Supporters Organize Twisted Benefit for Accused War Criminal at University Heights Lounge
A banner promoting a fundraiser posted along El Cajon Boulevard caught my eye recently. The pictured beneficiary on it looked out of place. The featured speaker had something to do with the 911 attacks.
So I looked into this matter a little further. This isn’t your typical benefit event. Nobody is starving. There are no medical bills to pay. There is no underprivileged human suffering.
What I discovered was yet another signpost along the road to an authoritarian society. The money raised is for the legal defense of a man, who among other things, is alleged to have stabbed a teenager laying on a stretcher, shot a young girl from a sniper’s roost, and then threatened the people who dared to complain about his actions.
The case of Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward R. Gallagher, a Navy Seal indicted for war crimes, gives us non-combatants a window into world where the abnormal is normal; where war is peace; where death is life.
One of the dangers of waging endless war is we become that with which we are fighting. Or, as the cartoon character Pogo once proclaimed: We have met the enemy and he is us.
To be clear, Gallagher is merely accused. His day in military court is still coming. And he vehemently denies all the charges. The trial is scheduled to begin May 28.
He was, until these charge arose, considered to be one of the cream of the crop in a profession known for its selectivity. His alleged crimes, however, are horrific, and I’ll detail them below.
What is also horrific, though, is the nature of the defense his supporters have mounted.
The President of the United States has intervened on his behalf so a man accused of premeditated murder doesn’t have to be locked up at San Diego’s Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar “with sex offenders, rapists and pedophiles.”
Forty Congressmen, led by our own Duncan Hunter sent a letter to former Navy Region Southwest Rear Adm. Yancy “Lurch” Lindsey stating:.
“To confine any service member for that duration of time, regardless the authority to do so, sends a chilling message to those who fight for our freedoms.”
Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are living a country club existence compared to the “Gestapo/KGB practices... ...being applied by NCIS to break this US Navy SEAL Hero,” according to the website set up to publicize his plight.
Those who have brought charges against him, according to his supporters, are no better than a (wink, wink) somebody who takes a knee during the national anthem.
“Patriotic” news media (OAS and NewsMax, the farm league for state-sponsored Fox) have been summoned to spread the word about the prosecutors who know nothing about combat listening to malcontents and Monday-morning quarterbacking the actions of a great American hero.
And then there is the drivel about his accusers being the ones who should be investigated. I’m surprised they haven’t found a way to blame Hillary Clinton for something.
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Bernard B. Kerik, NYC’s 9/11 Police Commissioner (2000-2001), is the featured speaker at his event.
HIs claims to fame include serving as Rudy Giuliani's driver and bodyguard (1993), Commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections (1998-2000), Member of the board of directors for Taser International, Inc.(2002-2005), and being nominated by President George W. Bush to be Secretary of Homeland Security (2004).
Things went downhill rapidly from there. He withdrew from consideration as DHS head due to potential tax violations and a former household employee's questionable immigration status.
And then the indictments rolled in.
In 2006 Kerik pled guilty to charges of receiving $165,000 in gifts from a New Jersey construction firm, Interstate Industrial Corp., a company alleged to have ties to organized crime.
Federal charges involving corruption, tax evasion, aiding the filing of false returns and making false statements while applying for a housing loan followed. In 2009, he pled guilty to eight felony charges and was sentenced to 48 months in prison.
After serving 36 months and being released early for good behavior, Kerik went on to publish a book about his experiences as inmate #84888-054 and the need for criminal justice reform.
More recently he made the news for walking off a set on CNN, claiming the network was “politicizing” its coverage of mail bombs sent to top Democratic Party figures.
Ugh. Sounds like one of Trump's "fine people."
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Navy SEAL commandos from Team 7’s Alpha Platoon are among those making allegations against Eddie Gallagher. They had to fight the Naval brass tooth and nail to get heard, given a subculture within the SEALs that tended to protect wrongdoers.
Among those claims:
Subordinates were ordered to fire rockets at houses for no apparent reason
Gallagher routinely parked an armored truck on a Tigris River bridge and emptied the truck’s heavy machine gun into neighborhoods on the other side with no discernible targets
He spent much of his time in a hidden perch with a sniper rifle, firing three or four times as often as other platoon snipers, boasting about the number of people he had killed, including women.
A girl in a flower-print hijab who was walking with other girls on the riverbank was alleged one of his victims. One sniper said he watched through his scope as she dropped, clutching her stomach, and the other girls dragged her away.
Another day he chief shot an unarmed man in a white robe and with a wispy white beard. The man fell, a red blotch spreading on his back, according to two witnesses.
Here’s one killing you might want to skip if you’re squeamish, via the New York Times:
On the morning of May 4, 2017, Iraqi troops brought in an Islamic State fighter who had been wounded in the leg in battle, SEALs told investigators, and Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of “he’s mine.” The SEALs estimated that the captive was about 15 years old. A video clip shows the youth struggling to speak, but SEAL medics told investigators that his wounds had not appeared life-threatening.
A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with a hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said.
Iraqi officers who were at the scene told Navy investigators that they did not see the captive die, but disputed the stabbing account, saying it seemed out of character for the chief.
Minutes after the death, Gallagher and his commanding officer, Portier, gathered some nearby SEALs for a re-enlistment ceremony, snapping photos of the platoon standing over the body.
The NY Times obtained a 439 page confidential Navy investigative report on Gallagher’s attempts to avoid being charged
Gallagher learned of the March 2018 meeting soon after it happened, the report indicates, and he began working to turn other SEALs against the accusers.
“I just got word these guys went crying to the wrong person,” Gallagher wrote to a fellow chief in one of hundreds of text messages included in the report. To another, he wrote: “The only thing we can do as good team guys is pass the word on those traitors. They are not brothers at all.”
Citing his texts, the Navy kept the chief in the brig to await trial, saying it believed he had been trying to intimidate witnesses and undermine the investigation. He denies that accusation as well.
The Navy Times says the investigation into a potential cover up has grown to include members of Navy SEAL Team six:
Search warrant documents and email messages from Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents leaked to Navy Times reveal the seizure of cell phones and electronic communications beginning in early February, allegedly to prove that Gallagher urged fellow SEALs at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group — or DEVGRU — to obstruct justice or retaliate against junior sailors who ratted him out for war crimes.
The documents and emails appear to support a theory put forward by Gallagher’s defense attorneys that military prosecutors are going after what they call a “Mean Girls" clique of special operators.
They suspect prosecutors are trying to prove collusion between Gallagher and other SEAL leaders at California’s Naval Base Coronado and members of the color-coded DEVGRU squadrons in Virginia.
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To put all of the above into the larger context of Trumpian legal theories, consider the case of Ex-Army Ranger Michael Behenna who was convicted and spent five years in prison for murdering a suspected al-Qaeda detainee.
Despite being told to complete his parole in 2024 before seeking a pardon recommendation from the Justice Department, Behenna has asked the White House for early consideration.
Via the Washington Post:
It is a bold ask for someone who stripped a prisoner naked, interrogated him without authorization, shot him twice and then claimed at his court-martial that he was protecting himself. But Behenna, now a 35-year-old ranch hand, is pitching his case at an opportune moment for U.S. military members accused of war crimes.
“We know we have a president who is very sympathetic to the very difficult situation that soldiers, sailors and Marines were put in during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,” said John Richter, a former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division who is representing Behenna and has spoken to White House officials about his case.
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Up is down. War is peace. And war crimes are okay with the commander in chief. THIS is what it’s come to.
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