Posted on 07/08/2014 5:07:26 AM PDT by don-o
Many Americans remember the video posted on YouTube in January of 2012 showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan. (VIDEO)
The images provoked international outrage. Some felt the Marines’ unlawful behavior was mitigated by the context of a long and bloody war against a brutal enemy. Others felt there was no excuse.
But few people know what became of the case once it left the public eye: it collapsed under claims of unlawful interference at the highest level of the U.S. Marine Corps. And the key whistleblower leveling allegations is one of the prosecutors: Deputy Judge Advocate Maj. James Weirick.
“I knew something was wrong from the start,” Weirick tells me, explaining that nobody at Marine Corps headquarters would answer why Commandant James Amos, a four star general, abruptly replaced the original prosecuting team after just a few weeks. (Weirick is speaking to Blue Force Tracker on his own behalf, not on behalf of the government or military).
“I think it’s unfortunate that the system of justice was not allowed to run its course,” says Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, “as a result of Gen. Amos’s blatantly improper conduct.”
For his part, Gen. Amos admits that some of his conduct “probably wasn’t the right thing to do as it related to…undue command influence,” but claims that the problem was corrected and the cases “have been handled justly.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blueforcetracker.com ...
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I did read it and you are correct. It is a well written piece. With one exception. She should have named the members of the Commandant’s legal team. Shine the light on them so it will follow them the rest of their lives. As it is, those staff pukes get a free ride after demonstrating their incompetence of the highest order.
The US government threatened to cut their heads off.
Wow, I’ve lost a lot of respect for Commandant Amos after reading this piece. I have no doubt the allegations concerning him in this piece are true. I said all along that these guys should have received NJP and that looks like one of the initial recommendations for this.
I think the biggest thing they did wrong was not the urination on dead bodies. Hell, stuff like that happens in war all the time. Patton pissed in the Rhine river when he crossed over it. There’s a picture of him doing it. The stupid thing the Marines did was film the incident. That was just plain stupid and idiotic.
To be honest it wouldn’t have bothered me at all if they had taken a dump on them also..
I would like to know the extent and circumstances of Sgt. Robert Richard’s injuries?
“It happened a long time ago”.....
“What difference does it make”.......
Good article but I don’t see too much damage coming to those involved.
Probably not. But, the larger point, for me, revolves around the reporter. She left CBS because they did not want to to investigative journalism.
So she has gone independent. Hopefully, there will be more of this type of reporting from her. Hopefully, some people with knowledge AND a conscience will come to her about the pile of Obama scandals.
Still looks to me like - as an act of kindness - the Marines were trying to cleanse the wounds of the Taliban. Hey, in the field you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.
I found this on Free Republic some time back, I am not the author.wish I had written it.
A great deal has been going around the internet lately concerning the “alleged” desecration of three Taliban corpses by four combat hardened Marines who, it is claimed, urinated on them. One of those bits of input included a possible explanation for the episode. It would seem that the four Marines, immediately after an intense firefight, approached their Company Gunnery Sergeant and reported “...We’ve got three dead Taliban, Gunny. What should we do with them?” Now . . . here is the crux of the issue . . . this explains everything: The Gunny responded to their question by saying “Piss on ‘em. Get back to your posts!”So, as required, they obeyed their last command by urinating on the remains of the dead Muslim scumbags, and then they returned to their posts.This is really simple stuff and from this time on our military judges and lawyers should call this the “Obey The Last Command” defense. Nuff said.
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