“If you find a weapons cache, make the farmer upon whose land you find the stash dig it up (in case of booby traps). If a suspected insurgent resists detainment? ‘Knock ‘em out!’” These words were delivered to an assembled brigade combat team (BCT) by the colonel commanding the outfit prior to a large-scale combat operation. My interviewed Army CID agent personally had no heartburn with the BCT commander’s instructions. However, the retired agent’s personal opinions were not the rules of war.
In the wake of the embarrassing Abu Ghraib Prison photos scandal, Washington, D.C. wanted scalps for other supposed “war crimes” committed by US military personnel. Army CID agents were ordered to investigate all manners of alleged “war crimes.” Curiously, nearly all cases brought against US personnel involved enlisted soldiers. A miniscule number of those cases found actual criminal conduct.
In one example, a tremendous amount of investigative effort was poured into a situation to determine if a former Marine infantryman and then US Army cavalry scout non-commissioned officer (NCO) had acted criminally when he leapt from the commander’s hatch of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle; detained a military-aged male stopped driving a car after curfew along a desolate roadway; and struck the man with a wooden stick grabbed from the suspected insurgent’s vehicle trunk when the man attempted to run away when a search of the car’s trunk turned up shovels and other equipment associated with planting IEDs.
“Was he trained in using a baton?” was an actual question from an investigative supervisor, concerning whether or not to “title” the scout NCO as a “subject” in a criminal investigation. (Army CID doesn’t “charge” soldiers or civilians, but “titles” them. More on that later.) The soldier in this example was “titled” remotely by the CID detachment’s commander prior to agents even arriving at a FOB to initially interview the accused NCO. Appalling.
What of the full bird colonel at the beginning of this article? Was he “titled” when a lower enlisted soldier under his command was investigated for striking a resisting insurgent suspect across the forehead with the barrel of his M4 carbine at a weapons cache during the combat operation described earlier (“Knock ‘em out!”)? He was not. You see, in the military system if one is ever “titled” in a criminal investigation (even if it is later determined to be “unfounded”), it is much more often than not a career ender when it comes to consideration for promotion. Couldn’t have a colonel passed over for promotion to brigadier general over a “war crimes” witch-hunt, now could we?
When the interviewed agent first arrived in-country, “titling” enlisted soldiers for various “war crimes” was being done like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500. As the tour continued however, hard questions were asked by agents on the ground as to why enlisted soldiers were having their careers ended (for all intents and purposes) by such charges, but senior officers were left untouched? By the end of the deployment, those questions resulted in reminding investigative supervisors that the principle of “Equal Justice Under The Law” wasn’t just a phrase mouthed in 7th grade civics class. Rightly, the “ticket” issuing slowed to just a trickle by the time the next batch of agents showed up to relieve the interviewee’s detachment.
Next Week: “You gonna clear that pistol!”
Shane Morris is a retired soldier and teacher. Contact at sigm11@yahoo.com (Subject: NtC)
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