Murder Trial Sniper Says US Used ‘Bait’ For Suspect Iraqis
A trial opening in Baghdad today will shed new light on a secret Pentagon programme in which US snipers allegedly planted fake weapons as ‘bait’ to lure their Iraqi enemies to their deaths.
Sergeant Evan Vela is accused of murdering an unarmed Iraqi man and an attempted cover-up. He has admitted that he fired two bullets at point-blank range into a detainee’s head but said he was following a direct order.
His court martial comes after those of two fellow snipers in an embarrassing saga which has blown the cover of an alleged classified ‘baiting’ programme in which snipers scatter ammunition, detonation cords or other items, then lie in wait to shoot insurgents who pick them up.
The tactic emerged earlier this year when Captain Matthew Didier, a platoon commander in an elite sniper unit known as the ‘Painted Demons’, told a military court: ‘Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy.
‘Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against US forces.’
Didier claimed that members of the US military’s Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later supplied ammunition boxes filled with ‘drop items’ to be deployed as bait. Soldiers told the Washington Post that about a dozen platoon members were aware of the programme, and that others knew about the ‘drop items’ but did not know their purpose. Vela, team leader Michael Hensley and Jorge Sandoval were members of the ‘Painted Demons’, which had a reputation for notching ‘kills’ at a high rate in the so-called ‘triangle of death’ south of Baghdad. They were charged with the murders of three Iraqis during US operations in the spring.
Last week Hensley, an expert marksman from the 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was cleared of murder charges but reprimanded and demoted on lesser charges of planting an AK-47 rifle beside the body of a dead Iraqi and disrespecting an officer.
Last month Sandoval was found not guilty on two murder charges but was demoted from specialist to private and is serving a 44-day sentence for planting a detonation cord on the body of an Iraqi.
Vela is charged with premeditated murder, planting a weapon, making false statements and obstruction of justice. The first pre-trial hearing is today.
Lawyers for the snipers have argued that the baiting programme is relevant to their defence because it shows how officials backed unorthodox methods of killing not only insurgents but also unarmed men thought to be enemy combatants.
James Culp, Vela’s attorney, has said: ‘I don’t know how far up the chain this baiting programme goes right now. I know the government is trying to dummy this down to the lowest level possible.’
He added: ‘Our government is asking soldiers and Marines to make morally bruising decisions under the most horrific conditions imaginable. When the government doesn’t like the results, they isolate and vilify the soldier while hiding behind security clearances, classifications and unreasonable expectations.’
Vela’s father, Curtis Carnahan, told the Washington Post: ‘It’s an injustice … You can’t prosecute our soldiers for acts of war and threaten them with years of confinement when this programme, if it comes to the light of day, was clearly coming from higher levels. All those people who said “go use this stuff” just disappeared … ‘
US military officers in Baghdad deny the existence of a baiting programme. The court barred most classified material from Hensley’s court martial.
© 2007 The Guardian
It must leave a person with a feeling of power and goodness that they have sniped the life of another human, one who may pick up an object from a roadway, perhaps not knowing what is is and perhaps planning on taking it to someone who may know and explain it. Or perhaps a child or teenager, who may not know a length of primer cord from a jump rope.
Heard a man once describe how great it felt to shoot porkapines with a 44 magnum rifle and watch their heads explode. ___ It takes all kinds. __ For our military leaders to authorize or condone this is criminal, why aren’t they on trial for murder?
I am sickened on a daily basis by the situations our “leaders” have created. War is a disease on the surface of our planet and those who brought this about should be … what? Certainly removed, punished, shamed but that just doesn’t seem to be enough. I am furthered worried that they will not loosen their hold on power any time soon.
Leaders all alone in Washington DC offices wouldn’t be able to do anything. You have to understand that the military is composed of low life forms that has been raised to kill. Before joining the military many have practiced on what they call varmint, at home, deer, porcupine, whatever moves in the country side and they just can’t wait to kill another human being. Do you remember the sniper in Jarhead who was banging his head in despair when his superior didn’t give him the authorization to kill another human being and called in the Air Force do to the job?
I’m sick and tired of the support your troops rhetoric. I don’t give a damn about the troops.
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy.”
The “new” army doesn’t DEFEAT the enemy, it DESTROYS the enemy. It’s all part of the newthink that permeates every nook and cranny of the armed forces since the takeover of the military leadership by right-wing fundamental Christian zealots.
Don’t miss this article:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/08/5093/
I could see some guy just trying to remove dangerous objects from his property getting shot. Why not install a drinking fountain with poison in the water?
I am sure this baiting program raises a little problem with trust.
I also thing this will kill stupid terrorists while the smart ones will use it as a recruiting tool.
I am always sickened, but never surprised at what the US military gets up to these days.
This just another example of its disgusting behavior. These nasty tricks are thouht up by the administrators and foisted off on the inlisted troops to carry out. Yuk
Anne Kirby
This entire article boggles this mind. I simply cannot understand why anyone would be a sniper. Hell, I can’t imagine why anyone would be in the military. Don’t these people understand that they are killing human beings?!
I am not a christian, but many of these military types claim to be. So, whatever happened to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” There
aren’t loopholes, justifications, ‘except fors’ in this commandment. Thou shalt not kill - end of story.
Someone please help me understand …
I can hear the conversation now. From a distance of one and a half miles, the pair wait. One finishes taking a few gulps of water from his canteen before checking his 50 caliber, bolt action sniper rifle to insure it is ready for firing. All that is needed it to click off the safety.
Shooter, “See anything”?
Spotter, “Yeah get ready, there’s two men looking at the number three bait”.
Shooter, “Okay, I see em, probably terrorists alright. ___ Quiet now, I’m zeroing in on em, I’ll take out the one on the left first if either one touches it”.
Seconds later, in a whisper, the spotter. ___ “You got him, you got him, the other one is staring at the body.” The sound of the bolt action being oenened and closed is then heard.
Seconds later. Spotter yelling out, “You got him, his head just exploded, ___ great shot, __ that was great”.
I can hear it. ___ They will have to forever live with it.
iowairish– I got this interpretation from Alberto Gonzalez, who termed the Ten Commandments “quaint”:
“Thou” refers to anyone not a member of the United States Armed Forces or any armed individuals under contract to the U.S. government.
“Kill” refers to any action intended to cause organ failure, or organ splatter.
Remember, it would only be terrorism if our enemies did this.
You gotta read the fine print.
This is very odious. The only thing I can
say on about and to the soldiers is look to
Ehren Watada as a role model and get some
professional help. Dont commit suicide,
please. Smoke a lot of pot. It’s your bosses
that crafted your missions, that need to be
drawn and quartered.
As a matter of fact, does anyone
know anything about how our troops
are managing their anguish over shooting
non-cobatants in the head from 1000
yards? I’ve read absolutely nothing
anywhere about soldiers doing heroin
in poppy central. If I was there somehow
inadvertantly (?) i’d be a total
heroin addict.
Yessir, I am sure looking forward to when these sociopaths get back to the U.S. of A. Sniper and Baiter…….those are definitely marketable skills in the real world. And it makes me wonder: to a sniper, all of those little children who pick up the cluster bombs that we leave lying around the world, they must be “baby terrorists”, right? After all, why else would someone want to pick up a bomb? They MUST be doing it for some nefarious purpose. I can just hear the lead-platoon sicko now: “Go ahead, corporal, shoot that three year old for touching U.S. government property”. After all, better a dead baby terrorist, than one who just had his hands blown off…………
Oh, and one more thing. It is plainly obvious that nobody ever gets convicted of a real crime during U.S. courts-martial (after all, it isn’t “murder” when U.S. soldiers do it, only “causing a disturbance” or “disrespecting a dead guy”), but still the lamest of all excuses has to be “I did it because I was ordered to do it”. It didn’t work for the Nazis sixty years ago, and it should not work for our little nazis either.
Geez as an American I’ve been so
conditioned to support the troops
or else. On one hand those folks
are under extraordinary pressure
to do their jobs the other hand is
it’s wrong to kill.
Maybe someday under an enlightened
administration I’ll get med coverage,
counsleing and legal, free drugs to
medicate the PTSD that I
suffer from as a result of my
illustious my leader group’s actions.
Sorry for the typos, it shoulda read:
Maybe someday under an enlightened
administration I’ll get med coverage,
counseling and legal, free drugs to
medicate the PTSD that I suffer from,
starting from 9/11/01.
It’s appropriate to try these guys, but it’s even more appropriate and important to follow the chain of command, however high it may go, and prosecute any official who authorizes, orders, condones or suggests behavior constituting war crimes. It may well be the case that the majority of Americans support, or at least don’t oppose, such offenses, but that does not matter. They are clearly illegal under US and international law, and law does not depend upon polls. Congress, by its craven refusal to delve into these matters even while funding them, is complicit. There must be, even if under the next administration (unlikely if any Republican or Hillary Clinton becomes president), public investigation and prosecution to restore the faith of our allies, assuage the rightful wrath of our current or potential enemies, and regain the rule of law.
Snipers have a unique/valuable role in military-engagements…but to combine this technique with this sort of specious ’sting-operation’ (that the US-JusticeDept is now so fond-of) is unconscionable in ‘Urban Warfare’.
Leaving ‘bait’ such as cord, ammo, etc., in these urban war-zones (and worse, one in which the Occupiers have insured a 70%+ unemployment-rate for years-now), and then ‘engaging’ any civilians — which, inevitably, means ‘certain-death’ for them — leaving with such?
Can these commanders/’strategists’ who thought-up and suggested-this nonsense possibly be ’sincere’?
What about those who want just to turn it in to proper-authorities? Or insure that children (or ‘bad-guys’) have no-access?
Or, those who simply hope/need to sell-it — to feed their family?
It’s indiscriminate-murder…and nothing less. To ‘lipstick this pig’ by trying to focus upon some-few who are killed this way, who ‘may or may-not’ be “unhappy with the Occupation”, is Prosecutorially-abusive and a total-Hypocrisy.
This is no-different than the mindset of the arch-bishop Arnaud who, when faced with the difficulty of identifying a few-thousand Cathars from ‘normal-Catholics’ in Beziers, France in 1209, ordered his Papal-Crusaders to ““Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own.” [He then wrote to Pope Innocent III that: “Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex.”]
Its no-wonder that returning US-soldiers are suffering from mental-illness, suicide and violent ‘acting-out’/PTSD, in record-numbers — having been subjected to such a depraved misuse of their already stressful and inhumane Duties. ‘Embedded-reporters’ and the Pentagon may find their solace in statements to an unaware-Public that constantly refer to all-killed as ‘insurgents’, but the trooper — having left the reinforced ‘buddy-system’ and “fog of war”, in-Theater — well-knows exactly what he/she participated in. The Murder of innocent civilians.
Truly ‘Medieval’…
http://www.qumsiyeh.com/targetingcivilians/
- Most Palestinians killed in Israeli raids were civilians, Amnesty says By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem The Independent - 24 May 2007
“More than 320 civilians were among a threefold increase in the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces last year, according to Amnesty International. The human rights group’s 2007 report says that over half of the more than 650 Palestinians killed in 2006 were civilians, 120 of them children and young people under 18. ” http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2578484.ece
Hey zis is kosher, goys. Apartheid supremacist Jews have been doing it for years. No time now for you Goyim slave cattle to be getting squeamish in your mission for Eretz Y’Israel. Keep on killing..it’s the christojudeofascist way of life…if you’ll pardon a supremacist pun!
Jews have been baiting Palestinians for years for chrissake, blowing children’s heads apart as they sat in their school rooms or played football.
Iraqi culling amerikans enjoy the kosher “burst of pink mist” as a human skull disintegrates and the brain is liquefied in a faint pink cloud that amerikan long-distance killer snipers (long time Jew speciality in Palestine) have been talking about on the net for years.
Question remains…which of the two pariah war machines has contaminated the other more, the amerikan the Jew or the Jew the amerikan? Chicken egg shit really when you consider whose running the amerikan coop!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pink+mist
Urban Dictionary
How about:
finding something, abandoned, worth a dollar, or perhaps five or fifty dollars. Pick it up = death // you’re sniped as an insurgent.
It’s crazy logic for troops to condemn trash pickers, recyclers or scavengers as insurgents doomed to die.
Bas bad killers
This is what the Bush White House has done for America!
People honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry! What imbeciles have the United States by the throat! And the chief imbeciles are in the Oval Office!
Let’s try to follow the bouncing ball….
It’s all too easy for our “leaders” to do
- set up a program like this - let the soldiers take the fall for anything they are caught doing - all while singing “support the troops!!”.
As for the scavengers - well most Americans have no idea how many people who are dirt poor in other parts of the world actually survive by scavenging things they may be able to sell for a few bucks - so we can just assume the simpletons who watch the evening news each night in America will never see this anyway - if they do - well the simpletons will understand that when we tell them the “insurgents” tried to pick up weapon making material - well this must mean they are terrorists right?
As for the dead victims - even though we try to claim we “liberated” Iraq - we do not count the enemy dead - and now that there is an insurgency we can assume any Iraqi that we previously liberated is now an insurgent or terrorist.
That is your mental gymnastics performed by the media to ensure no one understands anyting past what they are being told. follow the bouncing ball…
I’m sure this bit of “drama” will prompt more spawn of this “great nation” to sign up to teach U.S. democracy abroad. Knowing full well, of course, that the drones they return to, (if they return), will “honor” their great sacrifice in service of this country. Takes alot of guts to allow yourself to be lied into invading a country 1/50th the size of the evil empire to access control of their raw materials for the corporations that have bought and paid for your “leaders” so they can bring it home and f**k us to death with it as well. Then deny us a simple thing like healthcare and retirement. Knowing, of course, that the level of flag-waving ignorance and bravado here will more than keep the masses licking the boots of the swine that kick them. A nation of sheep, led by a cartel of whores, controlled by Israel / big business. Welcome to the REAL Evil Empire.
Once again the soldiers have been betrayed by their leaders. Our soldiers are lions lead by donkeys. The ones who should be on trial instead go to their posh offices at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from where they plot America’s future wars.
People, people, people, I just can’t believe some of the comments such as:
” As a matter of fact, does anyone
know anything about how our troops
are managing their anguish over shooting
non-cobatants in the head from 1000
yards?”
THEY LOVE IT! GO to the link pasted below and open your eyes and ears
http://thejoyofkilling.blogspot.com/
“…following a direct order,” indeed! We need to recognize that we have a lot of sociopaths in the U.S. military and their behavior is openly encouraged by the top brass. This guy should have the book thrown at him, and that applies as well to all those in the chain of command above him, including GWB.