Just the tip of the iceberg. The whole operation has been one long war crime.
"Soldier denies plot to kill Afghans; Lawyer admits client took body parts as trophies" November 01, 2011|By Gene Johnson, Associated Press
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. - An Army staff sergeant charged in connection with the deaths of three Afghan civilians had nothing to do with any plot to slaughter unarmed men for sport, his lawyer said yesterday.
Related: No Medals For AmeriKans in Afghanistan
A court martial opened for Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs of Billings, Mont., who has pleaded not guilty to 16 criminal charges ranging from murder to taking the fingers from the corpses of three civilians as mementos.
Gibbs maintains that, as far as he knew, the killings of the three men early last year were legitimate engagements - and that his codefendants conspired to blame him when they got caught.
“What you are seeing in this case is the ultimate betrayal of an infantryman,’’ Gibbs’s lawyer, Phil Stackhouse, told jurors in his opening statement.
In some of the most gruesome allegations to emerge from the Afghan war, prosecutors say Gibbs and his codefendants slaughtered the victims with grenades and machine guns during patrols in Kandahar province, then dropped weapons near their bodies to make them appear to have been combatants.
That last part is nothing new, and makes one doubt anything the military says or shows.
Of the five soldiers charged as part of the so-called kill team within the platoon, three have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Gibbs, who faces up to life in prison without parole if convicted.
Gibbs, 26, is the highest in rank of those charged. Others in the unit, including some of his codefendants, portrayed him as an imposing sociopath with little respect for life - a man who gunned down dogs without provocation, threatened fellow soldiers, and tallied his kills with skull tattoos on his calves.
He's just emulating the lying leaders that sent him there.
Another lead figure in the alleged plot, Private Jeremy Morlock, testified that Gibbs played with the corpse of the first victim, a teenager, as if it were a puppet. The jurors were shown graphic photographs, including one in which Morlock stood over the victim’s body and held up his head as though he had just bagged a deer.
Related: AmeriKan's Afghan Photo Album
A prosecutor, Captain Dan Mazzone, told the jurors at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle that Gibbs took advantage of weak leadership in the platoon to lead his juniors into the diabolical plot. This wouldn’t be a case where they have to second-guess difficult combat decisions, Mazzone told them.
“This case is the exact opposite: It is about premeditated murder,’’ Mazzone said.
And an invasion promoted by media lies that kills millions qualifies as.... ????
Gibbs joined the unit in what was then known as the 5th Stryker Brigade in Kandahar province in late 2009. He soon began telling others how easy it would be to kill civilians, Mazzone said.
When the platoon later came across a body that had been mangled by a helicopter gun, Mazzone said, Gibbs had reason to believe he would be able to get away with murder: As the platoon’s leadership watched, one soldier stabbed the corpse with a knife and posed for a photo.
Our leaders did. I have yet to see Bush under arrest.
Gibbs’s lawyer sought to lay the blame for any unjustified killings with the defendant’s comrades. When Gibbs came to the unit, hashish smoking was already rampant, Stackhouse said.
Wouldn't the hash mellow you out?
Gibbs, who had more combat experience than most of the others, did talk frequently of previous shootings he had been involved in - including one in Iraq, when Gibbs fired on a car that refused to stop at a checkpoint, only to later learn that the vehicle was carrying an innocent Iraqi family.
Related(?): The fatal touch of war
Was he there?
The others may have misinterpreted Gibbs’s stories, Stackhouse suggested.
Stackhouse admitted in his opening statement that Gibbs took fingers from the victims. He noted that while it’s inappropriate to take such trophies, soldiers are taught to disassociate war casualties from the human being they once were.
Sounds like Nazis to me.
Gibbs is accused of a wide range of misconduct, from providing a grenade used in January 2010 to kill the first victim, an unarmed farmer in Kandahar province, to directly shooting or tossing grenades at the next two in February and May of that year. One codefendant, then-Corporal Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, said that he or Gibbs enlisted one other soldier to participate in each of the three killings.
The pride of Wasilla next to Palin.
--more--"
"US soldier gets life sentence in Afghan killings" by Gene Johnson Associated Press / November 10, 2011
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash.—A U.S. soldier accused of exhorting his bored underlings to slaughter three civilians for sport was convicted of murder, conspiracy and other charges Thursday in one of the most gruesome cases to emerge from the Afghan war....
Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs acknowledged cutting fingers off corpses and yanking out a victim's tooth to keep as war trophies....
I assume you guys are working your way up the chain of command?
--more--"
Also see: AmeriKa's War Worship Day
