Everyone knows that the ’60s are hipper than ever! But allegedly, some overachieving members of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, of the 2nd Infantry Division, weren’t content to have a Mad Men-themed costume party. No, it got real My Lai-licious over in the Afghanistan, at least according to evidence and testimony presented at a military tribunal in Washington this week. This makes sense, because while it’s hard to find a Don Draper costume in Afghanistan, pulling off a Method impression of Lt. William Calley is easy as, well, murdering random unarmed poor people!
Members of an American Army unit consumed with drug use [?! -- Ed.] randomly chose Afghan civilians to kill and then failed to report the abuses out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander, according to testimony in military court here on Monday.
The testimony, in a hearing to determine whether one of those soldiers, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, would face a court-martial and a possible death sentence, came the same day that a videotape in the case was leaked showing Specialist Morlock talking to investigators about the killings in gruesome detail with no apparent emotion.
All fans of science fiction know that Morlocks are morally ambiguous creatures, so it is no surprise that this particular Morlock poses a similar quandary. Morlock’s lawyers have come up with a perfectly fine explanation for why their apparently alert, cooperative and fully-conscious client was totally actually not fit to be interviewed on video. They say he was “taking medication prescribed by military doctors for sleep deprivation, pain and muscle stress.” Must’ve been those famous “Inventing a Plausible and Convincing Tale of Committing War Crimes at the Behest of a Supervisor” Pills, a.k.a. St. Joseph’s Baby Aspirin. Those are the worst. Plus, he’s a native of Wasilla, Alaska, and we know what those people are like.
Morlock and at least one another soldier, Adam Winfield, allege that they carried out orders at the behest of their supervisor, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs. Winfield asked his family to notify Army officials about Gibbs in February.
Chris Winfield said he left at least four messages. “I said my son is in Afghanistan …. He’s in the front lines. There’s a rogue sergeant out there apparently killing innocent victims. And my son found out about this. And they’re threatening him because he might say something. And I said you gotta get him out of there. You need to call me back, please.”
If you actually think the Army did something besides ignore Chris Winfield’s plea, and that more killings didn’t allegedly take place after he sounded the alarm, and that his son and four others aren’t now charged with premeditated murder, then you’re clearly not familiar with the best practices of the U.S. Army, the best fucking military in the whole goddamned world. But hey, there’s a few bad apples in every bunch, right? USA! USA! [New York Times]
[Hey BENINCASA didn't you hear we killed the Top #2 or #3 Guy of Al Qaeda again today, with a fucking ROBOT BIRD? Accentuate the positive ... or a robot bird will kill you, for Obama. -- Ed.]
{ 69 comments }
"randomly chose Afghan civilians to kill and then failed to report the abuses"
In the military the failure to report is much worse than killing civilians. While the killing just reduces the number of Muslims in the world by one, not reporting it is shows a lack of respect for the chain of command.
It reminds me of Catch 22 except I don't see any humor in it.
I can't wait to read the part about the girl in the lime green burqua.
And yet another great example of why I should always check previous comments first before jumping in. A superior joke!
"I wanted to see exotic Vietnam… the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture… and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!"
Instead of being a sardonic dark joke, these fuckers meant it. Thanks Army for lowering recruiting standards (especially on the criminal and psychotic stuff.)
Next thing you know they'll have to take Mexicans.
I can't wait to hear Lee Greenwood sing about this one.
Just outsource the damned thing to the Chinese and be done with it.
You mean Xe, I presume. Don't worry, they're working on it.
Remember back in the day when our boys in uniform were righteous and obedient, and dutifully reported every war crime they committed because that was what a good soldier did?
Somewhere, Tom Brokaw has a sad.
Ha.
Brokaw is an ass and I hate his fucking books. Greatest generation my ass.
"You don't get a chance to find out who the fuck you are in some factory in Wasilla."
-Captain Willard
" Are my methods unsound?"
" I don't see any method at all, sir."
Can't dance, either.
Dear Pentagon:
Please add a line item to your demobilization SOP which says that if a soldier describes "killings in gruesome detail with no apparent emotion" then that soldier is never allowed off base again. Ever.
Thanks,
America's postal workers, postal customers, University of Texas students, children on playgrounds, etc. etc.
The difference between UT students and the rest is that you are actually allowed to bring concealed weapons on the UT campus…so you can defend yourself against school shooters (really.)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/...
The fact that this morning didn't go down like the end of a Tarantino movie almost makes me believe in god again.
No snark here. Unending, mission-undefined tours of duty in hellholes will probably make you snap, is all.
CORRECT.
Frankly, I'm not sure they "snapped". They might have been murderous assholes before they shipped off. It's just in Afghanistan it's easier to murder.
Deploy. Kill. Die. Repeat.
There are no jobs for them here anyhow.
Dear John…
Sounds like fun.
Seriously, what's the deal with Wasilla? How is it even possible for so much concentrated shit to come from such an otherwise insignificant, backwoods despair mill? The town is a geyser of karmic feces, a leak in America's bursting moral septic system. Can't we just nuke it from orbit and be done with it?
There's a squadron of robot birds orbiting over it right now.
The one redeeming feature of Wasilla is the Cute Girl Trucker on "Ice Road Truckers." Let's hope she never utters a word about politics so as to spoil my reckless eyeballing.
Well, Mother Earth has to have an asshole somewhere, although the painful swelling and itching must be terribly uncomfortable.
1. Our government spends BILLIONS training our young men and women to kill other human beings and then acts surprised at these outcomes. 2. I am so tired of failed efforts to apply humane rules of conduct to the most inhumane of activities (war). 3. Some Privates and maybe a Sergeant will be held accountable for a small number of deaths, meanwhile the Rumsfelds, Wofowitzs and Bushes of the world remain untouched and unsullied.
It's the American Way!
Right the fuck on, sir/lady.
Thank you mi amigo/amiga and I sincerely apologize for the unforgivable lack of snark. Some topics just drive the snarkies away because of the over-abundance of pure evil.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, the Snowbilly isn't a Wasilla native. She's worse: she chose to live there.
LOL
In Morlock's defense, I hear Eloi are pretty fucking delicious.
NERD ALERT!
I guess those judges that give troubled teens a choice between jail and Your Nation's Armed Forces are having an impact after all.
hmm. so maybe having the military run by fundies and operating in muslin territory isn't such a great idea?
also, can someone please decapitate Pete Campbell at said Madmen party?
And Bill Kristol still wants to invade Iran. Fuck him and every two-bit armchair warmonger who thinks other people's lives are petty abstractions to be fucked up forever to satisfy their inadequacies and third-grade sensibilities.
Bill Kristol wants to do what Israel wants him to. It is a testament to the decay of our media that this neocon douchebag is still in print.
He would be my first candidate for George Orwell's "a jingo with a bullet-hole in him".
Sara Benincasa is even hotter than usual when she writes about war crimes. Talk about winning hearts and minds. Rrrr.
Especially with line like "My Lai-licious." I think I may have soiled myself.
And drone bird killings in Wazhereistan.
Are you referring to the M-282 Wedding Buster?
if we'd have killed them all already, this sort of thing wouldn't still be a problem.
what? did i say something?
C'mon sucka, you're headed for a – 55.
Now that's simply not true: they might instead run for Congress in North Carolina on the strength of their hatred of muslims. So, there's that, too. Feel better yet?
Morlock/Zombie Helms '12?
In other news: Zom Thurmond would make a kick-ass addition to Plants vs Zombies. "We will rise agian…" etc etc.
You're obviously not from around here.
This guy's been a blogwhore here for years. I was always puzzled as to why Ken (and Jim, back when) put up with it. His art doesn't suck but he doesn't contribute anything to our brilliant discussions here.
Remember, they hate us because they hate our freedoms, and not actual things we've actually done; to say otherwise is unAmerican.
Dude that is sooooo 2003.
I think they must hate that we're free to kill them. I'd hate that.
Still life of TruckNutz on a Freedom Tray or GTFO.
One would think that after five or six tours of duty, these guys would have purged the bloodlust right outta their systems. Isn't that how it works?
Drugs among the Afghan troops!!! We never had such things in the 'Nam.
My military friends ALWAYS had better dope than us hippies. And more variety.
As Ackerlibtard points out, and I defer to him, because he's more well-versed in the study of war than I am, there's a rather conspicuous lack of any officers being charged with anything here. Aren't Commanding Officers kind of, you know, responsible for their units? Also, don't people keep, like, logs of ordinance like grenades? Shouldn't it be trivially easy to figure out what happened, if someone had actually bothered to look?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that by prosecuting and convicting, or more likely, failing to convict, these Specialists and Privates of various murder-ey crimes, Justice Will Be Served, because we can all assume that nobody else bears any responsibility, either directly, or in terms of dereliction of duty, and that there are no systemic problems that the fact that these guys were able to repeatedly murder people without any fear of discovery could possibly reveal.
Just like the Abu Ghraib torturers were just a couple of bad seeds acting under their own impulses, so no actual senior officials had to be investigated.
Wiggum: And that's the end of that … "tail". [brushes hands off]
Eddie: Uh, Chief, should we try and get the mountain lion back in its crate?
Wiggum: I repeat: [brushes hands off]
Members of an American Army unit consumed with drug use [?! -- Ed.] randomly chose Afghan civilians to kill and then failed to report the abuses out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander, according to testimony in military court here on Monday.
Yes, because the problem here was not rampant killing, but improper post-massacre procedure.
Well, really, how else is the Pentagon going to keep an accurate count of the number of browns they've killed if our soldiers go off on Afghan hunting expeditions and don't report the body count?
Sadly, according to the Pentagon the improper reporting is probably the greater crime.
First the return of the trolls, now the return of the blogwhores. It seems like old times, we could have the dating spambots come back next.
WHAT ABOUT THE FREEPERS?!?! You forgot to mention Freepers!!!
We're getting the man who groped Riley's BigBullshitters; pretty much the same thing.
Whats the problem? They're just Muslin sub-humans, right?
They will all be found guilty and sentenced to long terms in military prisons. They will not be able to secure any government employment after their release in something like thirty years. Their officers' careers are toast for not paying closer attention. (Hell, your career can be toast for having a vehicle a quart low of oil, so believe me, those guys are fucked. That fucking just doesn't make the news.)
And yes, the assholes who started these little wars are still walking around free and collecting retirements and/or speaking fees far in excess of my annual salary. That sad truth is what makes me want to "Fix bayonets!"
How 'bout we through 5 ninja stars at your art instead. Would that help? Lemmekno, k?
NOBODY LIKES YOU
Glad you're still paying attention, boss.
Hey, everybody! I have the same pee score as Ken Layne! Imma get big-headed about that, I'll tell ya.
"out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander"
Um, either the NYT reporter doesn't know what retaliation means OR we have a bigger problem in our military than I thought.
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