Investigation of SEAL Conduct in Afghanistan Is Reopened

[Disir]

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has reopened its investigation into allegations that Navy SEALs and Afghan police militiamen beat several detainees, including one who died, at an isolated outpost in Afghanistan in 2012, agency officials said Thursday.
The agency’s action came after revelations in an article in The New York Times last month about new Afghan witnesses and questions from congressional leaders about how the Navy handled the case.
The case began when four United States Army soldiers stationed at an outpost with the SEAL team told N.C.I.S. investigators that they saw three SEAL team members kicking several detainees, dropping heavy stones on their chests and firing guns near their heads. The Navy investigators also interviewed several Afghans and Navy personnel who described some of the abuses
.A Navy lawyer advising the command recommended in 2012 that three members of the SEALs be charged with assault. But a SEAL commander cleared the team members of any wrongdoing in a closed disciplinary process typically used only for minor infractions. The SEAL team members denied any misconduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/w...tion=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

This is going to be interesting to watch unfold.

 

[Searcher44]

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has reopened its investigation into allegations that Navy SEALs and Afghan police militiamen beat several detainees, including one who died, at an isolated outpost in Afghanistan in 2012, agency officials said Thursday.
The agency’s action came after revelations in an article in The New York Times last month about new Afghan witnesses and questions from congressional leaders about how the Navy handled the case.
The case began when four United States Army soldiers stationed at an outpost with the SEAL team told N.C.I.S. investigators that they saw three SEAL team members kicking several detainees, dropping heavy stones on their chests and firing guns near their heads. The Navy investigators also interviewed several Afghans and Navy personnel who described some of the abuses
.A Navy lawyer advising the command recommended in 2012 that three members of the SEALs be charged with assault. But a SEAL commander cleared the team members of any wrongdoing in a closed disciplinary process typically used only for minor infractions. The SEAL team members denied any misconduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/world/middleeast/investigation-of-seal-conduct-in-afghanistan-is-reopened.html?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Middle East&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

This is going to be interesting to watch unfold.

Events like this haven't been that rare in the murky M.E. conflicts American forces found themselves bogged down in. You hear it all the time, it's essentially impossible to delineate the "good guys" from the "bad guys". These detainees had been rounded up by the Afghan police after some kind of attack on Afghan police forces. It's not cynical to suggest the Afghan forces themselves are a large part of the problem, they're mostly brutal thugs when they have the advantage and mostly cowardly pieces of shit when faced with real danger such as approaching ISIS members even if they outnumber ISIS 10 to 1. So the American SEALs got involved in a so called "interrogation", as WAPO described it;
"In 2012, U.S. soldiers told Navy SEAL command that they saw SEALs and Afghan police they worked with brutally beating detainees, according to the New York Times. They dropped stones on prisoners’ chests, stood on their heads, poured water on their faces, kicked them, and hit them with antennas and rifle butts..."
The Afghan detainees turned out to have no involvement in the original assault on the police, they were released that afternoon. One Afghan died from his injuries and the investigation that eventually ensued was handled in a closed disciplinary process by what I think is for a case of this magnitude a low ranked Captain.
They say that in order to win an insurgency war you have to win the hearts and minds of the civil populace. Events like this show, if it wasn't already obvious years ago, that all the "blood and treasure" the U.S. has invested in the region has been completely wasted and will never be redeemed. As WAPO put it;
“What happened in Kalach involved just one death in a conflict that has taken thousands of lives, but it had broader consequences,” the Times reported. “Instead of winning over the local population, the goal of the mission, the reported abuse further alienated villagers. It drove some previously cooperative Afghans to leave for Taliban-controlled areas, residents said.”
The honor lost by these individual SEALs is seen by the rest of the World as honor lost by America as a whole. And I know a lot of you Americans say "fuck the World". To me that is the great tragedy for someone such as myself who grew up as a great admirer of America's inspiring experiment in building a superior civil society, always striving towards a "more perfect Union" no matter the faults to be overcome.

 

[shadow355]

The New York Times - A "left" news organization ; criticizing American Serviceman of their jobs.

The New York Times------> They have to keep up sales somehow.

The New York Times ( NYT ) is more than likely opening a closed casket. Once was not to their suffice - so start another article and open up a whole bag of worms. Even if the SEALs were correct and the charges are unfounded - print an article that the world will see ; and thus begin the political pressure from the White House - to the Department of the Navy.

Someone ought to take the editor, assignment editor and the reporter from the NYT ; drop them off in Afghanistan..... in among one of the terror camps - then let them write and publish an article on torture.

Shadow 355