Jmm99: like you, I am wading through Mestroic and you are not alone climbing those walls. Mestroic, however, does present a view from a very different angle that provides a good operational check of the brain housing group functional cycle; your replies to my blog comments have a similar effect. I appreciate the mental function check.

I read “Schmedlap’s” link you provided. A whole bunch of questions there; Which army are we talking about? I believe that the US military has made little or no effort to charge, investigate and prosecute war crimes committed against US soldiers, Marines or civilians in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, General Ordinao, just released a enemy prisoner that executed four soldiers after they were captured. All DoD and Services Orders are very clear and state something like all war crimes will be reported, thoroughly investigated and corrective action taken of all war crimes committed by or against US and enemy personnel. To date, the US military seems to have ignored the word “against” in those Orders. And that is Orders with a capital “O”.
Next question: Is Schmedlap talking about war crimes or civil crimes? And this plays into one of my old arguments. In war, especially in insurgencies, judges are not always available. In the Haditha incident … no judges, no police, or any government reps…they were all beheaded or driven off by the bad guys. The only law that the Marines could bring to Haditha were the Laws of War. My old argument is that for that reason, in insurgencies, that has to be a conscious designated decision point, to switch from the Laws of War to the Rules of Law. You can’t make that switch until the friendly government has established itself in the area the military has seized, cleared and secured.

Your Capt Hill and 1stSgt Scott example surprised me. I must have missed it when they were charged with war crimes under the UCMJ 134 Article. I will go back and do some more research. But if so, that will be one of the first true War Crime cases I have come across. I say true because from my understanding, the only way to bring a Title 18 War Crimes charge into the military legal system is Art 134. BTW I have yet to find a military lawyer that would recommend that route.
I think, the Capt Hill case is a better an example of an officer standing by his integrity (to his detriment…basically, he admitted, Yes! That is exactly what I did) and his service working the legal plea bargaining system to avoid the embarrassment of a court martial lacking physical evidence. In addition, and I don’t think that Capt Hill realized this, but his defense was an argument for the Laws of War principle of “military necessity” and that is where it would have gotten embarrassing for the Army. And again, the only law Capt Hill had out there in "only Gawd knows where Afghanistan" were the Laws of War and again, we switch the trigger pullers, to their detriment, back to the Rules of Law standard using the UCMJ.

Your turn to think...