We will have to wait some 13 years to know if he really serves what he deserves. Calley was sentenced to life and seved 3 and a half under house-arrest.

Do you have no one - from 220 years of American warfare - who really served 15 years or more for a military massacre ? From the Indian wars for example ?

SueDB and Mike, I will stop this. It is not completely fair. As a German I am not in a position to judge other nations. But I am still pissed at the outcome of the Wuterich (nomen est omen) case.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24571/24 ... 4571-h.htm

enjoy

We will have to wait some 13 years to know if he really serves what he deserves. Calley was sentenced to life and seved 3 and a half under house-arrest.

Do you have no one - from 220 years of American warfare - who really served 15 years or more for a military massacre ? From the Indian wars for example ?

Army Spc. Joshua Pinheiro dropped by a sewing shop Monday near Joint Base Lewis-McChord to get a name tag sewn on his rucksack.

Business is brisk at Jeannie’s Sewing Shop as Pinheiro, 22, and other soldiers check off their to-do lists as they prepare for a deployment to Afghanistan. Pinheiro and the 4,000 other soldiers in 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division will depart this spring for a nine-month tour.

The upcoming mission will be made more challenging and dangerous, Pinheiro and other local soldiers said, due to the actions of one soldier assigned to another Lewis-McChord Stryker brigade.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/03/1 ... rylink=cpy

Pentagon officials insisted Monday that the weekend’s Afghanistan killing spree was an “isolated incident” and said that a 38-year-old Army staff sergeant from Joint Base Lewis-McChord would soon be charged in connection with the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children.

The unidentified Stryker brigade soldier, in the military for 11 years, was being held in pretrial confinement in Kandahar by the U.S. military while Army officials review his complete deployment and medical history, Pentagon officials said.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation said Monday that during a recent tour of duty in Iraq, the suspect was involved in a vehicle accident and suffered a head injury; information about the extent of the injury was not available Monday.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/03/1 ... ni_popular#storylink=cpy

The nature of the planned defense and the attitude of the military are becoming clearer. The soldier is reported to have had a traumatic brain injury, although he was treated and passed all TBI tests at Fort Lewis. He is reported as having had marital problems and as having trouble re-integrating into his unit in Afghanistan. The military has flown the soldier out of Afghanistan to Kuwait, making it unlikely that a public trial will be held in Afghanistan as the Parliament has requested.

I think this is leading up to a "not-my-fault" defense.

And knowing how overtaxed psychologically and spiritually the troops are, I reiterate my belief many soldiers are now ticking timebombs.

Of course infantry combat in Vietnam was perhaps more intense, but close fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was more pervasive and lasting, thus more likely to cause personal trauma in my mind. The infantrymen I spoke to at Fort Benning were different from those in my generation. They were more emotionally exhausted and drained, less spontaneous and humorless. My generation of professionals spent a great deal of time on Friday nights at the officer’s club, talking over a beer about the Catch-22 nature of Vietnam and many of the stupid and hilarious experiences we endured. None of this at Benning today. No clubs, no public displays of hilarity and certainly no beer. These guys seemed to view their time in combat as endless and repetitive. My sense is that their collective, intimate exposure to the horrors of close combat was far more debilitating than what we experienced.

This of course in no way justifies what happened in Kandahar. But I think if someone wants to place blame, it should be on a succession of national leaders who fail to recognize that combat units, particularly infantry, just wear out. Lord Moran concluded in his classic about combat stress in World War I, “Anatomy of Courage,” that the reservoir of courage begins to empty after the first shot is fired. The horrors of intimate killing, along with other factors such as fatigue, thirst, hunger, isolation, fear of the unknown and the sight of dead and maimed comrades, all start a process of moral atrophy that cannot be reversed. Lord Moran rightfully concludes that nothing short of permanent withdrawal from the line will bring soldiers back to normalcy.

The media is trying to make some association between the terrible crime of this sergeant and the Army’s inability to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Perhaps the Army could have done more. But I think Lord Moran had it more right; the real institutional culprit is the decade-long exploitation and cynical overuse of one of our most precious and irreplaceable national assets: our close combat soldiers and Marines.

If someone just after 9/11 would have told me that a very small Army and Marine Corps would fight a 10-year-long set of close combat engagements in two wars and still remain intact, I would have called them crazy. Well, we’ve done just that, haven’t we? But at what cost to the few who have borne an enormously disproportionate share of emotional stress?

One of the complaints about Vietnam was that you didn't know who the enemy was. Since they are almost of the same ethnic background, it would be hard to tell who was normal folks, who was a VC and who was NVA. Afghanistan is the same way. You don't know who is going to turn around and shoot you in the back after you walk past them.

Hey guys. I wrote up a long post for this thread while I was waiting for my flight home, but then we were rushed out of the tech trailer told our plane was leaving LIKE RIGHT NOW, only to rot on the tarmac for three hours. Fuck you hurry up and wait. Then I i swore to write something about it when I got home, but I had trouble finding time. I'll keep this one short.



This. Afghanistan is FUCKED now. There's no other way to put it. I know there's going to be a lot smug 'I told you sos' but they aren't entirely right either. The thing is, last time I was there in 2007, there was so much hope for the place. I mean, I went over with a jaded mindset and came away like, 'wow, we can do this'. Not this time. Not even close. The country has made ZERO gains as a functioning nation, and is even worse off security wise. I blame this on two things.
1: The new coin shit of focusing all of our efforts on a few small enclaves. That has made things so much worse. In 2007 we were in Zhari, and Panjawaii, and Argendabb, and Boldak down on the border with Pakistan we were where Timmy Taliban was. Now our strategy has ceded all that to them except a small area around Kandahar City. All the former areas are Indian Country now. And the locals all know it. Fuck COIN.
2. This is hard to say, cause I bear them no ill will, and I know it's hard to hear, but a lot of the fault is with the local Afghanis themselves. They have shown no will to help them selves out here. None. There was an ANP (Afghan National Police) post that we had in our AO that we used to bring water to occaisionally. They would leave there jerry cans out by the road and we would fill them if we were in the area, but we made it clear we were only helping out, not to rely on us, that sort of shit. So for two months we got shifted around, and when we come back we learned that 3 of the ANP guys had died from dehydration a while back. They didnt even bother to go in search of water else where, or dig a new well. There old one sat just a bit damaged, right outside their compound. The reason I'm saying this is because all of Afghanistan has become like this now. That whole country has become that police station. It sounds bitter, but there it is.


Ya we know it's unwinnable, better than anyone else. But you know what's weird? It didn't affect morale negatively in the least. In fact, this was my favorite tour of the three cause we just had this feeling of, 'this place is fucked, lets have a good time at least Rock Out We'd be conducting ops in the tanks with Metallica blasting out of our speakers, which we never would have gotten away with back in 2007.


Actually the training has finally caught up, such as training can. This tour was the first time I actually saw some of the expertise we had built be put into teaching the new punks.

Take all this with a grain of salt of course. I can't say for 100% that's how things are seen and done in the American Army, but that's how it is in the Canadian one right now. Also, I'm glad the media has caught up somewhat with what's going on, because the last tours i was on I did not believe a single thing they said when I came back.

We're in Afghanistan to stabilize the country (whatever that means) and help make the Afghanistan Army self-sufficient and capable of fighting the Taliban. Which is never going to happen.

We need to admit we can't do anything to further our goals and get out now.

So far, the historical record is that people the Afghans don't want there leave. Often feet-first.

We were severely criticized for not learning the French's lesson in Vietnam. But not to have learned everyone's lesson in Afghanistan ... I mean, that one was a no-brainer.

FOX First: Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is alleged shooter of 16 Afghan civilians according to 3 U.S. Military sources