Nine children among 16 dead after US serviceman attacks villagers

[Culpeper]

I'm not going to buy too many deployments. These volunteers get to come home for periods before being redeployed. In the case of this soldier he reenlisted knowing full well he would be deployed throughout his enlistment. Thousands upon thousands have done it without murdering women and children. PTSD is BS as well. I have an uncle that wet the bed for a year after The Bulge but he moved on with his life. I understand the horrors of war but PTSD has lost its value because too many soldiers use it as a form of entitlement. It is an abused diagnosis no different than affirmative action, which doesn't work as originally planned. This guy's record shows he was a a warrior and a leader. Then he made a stupid mistake. I consider him a self-centered SOB that murdered and caused irreversible damage on too many levels. Just sayin'.

[jmm99]

From Free Republic, Afghanistan massacre suspect named as Sgt Robert Bales.

I'm posting the entirety of the posts by the 31-year old CPT posting as Future Snake Eater. If he is who he says he is (a photo of Bales and him is posted by him !), he will undoubtedly end up as a character witness called by the defense. He is not a res gestae witness of the events in Astan. The value of character witnesses is subject to some argument. The Chicago Jury Study of long ago proved that character witnesses are more sentence determinative than outcome determinative; although, in any event, character witnesses are better than no defense witnesses. The posts below are not quite as dramatic as 1st Lt. Ollie North's character testimony for Herrod in his 1970 Son Thang GCM, which found Herrod not guilty of 16 charged murders. The members of that panel thought well of North, but did not feel that his testimony swayed them.

All,
I served with Bales for three years as his Platoon Leader. He is an absolutely outstanding Soldier, and what has transpired here is so out of character, I don't even know where to start. Please keep his wife and two young kids in your thoughts and prayers. He needs help. Hopefully he'll get it.
1 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 6:54:03 PM by Future Snake Eater

To: darkwing104 [I sure hope the Army does everything to protect his family]
To my knowledge they are. Part of the delay in releasing his name was getting his family relocated to a secure area so as to protect them from possible repercussions from ROP types or even would-be liberal “do-gooders” (you know, teach us baby-killers a lesson, right?).
5 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 7:03:05 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: All
RE: Bales' three Iraq deployments--
They were all with the 3d Stryker Brigade Combat Team. That's the Army's first ever Stryker Brigade. He went with them on their first deployment to Mosul in Northern Iraq. That one BDE relieved the entire 101st Airborne Division. Not only that, but Strykers had never been used in combat, so they had to figure that all out on the fly as well.

I got to the company right as they came back from Iraq. I can tell you for certain, Bales stood out immediately as a go-to guy. He was an E-4 (Specialist) at the time but quickly got promoted to Sergeant and took over my 1st Squad, Alpha Team. He is VERY smart, very intense, and was just everything you could want in a Team Leader. He knew when to be relaxed, and he knew when to be hard. He could joke around with guys during down-time, then be 100% business on a mission.

He saved my Stryker during one particular engagement. We had been in Mosul for months (this was his second deployment, my first). When you're in an area for that long, you can easily let your guard down when you NEVER take contact. Bales, however, was always on his game. We were checking out an area in a fairly tight alleyway, and he pulled security directly to the rear of the vehicle from his hatch. I was talking to my commander over the radio when I heard Bales yell "RPG!" and then immediately open fire. By the time I had even dropped into my hatch, he had shot the RPG shooter, causing the RPG to fly high and miss my vehicle. They caught the guy later that day getting treated for a GSW in an Iraqi hospital.

That second deployment was hell. It was Jul 2006-Sept 2007, 15 months, during the height of the insanity in that country. We got bounced around all over the country after we left Mosul. Constant stress, always waiting to be blown up or ambushed--AQI, Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, who knew? In our last three months, we were in a neighborhood called Dora. Just in the first week we had six Strykers destroyed and over 40 people wounded. Bales was rock-solid the entire time.

Bales was frequently the lead guy in the door whenever we conducted a raid (we did about 50 of them). He never complained, he wanted to be there for his guys. A tremendous NCO.

I honestly don't care what comes out of this, b/c I know who he is. I just hope that you all will keep this in mind when you see the inevitable character assassination on TV news.
10 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 7:14:37 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

My favorite pic of Bales. My Stryker vehicle commander had a feeling we were going to get hit with an IED on that particular patrol. Bales and I both bet him $0.50 we'd get through just fine. When we reached the next FOB without any issue, my VC tore a $1 bill in half and gave us each one. This was our celebratory photo.



23 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 7:36:29 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: killermedic
Too many clowns who’ve “deployed” but never even seen a combat patrol, let alone combat, think they can moralize via long distance. I’ve seen it before (in my Career Course class). The constant mental strain of waiting to get hit, knowing that it could come at any time, knowing that you’ll likely never even see direct enemy contact since they know better than to engage you like that...it takes a major toll after a few months.

I don’t like to play the “I was there, you weren’t” card, but it’s really something you just can’t know unless you experience it. He did it three times and was well under way for a fourth. We had guys killed and limbs blown off in our deployment. We had guys up and quit on the spot b/c they couldn’t take the stress. We saw the charred corpses of other Soldiers, dead kids, the looks of sheer hatred from the populace we were supposedly there to help.

He took every bit of it. Everyone has their breaking point.
41 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 7:54:14 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: LittleSpotBlog [Interesting...the NBC nightly news just showed photos of Bales, and he looks nothing like the Bales in this pic.]

I just looked it up on the NBC World News site. That’s definitely him.
47 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 8:00:06 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: PapaBear3625 [You think it’s a good idea to put a pic of him on a public forum? Unless his pic is already plastered throughout the media?]

It is. I purposely withheld any/all info I had about him until the press did their thing. Now, it’s up to us, his comrades-in-arms, to make sure the word gets out that this man is NOT a psychopath, that if he did indeed do this, then he needs help, NOT a prison cell or a death sentence.
60 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 8:09:48 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: jesseam [PTSD is a horrible thing. My last combat exposure was five years ago and I still drop whenever a sudden noise occurs; God help the Sargeant. OIF vet]

Thankfully it only took me a few months to shake the “jumps” though I was quite a piece of work during my R&R leave!

Stay safe, brother.
132 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 10:12:24 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: Toespi
Yeah, that’s him.
137 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 10:27:39 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

To: MinuteGal
Bales on the right, I’m on the left.
138 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 10:29:43 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

There will be much, much more to this case - evidence favorable for the prosecution; evidence favorable for the defense.

Regards

Mike

[Stan]

Hey Mike,
Thanks for the excellent post. As always, very thorough !

I am more than certain he did a ton of good soldiering and we'll continue to find events suggesting he still is and just needs help.

Unless he produces a handgun under each and every child's pillow from that evening, I can't think of any reason to line them up and do head shots.

Even if he wasn't a father of two, the entire event is inexcusable and inexplicable. If I was one of his offspring, I'd be real worried about his return home

[jmm99]

AP is running After days of secrecy, US suspect in Afghan killings ID'd, a father of 2 with arrest record and Neighbors say Afghan attack suspect was family man.

The arrest charges were (quotes from each story):

But court records show Bales was arrested at a Tacoma, Wash., hotel in 2002 for investigation of assault on a woman he dated before he married his wife, his lawyer, John Henry Browne, confirmed. Bales pleaded not guilty, underwent 20 hours of anger management counseling and the case was dismissed, according to court records. A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in a nearby town's municipal court three years ago, according to records.

Bales completed 20 hours of anger-management counseling following a 2002 arrest at a Tacoma hotel for investigation of assault. Browne said the case involved a woman other than Bales' wife, whom he married in 2005.

Tacoma Municipal court administrator Yvonne Pettus provided a copy of the court docket, but said clerks could not immediately locate the case file, which is either in archives or destroyed. The docket shows that Bales pleaded not guilty, underwent the 20 hours of anger management treatment, and the case was dismissed.

Records also associated with Bales show that in 2009 he had a hit-and-run charge dismissed in municipal court in Sumner.

The neighbors had this to say (quotes from each story):

...Neighbors described him Friday as good-natured and warm, and recalled seeing him playing outside the family's modern split-level with his children, ages 3 and 4.
...
Neighbors, though, recalled a man who was stoic about his time at war and didn't let on much.

"He always had a good attitude about being in the service," said Kassie Holland, who lives next door. "He was never really angry about about it. When I heard him talk, he said ... `yeah, that's my job. That's what I do.' He never expressed a lot of emotion toward it."

Holland called Bales kind-hearted around the neighborhood. "I can't believe it was him," she said. "There were no signs. It's really sad. I don't want to believe that he did it."

Neighbors of a Washington state man accused of gunning down 16 Afghan women and children in a nighttime rampage describe him as a family man who was "just one of the guys."
...
"I just can't believe Bob's the guy who did this," said Paul Wohlberg, a next-door neighbor who said his family was friendly with the Bales family. "A good guy got put in the wrong place at the wrong time. ... I never thought something like this would happen to him."

Wohlberg described Bales as a "good guy _ just one of the guys."
...

Kassie Holland, who lives next door, said she would often see Bales playing with his two kids and the family together at the modern split-level home.

"My reaction is that I'm shocked," Holland said. "I can't believe it was him. There were no signs. It's really sad. I don't want to believe that he did it.

"He always had a good attitude about being in the service. He was never really angry about it," she said. "When I heard him talk, he said, it seemed like, `Yeah, that's my job. That's what I do.' He never expressed a lot of emotion toward it."
...

"I kind of sympathize for him, being gone, being sent over there four times," said Beau Britt, who lives across the street. "I can understand he's probably quite wracked mentally, so I just hope that things are justified in court. I hope it goes OK."
...
Alissa Cinkovich, 45, has lived in the neighborhood for seven years, and said it was scary that Bales had been living nearby.

"I would like to think he just went off his rocker because of the war," Cinkovich said.

Prior to Astan deployment, Bales was at the NTC:

Spc. Ryan Hallock
In this Aug. 23, 2011 Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System photo, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, right, participates in an exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. Five days after an attack on Afghan villagers killed 16 civilians, a senior U.S. official identified the shooter in that attack as Bales. The man at left is unidentified. (AP Photo/DVIDS, Spc. Ryan Hallock)

I don't know which way this might cut.

Regards

Mike

[jmm99]

I expect the prosecution will first set up the three scenes with lots of demonstrative evidence. I'd expect that will be mostly a US show, unless some Afghanis were involved in the forensics and ballistics. I'd expect the video and sensor evidence to come in at this point. All of that should be fairly cold and methodical stuff.

Depending how trial counsel sequences it, photos of each deceased and forensics (autopsies, if any) on each one will come in. The prosecution should show absence of weapons, and absence of casings not associated with Bales' weapon; a prevention for some "I was shot at" defense. Some media articles have said that bodies were moved from the scenes. So, some gray areas may exist. However, we do not know this.

At some point, Afghanis will have to testify as to the photos of the dead bodies; and also as a PID on the shooter (or shooters, as some Afghanis still seem to be claiming). That testimony will probably be videolinked. There might be some problem in showing what the shooter did with each deceased if the bodies were moved. Then, Afghani witnesses would have to relate that story - which is fine, so long as they are not inconsistent and hyperbolic.

This area will be hot. E.g., how does defense counsel handle pictures of dead kids ripped apart with modern munitions, with brains and guts hanging out. The usual method (if defense counsel cannot keep them out) is to keep going over them gruesome detail by gruesome detail until the members of the court are desensitized to them.

Personally, I've never much liked the insanity defense - it frees violent people. So, as I've said here at SWC, "guilty but mentally ill" should be allowed as an alternative jury finding. But, that requires statutory change as we've done in Michigan. That linked post is in a PTSD discussion thread, Post-combat stress as a defense. BLUF: PTSD is not a defense, but it can be a mitigating factor.

There we even have Boondoggle and Polarbear1605 - including myself, a real group of Neanderthal knuckle-draggers. BTW: As I notice now, the Great White Bear had a chance to deny his foundling story (from the Arctic to Quantico), but didn't.

If you take a gander at your Manual for Courts-Martial, you'll see that "deminished capacity" reduces premeditated murder to unpremeditated murder, but no lower. That's OK with me if that where the facts lead me.

Of course, the death penalty requires premeditated murder with full capacity - so "snapping" is a problem for trial counsel.

We've still a long way to travel here.

Regards

Mike

[carl]

Random thoughts on this.

The future snake eater posts remind me of a closing argument a prosecutor used in a murder case I read about in the paper. There was no doubt about the defendant's guilt, but the complicating factor was he had escaped before being sent to the penitentiary. He was on the run for many years and during that time had led an exemplary, even admirable life. The defense case (as best as I can remember) was what you would have expected, "This is a fine man, already reformed and no threat to society, what good would it do to send him to jail?". The prosecution responded with "How many free murders do you get in your life?". The jury convicted. Future snake eater apparently thinks 16 is a good number.

Those posts also reminded me of the segment in Lonesome Dove when Gus and Call hung Jake Spoon for murder even though he was an old loyal comrade. Murder was murder. But fiction is fiction not real life.

Every little move and development in this case will be watched closely in Afghanistan. Most importantly they will be watched by the type of people in the ANSF who have been murdering ISAF people. I have no doubt that this case and the various developments will help motivate some of them to murder some of our guys. I wonder if the future snake eater and the thing he is defending will stop and think about that when those killings occur. No... they won't.

One of things I think I noticed over the years when killings similar to this happen is that the defendants are convicted but when the sentences are handed down they seem to be light. Form is complied with but substance is gotten around.

If this thing isn't convicted or only serves a short sentence, I wonder if it will have to be guarded by the police, sort of a perverse variation of the witness protection program, so it won't be in danger of being killed for revenge.

Anger management classes exist so weak willed judges can pretend to have sentenced when they don't have the moxie to look a violent person in the eye and tell them they are going to jail.

I knew people would rush to the defense of the thing. It has happened often before but it still throws a cloud over my soul. It really does. And ultimately, the legal defense and popular justification will rest on the carefully unstated but always implied argument that "After all, they were only Afghans."

So future snake eater plays the "I was there, you weren't card." to justify mass murder. What can you say? The clouds are going to get very thick.

Mike: Editorially, good use of the (don't stop, keep moving) device. I would have stopped but didn't.

[stanleywinthrop]

Carl, I agree with your thoughts on future snake eater. Reading his posts churn my stomach.

Frankly, as an Army Officer with (apparently) personal knowledge he should shut his mouth and await his chance to testify. (although he might be out for all I know).

[jmm99]

"(Don't stop. Keep moving!)" shows up after the young captain's "signature" after his first post (in #5 and all following):

1 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 6:54:03 PM by Future Snake Eater

5 posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 7:03:05 PM by Future Snake Eater (Don't stop. Keep moving!)

I've no idea who put it there, what it's meant to convey, or its source. I wondered about that myself.

His "UserCP" doesn't explain it.

Regards

Mike

[Stan]

I've no idea who put it there, what it's meant to convey, or its source. I wondered about that myself.

Regards

Mike

Mike,
We used to use a similar sign off within armor and recovery in the late 70s (when you have a massive V12 with twin carbs, magnetos and turbos).

SBCTs (Stryker Brigade Combat Team)s often refer to their speed and agility the same way (rapid response, rapidly moving, etc.).

I hope that future snake eater does not mean he is referring to the game Metal Gear Solid. The snake eater is known for having killed a lot of people. Seems someone is really into games. Hope there's a way of discerning between fact and fiction with those geeks

[JMA]

Random thoughts on this.

The future snake eater posts remind me of a closing argument a prosecutor used in a murder case I read about in the paper. There was no doubt about the defendant's guilt, but the complicating factor was he had escaped before being sent to the penitentiary. He was on the run for many years and during that time had led an exemplary, even admirable life. The defense case (as best as I can remember) was what you would have expected, "This is a fine man, already reformed and no threat to society, what good would it do to send him to jail?". The prosecution responded with "How many free murders do you get in your life?". The jury convicted. Future snake eater apparently thinks 16 is a good number.

I asked in another thread... "I mean does a sane person commit rape and murder? The death penalty should be obligatory in such cases."

The legal view and the medical view is yes.

It's just plain wrong IMHO.

To go out and shoot 16 people (including women and children) you have to be crazy.

...but then they say you can't sentence crazy people to death?

Another 'own goal'!

He was a good guy, went crazy, did crazy stuff ... now top him... and be quick about it!

[jmm99]

JMA (Untitled, #89):

I mean does a sane person commit rape and murder? The death penalty should be obligatory in such cases.

JMM ("...does a sane person commit rape and murder?", #90):

Yes.

JMA (Untitled, #92)

Don't agree

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

Random thoughts on this.

The future snake eater posts remind me of a closing argument a prosecutor used in a murder case I read about in the paper. There was no doubt about the defendant's guilt, but the complicating factor was he had escaped before being sent to the penitentiary. He was on the run for many years and during that time had led an exemplary, even admirable life. The defense case (as best as I can remember) was what you would have expected, "This is a fine man, already reformed and no threat to society, what good would it do to send him to jail?". The prosecution responded with "How many free murders do you get in your life?". The jury convicted. Future snake eater apparently thinks 16 is a good number.

(shortened)

Looking at the comments in this case from an ex-Platoon Commander about his ex-Platoon Sergeant of some years I understand where he is coming from.

I had the same platoon sergeant on constant operations for more than two years. One only understands the bond that develops (where this relationship is successful) when one looks back over the years (in my case 35 odd years).

He was a good man, in fact an outstanding balanced soldier and I believe we got the platoon commander/platoon sergeant relationship just about right. We still speak on a regular basis.

All that said if some years after we operated together it turned out (hypothetically) that he had snapped and done something terrible I would have stood right by him in his time of need (even though I knew he was heading for the highjump.)

If I were still serving I would have to be more circumspect in what I (as a serving officer) said publicly but if out of the service I would not be so constrained.

My heart would bleed for him... and if he needed it I would give him the shirt off my back.

[KingJaja]

I am neither Afghan nor American so I don't really have the right to comment on this thread. However, I'll pass a few words across.

This doesn't play well with the World's 1.3 billion Muslims - especially those who have similar social and economic standing as the Afghan people.

On the one hand, many Americans attempt to humanise an individual who is responsible for the deaths of 16 civilians (children included). While on the other, they believe that the US has the right to act as judge, jury and executioner in dispensing swift justice (via drones) to "terrorist suspects".

This individual will have the benefit of a long drawn out process in the US legal system. Many Afghans killed by US forces did not.

At times like this, the US has too really take a close look at itself and ask itself some pretty hard questions. The USG has killed infinitely more people this decade than say, the Chinese government. And no matter the justification for the killings, those numbers don't look good.

To what end is this endless cycle of killing, photo-ops and huge expenditure on aid? Has it improved US standing in the World? No. Has it improved your strategic position? No. What has it done to the reputation of the US Military (outside of America)? It has diminished it.

The US really needs to learn how to do more with less.