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Suspect Soldiers: Did Crimes in US Foretell Violence in Iraq?
Before Army Sgt. 1st Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record in Colordao and Washington state for assaulting his wife and in Maine for a drunken high-speed police chase, for which he remains wanted.
Before Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes stabbed an Iraqi private to death, angering the soldier's unit of coalition soldiers, he was hospitalized after threatening suicide in high school, accused of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, and, in the months leading up to deployment, twice linked to drug use.
Before Army Spc. Shane Carl Gonyon was convicted of stealing a pistol at Abu Ghraib prison, he was convicted twice on felony charges and arrested four times, once for allegedly giving a 13-year-old girl marijuana in exchange for oral sex. He enlisted weeks after his release from a federal prison in Oregon.
A yearlong examination of military and civilian records by The Sacramento Bee involving hundreds of troops who entered the services since the Iraq war began identified 120 cases of people whose backgrounds should have raised the suspicions of military recruiters, including felony convitions and serious drug, alcohol or mental health problems.
Of those, 70 later were involved in controversial or criminal incidents in Iraq.
Ruby, Holmes and Gonyon were among those cases.
"These guys are out there carrying weapons, fighting on the streets with drugs in their pockets," said Tressie Cox, whose son, Lee Robert, had a history of drug and mental problems before he was charged with selling drugs in Iraq. "Shame on my son, but shame on all you people out there who are policing this and allowing this to continue to happen."
The 70 were among the tens of thousands of military personnel recruited or retained as the armed services, entering the sixth year of the Iraq war, lowered educational, age and moral standards and granted a growing number of waivers to applicants whose backgrounds previously would have barred them from serving.
From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of Army recruits receiving so-called "moral conduct" waivers more than doubled, from 4.6 percent to 11.2 percent. Others, The Bee found, were able to enlist because they had no official criminal record of arrests or convictions, their records were overlooked or prosecutors suspended charges in lieu of military service - akin to a now-defunct Vietnam-era practice in which judges gave defendants a choice between prison and the military.
"How in the hell can they legally possess a gun?" asked Montgomery County, Ala., Sheriff D.T. Marshall, when questioned about a soldier from his county.
That soldier, Eli C. Gregory, was convicted in an attempted home invasion and of felony theft in Alabama, making him ineligible to legally possess a firearm there. Yet the military gave him a rifle and sent him to Iraq, where he was convicted by the Army of assault and battery on a fellow soldier and discharged.
Gregory, who returned to Alabama after his court-martial, said during an interview that he still cannot legally possess a firearm in the United States.
The military defended its recruiting policies, including granting more waivers for past conduct.
"Standards in our society have changed over the years; we are a reflection of those changes," said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command. "Considering offering a waiver to otherwise qualified recruits is the right thing to do for those Americans who want to answer the call to duty."
Earlier this month, the Department of Defense announced a new system to categorize waivers by the severity of prior offenses to allow the services to analyze the link between waivers and future military behavior.
The examination looked at only a fraction of the 1.4 million people in uniform and was conducted largely without benefit of sophisticated criminal databases available to the military.
Still, The Bee linked dozens of soldiers and Marines with criminal records and other questionable backgrounds to misconduct in the military. In some cases, past misconduct appeared to forshadow future behavior.
"Criminal history is the best predictor of future behavior," said Shawn Bushway, a criminology professor at the University of Albany, N.Y., School of Criminal Justice. "Any time you lower your standards, you're going to raise the risk. No question about it."
Nine months before the death of the first of three Iraqis that Army sniper Michael A. Hensley was accused of murdering, members of a San Diego-area family witnessing his actions in Seward, Alaska, were so concerned about what they saw that they videotaped him.
The family, sharing a third-floor hotel room in Seward, awakened to screams from the parking lot below and peered out to see Hensley threatening a woman inside a Jeep, pounding on the vehicle with his fists.
"He obviously wasn't stable, just from seeing him the 20 minutes I did," said Alex Elling, who was 18 when he videotaped the incident.
Hensley "had bloody knuckles, and the windshield of the Jeep was broken," a Seward Police Department report said. Hensley, who had previously served six months' probation on a drunken-driving conviction in Georgia, pleaded no contest to the Alaska charges of disorderly conduct.
In Iraq, the military found Hensley guilty of planting an AK-47 on the body of an Iraqi he was accused of killing, but not guilty in any of the three killings.
In the months surrounding his enlistment into the Army in 2000, Ricky Allen Burke was the subject of two court cases for unpaid debt, and, according to Monticello, Ky., Police Chief Ralph Miniard, he was involved in two vehicle accidents. His wife, who left him before their second anniversary, claimed in a domestic violence petition filed in March 2000 that he threatened to kill her, causing her to flee to a police station.
Two months later, court records say, Burke confronted his wife again at a relative's house, and police cited him for violating the domestic violence order.
A domestic violence conviction could have triggered a federal law precluding Burke from possessing a firearm. But seven days after he enlisted, the criminal case was continued, one of several continuances before it was dismissed in 2002.
Three years later in Iraq, Burke shot and killed a wounded insurgent he claimed had moved toward a weapon. But soldiers contradicted his story in statements to investigators.
"(Burke) said to me, 'Let me shoot him. Let me shoot him. I got payback coming,' " Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein said, adding that he repeatedly ordered Burke not to fire since the insurgent was injured and Nein saw no weapon nearby.
Despite the testimony against him, Burke was found not guilty of the killing by a military court.
In December, the National Guard quit granting felony waivers. The Guard's chief recruiting officer, Col. Mike Jones, was quoted in the Army Times calling the previous policy "a risk," but he later told The Bee an increased number of applicants made the policy no longer necessary.
Of the more than 120 soldiers and Marines with questionable pasts examined by The Bee, at least 18 had felony arrests or convictions or histories of mental illness. At least eight of the 18 later were connected to incidents in Iraq, and a ninth fatally shot himself while on guard duty in Kuwait.
The military refused to disclose who required waivers to enter the military, citing privacy, but waivers were not required of all convicted felons.
Gregory, the Alabama felon prohibited from possessing a firearm, said he was allowed to join without a waiver because he was convicted of stealing less than $500, so the Army didn't technically consider the crime a felony. The Army confirmed that it does not require waivers for some felonies in which the crime loss is less than $500, but a spokesman noted that a felony waiver is required for larger amounts.
Spc. Shane Gonyon had four felony arrests and two convictions, but he had only to lie to avoid rejection.
Shortly after he was discharged from the Air Force in Wyoming for drunken driving in 1998, Gonyon was arrested in Colorado on suspicion of pointing a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol at a homeless man who had accused him of theft.
The following year, he admitted to stealing more than $10,000 in equipment from an Air Force base, and months later, he was accused of providing marijuana to a 13-year-old girl in exchange for oral sex, triggering a felony charge that resulted in a guilty plea to misdemeanor child endangering.
Nineteen days after he walked away from a federal prison, Gonyon applied for the Michigan National Guard, claiming he had worked at a wood supply company during the period when he actually was incarcerated. He was accepted the following month, in January 2003.
Since Gonyon had previously served in the military, the Guard didn't require a complete background check. That practice also ended earlier this year, after a guardsman with a past felony conviction shot and killed four civilians.
Gonyon wasn't confronted about his criminal record until 2006, after an incident at Abu Ghraib prison, where he processed detainees. In late March or early April 2006, Gonyon stole a 7 mm pistol from a translator. He was caught trying to mail it to the United States.
"I deliberately concealed my arrest(s) and convictions," Gonyon told a court-martial panel, which convicted him of theft and other charges.
The military is required to screen applicants for drug or alcohol abuse, mental health history and prior criminal conduct.
Recruiters, however, are not required to call former employers, research all information held by law enforcement agencies, check civil court files or, unless a security clearance is involved, attempt to contact relatives, former spouses, schoolteachers and neighbors - all techniques used by law enforcement agencies to screen applicants.
Such checks could uncover applicants not necessarily fit for service, even though they lack serious criminal convictions.
The additional checks might find criminal defendants not prosecuted in exchange for agreements to join the military, for instance, or defendants in criminal cases who had their charges dropped or reduced in exchange for providing information to police.
When the military did its standard criminal background check on David Crawford, who entered the Army at age 18 in 2006, he had only a minor juvenile record, Cincinnati police said. A request to police for a more thorough check would have revealed much more.
"I would have told them he was a suspect in a murder case," said police Spc. John Horn, who questioned Crawford about the killing days before he left for boot camp. "When I interviewed him in September 2006, he admitted, because he was sniffling, that he was on a three-day cocaine binge."
Crawford was arrested by Cincinnati officers for the crime when he returned from boot camp in 2006, and the following year, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 28 years to life.
Asked why someone like Delano Holmes was allowed to deploy to Iraq, Marine Capt. Brett Miner, a prosecutor at Holmes' court-martial, said: "We're kind of short on bodies."
Indianapolis police records show that on Jan. 13, 2002, when Holmes was 16, officers dispatched an ambulance to his high school after Holmes threatened to kill himself.
Fifteen months later, Holmes was arrested for disorderly conduct at an Indianapolis mall and banned from returning there for a year. He returned 10 minutes later and was arrested on a trespassing charge.
Then, on April 14, 2004, a college student told police that Holmes had shoved him onto a bed and hit him in the forehead during a dispute over a vehicle.
Weeks later Holmes left for boot camp in San Diego.
In the months leading up to his 2006 deployment to Iraq, civilian police found Holmes in a pickup containing marijuana residue and drug paraphernalia. In a separate incident, the military disciplined him for failing a drug test given to members of his unit preparing to deploy to Iraq.
Section 6210.5 of the Marine Corps Separation and Retirement Manual says Marines confirmed to have used illegal drugs "will be processed" for separation. A Marine Corps spokeswoman said the regulation does not give a time limit for completing that separation process, but she acknowledged that commanders had not even started the process for Holmes.
Three months after he deployed, Holmes was standing guard at an outpost in Fallujah when he pulled out a 13¼-inch bayonet and repeatedly stabbed Pvt. Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin, whose Iraq army unit was serving alongside U.S. Marines. An autopsy found Hassin suffered 17 stab wounds, 26 cuts and a severed spine.
Holmes then fired Hassin's AK-47 rifle to make it appear he had killed him in self-defense, the prosecutor told The Bee. Defense attorneys said the fight started when Hassin refused to put out a cigarette, which Holmes feared might alert insurgents.
A military panel at Camp Pendleton, Calif., found Holmes guilty of negligent homicide and making a false statement and sentenced him to 10 months in jail or, in effect, time served.
Holmes did not testify during his military trial, but read a statement. He stood silent for several minutes, turning pages in a notebook. Then his eyes filled with tears so large that they could be seen falling on the lectern from across the room.
Between sobs and silence, he finally spoke, calling himself a warrior and a Christian.
"I believe we are all products of our experiences," Holmes said. "God gave me more than I could handle."
Holmes' criminal record was not part of his court-martial, and media accounts identified him as a college student. The prosecutor acknowledged in a subsequent interview that he was aware of Holmes' record.
"I think that his character for violence was a contributing factor to the death of Private Hassin," Capt. Miner said.
COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES
For years the military was warned about applicants with criminal backgrounds.
A 1996 Pentagon study of more than 100,000 California recruits found that those with arrest records left the service at a rate 70 percent higher than those without such histories. A 2003 study warned that destructive behavior by troops with criminal histories or troubling backgrounds "could have the most serious consequences."
An October 2007 Army study shows that although recruits requiring conduct waivers re-enlisted at a higher rate, were promoted to sergeant faster and received more awards, they had a higher rate of desertion, misconduct and failure to complete alcohol rehabilitation.
Hassin, the Iraqi soldier killed by Holmes, had a relative assigned to the same post. His death angered the Iraqi soldiers serving with the Marines there.
"They took it pretty personal," Capt. Javier Torres testified at Holmes' court-martial. "After the incident, the Iraqis did not want to assume (their) post."
In another well-publicized incident, Army Spc. Mario L. Lozano Jr. fueled anti-war protest across Italy when he mistakenly shot and wounded an Italian journalist and killed her bodyguard at a checkpoint in Iraq. The shooting of Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent, and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, whose freedom Calipari had help secure, bolstered anti-war sentiment in Italy credited with helping elect a new government, which pulled its troops from Iraq in late 2006.
Though the shooting was the subject of hundreds of news accounts, including a "60 Minutes" segment, and described in two books, The Bee uncovered criminal records on Lozano not previously made public.
In 1994, for instance, a man who repossessed Lozano's car told Hollywood, Fla., police that Lozano threatened him.
"My Rottweiler was barking," Lozano explained in an interview. "I look out my window, and there's a guy rolling the car back. So I came out. I grabbed a bat."
Lozano joined the Army in 1998. Two years later, his wife dialed 911 and told Hollywood police that Lozano had hit her in the face with his open hand because she had been seeing another man.
"I've never done anything like that to any female," Lozano responded. He left after the incident and was back at his military post in Alaska in a day, he said, because "I know that ... even if she dials 911 and hangs up, the cops are going to come."
A domestic violence conviction could have ended Lozano's military career, but with Lozano in Alaska, records indicate, authorities had trouble pursuing the case. His wife subsequently filed for divorce.
In Alaska, Fairbanks police twice sought Lozano regarding threats to a man there, he was accused of writing bad checks, and eventually owed child support of more than $5,500, prompting a Florida court to take legal action.
Lozano left the active duty Army in 2001 but joined the National Guard in July 2003. Less than two years later, he was sitting atop a Humvee parked near a road leading to the Baghdad airport, manning an M-240B belt-fed machine gun that can fire 10 large-caliber rounds per second.
Lozano said he shone large lights on the vehicle carrying the Italians before firing, but Sgrena's book, "Friendly Fire," said the illumination and the shots came simultaneously.
An Italian court threw out the murder charge against Lozano, his attorney said, after realizing the United States is allowed to prosecute its own soldiers.
Lozano blamed the journalist for the shooting. "If it wasn't for her, it wouldn't have happened," he said. "It was her idea to go over there and mingle with terrorists."
Lozano said he left the Guard after commanders refused to let him deploy to Afghanistan.
"They got like 5,000 Italian soldiers over there," he said. "They don't want to create no kind of problems."
MILITARY HISTORIES
Like Lozano, several other soldiers and Marines linked to incidents in Iraq had questionable histories - obtained not as civilians, but as members of the armed services. They, too, were nonetheless deployed.
Three years after Randal Ruby joined the Army in 1985, civilian police near his post at Fort Lewis, Wash., arrested him on a charge of assault after Tacoma police officers reported finding him pacing amid belongings scattered across his living room. The officers reported that the left side of his wife's face was swollen.
Six months later, Ruby's wife again called officers, who found her scalp and forehead red from an apparent attack, and, in 1991, she obtained a restraining order after alleging Ruby "struck me several times."
Ruby was transferred to Fort Carson, Colo., and civilian police were called to the couple's home after his wife accused him of choking her.
He filed for bankruptcy protection in 1997, the same year he led three police officers in Maine on a high-speed chase that ended when he lost control of his pickup and crashed.
Ruby was indicted in that case on charges of eluding an officer, drunken driving, speeding more than 30 mph over the limit and driving without a license.
A warrant remained outstanding when he deployed to Iraq, where he was accused in 2006 of "drop kicking" one detainee and allowing a translator to beat another with a Kevlar vest.
"What was Sergeant Ruby doing when he (the detainee) started crying after he beat him in the head with a Kevlar?" a defense attorney asked Sgt. Justin Stubblefield during a military proceeding in 2007.
"He was laughing," the soldier responded.
Soldiers, including Ruby's driver, testified that the unit kept AK-47 rifles, known as "packages," in Humvees to plant on civilians killed by mistake. Once, Pfc. Nathan Huhn testified, Ruby ordered a "package" after telling his men to open fire and calling in an airstrike on an area populated by civilians.
Once the firing started, Huhn testified, "We maneuvered up there and still didn't see nobody ... a crowd of women, children and men, but nobody with weapons or like that. Sgt. Ruby told Staff Sgt. (Armando) Cardona (Jr.) to go ahead and send the package."
Cardona testified: "I grabbed an AK, walked up around my truck, looked for a spot" to throw it, then realized he couldn't reach across a canal.
Ruby, who said in an interview that he ordered his men to stop firing as soon as he realized civilians were in the area, was charged with nine offenses but found guilty of only one: disrespecting a superior.
That superior, Lt. Neale Shank, was found dead in a suspected suicide weeks before Ruby's court-martial.
Ruby was sentenced to a reprimand, in which a general wrote: "Your behavior is a disgrace to the Army."
Now retired and living in Kentucky, Ruby denied ever planting weapons, and said his soldiers were pressured to testify against him, especially after Shank's death. He also maintained that his civilian charges "have nothing to do with Iraq."
"I never robbed a bank or a 7-Eleven or smoked dope or any of that stuff that they're letting kids in the military for today because there's no draft," Ruby said. "I served my country honorably."
© 2008 McClatchy
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55 Comments so far
Show AllSo, let me get this straight...if you're a convicted felon, rapist, wife beater, thug, scoundrel, thief, or murderer you can join the military, national guard, or reserve, and go on to cause shame to your country, but if you're a homosexual that has a clean record, you may not serve in the military.
Something is very very wrong with this policy.
So the recruiting station has moved to maximum-security prison as well as the death row section?. Or could this be a random sample of the US population?
A known criminal, Lozano, shot and killed Italy's highest ranking intelligence official, a very brave and talented public servant and close friend of the Italian Prime Minister, and the Italian government dropped the case...under pressure from the White House.
Two low-life enlisted men from the Colorado National Guard slowly suffocated an elderly Iraqi general with duct tape, the former head of the air force - who had turned himself in to the Americans in order to have his young and very frail son released from 'US custody'. They were not prosecuted (for murdering a general!)
Semi-literate US soldiers can kill Iraqi civilians, including neurosurgeons, grandmothers, poets and the handcapped - with total impunity. That's power!
Say it again! THAT'S POWER!
No it's just a legal loophole to avoid the consequences of bad behavior while basking in the hoopla of serving one's country by being a bullyboy or girl for corporate interests. They're defending our freedom, yada yada yada. Don't you feel safer?
Now let me get it straight. The military should only recruit fine, upstanding citizens with no criminal record so they can be sent to fight an illegal war, obey illegal orders to kill civilians and torture prisoners, and terrorize and destroy the homes of innocent Iraqis. Do I have it?
And by the way, who checks the resumes of the Blackwater thugs?
C H E E K Y,
You ask "being a bullyboy or girl for corporate interests. They're defending our freedom, yada yada yada.
Don't you feel safer?"Not yet, I'm waiting for them to come back into my community,then I'll feel so much safer
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
In a culture that defines "national service" in terms of its prideful militarism, the problem that this article addresses should not be surprising; indeed, between the effects of gun-worship and the impact of the video game-training of our very young, as well as the God's-chosen exceptionalism that spews from all too many pulpits every Sunday, I'm surprised that the military needs to "lower" its "standards," the poverty draft and the stop-loss policies notwithstanding.
A greater concern is what happens to our children who are suckered in to "service" because of "the old lie" that it is glorious to die for one's country and who return profoundly changed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3OKyqDGaHo
"So, let me get this straight…if you're a convicted felon, rapist, wife beater, thug, scoundrel, thief, or murderer you can join the military, national guard, or reserve,"
Better yet, join Blackwater and you won't get prosecuted for it.
I saw excerpts from an interview with Lozano on "Democracy Now" after the Italian court dismissed the charges against him.
He's your basic thug, or mook. His lizard-brained perspective in the interview was, of course, that justice was served. He went on to opine that it was Sgrena herself who was the real cause of the homicide.
She had no bidness being where she dint belong in the first place. She was stoopit enough to travel to a dangerous place and got herself kidnapped by running into the wrong people. Den da military had to go to a lot of trouble to rescue her. So it's all HER fault, capisch?
What a pig. The Ugly Amerikan, armed to the teeth.
EZEFLYER
'better yet join blackwater and you won't get prosecuted for it'
not any longer = see c.d. 'security firms lose immunity in iraq deal' dated 10th july the independent/uk.
Little Bro!
You got Lozano's interview down pat...except you forgot to mention that he was now taking anti-depressants because he was 'afraid that Commie Sgrena's buddies or Berlusconi's hitmen were out to nail him in the streets of New York.' Its tough being a hood and a hero.
Look at the expression on the low-life Cpl. Holmes' face. He wants sympathy and is trying his best to look like an innocent, harmless sort of fellow. Poor guy, everyone's picking on him. hehe
With people like these dirtbags roaming the streets in America, I definitely DO NOT feel "safer." :(
When the government acts like a bully and a thug, it needs bullies and thugs to do the actual work.
Thanks coco. I should have said "you would not have been prosecuted for it." But anyway, you would have made a heck of a lot more money than a grunt.
EZEFLYER
didn't know if you'd seen the article...............and not being too familiar with americanese, i presume a 'grunt' is a lowly military serviceman. wonder how their salaries compare...............
EMPTY THE JAILS. Empty the Prisons. Put them in uniform, give them guns, and turn them loose on the captive population. This strategy was employed by the British Crown in subjugating Ireland and we all saw how well that worked out. EVERY BRIT BECOMES A DEGRADED ANIMAL when the Brits let animals (aka "our boys and girls in uniform")feed on the HELPLESS survivors.
Oh, such a pleasure to watch this degraded and debased country shows its true colors as a genocidal thug.
Coco:
I think I read the salaries of Blackwater mercenaries were on average ten times a grunt's (a soldier's) salary.
"Soldier of Fortune"...sounds romantic doesn't it? And you get to wear all this neat camo and carry big bore weapons, grenade launchers, fully automatic shotguns, you name it too.
And it's pretty safe. All you have to do is put out some bait (a gun, or similar object), wait until an Iraqi "insurgent" (man, woman, or child) picks it up, and safely "take him out", "pick him off", or "waste him" from 500 yards out with your 50 caliber sniper rifle from your well protected position.
Then you can drive back to the Green Zone in your armored vehicle, plinking at targets with your machine gun along the way, chug back some beers and share laughs with your buddies, have a nice steak, watch some music videos, email home, rape a female soldier and sack out in your air conditioned room dreaming of the hero's welcome you'll receive and all the combat pay you're going to get.
What's not to like?
A few preliminary comments.
We are a culture of cop-worshippers. We are a culture of soldier worshippers. TV and Hollywood have taken care of that ever since D.W. Griffiths filmed "The Birth of A Nation" for the "big screen" and on through "Rambo" and "To Hell and Back" and "Bataan" and any John Wayne military fantasy; then continued through hours and days and seasons in tens of millions of homes via "The Untouchables," "Dragnet," "Adam 12," "Hawaii Five-O," "Starskey and Hutch," "SWAT," "Combat," "Tour of Duty," "The Silent Service," etc.
What subliminal "effect" does all that watching of entertainment programs "with heart" have on our democracy? Is it strange that our young men and women seem all too ready to use force and weapons _to impose_ our version of good and virtue and "the right thing?"
Now add to that mix the dysfunctional and brain-damaged, due perhaps to physical, psychological, or economic abuse. You have a lethal cocktail of individuals who cannot find a living-wage job in civil society; however, the government has its uses for them, a place where these individuals find a healthy and acceptable outlet for their physical and sociopathic impulses.
Pacifists, the cheerful, and the empathic screen themselves out from these jobs. I can't say the same for their psychological "opposites"...
I've got to say that although these soldiers did horribly cruel things, I do sympathize with them. For the record, I hold them fully accountable. But the military ALLOWED the criminal part of their person to take over, encouraged it. Sort of an affirmation of their crimes, you know?
"Asked why someone like Delano Holmes was allowed to deploy to Iraq, Marine Capt. Brett Miner, a prosecutor at Holmes' court-martial, said: 'We're kind of short on bodies.'"
That's sad. Is that how this kind of thing is justified? "They're cannon fodder!"
All this is very true. But even the soldiers with clean records were intellectual dwarves, too lazy to study the Iraq occupation although their very existence depended upon the best information available. I know this is an unpopular viewpoint with people who dined on too much John Phillip Sousa throughout their blighted lives-- people who never question very much-- but it's true.
Even the Winter Soldiers, admirable as they are (hooray for the reformed-- capable of wholesale transformation!) they started out as complete twits, ready to believe anything that any advertising person told them.
How can I be so sure? Easy. They signed up.
Ah - the bad apple theory. Naturally, when a soldier commits a criminal act it has nothing at all to do with training which has conditioned him or her to kill as efficiently as possible without compunction.
Let's not get too carried away with these conclusions, etc. Self-righteousness is a problem on both sides of the great divide. There's a lot of good people over there, misled and disillusioned though they may be, who ought not be degraded for having been alongside these guys.
Most of these incidents seem to have involved a perp who was so generally offensive that his comrades were probably looking for a way to get rid of him. We've also seen how the camos can join shoulder to shoulder or are ordered to cover things up. Seems the same result obtains though, their presence degrades every soldier.
I also think that the flood of non-combat injuries swamping military facilities ought to be looked at as a demographic which considers self-inflicted attempts to avoid redeployment. The old cutting off a few fingers trick. Whatever works. That measure should add another screaming bit to the great heap of evidence that what's being done with our soldiers is wrong.
DavidPeace: I think it should go further than that. A government should know that what it's doing is wrong if it can only hire bullies and thugs to accompli shit.
Edward: So it's wrong to protect homosexuals from exposure to these guys?
W has put these people to this use; his private use for gain. He is what is degrading everything America should stand for.
I mean how could a soldier be found guilty of capital murder? It just wouldn't be good PR. The sentence would be on appeal and the Justusses would have to do away with the death penalty. The soldier did it on our behalf.
This has been a long used new definition applicable to enlistees. We've known of this for some time.
bottle, you are highly intellectual as I've noticed, incredibly well informed and someone whom has never been poor enough, lost enough nor homeless enough to ever have been in the military. How many Iraq Veterans Against War do you know personally? NONE. If you had you would have mentioned their names, to infer they were less than human because they enlisted is yet another sad commentary of the "I am much better than another because...", I suggest you go to their House in the District near the Hill, they'll welcome you and allow you to ask any question of them.
How many have seen predatory recruiters having an office in an affluent area? Not a one of you, because they are non-existant. The military wants bodies, that is all, and the impoverished, the unemployed with families to feed and the undereducated are their prey.
It does not take an idiotic version of what you deem as the I Love america flag waver types to become a grunt in the military, we are GI's, Government Issue, poor, needing a meal and a roof, not fucking illiterate, inhumane, hater's of all that is not us, lazy is certainly not one of an emlistee's problems, ignorance of being deceived by this criminal government to fight what they thought was a "WAR", coming to find indeed it was an illegal occupation.
Sad little man you are, not a shred of decency or humanity.
Wow, some harsh and judgemental statements. Sounds like someone has a gigantic chip on his shoulder.
I'm wondering how the GI's thought they were fighting a "war" when there was no proof that Iraq was a threat or was involved the 9/11 attack which was done by a bunch of civilians who didn't represent any specific country.
Actually, it would be a very rare occurrence if a country's military attacked the world's superpower, the U.S. Why does the U.S. need over 700 military bases around the world? The military's job in this day and age is to guard, in foreign lands, the interests of the super rich and has nothing to do with protecting America.
We don't need the bloated military budget to provide hundreds of billions of dollars for the military-industrial complex. We have enough weapons of mass destruction to discourage any country from attacking us.
Crime by an individual is a crime. Crime by an army is war. Crime by a government is policy.
What we do every day in Iraq is commit crimes.
From the Army recruiters: "Considering offering a waiver to otherwise qualified recruits is the right thing to do for those Americans who want to answer the call to duty." In otherwords, it's ok to send felons to deal with issues in what might reasonably be described, at present, as of the most sensitive regions in the world. Incredible. These people deserve a bullet in the back of the head.
It is mo' better that they commit crimes over there than here at home.
lillulu July 13th, 2008 7:52 pm
Wow, some harsh and judgemental statements. Sounds like someone has a gigantic chip on his shoulder.
I'm wondering how the GI's thought they were fighting a "war" when there was no proof that Iraq was a threat or was involved the 9/11 attack which was done by a bunch of civilians who didn't represent any specific country.
Actually, it would be a very rare occurrence if a country's military attacked the world's superpower, the U.S. Why does the U.S. need over 700 military bases around the world? The military's job in this day and age is to guard, in foreign lands, the interests of the super rich and has nothing to do with protecting America.
We don't need the bloated military budget to provide hundreds of billions of dollars for the military-industrial complex. We have enough weapons of mass destruction to discourage any country from attacking us.
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If the ?comment? you made was directed at me. Reference me, he is a she. she is not harboring a thing except for the resentment I've always felt towards your one sided view of all you consider to be THE WAY ACCORDING TO LILLULU. It is consistant and childish and if you feel the chip that is on my shoulder is large perhaps you should consider that ego of yours. I just do not take shit, off of you or any other. I didn't live this long to have persons like you think that however you feel you must intentionally personalize attacks which are baseless. I will say as I wish and I will piss with you each time you do this shit. Enough.
tsk tsk, I don't appreciate crude language directed at me. So that ends our communicating. Bye bye.
The only mistake the criminal turned soldiers made was not signing up as a contractor for the occupation. Then war crimes will get you, at worst, a seat home on the next plane out.
Learn from the professional criminals, politicians, lobbyists, and corporate elite get golden parachutes, immunity, plausible deniability, scape goats and pardons.
If all that doesn't work, you make sure you get enough money from your crimes to hire a lawyer that is a bigger criminal than you are!
Well, with criminals in charge, what do you expect??
How does that Marine advertisement go? The Few, the proud, the... strong was it?
I'd love to see that AD running juxtaposed with the criminal histories of these guys shown IN uniform.
I dated an X-marine and asked him WHY he joined. He told me he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, got into trouble with drugs (this in the late l960's) and was given a chance THEN of either going to jail or joining the military. He went to Vietnam and in my view, still suffers from PTSD. This strategy of collecting "able" bodies to fight wars is not new, although with low recruit rates, it's obviously getting an upping of its ante.
GREAT comments: OLD BADGER, TOO, SOCRATES 2 & LILULU.
A couple points. 1. These guys will find attractive employment opportunities with Blackwater et al.
2. If you're outraged at the US government's policies,
why send them money every April?
Sheesh, about time HE got the point.
You can either be militarised or civilised, but not both.
The USA has made it's choice.
What absolutely NO ONE mentioned in here is the fact the US military is ACTIVELY recruiting it's soldiers from street gangs and the criminal underclass, SPECIFICALLY because they will act with blind obedience and maximum violence.
Criminal pasts a re carefully ignored or buried, and these thugs are rapidly promoted based on their body counts.
This does not even go into the US Military program of making video games that are little more than indoctrination and small unit tactics instructionals based on hundreds of hours of actual house to house combat. These combat simulators are known as 'First Person Shooter' games. Sound familiar?
Ezeflyer and Coco,
The word "grunt" is used to describe an infantryman. A foot soldier. I served in the infantry and hardly ever heard the term used. "ground pounder" was much more common, and paratroopers (airborne) would refer to all non-parachute qualified troops as "legs."
Does everyone understand why the Republicrats keep uping military pay, enlistment bonuses, reenlistment bonuses, etc.? It has very little to do with "protecting us from the bogeyman" and more to do with imperialist ambitions from thieves in high places easily manipulating the thinking of the masses. It's been going on for thousands of years.
Galen and peaceman, Thank you. Damn, that lillulu always is insistant upon making a point of seeking me out, always when I try to explain predatory recruiting practices, where their offices are located[not Rodeo, 5th Ave or the MainLine], kids with kids that need to make a living. 1st it calls me a he, I am on here frequently saying I'm a Mom, USAF 75-77, now Veteran for Peace and supporter of IVAW, I want people to view things with perspective. I do not mean to infer that I feel nothing for the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan but I know what is done to enlisted personnel. I do wish that these, many are kids with visions of sugar plums, they've yet to experience raising children, losing a home, a job, willing to do anything to get the hell away.
I see you both understand and thank you for taking the time to explain things with less ferocity than I am normally capable of, thanks Air Force!~
Can the Black and Tans be far off? When Britain was short of troops for crushing another Irish "rebellion" they just emptied their prisons and armed every thug and shipped them over to rape, murder and terrorize...
not surprisingly, soldier populations behave like prison populations - same levels of rigid conformity, same encouragement of attitudes of violence with little or no provocation - gangs or groups that set themselves apart by race, rank, sexual orientation....the fact is that what is considered a successfully trained soldier bares remarkable resemblence to social deviants, violent criminals and psychopathic predators. a willingness, encouraged through basic training, to devalue the lives of others - to oversimplify conflict into mere "us vs them" is turned into something to "be proud of" - to glorify. it's time to look squarely at the perversion of human beings our military has become. they may somehow remain healthy wholesome individuals, more a testament to their own dignity and personal discipline, but most are twisted and brutalized beyond their capacity to live peaceful loving and conscious lives. while i do not have any illusions concerning those for whom serving in the military has it's appeal, either through deception of recruiters or lack of other options available to many, no one is able to claim complete innocence in the acceptance of the dehumanization that is part and parcel of the soldier's experience.
@robinea July 13th, 2008 3:11 pm
"THAT'S POWER!"
If you happen to be a social deviant with a desire to abuse, but have not yet done something to get yourself put in irons, consider joining the police force. You can beat, taser, and charge with resisting arrest just about anyone who argues back. And should they turn on you, then you can shoot them - with almost complete impunity.
But if you have been caught committing some violent act, and find yourself behind bars, then there is always the army. Lets face it, it leaves the power of being a police officer for dead. Police stand a real chance of getting behind bars themselves, if they were to invade someones house, rape the daughter, and kill the rest of the family. But civilians of an occupied country have no better chance of justice, than would prisoners beaten by prison officers.
Turce, You're welcome. I'm on my way to work so I'll be brief. The military has changed a lot since you were in and especially in this administration. I wrote several times on CD about the courage of Lt. Watada. He's a real hero!
"Standards in our society have changed over the years; we are a reflection of those changes," said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command.
Now that's a chilling thought. We have sunk so low as to now find felonious behavior acceptable. It's the new standard. We've become a society of gangstas.
Pit Bulls are used as fighting dogs because they have a predispostion to be mean.
It only makes sense to hire people into the military who are killers at heart, too. Criminal records only show that they got caught.
The moral failure is ours for allowing the war to go on. We should be withdrawing and be prosecuting the upper level war criminals in our government.
It is power and almost total impunity that motivate sociopaths in the armed forces. However...impunity is not absolute. When the young girl was gang-raped and murdered together with her mother, father and toddle sister by 5 members of an American Army unit in the city of Mamudiya, Iraq - the Iraqi armed resistance in the area promptly captured 4 soldiers from the same unit (none of whom were among the perps). They were decapitated and at least one was burned (like the murdered young girl). This prompt retribution led frightened or guilt-ridden soldiers who knew about the crime to tell their officers and 'mental health' professionals about the crime and 'cover-up' and the Iraqi's people's response through their resistance movement. Grieving family members of these captured and executed soldiers at least came to the bitter knowledge that their sons had paid horribly for the heinous crimes of their comrades. None of the rapists and murderers have ever been properly punished for the deed but it does show that peoples protracted resistance to imperial occupation has a component of popular justice - which is why the resistance has credibility with the embittered masses and is able to recruit more and more fighters despite the brutal and indiscriminate repression. This is why the US and its puppets will be eventually ejected from Mesopotamia by its outraged people. Peoples justice, as brutal as it may seem to our sanitized eyes, is the only effective response to the promises of impunity that empire offers to its criminal soldiers. Since the Armed Forces of the United States cannot, as an institution of empire-building, prosecute its low-level murderers, torturers and rapists in uniform and their so-called officers in this 'war of choice', justice has to come from another source. It is a process we should try to understand and respect.
"Support our troops" Each one of these is a better person than any one of our "leaders"
Ah spreading freedom and democracy around the world.
This is disgusting.
How many of you have watched a Military ceremony involving a soldier killed in Action and not been moved by it? That somber Music, the intime step...playing taps. The 21 gun salute and the folding of the flag.
This ceremony has been refined over the years for that very purpose. People cant help but be moved by it.
Militarism promises with it, the chance to become elite , to become a hero, a person above his or her contemparies because they serve their country and sacrifice themselves on her behalf.
From the day we are children we all crave to be special and ironicaly , while dressed in uniforms all the same and issued dog tags, the Military seems to offer that to many.
To others you also get that gun, and the power of life and death over another human being. You can play god for a time like thsoe people in the movies. You can take anothers life and not be punished for it.
Then there are the people from poorer communities. They can not afford a higher education and feel joining the Military a chance to escape poverty.
There are the type of people who have always been followers. They need someone around to tell them what to do all the time. To give their lives order. The Military perfect for that.
All types join the Military. Good and bad just as exist in society at large. All have reasons of their own. All react differently to the training used to break them down and turn them into people willing to kill or be killed.
IMHO - this focus on rather low-level criminal behavior is a mere diversion. What kind of "record" do the flight jocks have - you know, ones like McCain who drop bombs on babies from 10,000 feet. What kind of "record" do those firing depleted uranium munitions on towns like Haditha have, let alone cluster bombs. Or, what kind of "record" do the Generals & Admirals have that order the deaths of tens of thousands. In fact, what kind of "record" do Bush & Cheny have?!?
I think the problem is a lot bigger than the petty criminals this article attempts to cover.
Starkraving, your description of a soldier is totally inaccurate. You are obviously not speaking from experience. A total soldier is educated, has integrity, is honest, intelligent, compassionate, has a very high regard for all life, and sometimes brave beyond measure.