Marine conviction overturned

2,101 Views | 7 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Ulysses90
mellison
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AG
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/11/09/court-overturns-conviction-of-marine-urinated-taliban-corpses.html

I would like to how others view what happened here. I'm personally not overly bothered by what these Marines did given the circumstances, except that they didn't keep it to themselves.

My wife was deployed at FOB Edinburgh when this all happened. She was on the medical team that treated their buddy when he first came in from the field, injured by and IED. It was bad, he didn't survive.
AGGies0311
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I was in Musa Qal'eh and stayed at FOB Edi when 2/7 first took over Helmand in 08. They should never have filmed themselves. Otherwise war is war.
CT'97
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They are Marines not state department employees. Their job is to close with and destroy the enemy in close combat not make the US look good to the world.
JT05
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Obama puzzification. They shouldn't have filmed themselves sure, but beyond that who cares.
JABQ04
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Shouldn't have filmed it, but other wise don't give two flying ****s about the dead Taliban. I received a negative counseling for keeping track of the number of kills my gun section made on our whiteboard in our sleeping quarters during our Afghanistan deployment. Military is there to kill people and break stuff. Not a Boy Scout campout
74OA
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I don't give a flip about the Taliban dead, but the point is that those Marines disobeyed a general order forbidding desecration of enemy corpses. We can argue whether their punishment went overboard or was influenced by higher command, but it's entirely appropriate that they should be disciplined for disobeying an order.
Ulysses90
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This is not the first time that prosecutable behavior at lower echelons has gone unpunished because of UCI. The underlying mistake was that these Marines were over-charged for the offense i.e. a misdemeanor was prosecuted as a capital offense. In my opinion this should have been handled at NJP by the first GO in the chain of command and not at the three & four star level. The way these Marines were prosecuted bespeaks a lack of confidence by CMC in the ability of officers to carry out the duties of their rank.

It is not uncommon to hear commanders complain that junior Marines don't use the chain of command and jump over their first and second level commanders to air a grievance and that's a valid complaint. It is no less a valid complaint that very senior leaders reach down that chain of command to take personal action on matters that their subordinate commanders should be allowed to handle.
74OA
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All true, but since those particular Marines not only felt it was okay to disobey a general order but also felt comfortable flaunting their misbehavior before the world on social media, it would appear that in fact their supervisors did fail the rudimentary leadership duty of ensuring good order and discipline in their command. So, with the PR blasting the Corps got, I'm not surprised that the incident generated a certain lack of confidence by senior officers in the lower end of the chain.. That doesn't justify the overcharging, but it does explain the overreaction.
Ulysses90
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Quote:

... it would appear that in fact their supervisors did fail the rudimentary leadership duty of ensuring good order and discipline in their command. So, with the PR blasting the Corps got, I'm not surprised that the incident generated a certain lack of confidence by senior officers in the lower end of the chain.

You are correct and it should have. However, as poorly as the incident reflected on the leadership of the battalion the reaction reflected even more negatively on the senior leadership of the Corps. This whole case was handled horribly. Everybody up the chain of command to the Battalion Commander had a promotion hold and PCS hold put on them until the (years long) investigation was completed. However, at the time of the incident 3/2 was conducting split battalion operations and the sector in which this incident occurred was under the command of the battalion XO. The XO was already selected for promotion and slated for command of another battalion. While everyone else is embroiled in the investigation aftermath the XO has his promotion hold lifted and he is promoted and takes command of a battalion. That raises an eyebrow by itself but when you realize that the XO was the son of the former Commandant who preceded the current Commandant it looks even worse.

Add to this the overtly vindictive behavior of the HQMC senior counsel toward the defense counsel for one of the Marines directly involved in the urination incident, Maj Weirick and the lack of confidence in the leadership of 3/2 was reciprocated on a much larger scale. At some point I would not doubt that there is a book written about this case and several other prosecutions that happened in the 2011-2015 time frame.
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