Thread: US officials say Army soldier suspected of shooting more than a dozen Afghans

I'm getting the impression this was a mistake on the part of the army for sending him there, but it was probably due to the difficulty of getting men willing to do this. That doesn't negate what he did at all - but it makes others responsible as well. They need to punish the monster and discipline those who contributed, IMO.

Whats saddest is the fact that we tried to humanize war, to lessen its cost to innocents like children, but in so doing created situations where war doesn't end becuase the pain inflicted on the enemy is never enough to make them cry uncle. As a result more innocents end up dying. I've said it before, sanitized war leads to more deaths.

Now we have a dead family of afghans, a ruined family of Americans and a previously honorable soldier now piled up in a horrible crash of good intentions and reality on the road to Hell. If we want to win a war in Afghanistan we need to be willing to kill everyone for it, if we are not willing to do to Afghanistan what we did to Germany and Japan we need to go home.

Accused soldier in Afghanistan shooting could face death penalty, plead insanity

Published March 13, 2012 AP


The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians over the weekend is not talking and is generally not cooperating with investigators, U.S. military officials said Tuesday as details of his arrest began to emerge in a case that could lead to an insanity plea or possibly the death penalty.

On Sunday, the soldier, whose name is being withheld until charges are filed, reportedly walked off the U.S. base in Kandahar province -- where he had been stationed for just six weeks -- and allegedly entered homes in a nearby village, shooting people while they slept. Nine children and three women are among the dead, and some of whose bodies were apparently burned.

Shortly afterward, local Afghans showed up at the outpost looking for help. The military began searching for a suspect.

According to a U.S. military source, aerial imagery was used to spot the accused soldier crawling on the ground near his base. The imagery was likely provided a drone, though the official did not say. The soldier was seen lying on the ground and then getting up, according to the imagery. He was then apprehended.

One U.S. official told Fox News there is "reason to believe alcohol may have been involved."

The soldier has invoked his rights to an attorney, but it's not clear yet whether he has retained one, either private or military.

As the details unfold, President Obama on Tuesday pledged that the U.S. will "spare no effort" in conducting the investigation

"The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens, and our children, who were murdered. We're heartbroken over the loss of innocent life," Obama said during a White House event.

"I've directed the Pentagon to make sure that we spare no effort in conducting a full investigation," Obama said. "We will follow the facts wherever they lead us and we will make sure that anybody who is involved is held fully accountable with the full force of the law.

As the news trickled out across Afghanistan, the alleged massacre has already generated threats of violence. On Tuesday, an Afghan delegation sent by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the shooting scenes were attacked by militants. Multiple people were wounded and one Afghan soldier was killed, a senior military official in Afghanistan told Fox News.

The Taliban, with whom the U.S. and Afghan officials are said to be negotiating, has vowed revenge, including reportedly threatening to behead American soldiers.

Though Afghanistan's parliament has called for the soldier to be tried in an Afghan court, he will likely be returned to the United States and face a general court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Pentagon investigators are mulling charges that could result in the death penalty if he is found guilty.

The soldier reportedly suffered a traumatic brain injury, incurred during one of his three prior tours in Iraq. Military officials later described it as a mild injury resulting from a vehicle rollover but his history could impact the case, said Gary Solis, a Georgetown University law professor and expert on war crimes and the military justice system

Solis said he thinks there's "a good chance" that an insanity defense will be raised.

"Given the circumstances of this case and the previous records of deployments of this staff sergeant, I think it's an obvious defense of his defense counsel," Solis told Fox News.

"It's hard to say whether the case will even go to trial because in war crimes like this it's very possible that there will be ... an insanity defense, that he is unable to recognize the wrongfulness of his act because of a severe mental disease or injury," Solis said.

Solis, a former Marine military prosecutor, said that the military is well aware of the side effects of multiple deployments in war zones, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the high divorce rate and the spousal abuse rate, among others. He said PTSD and insanity are not the same, and PTSD is not a defense, but "the groundwork has been laid" by his repeated deployments to declare insanity.

"Those individuals with PTSD should not ever be confused with someone who is insane, but insanity is much more than that, and one merely looks at the acts that this individual allegedly committed to say this is just not the working of a rational mind," Solis said.

President Ronald Reagan reinstituted the death penalty for soldiers by executive order in January 1984. In the order, he required that the president personally sign-off on an execution before it can take place. Though the last time a soldier was put to death -- for rape and murder -- was in 1961, six military members are currently on death row.

Solis said death sentences are relatively rare in the Armed Services. More common is for charges to be brought under a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

If the accused soldier doesn't claim an insanity defense, he may be able to use insanity as a mitigating factor to avoid death. He could also argue that his long service to the nation makes him eligible for a milder sentence.

Read more: Accused Soldier In Afghanistan Shooting Could Face Death Penalty, Plead Insanity | Fox News

Originally Posted by omon

i,ve read about it in few places, but i have not seen any mention of distance or that he burned bodies, do you have a link to those details???

Don't have a link now but apparently the killings happened over a distance of >1 mile and he burned some of the bodies. That means he had a supply of chemicals/fuel etc. to do that.

Originally Posted by Vinod2070

Don't have a link now but apparently the killings happened over a distance of >1 mile and he burned some of the bodies. That means he had a supply of chemicals/fuel etc. to do that.

Not necessarily so m8 , he could have used what was handy in the home .If he did carry chemicals thats premeditated ,,bang goes insanity plea methinks .

Originally Posted by tankie

Not necessarily so m8 , he could have used what was handy in the home .If he did carry chemicals thats premeditated ,,bang goes insanity plea methinks .

I just said something very similar but for some reason it didn't post but I think we are on the same song sheet with that one mate.

Originally Posted by zraver

Whats saddest is the fact that we tried to humanize war, to lessen its cost to innocents like children, but in so doing created situations where war doesn't end becuase the pain inflicted on the enemy is never enough to make them cry uncle. As a result more innocents end up dying. I've said it before, sanitized war leads to more deaths.

Now we have a dead family of afghans, a ruined family of Americans and a previously honorable soldier now piled up in a horrible crash of good intentions and reality on the road to Hell. If we want to win a war in Afghanistan we need to be willing to kill everyone for it, if we are not willing to do to Afghanistan what we did to Germany and Japan we need to go home.

You've been dealing with an insurgency for a long time now. The war ended a few months after the invasion in 2002.

The very nature of an insurgency is both parties get brutalised over time. From that pov this one is no different to any other bitter insurgency fought in the past.

Originally Posted by zraver

Whats saddest is the fact that we tried to humanize war, to lessen its cost to innocents like children, but in so doing created situations where war doesn't end becuase the pain inflicted on the enemy is never enough to make them cry uncle. As a result more innocents end up dying. I've said it before, sanitized war leads to more deaths.

Now we have a dead family of afghans, a ruined family of Americans and a previously honorable soldier now piled up in a horrible crash of good intentions and reality on the road to Hell. If we want to win a war in Afghanistan we need to be willing to kill everyone for it, if we are not willing to do to Afghanistan what we did to Germany and Japan we need to go home.

The Russians were willing to fight a dramatically more brutal war - that didn't work either. If there is a way to 'win' in Afghanistan I'm not sure any modern power has found it.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

The Russians were willing to fight a dramatically more brutal war - that didn't work either. If there is a way to 'win' in Afghanistan I'm not sure any modern power has found it.

Yes there is. You just have to settle down for the long haul in which the major powers were not willing to do because it is all full of rocks and sands and no oil. Nobody wants to live in Afghanistan. If there's a group of people that wants to live in Afghanistan, they would have been there by now. When nobody wants to live there, the people living there already pretty much can do whatever they want to do. So only the Afghan people can decide this and the last 10 years have consistently showed that the Afghan people don't give a fvck about Taliban or NA. They just want to continue on in their uncomplicated lives and eke out a simple living.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

The Russians were willing to fight a dramatically more brutal war - that didn't work either. If there is a way to 'win' in Afghanistan I'm not sure any modern power has found it.

The Russian's were not much more brutal than we are if going by body counts and the measure is WWII. The Soviets inflicted roughly 60-100,000 casualties a year on Afghanistan. Germany suffered somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.5 million from 39-45 and a further couple of million from 45-48. High end 4.5 million dead over the course of 9 years or more than 5 times the rate the Soviets killed at. Japan only lost about a million civillians but this was done almost entirely in the last year, year and a half of the war so again at about 5 times the rate the Soviet's killed afghanis at. We are currently killing Afghanis at about 1/25th the rate the Soviets did.

Other examples include the American-Indian wars, as a percentage of population, some tribes suffered 100% losses and went extinct while almost none who tried to fight got off easy.If they were agricultural we burnt their fields, if they were nomadic we killed the buffalo, we outlawed their religion, destroyed their moral compass with booze, slaughtered their elders and children. Even the Apaches who held off the Spanish then the Mexicans could not resist the crush of blue wool and bullets. Then when they cried uncle we made them live a different way, we didn't enforce reparations like Europe would do against Germany, but made them re-order their entire society. There hasn't been a major Indian uprising in over a century. Similar pattern with Germany and Japan- no longer a threat to global peace. War is about winning, not winning nicely, and the easiest way to save lives is to jump up and down on your enemies head with both jack booted feet until they cry uncle then lift them up and show them how to live to avoid another lesson.

You sound like British colonialist.

At the end of the day, after few centuries they are back on their island. In few years, decades top, they wont rule the whole of it as well, because of their brutal past.