Posted on 07/02/2019 4:46:37 PM PDT by centurion316
The jury in the military trial of Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher has found him not guilty of premeditated murder and attempted murder during a deployment to Iraq in 2017.
He was, however, found guilty of unlawfully posing for a picture with a human casualty.
The verdict was reached after about a day of deliberation. The government and defense attorneys both made closing arguments in the case on Monday, after presenting testimony from numerous witnesses over two weeks.
Gallagher, 40, was charged with premeditated murder over an alleged stabbing of a wounded ISIS fighter in Mosul, and attempted premeditated murder over alleged unlawful sniper shots taken at an old man and a young girl. He was also charged with wrongfully posing for an unofficial photo with a human casualty.
The charge of unlawfully posing for a photo — which was shown throughout the court martial — carries a maximum penalty of four months' confinement, though Gallagher is likely to get credit for the eight months he served in the brig prior to his trial, Navy spokesman Brian O'Rourke told Task & Purpose.
(Excerpt) Read more at taskandpurpose.com ...
On a very hot, humid day, I was a Rifle Company Commander struggling to climb a steep ridge line with a 90 pound rucksack on my back. I called the lead platoon leader and asked him what trail should I follow when I got to the top.
He said, you can't miss it, I have marked the trail, go that way. The trail marker was a human skull on a stake. I stll have the picture, but it was taken with my camera, so I think that I have the only copy. The unfortuate enemy soldier had died a few weeks earler from H&I artillery fire (harrassment and interdiction). Sucks to be him that particular night. He shouldn't have left North Vietnam, but I'm sure that he didn't have a choice.
I took many photos of dead VC and NVA, but except for this one, I sent the film back to S2 so we could identify these little freedom fighters. That was legal. I don't have those photos.
How would we ever have taken Iwo Jima or Hue with grunts facing criminal charges for everything that offends the snowflake sensibilities of this generation.
And shame on his subordinates who turned him in. Dirty rats.
What qualifies as an “official” photo?
In the current version of live fire exercises, every single discharge of a weapon is followed by a formal investigation (called a 15-6 in the Army). Commanders at the Brigade level and in some cases, at the battalion level, have a JAG officer on their staff to “help” him with Rules of Engagement and War Crimes issues. Many of these JAG officers, wanna be warriors, believe that nailing the scalp of a real warrior to the door of his hooch is a ticket to success.
When I handed the film over to the S2. Should I should have cleared it with the ACLU?
Most of this crap is imposed by aging Boomer politicians and activists.
Hurray.
He should have never been put on trial.
JoMa
Flags of Our Fathers lays out some of the things that happened on IWO JIMA, Fly Boys some more. Gene Sledges book “With The Old Breed” even more. Louis Zamporini’s book “Unbroken” some more things. If you ain’t been in war keep the opinions to yourselves, It ain’t pretty.
My Dad’s job was to take photos of atrocities in the Korean War.
That will make your nights fun for the next 55 years. They come back to visit on a regular basis.
Getting murder convictions in Iraq is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500....(wisdom from Apocalypse Now)....
“Commanders at the Brigade level and in some cases, at the battalion level, have a JAG officer on their staff to “help” him with Rules of Engagement and War Crimes issues.”
**Exactly** like Zampolit political officers attached to each unit in the Red Army back in the USSR.
Exactly right. People have some idiotic ideas that grandpa was a perfect gentleman as he sadly did his patriotic duty.
They would be shocked if they knew what he saw, and what he did.
If asinine rules like these had been imposed on the Russian army in its final push on Berlin, the Swastika flag would still be flying over the Reichstag.
Read any accurate account of the Vietnam war. Bodies of dead VC and NVA were regularly lined up and displayed. It’s an especially vital thing to do to totally illegal combatants like Jihadis, the utterly subhuman scum of the earth.
That remark was meant to the guys 2nd guessing our war fighters not at you. I reread it and thought, geez not really clear it was aimed at the MSM and folks not up on the line. You don’t give warriors trials, you give them medals. IMO.
...and what he had to do to survive another day.
Those bodies were lined up for two reasons: to get an accurate count and to prepare them for burial. After those photos were taken, a bulldozer dug a trench and the bodies were pushed into the trench. Identification was collected when possible and the location with numbers of bodies was reported. Some were photographed, but usually only when we were looking for a known key leader. My brigade commander, division commander, and corps commander were all WWII veterans. We played by their rules. The Corps Commander had served with my father and while they hated the Japs, they followed the Laws of Land Warfare. No one had to shoot prisoners because the Japanese committed suicide instead of surrendering.
I did not support deadly force against non combatants. If they showed that they were combatants, then they were dead. I have more respect for NVA and Regular Force VC than I have to the Antifa wanna be’s. I know that the still living in Mom’s basement crowd may disagree.
We have a strange way of treating those who risk their lives to keep us safe
Awesome. You fight our troops, you die.
Oh, no offense taken. I read it the way you meant it
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