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USA MILITARY'S BAIT & KILL TEAMS IN IRAQ! Cameras & Similar Items Placed To Lure Iraqis Into Position To Be Ambushed By US Snipers: Isn't That How We Kill Rats In America! - RI10
USA MILITARY’S
BAIT & KILL TEAMS
IN IRAQ! Cameras
& Similar Items
Placed To Lure
Iraqis Into Position
To Be Ambushed By
US Snipers: Isn’t
That How We Kill
Rats In America! -
RI10
Tabacco: I’d like to say I was making this stuff up, but that’s why I use checkable sources – so nobody can say I made it up! Every week, every story, every revelation is worse than the ones before. Never laugh, Americans, at Germans because of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. America has the Neocons and George W. Bush.
War Resister James Burmeister Sentenced
to Six Months in Jail
A military judge at Fort Knox has sentenced US war resister James Burmeister to six months in jail after Burmeister pleaded guilty to going AWOL. The twenty-three-year-old soldier served as an Army scout in Iraq but fled to Canada in May 2007 while on leave. After leaving Iraq, Burmeister revealed that US troops in Iraq were planting equipment, such as AK-47s, to lure Iraqis to spots where American snipers could shoot them. The practice was known as bait and kill. Burmeister said, “I know going AWOL was wrong, but I thought it was the best way to stop the small kill teams.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/21/headlines#11
Army court-martials resister for blowing
whistle on ‘bait-and-kill’
By Dee Knight
Published Jul 19, 2008 9:27 AM
Private First Class James Burmeister faces a Special Court Martial at Fort Knox on July 16. The charges are AWOL and desertion. He returned to Fort Knox voluntarily in March, after living 10 months in Canada with his spouse and infant child. He refused redeployment to Iraq while on leave in May 2007.
PFC James Burmeister exposed
the Army's “bait-and-kill” program,
and is now being punished for it.
PFC James Burmeister exposed the Army's “bait-and-kill” program, and is now being punished for it.
In most such cases at Fort Knox, the Army has in recent years quietly dismissed the resister with a less than honorable discharge “for the good of the military”. This time it’s different. The brass “offered” Burmeister a year in military prison and a dishonorable discharge if he agreed to plead guilty.
Burmeister refused the offer. His father, Erich, says the Army is making an example of James for denouncing a secret “bait-and-switch” program he was forced to participate in while in Iraq. In media interviews last year in Canada, James described the program as a war crime he was forced to commit. Shortly afterward, the program’s details came out in the Washington Post.
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy”, the Post quoted Capt. Matthew Didier, leader of an elite sniper scout platoon. “We would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual”. – “engage” is a Euphemism. He means MURDER, not INTERROGATE! Just like “Nigger” (euphemistically called the “n-word”, it seems nobody in America can tell the Unvarnished Truth except yours truly. Sad, isn’t it! The Powers That Be can murder, rape & steal, but they CANNOT SAY “murder”, “rape”, “steal” or “nigger” – saying those words would be Politically Incorrect! But the acts themselves are glossed over and thereby acceptable. Cops can shoot a non-threatening Black bridegroom 40 times and be acquitted by a judge; but those same Cops better not call that same Black bridegroom a NIGGER or they would lose their jobs! What has become of America?
The Post reported that “Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program ... raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items. ... ‘You might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back,’ Fidell said.” (Sept. 24, 2007)
James had asked to be classified as a conscientious objector following his training in Germany, but his request was ignored by his commander. Instead, he became a machine gunner. “Our unit’s job seemed to be more about targeting a largely innocent civilian population or deliberately attracting confrontation,” he wrote in his deposition seeking asylum in Canada. “These citizens were almost always unarmed. In some cases the Iraqi victims looked to me like they were children.” (Eugene Weekly, May 22)
In Iraq, Burmeister had been knocked unconscious and his face filled with shrapnel when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. The shrapnel wounds left him with a traumatic brain injury, and he suffers from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His parents insist that he urgently needs medical and psychological help, not jail time.
His parents have waged an unceasing struggle for the Army to release him. They called on their representative, Peter DeFazio, to launch a congressional inquiry into James’s case, but have so far heard nothing. James’ mother, Helen Burmeister, flew to Fort Knox in June, with help from anti-war ex-Colonel Ann Wright. Helen spoke directly to the base commander there, demanding that her son be discharged in lieu of a court martial. She then joined supporters from Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Vets Against the War demonstrating outside.
On July 8 the Army invited Helen to attend her son’s court martial on July 16. This time both she and her husband Erich are going. They’re determined to keep James out of jail. “I bought a one-way ticket,” Erich told Workers World. “I’m not leaving without my son. If I have to sit outside the base and wait for him, I’ll do it. Even if I have to go on a hunger strike, that’s what I’ll do. My son does not deserve another day in jail.”
In an interview with Courage to Resist, Erich said: “[James] struggles with PTSD, yet he is quartered within earshot of the shooting range and tank training area, daily hearing the gunfire and explosions. He has been prescribed a dangerous cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs and sleep aids by Army doctors, while the command decides if they want to send him to prison, as a coward, a soldier who faced death, and followed orders to ‘shoot to kill.’ The cowards—George Bush and Dick Cheney, those in Congress and the generals with the blood on their hands—why are they the punishers instead of the punished?” (couragetoresist.org, May 12)
Supporters can contact the Fort Knox post commander, General Campbell, to demand a speedy discharge and no further punishment for James. Send email to knox.pao@conus.army.mil, or call the Fort Knox public affairs office at 502-624-7451. Ask that they discharge PFC James Burmeister now so that he can get the help that he needs.
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BACK TO IRAQ?
A Eugene soldier fights killing
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
PFC James Burmeister enlisted in the military because he thought he would be doing "humanitarian work" in Iraq. But he was manning a machine gun, using ammunition so large his targets — humans — would "literally explode," the day in Baghdad that his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. He was knocked unconscious, and bits of shrapnel were embedded in his face.
Burmeister went AWOL (absent without leave) and fled to Canada just months after the incident, no longer able to deal with the aftereffects of the bomb and his experiences allegedly setting up "small kill teams" and baiting Iraqis into approaching fake U.S. military devices like cameras, luring them in to be shot by snipers.
Now the 23-year-old soldier from Eugene waits at Fort Knox, Ky., to discover whether the Army will prosecute him, release him without access to medical care for his injuries or try yet again to send him back to a war he doesn't want to fight. His father fears the Army wants to keep Burmeister quiet about the "bait-and-kill" teams that he alleges have been used to kill Iraqi civilians. While James Burmeister awaits the Army's decision, his father is fighting to bring him home.
A soldier who deserts faces court martial, imprisonment and less-than-honorable discharge as a consequence. Many soldiers who have gone AWOL have chosen to return to Iraq rather than face a long stint in a military prison. Others, like Burmeister, say they are simply not psychologically able to return to a war zone.
If he is convicted of desertion and given a dishonorable discharge, Burmeister faces time in prison. And the soldier, who says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury as a result of the roadside bomb, fears he might not have access to veterans' medical benefits.
The Hippie from Oregon
Burmeister's father Eric, who works in food service at LCC, says his son James is "just a typical Eugene kid," so typical that other soldiers in his unit called him the "hippie from Oregon."
Born in Portland and raised in Eugene, the son of a white father and an African-American mother, James Burmeister found himself working dead-end jobs after graduating from high school. While on a trip to Germany to visit an old friend who had enlisted in the military, Burmeister began to consider the Army as a possible career. "My friend described the Iraq war as a humanitarian effort, and I believed him," Burmeister writes in a deposition to Canadian authorities while seeking asylum.
In June of 2005 he approached a recruiter and he writes he was again told "about the humanitarian efforts that the military undertook on behalf of the Iraqi people." He enlisted and was stationed in Germany, where he married a woman named Angelique, whom he had met on the earlier trip.
His father was against Burmeister's choice to join the military, "I'm an old Don Quixote tilting at windmills from way back", Eric Burmeister says. "But he bought the recruiter's line. He couldn't get a good job. I had to let him go."
After a year of training in Germany, James Burmeister began to question why he was only learning how to raid houses and secure buildings and not how to distribute food or develop "civilian infrastructure." He says he approached his commander and asked to become a conscientious objector, but he says the request was ignored.
Burmeister was sent to Iraq in September of 2006 as part of Unit 118 First Infantry Division and immediately deployed in Baghdad. His main duty was as a gunner. He manned the machine guns that sit on top of the Humvees used on patrol. "I was largely asked to provide protection for other soldiers" he writes of his duty.
But soon, he says, he realized his duties were less about protecting others and more about luring Iraqis to their deaths: "In many cases our platoon was required to engage in exercises that were designed to attract fire from insurgents." Army gunners would then return fire with 7.62-millimeter rounds that would "literally tear the limbs and appendages off the intended targets" or .50 caliber explosive rounds that when used against "human targets" would cause them to "literally explode or evaporate."
"Our unit's job seemed to be more about targeting a largely innocent civilian population or deliberately attracting confrontation with insurgents," he writes.
Small Kill Teams
Burmeister was also disturbed by the "small kill teams" for which he was asked to provide cover. On Sept. 24, 2007, the Washington Post investigated the story of the classified program of using "bait and kill" tactics in which sniper teams would scatter "bait" such as ammunition and detonation cords to attract Iraqi insurgents who would then be shot by snipers.
But Burmeister, who had deserted from the Army five months before the story broke, had been telling that story to the media for months.
In a July 2007 article in The Oregonian, Burmeister said he had participated in a team that placed fake cameras on poles and labeled them U.S. property to give the team the right to shoot anyone who to tried to move or take the equipment.
Burmeister writes in his deposition, "These citizens were almost always unarmed. In some cases the Iraqi victims looked to me like they were children, perhaps teenagers."
He told the same story to Canada's CBC news in June 2007, and allegedly to PBS's NOW, but that statement was not used in the portions of his interview used on air.
Ray Parrish, a counselor for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) says that it's not uncommon for a soldier's story of war atrocities to go uninvestigated. "It's part of the Winter Soldier phenomenon," says Parrish, referring to the January 1971 testimony of veterans exposing war crimes and atrocities during the Vietnam War. In March 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War organized a similar gathering in which veterans and Iraqi and Afghan civilians gave testimony about their experiences.
"When people hear about that [bait and kill teams] they say 'that would never happen,'" says Parrish. "The GIs are simply not believed."
PTSD
Burmeister was involved in firefights only a month after arriving in Iraq. In his deposition he tells of the first time he killed an Iraqi. "I tried to fire warning shots", he writes, "but the sergeant in my Humvee began yelling at me to shoot to kill". One of the insurgents he shot died, and the other was wounded. In the same fight he says that he remembers watching another gunner use .50 caliber rounds against two unarmed civilians, "which literally made them explode."
Parrish says such experiences are what are contributing to the PTSD he sees in the troops. "The most severe part of PTSD has do with a guilty conscience," he says. "They are repeatedly put in the position of doing things that they know in their gut are wrong."
Soldiers like Burmeister "are at a loss as to what they can do to stop their personal slide into hell", says Parrish, who fought in Vietnam and has been counseling veterans since 1976.
Burmeister's convoy was hit by roadside bombs on three different occasions, he writes. On the third he was briefly knocked unconscious, had ringing in his ears and got two pieces of shrapnel buried in his face. But when the platoon leader asked if everyone was OK, "I responded that I was OK. I believe I was in shock at this time."
When he later reported the injury to his sergeant, he writes, he was told it was too late to report, and he would be declared healthy. He was ordered back to his Humvee.
It was after this that Burmeister began to have nightmares and feel faint. After passing out in his room, he was sent to Germany for rest, where it was discovered he was suffering from chronic high blood pressure. He was also diagnosed with PTSD and a possible traumatic brain injury, and he was given sleeping pills and anti-depressants, he writes. By May of 2007 he was told to return to Baghdad despite his PTSD.
"Mental injury is just so hard to document," says Parrish. "People who are literally unfit for deployment get deployed anyway. Doesn't matter if it's a broken pelvis and you're in a body cast because there is a desk for you to sit at in Iraq."
Eric Burmeister agrees. "They need the bodies".
AWOL
As of May 20, 4,079 American soldiers have died since the beginning of "Operation Enduring Freedom" and the war in Iraq. Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties range to over 90,000, according to Iraqbodycount.org (EW updates the numbers in our paper each week). More than 100 of the soldiers who have died are from Oregon, according to statistics kept by Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office. Burmeister's father, Eric, chokes up when he talks about his fears that his son would be one of those statistics, "I knew for sure he was going to die over there", he says.
But Burmeister is still a statistic: He is one of 4,968 Army soldiers who deserted in fiscal year 2007, according to Army figures. After a soldier has been AWOL for 30 days, he or she is considered a deserter. Like Suzanne Swift, a soldier from Eugene who was "command raped" in Iraq, and Ehren Watada, an officer who refused to deploy to Iraq, Burmeister is fighting the military to allow him to leave the war.
Army desertion rates have risen 80 percent since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an Associated Press investigation said last November. It used to be that most deserters listed dissatisfaction with Army life or family troubles as their reason for going AWOL, but now PTSD has become a reason to leave the military for soldiers like James Burmeister.
Burmeister went AWOL in May 2007, fleeing from Germany to Canada in hopes of getting refugee status. He remained there for almost a year with his pregnant wife and son, who have since gone back to Germany. But in November 2007 the Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear the case of two American deserters, opening the way for the deportation of American AWOL troops. On March 4 of this year, homesick and struggling with PTSD, James Burmeister turned himself in to the Army.
Bring Him Home
Burmeister is now at Fort Knox waiting for the military to decide what to do with him. One of his original cellmates, who had also gone AWOL, has already been sent back to Iraq.
The Army has prescribed what Eric Burmeister calls a "drug-induced lobotomy" for his son. According to an emailed evaluation from Jon Bjornson, a retired psychiatrist and former major in the Army Medical Corps consulted by the VVAW, the drugs prescribed for James Burmeister are not for PTSD but for "bipolar disorder, mixed, type 1."
The combination of the prescribed medications, which include Desyrel, "a sedating antidepressant", as well as Seroquel, Celexa and a drug for hypertension, "will restrict an individual from driving, working with machinery, performing any activities requiring hand-eye coordination", writes Bjornson.
"Any physician clearing this individual taking the pharmaceutical regimen above, for military duty, much less combat, should be liable for malpractice", says the email.
But Parrish of the VVAW says drug prescriptions for troubled soldiers are not uncommon. "They are given a pill to go to sleep, speed to wake them up". Other troops and veterans, he says, are self-medicating with alcohol to try to sleep. The inability to sleep, he says, is common to veterans with PTSD.
Politicians don't want to talk about PTSD, says Parrish, or about suicide. "There's never been a situation where just as many veterans are committing suicide as are dying [in combat] in Iraq and Afghanistan", he says. "The numbers have hit 4,000", he alleges.
All Eric and Helen Burmeister want is for their son to come home. The Burmeisters asked Congressman Peter DeFazio's office to launch a congressional inquiry into James Burmeister's case, but so far they have heard nothing from the military. They hope their son will simply be discharged "in lieu of court martial".
Burmeister still faces possible redeployment to Iraq. If court-martialed and given a less-than-honorable discharge, Burmeister will not be able to access to medical care for his injuries unless the Veterans Administration grants him an exception.
For now, Burmeister is "unable to heal", says his father. His wife has returned to Germany, and Burmeister has not seen his newborn child. And because Fort Knox is an armor training school with soldiers firing from tanks day and night, he can hear the sounds of gunfire from his room as he awaits his fate, worsening his PTSD, says his father.
It's not just about his own son, says Eric Burmeister. It's about all of the young soldiers in Iraq, "I can never be quiet until they all come home. It seems like they are all my children now".
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/05/22/coverstory.html
U.S. sniper 'bait and kill' tactics may be a war crime
09/25/2007 @ 6:48 pm
Filed by David Edwards and Adam Doster
A classified program used by U.S. military snipers has come under scrutiny in recent days. The Washington Post reports that, "A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of 'bait,' such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents."
The secrecy of the plan was ended during a murder investigation involving three snipers who allegedly used bait items to make shootings seem legitimate. While it's unclear whether the three alleged shootings, which took place within months of the program's implementation, were part of the classified program specifically, "defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone".
In documents retrieved by The Washington Post from family members of one accused soldier, a leader of an elite sniper scout platoon said "members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the 'drop items' to be used 'to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight'."
The baiting program should be rigorously examined, says Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, because it raises frightening possibilities.
"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war," he said, "if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back".
Despite the new inquiries, it is not clear whether the program was isolated to one Iraqi region or how many people were killed using the tactics.
Read the whole story here. (See below)
CNN also detailed the counter-tactical program. The following video is from CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, broadcast on September 25.
To Stream Lou Dobbs’ account, go to
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=7667
U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With 'Bait'
Snipers Describe Classified Program
By Josh White and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 24, 2007; A01
A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait", such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.
The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.
"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy", Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."
In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight".
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.
"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back", Fidell said.
Soldiers said that about a dozen platoon members were aware of the program, and that numerous others knew about the "drop items" but did not know their purpose. Two soldiers who had not been officially informed about the program came forward with allegations of wrongdoing after they learned they were going to be punished for falling asleep on a sniper mission, according to the documents.
Army officials declined to discuss the classified program, details of which appear in unclassified investigative documents and in transcripts of court testimony. Criminal investigators wrote that they found materials related to the program in a white cardboard box and an ammunition can at the sniper unit's base.
"We don't discuss specific methods targeting enemy combatants", said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman. "The accused are charged with murder and wrongfully placing weapons on the remains of Iraqi nationals. There are no classified programs that authorize the murder of local nationals and the use of 'drop weapons' to make killings appear legally justified."
It is unclear whether the program reached elsewhere in Iraq and how many people were killed through the baiting tactics.
Members of the sniper platoon have said they felt pressure from commanders to kill more insurgents because U.S. units in the area had taken heavy losses. The sniper unit -- dubbed "the painted demons" because of the use of tiger-stripe face paint -- often went on missions into hostile areas to intercept insurgents going to and from hidden weapons caches.
"It's our job out here to lay people down who are doing bad things", Spec. Joshua L. Michaud testified in Iraq in July, discussing the unit's numerous casualties. "I don't want to call it revenge, but we needed to find a way so that we could get the bad guys the right way and still maintain the right military things to do."
Within months of the program's introduction, three snipers in Didier's platoon were charged with murder for allegedly using those items and others to make shootings seem legitimate. Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.
James D. Culp, a civilian attorney for one of the snipers, Sgt. Evan Vela, said the soldiers became "battle-fatigued pawns in a newfangled concept of 'baiting' warfare that, like an onion, perhaps looked good on the surface, but started stinking to high hell the minute the layers were pulled back and scrutinized."
Spec. Jorge Sandoval and Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley are accused by the military of placing a spool of wire into the pocket of an Iraqi man Sandoval had shot on April 27 on Hensley's order. The man had been cutting grass with a rusty sickle when he was shot, according to court documents.
The military alleges that the killing of the man carrying the sickle was inappropriate. Hensley and Sandoval have been charged with murder and with planting evidence.
As Sandoval and Hensley approached the corpse, according to testimony and court documents, they allegedly placed a spool of wire, often used by insurgents to detonate roadside bombs, into the man's pocket in an attempt to make the case for the kill ironclad.
One soldier who came forward with the allegations, Pfc. David C. Petta, told the same court that he believed the classified items were for dropping on people the unit had killed, "to enforce if we killed somebody that we knew was a bad guy but we didn't have the evidence to show for it". Petta had not been officially briefed about the program.
Two weeks after that killing, Sandoval and his sniper team stopped for the night in a concealed "hide" in the village of Jurf as Sakhr along the Euphrates River. While other snipers slept, Hensley watched as an Iraqi man, Genei Nesir Khudair, slowly approached the hide. He radioed to Didier, then a first lieutenant, for permission to go for a "close kill."
"I told him that as the ground forces commander, I would authorize that if it was necessary", Didier testified. "And about five minutes later, he told me that he had indeed killed the individual."
The U.S. military alleges that Vela, on Hensley's order, shot the Iraqi man twice in the head with a 9mm pistol after he had been taken into custody. It was Vela's first kill, and he was visibly shaken. "He looked weird", Sgt. Robert Redfern testified. "Just messed up from it. How would you feel if you had to shoot someone?"
At the time the two shots rang out, Sandoval was on guard duty about 20 meters away, out of sight of Vela, inside a broken-down pump house along the Euphrates River, soldiers testified.
Vela and Hensley told investigators that the man had an AK-47 with him and that he posed a threat, but other soldiers have alleged that the AK-47 was planted next to Khudair after he was shot.
Hensley's attorney could not be reached to comment. Sandoval's attorney, Capt. Craig Drummond, thinks his client is innocent in both deaths.
"Literally, they have charged this guy with two murders when on both occasions he was just doing his job," Drummond said.
Drummond said Sandoval did not have anything to do with placing an AK-47 in the pump-house killing. Sandoval made a statement to investigators discussing his involvement in planting the command wire on the first victim.
"That was done by one of the soldiers at the scene basically out of stupidity. The guys were trying to ensure that there were no questions at all about this kill", Drummond said. "It was done to overly justify a kill that didn't need justification."
Hensley is also charged with killing an Iraqi man whom he approached after the sniper team noticed the man placing wires on a road. Hensley shot him outside his home, maintaining that the man appeared to be moving for a weapon.
Two and a half months after the shooting near the pump house, authorities seized Sandoval while he was vacationing at his mother's house in Laredo, Tex. The charges have baffled family members, who describe Sandoval as a caring and honest young man who is being punished for following orders.
"This has been a shock to all of us", said his eldest sister, Norma Vasquez. "He's been in shock, too, he doesn't know what . . . is going on."
Sandoval, a former high school ROTC member, is scheduled to face a court-martial in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Vela's father, Curtis Carnahan, said he thinks the military is rushing the cases and is holding the proceedings in a war zone to shield facts from the U.S. public.
"It's an injustice that is being done to them", Carnahan said. "I feel like you can't prosecute our soldiers for acts of war and threaten them with years and years of confinement when this program, if it comes to the light of day, was clearly coming from higher levels. . . . All those people who said 'go use this stuff' just disappeared, like they never sanctioned it."
Partlow reported from Baghdad. Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431_pf.html
Tabacco: Can’t these guys see that not everybody, who takes the Bait, is a Terrorist! If you can see it, why can’t they! The only answer is they don’t care. You can’t make this stuff up!
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World