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Accused G.I. "snapped" from the strain
He'll be tried in the U.S., by the U.S. right?
WASHINGTON ? The American staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers had been drinking alcohol ? a violation of military rules in combat zones ? and suffering from the stress related to his fourth combat tour and tensions with his wife about the deployments on the night of the massacre, a senior American official said Thursday.
?When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues ? he just snapped,? said the official, who has been briefed on the investigation and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the soldier has not yet been formally charged.
As new details emerged about possible reasons behind the shootings, the American official said the military was preparing to move the sergeant to a prison in the United States as early as Friday, most likely to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., just a day after he was flown to a detention site in Kuwait from Afghanistan.
The sergeant?s sudden transfer to the United States is the result of a behind-the-scenes diplomatic uproar with Kuwait, which learned of the sergeant?s move to an American base on Kuwaiti territory from news reports before the United States government could alert the Kuwaitis about it, the senior American official said.
?When they learned about it, the Kuwaitis blew a gasket and wanted him out of there,? the official said.
The account by the American official, confirmed by a senior official at the Pentagon, is the most detailed description so far of the state of mind of the sergeant, a 38-year-old married father of two who was on his first combat tour in Afghanistan but his fourth over all, including three in Iraq, since he enlisted in 2001.
?There will be questions raised about his emotional and mental stability for a fourth deployment,? the American official said.
The Army still has not named the soldier, but on Thursday a lawyer who said he had been retained by his family offered some information and questioned some of the American official?s claims.
The lawyer, John Henry Browne of Seattle, said it was ?nonsense? that there were exceptional marital tensions. ?I know that is not true,? he said at a news conference at his office Thursday night in Seattle.
Mr. Browne added that the inaccuracy of the claim made him ?suspicious? of the suggestion that alcohol and stress contributed, though he noted that virtually anyone at a remote base in Afghanistan would be under stress.
The soldier and his wife had ?a very healthy marriage,? Mr. Browne said. Their two children are 3 and 4 years old.
A decorated soldier who grew up in the Midwest, the man enlisted within a week of the terrorist attacks of 2001, he said.
?He felt it was his duty to stand up for the United States,? said Mr. Browne, who has handled many high-profile cases in the Northwest, including the recent defense of the teenage fugitive known as the Barefoot Bandit, Colton Harris-Moore.
Mr. Browne, who said he met with ?a very large group of family members? on Wednesday and spoke with the soldier by telephone on Thursday, said the man had ?been decorated many, many times.?
?He was injured twice and he was deployed back to Afghanistan,? Mr. Browne added. "He is a career military man.?
He added, ?He was injured in Iraq in two places on his body, so he wasn?t certain he was healthy enough to go back, physically.?
Mr. Browne said the soldier suffered a concussion during a vehicle rollover accident caused by a roadside bomb. He also lost part of a foot in another episode.
He confirmed that the soldier, part of the Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry, had served three tours in Iraq with that unit.
He declined to say whether the sergeant might have psychological or mental health issues, and he also would not say whether the soldier had confessed. Mr. Browne said he would wait for the government to release the man?s name.
Mr. Browne criticized anonymous reports from government officials, calling them baseless.
?The government is going to want to blame this on an individual rather than blame it on the war,? he said.
Mr. Browne said that his client had been based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, just south of Tacoma, Wash., for his entire career. He said that many but not all of his family members had moved from the Midwest to western Washington. He said the soldier had done ?blue collar? work in the Midwest before he enlisted. The soldier?s wife had ?a very good job,? he said, noting that he was being paid, not working on the case pro bono. Mr. Browne said that the day before the shooting a soldier in the same unit had been ?gravely injured.?
The senior American official said the account of the sergeant?s state of mind came from two other soldiers with whom he drank alcohol on the night of the shootings. Those soldiers face disciplinary action.
The sergeant has refused to speak to investigators, invoking his right to a lawyer shortly after he surrendered on returning to his base after the shootings.
The soldier?s wife and children have been moved from their home at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for their protection in anticipation of the release of the sergeant?s name, the American official said. Concern for their safety was among the reasons for initially withholding the sergeant?s identity, the official said.
Re: Accused G.I. "snapped" from the strain
This is tragic on so many levels.
The Soldier will likely be tried in military court in the US.
I'm sorry, as the wife of a sergeant who has done three deployments, I have a hard time feeling any sort of sadness for this dude. He had a shitton of options available to him. Also, the process of getting off the base and doing this is not an easy one and takes a myriad of steps. I have a hard time believing these weren't deliberate actions undertaken by a homicidal and likely racist fuukwit.
Click me, click me!
*links hands with HaB*
this makes me feel worse and better. I really can't imagine the mindset of someone who's on their 4th tour, so it's scary that this lawyer would try to say that it was the pressures of war. I don't doubt there were serious mental issues and that the troop should have noticed it and intervened, but to snap and just KILL 16 sleeping people including 9 CHILDREN and then burn some of the bodies? horrifying. unthinkable.
oh and as for his family, how #$%$ up must you be feeling that you have had to hire the "lawyer who defended Ted Bundy" as your husband's lawyer?
ugh.
*Joins hands with HaB and Copz. Starts singing "We are the World"*
I agree, but I do feel bad for his wife and kids. He screwed them over too.
That I definately agree with. I couldn't imagine how I'd feel in her position.
Click me, click me!
I agree with HAB that the four tours are not an excuse, I disagree that he couldn't have been seriously psychologically messed up from it.
I think he should be punished for his heinous crime, but I do have compassion for this man, who obviously couldn't handle the stress that comes from being in a war far away from his loved ones while his personal life was falling apart. It's not an excuse, but some people can only handle so much.
There but by the grace of God...
I'm concerned about how this is going to effect our efforts in the region as well as the safety of the rest of our troops.
Between the pix of soldiers peeing on dead bodies, the accidental burning of the Quran, and now this - it's not good. Karzai wants him tried in Afghanistan. He's pisssed at Kuwait for taking him in. The Taliban, which was poised to begin negotiations is now calling off talks.
Here's a new article from the AP.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVPwrg5IYS5gvhYuQZzKdmWRAXSg?docId=f66f4ea7499444d9b07b47dd195ab9cb
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press ? 39 minutes ago
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Warning he's at the "end of the rope" over civilian casualties, Afghanistan's president angrily accused the U.S. on Friday of not sharing information about how an American soldier allegedly shot and killed 16 Afghans in two villages.
The incident has reverberated through the already complicated relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan, endangering talks over a long-term relationship after most U.S. and NATO combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
In an emotional meeting with relatives of the shooting victims, Karzai said the villagers' accounts of the massacre were widely different from the scenario depicted by U.S. military officials. The relatives and villagers insisted that it was impossible for one gunmen to kill nine children, four men and three women in three houses of two villages near a U.S. combat outpost in southern Afghanistan.
Karzai pointed to one of the villagers from Panjwai district of Kandahar province and said:
"In his family, in four rooms people were killed ? children and women were killed ? and then they were all brought together in one room and then set on fire. That, one man cannot do."
Karzai said the delegation he sent to Kandahar province to investigate the shootings did not receive the expected cooperation from the United States. He said many questions remained about what occurred, and he would be raising the questions with the U.S. military "very loudly."
The U.S. military had no comment on Karzai's remarks.
The Afghan leader stressed that he wants a good relationship with the international community, but that it was becoming increasingly difficult in light of airstrikes that miss their targets, leaving civilians dead and raising opposition to night operations where troops raid homes looking for insurgents.
"This has been going on for too long," he said at the presidential palace. "You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here. ... This form of activity, this behavior cannot be tolerated. It is past, past, past the time."
NATO has said that night operations have been instrumental in rounding up midlevel commanders and Taliban bomb makers. The coalition says more than 90 percent of night operations are done alongside Afghan forces and that more than 85 percent are conducted without any shots fired.
The United Nations has reported that last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs.
The U.N. attributed 77 percent of the deaths to insurgent attacks and 14 percent to actions by international and Afghan troops. Nine percent of cases were classified as having an unknown cause.
On Thursday, Karzai demanded that international forces pull out of rural areas because the fight was not in the villages.
Afghan officials said Karzai made his request to pull back from the villages now during a meeting on Thursday with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
U.S. officials said, however, that he did not tell Panetta that it should happen immediately.
Karzai said President Barack Obama called him Friday morning to ask him about the demand to withdraw from villages.
"Yesterday, I said clearly that the Americans should leave our villages," Karzai said. "This morning, Obama called regarding this issue. He asked, 'Did you announce this?' I said, "Yes, I announced it.'"
The soldier has not been identified, but officials have said the 38-year-old is based in Washington state. He was transferred late Wednesday to a facility in Kuwait and then left there Friday, according to the Kuwaiti state news agency and a senior U.S. defense official.
The soldier was expected to be flown to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the defense official said. Leavenworth is the military's only maximum-security prison.
Officials say that transfer was necessary because there was no appropriate detention facility to hold him in Afghanistan.
Dealing another blow to the war effort, the Taliban on Thursday said they were calling off the talks, charging that the U.S. had failed to follow through on its promises and made new demands. The militant group also said the U.S. falsely claimed that it had entered into multilateral negotiations that included the Afghan government.
Karzai said Friday that the Taliban should be talking directly with his government.
The moves represent new setbacks to America's strategy for ending the 10-year-old war at a time when support at home for the conflict is plummeting.
Part of the U.S. exit strategy is to transfer authority gradually to Afghan forces. Another tack is to pull the Taliban into political discussions with the Afghan government, though it's unclear whether there has been any progress since January.
Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Sebastian Abbot contributed to this report in Kabul. Lolita C. Baldor also contributed.
Copyright ? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
I didn't say he couldn't have been psychologically messed up.
What I'm saying is that there are multiple levels of screenings, assistance, outlets, and information available to the military. There are also procedures for leaving the base, for procuring a vehicle, walking off post or however he got there. There's also the deliberate act of setting the bodies on fire in the aftermath. There are also more mental illnesses than just PTSD.
Sure, this guy could have just lost his ever loving mind from the stress and flipped his shiit. But it's also just as possible he's simply a murderer. Or it's possible there's something in between.
But I admit I resent the hell out of the image that's being portrayed wrt our military recently.
Click me, click me!
I know there are lots of levels of screening and resources, but there's also quite a history of people slipping through all that. I don't find it inconceivable that both the stresses got to him and to the people who should have been watching out for him. I mean, some of the signs of someone flipping out aren't too different than expected and normal responses to repeatedly going to war. People can be too messed up to know they need help (hi, been there), and it takes someone else pushing them into it.
FFS, this isn't really the first time this has happened, although the # killed and the targets are different. There was that solider who shot up a bunch of people in Iraq while in a counseling center.
I read some speculation that he might have been attempting suicide by return fire. And then when it didn't happen he got all pissed and shooting. I doubt we'll ever know if that was the case, but it's an interesting angle.
One more side of this, those 2 people killed inside the embassy recently really shook people up. One of those guys was important to H, and he actually cried over the news. I think that, more than just the toll of return tours, the decade of war and decreasing faith that we're doing the right thing is going to affect people. Not that that excuses any of this.