Posted on 09/14/2009 4:21:33 PM PDT by curth
In the open desert outside Baiji, Iraq, a naked man with a thick black beard crouched in the dust of a railroad culvert at twilight. Hours before, he had been mumbling and praying in Arabic. Now he spoke few words. Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna stood over him in the grainy darkness, his Glock pistol racked and pointed down at him.
"If you don't talk, I will kill you," Behenna said.
The night was warm and ragged from the dust storm that had turned the afternoon an eerie ocher. Only one light could be seen, far off, along the road.
Behenna's squad leader had walked off to relieve himself in the bushes. An Iraqi interpreter listened just outside the culvert. "You'd better talk," he told the captive in Arabic. "I mean, why do you put yourself in this situation? He is going to kill you."
"I don't know anything," the man kept saying. "I am innocent."
Behenna was a 24-year-old first lieutenant from Oklahoma, the soft-spoken son of a retired state police investigator and a federal prosecutor who helped convict Timothy McVeigh. He liked to read history and philosophy, learned Arabic in his spare time and seemed to relish the Iraqi culture.
No one who knew him could have imagined that he would be here, at this moment, or how it would upend his life and shatter his family's tidy world.
The voices went back and forth. There was a muzzle flash, with the sharp crack of the Glock, and then another.
The squad sergeant ran back with his rifle raised and saw the naked body pumping blood onto the broken concrete.
They picked up the man's clothes. The sergeant took an incendiary grenade from his flak vest, placed it near the man's head and pulled the pin.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Part two can be found here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-killing14-2009sep14,0,7133244.story
“Behenna’s squad leader had walked off to relieve himself in the bushes.”
Well, so we know they weren’t torturing the guy...
Um...Glock?? When did we start issuing GlockS to our soldiers?
>>>> his Glock pistol racked and pointed down at him. <<<<
Glock?
Doesn’t the Army use the Beretta 92 FS?
This is stunning. We bend over and kiss the asses of terrorists intent on killing us but we won’t extend to one of our own basic rights>
Thanks for posting this. I am surprised the LATimes would post the whole story
The government’s key witness was “Harry,” an interpreter, who accompanied him to the culvert.
Yeah, so WTF is Harry? And, by that I mean both WHAT and WHO and why is his testimony so conclusive? What if he is the town mook for al Queda? They ignore the forensic evidence and this guy’s testimony and he goes up the river because of HARRY?
Prayers for justice for Michael Behenna.
The military prosecutor and judges seemed much more intent on getting a conviction than in seeing justice done. There is no honor or virtue in that.
I pray this young man will have another day in court for he surely deserves it.
“Glock”? Uh... I’m calling B.S.
More on Lt Behenna:
http://defendmichael.wordpress.com/
This is a story that one of the conservative tv hosts should be on.
They issued Glocks on this tour that we just finished, but they made us turn them back in as soon as the Brigade commander found out they didn't have the same safeties on them the old Berettas had. 9mm is junk, but the Glock's sturdier frame made them doable. The Berettas are plain junk....period.
Only problem that I see is that Michael Behenna is in prison for doing his job.
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