site, where the helicopter took the SEALs and their captive back to Camp Schweidler.

"It went flawlessly," said a source close to the case. "They expected to get a medal."

 

[Yusuf06]

I'll say up front that I support the SEALS and the rest of our military Sarge. However, if you'll allow yourself to look away from the Faux News viewpoint for a moment, you'll realize that little if anything is out of order here.

These guys by their own admission got great intel, captured the target without any shots being fired and everything went perfectly. Great. The target then alleges that he was roughed up. So are you saying our guys should immediately get the benefit of the doubt without any due diligence on our part whatsoever? Obviously the answer has to be "no".

OK, so here's what the outrage is all about. The target makes his allegations and these SEALS go to trial which will pretty much go along the lines of "OK, so the target had a revolver under his pillow yet was captured without being shot or seriously injured. Target then says he was "roughed up" and his injuries consist of....one fat lip? These men are innocent. NEXT!!" End of story. Big freakin' deal.

Now OTOH if our policy was to summarily dismiss the protests of captives (and others) out of hand, with no due process whatsoever, this is what we'd be at risk of becoming. Sorry, but we're better than that. And if the cost is that a few of our guys have to sit in court for a day or so while everything gets sorted out, so be it. That doesn't seem to be too huge a price to pay for doing what's right; nevermind the value of maintaining the confidence of the citizens of a country we're occupying....that we're trying to keep pacified long enough to get the hell out of BTW.

Anywhoo, when one takes into account that this story is being pushed primarily by the morons at Faux News and opportunists like Dan Burton (did you notice the "Paid for and authorized by the Dan Burton for Congress Committee" disclaimer in the petition?) it begins to look a lot more like just another story designed to gin up more Faux outrage....i.e. just another far right red herring.

Now in the true spirit of Penn and Teller, I'll challenge you to instead look at what the non-distractor hand is doing. That is, try thinking a bit about the bunny someone might be trying to get you to overlook while they're waving the magic wand around in their other hand. Could it possibly be that maybe, just maybe, someone is trying to manipulate your outrage for their benefit?

You're better than that Sarge. And a hell of a lot smarter. I don't know about you but I'm done with falling for the GOP's banana in the tailpipe routine.

 

[Sarge]

I'll say up front that I support the SEALS and the rest of our military Sarge. However, if you'll allow yourself to look away from the Faux News viewpoint for a moment, you'll realize that little if anything is out of order here.

These guys by their own admission got great intel, captured the target without any shots being fired and everything went perfectly. Great. The target then alleges that he was roughed up. So are you saying our guys should immediately get the benefit of the doubt without any due diligence on our part whatsoever? Obviously the answer has to be "no".

Sorry, I'll take the word of the SEALS over the word of the guy that planned and executed this

Keep in mind that these guys are now taught, via the AQ handbook, to squeal about abuse as soon as they are captured.

OK, so here's what the outrage is all about. The target makes his allegations and these SEALS go to trial which will pretty much go along the lines of "OK, so the target had a revolver under his pillow yet was captured without being shot or seriously injured. Target then says he was "roughed up" and his injuries consist of....one fat lip? These men are innocent. NEXT!!" End of story. Big freakin' deal.

In Sarge's world, that would be correct. A fat lip? You're gonna allow three special forces guys to possibly go to jail, and certainly ruin their careers, because a terrorist has a fat lip and they alledgedly tried to cover it up? Additionally, we're going to spend probably hundreds of thousands, if not a millions of dollars, sending these guys back to Iraq for trial?

What's wrong with this picture?

Now OTOH if our policy was to summarily dismiss the protests of captives (and others) out of hand, with no due process whatsoever, this is what we'd be at risk of becoming. Sorry, but we're better than that. And if the cost is that a few of our guys have to sit in court for a day or so while everything gets sorted out, so be it. That doesn't seem to be too huge a price to pay for doing what's right; nevermind the value of maintaining the confidence of the citizens of a country we're occupying....that we're trying to keep pacified long enough to get the hell out of BTW.

LiIke I said, it's gonna cost these guys more than a few days in court if they are found guilty. Mind you, they are not being prosecuted for roughing the throatcutter up, they're beig prosecuted for alledgedly lying about it. Two completely different things.


Anywhoo, when one takes into account that this story is being pushed primarily by the morons at Faux News and opportunists like Dan Burton (did you notice the "Paid for and authorized by the Dan Burton for Congress Committee" disclaimer in the petition?) it begins to look a lot more like just another story designed to gin up more Faux outrage....i.e. just another far right red herring.

Would it have been better had I gotten the link from CNN? I'd still be just as pissed.


Now in the true spirit of Penn and Teller, I'll challenge you to instead look at what the non-distractor hand is doing. That is, try thinking a bit about the bunny someone might be trying to get you to overlook while they're waving the magic wand around in their other hand. Could it possibly be that maybe, just maybe, someone is trying to manipulate your outrage for their benefit?

You're better than that Sarge. And a hell of a lot smarter. I don't know about you but I'm done with falling for the GOP's banana in the tailpipe routine.

I really don't see this as Dem/Repub thing. I see it as someone in the Navy that has some kind of agenda.

The higher ups tried to give these guys paperwork that may have set their careers back a bit, and they turned it down. They asked for the Mast, which is essentailly a court trial. That's a hell of a bluff to call, and you better be damn sure you're innocent if you're going to do it.

Bottom line, it's a hell of a waste of money and a hell of a hit to morale. The next set of SEALS that get sent out to grab an asshole are either gonna take a lawyer with them or just shoot the guy so they won't have to take the chance of being nailed by some bean counter

 

[Hog Fever]

OK, I was trying to avoid this because I don't want to look like I'm dropping names or anything. My information comes directly from one of my best friends who is a former member of both SEAL TEAM 2 and SEAL TEAM 10 who rotated out several years ago as well as several active duty SEALS who I see socially. I trust my information completely.

The mission these three were on was to grab a high value target and bring him back, fairly standard stuff. During the target's apprehension there there was a struggle (since he did not want to go with them at first) and he was handled accordingly.

Upon getting back to base the target complained that he was tortured and beaten by the team members who apprehended him. This is standard operating procedure for opposing forces. Enemy combatants in both Iraq and Afghanistan are taught to say they have been mistreated. Draw your own conclusions as to the how this strategy was developed.

In this situation, as with ALL detainee charges of abuse, it was investigated by NCIS. After an investigation they cleared the SEALS of any wrong doing in this incident. The problem came when the three SEALS were asked to submit to nonjudicial punishment (Article 15). What that amounts to is a sort of “in house” punishment used to avoid a Court Marshall. The punishment from NJP can range from anything from confinement, to losing a bird, really anything short of a dishonorable discharge. It's all up to the commanding officer (who in this case served with my friend in SEAL 10). His motives are unclear.

Accepting NJP is not supposed to be an admission of guilt but in the eyes of these SEALS they had done nothing wrong and had been cleared by the investigation. They didn't feel punishment of any sort was warranted. Their commanding officer thought differently and threatened to Court Marshall them if they didn't submit to NJP. They refused.

So here we are. Straight from the horses mouth.

 

[Yusuf06]

I really don't see this as Dem/Repub thing. I see it as someone in the Navy that has some kind of agenda.

The higher ups tried to give these guys paperwork that may have set their careers back a bit, and they turned it down. They asked for the Mast, which is essentailly a court trial. That's a hell of a bluff to call, and you better be damn sure you're innocent if you're going to do it.

Bottom line, it's a hell of a waste of money and a hell of a hit to morale. The next set of SEALS that get sent out to grab an asshole are either gonna take a lawyer with them or just shoot the guy so they won't have to take the chance of being nailed by some bean counter.

Your point about someone having an agenda is one possibility. However, I think the more plausible explanation is that after Abu Ghraib and other incidents that created a lot of bad feeling among the Iraqi populace and helped fuel the insurgency, we're bending over backwards to show the Iraqis that that type of behavior isn't being allowed any more.

As I said earlier, such a policy is aimed at avoiding the appearance that the Iraqi government are U.S. puppets and keeping things relatively quiet until we can unass the A.O....'er make good our escape, than it does wanting to somehow punish the military or these SEALS in particular.

As for the individual SEALS involved, they were correct to demand a trial. It sounds as though they didn't do anything wrong as it relates to the prisoner. However the attempted cover up was just stupid and that literally has nothing at all to do with the assault charges. It's not unlike the cases where an otherwise innocent driver gets nervous that a cop is behind him and tries to escape, thus causing a high speed chase. Likewise, the SEALS will almost certainly be found innocent of the abuse charges but guilty of the attempted cover up.

Again, within reason I don't think it's a problem to hold our military to a given standard of behavior. Whether that standard is higher than the enemy's or the nature of the enemy's "crime" is completely irrelevant. We cannot allow our forces to intentionally kill civilians (not counting human shields), mistreat prisoners, etc. without suffering the consequences. And if our guys are going to be punished for not adhering to that standard of behavior, they deserve due process.

We decided long ago to uphold ourselves as a nation of freedom and laws, and that has a cost. Sometimes it's paid in dollars, sometimes in hide and other times both. But as the old saying goes, "Freedom ain't free". I think very often many of us forget that that saying applies to a heck of a lot more situations than we think it it does.

When we make the collective decision that we're going to do "X" because they did it to us first, the slope starts getting pretty slippery and before you know it, we might find ourselves repeating "Four legs good, two legs better!".

Finally, I'll reiterate my point about someone using the issue to artificially gin up outrage for political purposes. If you think otherwise, then why do you think the fact that the prisoner reported the incident to the Iraqi authorities gets soft peddaled, if it's mentioned at all? That small oversight strongly implies that the prisoner complained to our military and the SEALS are being punished as a result, the implication being "Look at what those mean old liberal politicians are doing to our boys, and for no reason whatsoever."

Now to their credit, Faux News did make mention of that fact in their story, though not until the very end. Of course everybody knows that when the Oxycodone Avenger, Captain Crackpot, the Princess of Prevarication and their ilk get ahold of it, any mention of the things that would fully explain the story are out of the question.

I don't know about you but that looks and smells an awful lot like a lie of omisison to me. I'm sorry but I refuse to have my intelligence insulted by juvenile attempts at manipulation like that...by either side of the aisle.

 

[servumtuum]

Yusuf, my compliments-and my thanks-for saving me the trouble of trying to compose a post for this thread-your two entries are simply excellent. You expressed my thoughts on the matter very well, and probably in a more organized and logical manner than I could have. The ultimately sad thing to me is that the intelligence you manifest is not a common trait in this country and the "they hit us we gotta hit 'em back harder" cry is the norm. A substantial proportion of our citizenry display a level of emotional control and willingness to investigate before reacting that is, I think, best modeled by the chimpanzee at the beginning of the movie 2001. "Faux news" and their political "friends" are very aware of this and do what they do because it works.

The SEALS are, I believe, victims of a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don't scenario; caught between the realities of their mission and the inability of their superiors to navigate the treacherous precipice between how they should ideally operate and what's desired by the pols in D.C. In my opinion, inflammatory reporting-a Faux News specialty, I agree-is designed to serve those pols who have scoped out the most volatile hot buttons of the voting public for manipulation when necessary. An accurate portrayal of the difficulties involved in fulfilling mission requirements while considering how the consequences of how actions might propagate politically would be better for understanding why things should be done a certain way-such as maintaining, as you mentioned, a semblance of trying to operate according to principles this country is supposed to stand for-however, the unfortunately large segment of the population who simply knee-jerk into a reactionary response mode is not an audience for intelligent analysis.

 

[Sarge]

Here's the deal. There are varying degrees on non-judicial punishment. Non-judicial in the military world meaning the punishment is proabably not going to affect your pay or rank, at least on the lower end of the scale. In the Air Force, the lowest degree on NJP is what's called a Letter of Counseling. It's basically a letter saying "You were a bad boy. Don't do that again". The other end of the scale is something called a "Letter of Reprimand". You can have a stripe removed or be docked pay along with being read the Riot Act.

After those options, you go to judicial punishment, which means you can go to jail and be kicked out of the military.

It's entirely up to your commander what degree of whacking you get. That these guys turned down NJP says to me that they have the conviction that they did nothing wrong and that their commander tried to give them the max. Meaning they were probably going to have a stripe taken and/or their pay docked. Such punishment also affects your promotion scores and ability to make rank in the future.

I can relate to these guys because about 10 years ago, I was caught up in a promotion testing cheating event, which the military highly frowns upon. I didn't have a damn thing to do with it, just happened to be sitting in the wrong part of the room with some other controllers that were cheating. My 1st Sgt, who was pretty much a full time dick, was going to give me an LOR and dock my pay. I called his bluff and did the same thing these guys did, I said "Court Marshall me". My commander reviewed the case and set it aside, meaning he couldn't tell who was telling the truth, me or the test proctor, so he sided with his troop, as any GOOD commander would, and pretty much made it go away.

These SEALS' commander had the same opportunity, and yet pressed the issue over covering this up.

Do you know how many military people cover up stupid stuff they do every day? Not so much the senior NCO's, but the lower ranking guys. Do you know how many officiers cover for one another so they won't casue a fellow ring dragger to go down?

I'm not saying it's rampant, but it does happen.

Point is, someone is pushing this issue. I'd say it's a Dem thing, but Bush had a few incidents where his Defense Department tried to BBQ military guys. The Jarheads wrapped up in the so called "Haditha Massacre" come to mind. Every one of then were found not guilty, yet Bush let those guys twirl in the wind for the sake of appearances.
And I wonder, if our "image" is suposedly so bad in the world, and BBQing some of our guys in the past didn't seem to help, why continue to do it? Especially for puddly **** like this.

But if we want to look at the political side, I'd be inclined to think that an adminstration that jumped on a cop two seconds after an arrest event involving a friend and stated "The cops acted stupidly", or an adminstration that has gone on a year long apology tour around the world, or an adminstration whose Attorney General let the Black Panthers slide with voter intimidation, would be more inclined to have the military sacrifice a few enlisted grunts in order to improve our standing in the world

 

[Yusuf06]

About the commanding officer we are in complete agreement Sarge. In fact, I was going to mention that in my previous novel...'er post and decided not to because it was already way too long.

Unfortunately, there's no way to know why their commander decided not to back his guys. It could have been the "word from above", a personal vendetta, or simply that he's just a douche....or even some combo of these or other factors. I'd hate to think someone would be so petty but I'm a realist and I've seen enough to know it's certainly possible...maybe even probable.

As for your diatribe about the political side, I hope you know that for all the examples you cited there's probably a corresponding incident that could just as easily make the case the other way. So, I could easily draw a number of conclusions (valid or otherwise) based on the actions of W.'s administration, e.g. the patriot act, its go it alone "cowboy" foreign policy, stacking the DOJ with ideological hires, its laissez faire policy toward the GOP's voter suppression tactics, police brutality, use of virtually non-existent voter fraud as a red herring, etc.