Remember this letter from the heady Beauchamp days:
I’m not in the habit of answering these email’s. It would be far too many. I appreciate all the support from home and I can assure you that not a single word of this was true. We’ve been fighting this fight for quite some time. Numerous soldiers within my unit have served on several deployments and this is my third year as a First Sergeant in this unit. My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. This soldier has other underlining issues which I’m sure will come out in the course of the investigation. No one at any of the post we live at or frequent, remotely fit the descriptions of any of the persons depicted in this young man’s fairy tale. I can’t and won’t divulge any information regarding this soldier, but I do sincerely appreciate all the support from the people back home. Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I’m currently serving with the best America has to offer. I have worked and fought closely with every soldier within my company and they are consummate professionals in an area most people can’t fathom. I’m proud of my soldiers and would gladly give my life for any one of them. Please continue to keep them with you in your prayers and thank God that we have these courageous men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, Americans, and the people of this struggling nation.
Sincerely,
1SG Hatley
As an NCO back in the day, I remember thinking how shockingly unprofessional it was for an NCO to openly distribute his feelings about a soldier under his command. You just keep that shit in house, you don’t go spread your feelings about your troops all over the internet. Well, they may not tell off color jokes or run over dogs, but summary execution of prisoners may be another story altogether:
A U.S. soldier who admitted involvement in the shooting of detainees in Iraq early last year has been sentenced to seven months in jail and will be dishonorably discharged, the army said on Thursday.
Specialist Belmor Ramos, 23, pleaded guilty at a court martial in Germany to charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. He agreed to testify in the trials of other soldiers involved, the army said in a statement.
Ramos was present when four unarmed, handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi detainees were allegedly shot dead near a canal in Baghdad in March or April 2007.
Three other U.S. soldiers have been identified by witnesses as the shooters: Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, Sergeant Michael P. Leahy Jr., a senior medic and an acting squad leader, and First Sergeant John E. Hatley.
Criminal charges have been filed against Hatley, Mayo and Leahy, as well as against Staff Sergeant Jess Cunningham, Sergeant Charles Quigley .
Beauchamp, who we were assured was the real villain in his unit, is still serving his nation and his unit honorably, Michael Goldfarb and the lynch mob be damned.
More stories here and here, coverage from the Army Times can be found here. And yes, that is the same 1SG Hatley.
Also, in case you missed it, this Spencer Ackerman Radar Online piece is a must read.
Martin
Clearly Beauchamps is working with Al Qaeda and other evil elements to have set up these soldiers so professionally. That this conspiracy extends all the way to the court in Germany, whose evil elements have historically attacked American patriots and who recently came out for Obama is not surprising. Is there anybody left who isn’t trying to discredit these brave charges of the 101st Chairborne?
capelza
I eagerly await Bob Owens’ comment on this.
PC
I have a vintage GI Joe play set that proves this could not have happened. Why do you hate America?
The Other Steve
I reenacted the circumstances in my sandbox, and it’s quite clearly a forgery. The fonts and kerning are all wrong.
Stuck in the Fun House
Why do we have so many fuckwits like Goldbarb, Malkin, Hewitt and all the other malignant gasbags? It’s not just that they holler and yell about how their ideology is the way we should all live. That I can take. It’s the neverending lies and fairly tales to prop up the sick notions of national and personal perfectitude . Don’t they ever get tired of the bullshit they shovel daily into the national dialogue, that almost always ends up thrown back in their laps. And they never ever learn from their fuckups and phony accusations. In fact being proved wrong only incites more nutbaggery.
Svensker
Dogs are nice.
Nice is good.
Iraqis are Mooslems.
Mooslems are bad.
Iraqi detainees
Svensker
Hey, Word Press ate my equation!
Iraq detainees (are less than) dogs.
Ergo, Beauchamps is a liar.
Tim (The Other One)
I don’t want this to get lost in the thread below so on behalf of CU I would like to welcome the Mountaineers to altitude fatigue.
Go Buffs !!
ahahahhahhha !!!!
The Other Steve
Damn you Scott Beauchamp! This is all your fault!
Conservatively Liberal
This is sad to read about. Needless and mindless death is a waste of human life and if we are responsible for it then we all should denounce it and hold the guilty parties responsible for their actions. I think highly of those who serve but if these soldiers are guilty then they are a disgrace to their uniform and our country. Unfortunately, if they are guilty, there will be people in our country who will hail these guys as heroes.
People who approve of and defend the behavior of soldiers like these are just as much of a disgrace to our country. In times of war and violence, shit happens and the right better get used to that concept. If humans are involved in anything then you can expect some of them to fuck something up royally. To pretend otherwise is denial of reality.
Of course, denial of reality is a built-in feature for far too many on the right.
r€nato
oh yeah? What about Beauchamp’s kitchen counters? Huh? Hmm? Clinton! Rezko! Chappaquidick!
Frank
Yes, there is. As a matter of fact, I imagine most of THIS country would be disgusted by this trash. Luckily, you people are so far out there that they’ll probably never even here of this.
Maybe those soldiers did kill those guys, (which I seriously doubt, especially seeing as how one of them is a medic) but who are you to say that they didn’t deserve it? I’m pretty sure you people can’t, since none of you were there.
Oh yeah, and all this crap about people killing other people DURING A WAR is supposed to all-of-a-sudden make that slanderous jerk Blowchump some kind of martyr? Not buyin it.
Svensker
Gosh, “Frank” said the same thing I did, without the equation dealie that Word Press ate on my post. {Dog (is better than) Iraqi detainees, (therefore) Beauchamps’ a liar.} Dang. You’re good, “Frank”. Really good. I thought the “Blowchump” thing was particularly hilarious. You know what’s even funnier? Dead Iraqis! Har har har.
catatonia
Wow. Great job, John; you set this up like a true storyteller. (I’d say comic, rimshots and all, but the basis of such shadenfreude is some guy whose death defines the word “travesty” and thus makes such gratification less … gratifying.)
As I read this post, I was thinking, ok, 1SG Hatley unprofessional prick is gonna get his comeuppance in, say, the arena of public opinion. But it’s no surprise that someone so flippant about his responsibilities toward the men under his command, so eager to stoke the wingnut fire, would, when confronted by a situation like summarily executing some poor Iraqi SOB, would so eagerly embrace situational ethics … on his own terms, of course, laid down by god knows what wingnut radio fathead.
After reading it again, what bothers me is WTF the medic is doing as one of the executioners. You’d think someone who is at least conversant with the Hippocratic Oath (are military medics aware of that?) would have had the ethical sensibility to eschew participation in conspiracy to commit acts really no different to what the Wehrmacht did to Red Army soldiers (and, yeah, yeah, wingnuts, the other way around, too) on the Eastern front.
The Moar You Know
Medics are not doctors. The civilian equivalent is a paramedic. They do not take the Oath.
bostondreams
Frank, you, sir, are an ass. I hope you are not a veteran, because if you are, your words shame the uniform many of us have worn. These men were not killed in combat DURING A WAR..they were MURDERED during a war. Shot on their knees, blindfolded, without trial. Why is this ok for the enemy when it would not be for our own men?
If these soldiers are guilty of this, they are scum who deserve the highest punishment possible. I question your values as an American if you think otherwise (see, I can do right wing talking points too!).
Screamin' Demon
Journalism 101: if four people are dead, with their bodies shot full of holes, those people weren’t allegedly shot. What is alleged is that those accused of shooting them actually pulled the triggers.
Which they did, of course.
Chud
A medic wouldn’t execute a bound and blindfolded detainee (VERY heroic!) because it’s not SOP…just like soldiers wouldn’t run over dogs because it’s not SOP…right? That’s some pretty tired “logic”. Will it stand up to the sworn statements that have already been signed and submitted saying that the murders did happen?
Why didn’t the Beauchamp allegations get this kind of intensity of scrutiny from the military? Probably because they let the unit investigate itself instead of letting CID conduct it like they did in this case.
Anyone who sympathizes with with these murderers is insane and unpatriotic. Let’s assume that the detainees WERE guilty of something. Not following rule of law (remember, they were ALREADY detained)serves as a warning to the Iraqi’s who were watching this all take place in the crowded Baghdad neighborhood: the American’s don’t play by their own rules. They don’t respect the law. They are hypocritical. Anything goes.
And that’s how baby terrorists are born.
If my tone is curt it’s because I’m a veteran and served in Baghdad.
Martin
See Mengele, Josef
When you see clusters of people like this (either this crowd, or bad cops, or SLA, Abu Graib or whoever) what you are usually seeing is one fucked up dude and a bunch of authoritarian followers. Take the fucked up dude out of the equation and the followers would never, ever do something like this on their own.
Now imagine Mengele as the head of a Milgram experiment and you can see how this happens.
Stuck in the Fun House
Here grasshopper, we have wingnut reasoning at it’s zenith. The troglidite mind works in only one dimension. The point of the post was not to exonerate Beauchamp because people git killed during war, although executing unarmed handcuffed prisoner is a war crime. The point of the post, as I read it, and Mr. Cole can correct if I’m wrong, was to point out the folly of deifying American soldiers, or any soldier in a war zone, out of some fevered sense of hyper-nationalism and also in a political effort to paint liberals as soldier hating slobs for recognizing soldiers sometimes do bad things in war zones, even saintly GI’s.
I swear, we all have it, but wingnuts take hypocrisy to levels that can’t be measured.
LiberalTarian
This is one of the myriad reasons for not going into war for oil or vanity.
Soldiers break. Murder and sadism are human behaviors that come forward under pressure or when boundaries are withdrawn. I don’t think they are good aspects of human nature, but they are elements of the human condition. Given the right conditions, e.g. war, they come forward.
Maybe this guy would have been a murderer regardless, but probably not. Wrong place, wrong volunteer opportunity. :(
AJ
I think that “Frank” guy might be Frank Foer.
bargal20
Seven months and a dishonorable discharge for conspiracy to commit multiple murders?
You Americans really do think one of you equals ten of us, don’t you?
The Moar You Know
Not anyone posting at this site save for the trolls – and probably not 99% of the people voting Democratic this cycle. But yeah, there are a disturbingly large number of folks in this country who do believe exactly that.
Sorry,
America
TenguPhule
Killing unarmed prisoners is a war crime.
But as scientific research has proven, Republicans love to believe in lying liars.
r€nato
$10 gets you $100 that “Frank” has never been with 1000 miles of a combat zone.
Belligerent trashtalk from someone who’s never had to walk the walk is the hallmark of the American Chickenhawk (Yellowbellyus Americanus)
bayville
Why does the Army hate the troops?
The Moar You Know
I very much doubt that “Frank” was capable of finishing his first year at community college.
He’s probably a realtor, or some similar make-work white-collar occupation that requires far less brains than the average ditchdigger has.
r€nato
No. Because they are sociopaths, who by definition have no conscience.
This has been another edition of…
Kevin
No, “we Americans” don’t.
The Moar You Know
Love the link. Your trolling work is truly epic. Looks like I bit on your comment – well played!
My hat is off to you.
matt
I sort of agree with r€nato in the sense that I don’t think being “conservative” has much to do with anything. Although it gets complicated because one feature of (contemporary) conservative thinking is being wary of Smart People. So it’s a bit muddy. But as he points out, there’s no shortage of people of all different groups who believe weird shit, and aren’t going to be persuaded otherwise regardless of the evidence presented.
matt
Oops, wrong thread!
Martin
Some do. The nationalists (AKA Republicans) in particular. These are the folks that literally believe that God created America as a sacred place. See, when the world comes to an end, only Americans will be saved, and God even has special plans for Alaska.
Enlightened Layperson
Is Frank for real? Seriously. To argue that killing handcuffed, blindfolded prisoners is just fine but telling sick jokes is going too far goes so far off the deep end it starts to sound like parody.
Thers
This story is just sad. I just hope to God whatever administration comes in, they are going to pay whatever it takes to do right by these returning soldiers. The bill is going to be enormous, and will need to be paid for about two more generations. And for what.
Nancy Irving
The seven-month sentence for Ramos appears pretty shocking, until you realize that: Presumably they were unable to secure his testimony without the plea deal, so they let him off easy in order to ensure the conviction of the others, who actually fired the shots.
This happens all the time in the civilian arena. You don’t have to like it, but it’s necessary.
I don’t think it reflects any failure on the part of the military prosecutors to appreciate the seriousness of Ramos’ actions.
Person of Choler
If I follow the logic:
1) Soldiers in Beauchamp’s unit did bad things.
2) Beauchamp said that soldiers in his unit did (other) bad things.
3) Therefore, Beauchamp told the truth.
Q.E.D.
The soldiers who committed the real crimes have been convicted and will be punished (although the punishment seems to me to be lenient).
Given that this sort of very serious stuff went on, why did Beauchamp have to make up stories about running over dogs and taunting disfigured women?
The Grand Panjandrum
I smelled a big stinking rat in this mess from the beginning. Me thought the Sergeant did protest too much. I could see him privately, or in front of the unit, ripping Beauchamp a new ass, but never, never, never going public with his own misgivings. Now it all makes sense if these allegations are proven true about Hatley.
My own personal experience with a high-profile incident (it was a fairly big event in the local civilian paper but never went national) was that our 1SG got all the NCO’s in the company together and promised a general court-martial to anyone talking to the press about the event.
I know the Army has changed since I when in but the culture could not have changed that much. Jesus if one thing is true about the military its that it takes for fucking ever to change anything.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to ascribe motive to anyone. I suspect he knew these guys (i.e. Hatley) were some bad actors and was trying to out them. But were Beauchamps stories ever refuted other than him saying they weren’t true? That’s the real issue here. Will we ever know what did or did not happen? The exact details of these other stories will be obscured now that we have serious war crimes charges against these clowns.
bargal20
Nancy,
The seven -month sentence for conspiracy to commit multiple murders is part of a pattern of ridiculously light sentences meted out to American service personnel for crimes committed against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Random Asshole
All I’m going to say is that while seven months seems really short, we don’t know that soldier’s exact role in this mess. He could have simply been a slightly-less-than-innocent bystander while the other three committed the murders. The fact that they offered him such a plea would suggest this is at least possible.
John Cole
Who says he made any of it up? This has gone through rigorous investigation, and the only thing that we have seen is that Beauchamp was wrong about the location of the teasing about the burn victim (it happened in Kuwait, and not Iraq).
Tim F.
Limbaugh. Before wasting any more of your time, revisit the thread above this one.
r€nato
This is nothing new. About 10 years ago, a hotdog aviator based at Aviano in northern Italy was flying too low over a ski resort and clipped the ski lift cable, sending 20 skiers plummeting to their deaths.
For quite some time the Italian government had complained to the US military about their pilots flying too low and too fast over this area, obviously not much was done to curb this behavior.
The aviator was acquitted.
As for more current events, I’ll just note that while the lower-level grunts involved in Abu Ghraib were punished, nobody in the upper command – including the unindicted war criminal Donald Rumsfeld – were ever implicated, even though anybody with any common sense knows that they encouraged and approved of this kind of ‘gloves-off’ behavior, and it would not have happened had they not encouraged it.
tBone
Apparently you don’t follow the logic:
1) Beauchamp said that soliders in his unit did bad things.
2) Sgt. Hatley publicly denies Beauchamp’s claims and says “My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable.”
3) Sgt. Hatley is later charged with murdering blindfolded, unarmed prisoners.
4) Thus, Sgt. Hatley’s veracity re: Beauchamp (and everything else) appears somewhat suspect.
Now go play in your sandbox scale model, but watch out for cats – you don’t want to get buried.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
Well, were you there? And if not, who are you to say they did?
That was a trick question, blindfolded, handcuffed prisoners cannot deserve to be executed, under any circumstances.
Now go upstairs and take out the garbage, your mommy’s been screaming at you for the past half hour. You can finish wanking to that photoshopped bikini picture of Sara Palin when you’re done.
And John, as I keep sayin’, better trolls. I’d suggest a more rigorous interviewing process.
C
I hope everyone who said that it was unconscionable to say that soldiers were running over dogs are embarrassed right about now. If someone can shoot four human beings in cold blood, I think they can run over a dog without losing too much sleep.
Pennypacker
Where’s the Confederate Yankee? He should be attacking the patriotism of the US Army for even charging these soldiers with a crime.
Even-Headed Brit
Limbaugh wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on his drug-addled, racist, greedy fat ass. This shit is the reason the USA refused to sanction the International Criminal Court. To you Repub hillbilly fuckwads the lives of people from outside your own country aren’t worth as much as American lives – real Christian attitude huh. Oh, and a tip for Palin… the world isn’t less than 10000 years old. Unless you’re a retard. Burn in Hell you selfish ingrates. God is a Democrat!
wufnik
Haven’t heard much bleating from the guys over at Winds of Change about Beauchamp recently, have we? Strange.
Greg
I agree with Renato–they’re sociopaths, as is much of the leadership of the Republican Party. Bush, Cheney, Rove, deLay, Scaife, Moon, Hannity, Ailes–all terrified authoritarian sociopaths. The damage they have done is untold.
By the way, for those who think that Beauchamp made any of it up, read the linked Radar article. It’s all true.
Bob Owens
You’re a bit late. I first covered these article 32 hearings a month ago when I debunked Ackerman’s craptacular “investigation,” which consisted him hanging out with Beauchamp and Reeve at a bar, and then sending them email.
Do try to keep up.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
Careful, that’s kinda close to home for me.
Cassidy
Killing EPW’s is not SOP. It’s a war crime. The SOP is in place to turn them in for processing, etc. While executing some of those oxygen stealing bastards would have made me feel better, it’s still wrong regardless of “deserving” it.
I’m a Medic. Medics are no different than other Soldiers. We shoot, blow shit up, etc. The only difference is that we are subject matter experts in battlefield trauma.
10? You are so wrong. A thousand dead hajis aren’t worth the life of one American Soldier.
The lady was made fun of (most likely). How do I know this? Soldiers have a very peculiar gallows humor. Think, “Oooohhh….I just stepped on someone’s face”, after a VBIED goes off in market and you might begin to understand it. When slipping on someone’s body parts or viscera becomes a funny anecdote, just about anything can be amusing. OTOH, maniacally driving through the streets to hit stray dogs most likely did not happen, only in that it invites an IED to be lit up under your ass. Driving on roads in Baghdad is a very serious endeavor, these days, and not something , generally, taken lightly.
Seven months in a military prison is considerably different than anywhere else. Secondly, the lifelong stigma that goes with the discharge, will more than make up for “mercy” he received.
zakur
Ramos’ own words on his role in this mess:
capelza
Oh Bob, Bob Owens….
Yeah, I see you really really put a lot of thought into it and burued teh lede to cover your disgraceful butt.
I had almost given up on the article when at last and 3/4 through it, you finally mention…the murder charges.
You really don’t realise what a jackass you are do you?
A husband, a Marine Vietnam Vet and two Army sons say the same thing. You really are a fucking wanker.
Aaron
Shorter version of the Radar article on Beaucamp:
“TNR confirmed all the relevant details of his story but when the army put him under wraps and TNR couldnt get in touch with him, Foer, the TNR editor, betrayed his reporter and branded him a liar.”
TNR- the new republican.
bargal20
10? You are so wrong. A thousand dead hajis aren’t worth the life of one American Soldier.
Thanks for the correct equation, Cassidy. You. Pathetic. Fuck.
Hope you don’t die, but in your case a testicular-related injury might do humanity some good down the road.
Cassidy
Spoken like a true ignorant American. Daddy must be so proud.
bargal20
Okay, I’m new here. Do I have my wires crossed or something? Did I misinterpret Cassidy’s post?
If so, I apologize.