Posted on 12/30/2008 6:47:01 PM PST by RaceBannon
"So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle,stricken with a dart,
Said when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
With our own feathers, not by others' hand,
Are we now smitten. ' "
-Aeschylus
Exercising the power of clarity--putting ordnance on target--let's make clear the chaos of the treasonable motives threaded throughout the political power play narrated in this series.
Peter W. Chiarelli plays the role of General Courtney Massengale (aka "General Court Marshall).
Pete got suckered! Ray Girouard and his squad mates are paying the price for Pete Chiarelli's and Michael Steele's cowardice and incompetence.
Urban infantry warfare tactics Chiarelli, Steele, and their Iraqi counterparts structured to engage and destroy the reported threat near Samarra were conceived using intelligence gathered by and confirmed by Iraqi sources. But instead of finding an ant hill of insurgent recruits and their drill masters, Girouard and the others in Steele's combat team landed at a convent.
The bad guys knew we were comin'. In consequence Iron Triangle did not unfold as expected. The raid was unopposed. And confusion reigned with the discovery of women and children populating what had been briefed and hyped as a hard target snake pit objective.
Army propagandists put the best face on the embarrassment as was possible.
Quoting an Army source, "The combined three-day [Iron Triangle] operation netted more than 200 [two-hundred] suspected insurgents. Propaganda materials, rifles, and video were found during searches. Iraqi soldiers also gathered names of potential threats from the detainees nabbed during the operation."
Only one U.S. troop was injured. No American or Iraqi soldiers died.
The bad guys put up no resistance. There was no fight.
Some insurgent boot camp. Ten guys and a few guns. WOW!
Oh, don't forget the two-hundred [200] "suspects" collected up over the three-day combat action inside the 93-square mile OPAREA.None of the Iraqi civilian deaths were publicly reported (between 50 to 71). We don't know their identities or how they died (Medical examiner reports remain under guard). Forty-four (44) of those deaths occurred on Ray Girouard's objective, the Muthana Chemical complex).
Failures to report taken together with deceptive reports of success betray Chiarelli's guilty conscience.
Pete Chiarelli was baited. He took to the scent of the terrorist training camp like a Beagle to a sirloin.
Chiarelli assigned the mission to his Georgia Bulldog, Mike Steele, and Steele's Pit bull pups. Steele figuratively starved and beat his brood revving them for a fight to the death. Steele prepared his men to die.
Then something bad happened.
The dogs of war came off their birds shootin' at everything that moved. Sergeants like Ray Girouard recognized almost immediately something was wrong and worked furiously to restore sanity and restraint to a battle field where confusion blinded the confused.
"Insurgents" hiding behind women and children. Steele and Chiarelli were had. The mission had been compromised and our guys got sucked into a politically explosive trap.
Sergeants hitting the ground like Ray knew they had a problem and did what they could to keep their men and innocents safe. Ray left his men to load women and kids on a Blackhawk when three of the middle-aged males got popped.
But before order was restored on the Chemical Plant objective, forty-one (41) more died.
Still, the restraint of sergeants saved lives.
What had been intended a great success in the days leading up to America's mid-term congressional elections turned into miserable failure.
The trap snapped shut when word leaked out about the Iron Triangle combat action. Matters became frantic once Steele's ROE command made its way to print media ("kill all military age males"). Panic escalated once Steele's other combat adventures started coming under a microscope.
It's at this point Ray Girouard's life changed. Pete Chiarelli used Ray and his squad like the enemy terrorists had used the ladies and kids. That is to say, as cannibals in ritual, tribal sacrifice.
Someone on the Iraqi side set our troops up. Iron Triangle was doomed. Exposure of Iraqi duplicity was an extraordinarily damaging to U.S.-Iraqi political relations in the five months before U.S. midterms and quick action had to be effected to reduce embarrassment all around.
The Iron Triangle Article 32 was a fraud. The courts-martial it spawned were all frauds!
Ray's fake Art. 32, with the promise of a series of pretend courts-martial, was the fix...and was fixed! Undeniable in its intrigue, the fake 32 is distinguished by invisible, deep, and subtle scheming. Chiarelli's evil offerings of Ray and his men were politically driven and remain criminally indecent.
Accusations made against Ray lacked motive. But government motives abound. Disguising Ray's combat experience as an isolated episode of a rogue cell facilitated the examination of small mysteries used to obstruct a more expansive and appropriate investigation regarding U.S.-Iraqi command involvements and decisions from Chiarelli down.
Chiarelli instead fed Ray and his men like chum to the blood-thirsty sharks in the press pool and to the denizens of the congressional cesspool. "Big Army" turned against Ray, then turned Ray's men against Ray.
The Iron Triangle men were JAG-knifed by a ruling military elite, mercilessly coerced to the point they were turned against each other and on themselves. Government accusations leveled against Ray and his men are unproven and unprovable. Today they are being punished without a jury trial for crimes they did not commit in sacrifice protecting Chiarelli and his cohorts.
Attendant death penalties worked to agitate an already frenetic feeding frenzy sensationalizing the already sensational. Ray and his men, and then their defense teams, were paralyzed in response, and rendered powerless to defend themselves.
Through all of this there is exhibited the expression of Executive Government to imprison men for reasons of State. It is the expression of the courts-martial system. It is the expression of the power of attainder.
There exists here an enormous scandal demanding public exposition and public discussion. The first step is the release of Ray Girouard (and Larry Hutchins too). Let the Sergeants freely and publicly tell us what they know.
As a student of Ayn Rand,
"I do not make assertions. That is the moral crime peculiar to my enemies. I do not tell--I show. I do not claim--I prove. It is not your obedience that I seek to win, but rather your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of their secret system. The conclusion is now yours to draw--we can help you to name it, but not to accept it--the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must by yours."
Labels: Article III, Lawrence Hutchins, Michael Steele, MMilitary attainder, Raymond Girouard
The articles posted here from THE JAG HUNTER are most informative.
While I would write in a drier style, the author of Jag Hunter is one smart cookie, having proved that NCIS personnel forged documents in a court martial he was involved with and fought to prove his own innocence.
Please take the time to read all 5 parts. The links are here.
SSgt Ray Girouard is an innocent man, and like Ramos and Campeon, GWB abandoned his men in the field: Girouard, The Pendleton 8, and the Haditha Marines.
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