I had mentioned that I wanted to do a follow up “piggyback” write up to an earlier post by CJ on Divorce and the Military.
There are really two topics in that post and I wanted to address each one separately. The first issue has to do with statistics and the media, and the second has to do with research around divorce and current theories in the field of marital counseling. I will do a quick overview of the statistical issues today and refer you to a very well written, succinct guide to scrutinizing the use of statistics. Next week I will write up some of the more recent findings in marital counseling — focusing on what builds a strong marriage instead of telling you how to avoid a divorce.
My background is quite diverse in regard to the different populations I have worked with. I have worked in the poorest regions of Appalachia, and I have worked with violent and assaultive youth, pediatric brain tumor patients and their families, and my last job placed me in various client settings evaluating program effectiveness and developing tools to measure outcomes as a research associate.
One common thread through all of my work has been research. Every program I have worked in over the years has either used research to inform its practice, or was actively conducting research in the field. There are two things I learned along the way: research is necessary to guide practice, and the information we gain from social research is often more limited than researchers want to admit. Continue reading this post…
I got some intel several weeks ago from sources close to the incident, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/02/asia/03afghan.php UPDATE- I am now in contact with people very close to this case and hope to be able to reveal more information soon.
I really look forward to your comments and feelings on this. These guys are probably damn good leaders that care more about their soldiers than they do anything else. They have been around long enough to know what they did put themselves at risk but they had no options. I will tell you that I would have done the same thing that 1SG Scott did. The crap that I saw the Afghan Army do to their own people, people that were obviously innocent makes Abu Ghraib look like Sunday School. You want to really know the difference? In Abu Ghraib they put a guy on a box with wires to his hands that went nowhere. The ANA would have connected the wires to a car battery and shocked the shit out of him until he confessed to something or died.
Here is the bottom line, the crap that happens over there is beyond what the American people can comprehend. Rape, beatings, shootings of enemy or suspected enemy is not beyond what the ANA or ANP, or even what NDS will do. NDS is their version of the FBI and an organization I have talked about on here before.
What these two guys did was not beyond that bad. In fact I think what they did falls perfectly inline with what is acceptable in field questioning. Like I said I got inside info about this and let me tell you there are a lot of pissed off soldiers and peers of these guys over there that feel like their higher HQ is hanging them out to dry, and to be quite honest it is probably personal as suggested in the article. I am quite disgusted that my old Battalion, the Curahees of Band of Brothers fame is allowing this Article 32 hearing to even happen.
Just in case the above link does not work, I have re-posted the entire article below.
A War’s Impossible Mission
By P.J. Tobia
Sunday, December 14, 2008
KHOST PROVINCE, Afghanistan Capt. Roger Hill stood behind a long wooden desk, reading from a piece of paper that trembled lightly in his hand. “Please know that seeing your brothers whittled down one by one by a cowardly and ghost-like enemy is difficult,” he said, glancing up only briefly at the team of military prosecutors assembled around him.
Hill is a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan accused of detainee abuse, including a mock execution, war crimes, dereliction of duty and other serious charges stemming from an incident last August at a U.S. military base outside the capital city of Kabul. Members of his unit allegedly slapped Afghan detainees, and Hill himself is said to have fired his pistol into the ground near blindfolded Afghans to frighten them.
But after exploring the personalities and circumstances involved in this case, it’s hard for me to condemn Hill or his first sergeant, Tommy Scott, who has been charged with assaulting the detainees. Stuck in the deadly middle ground between all-out war and nation- building, these men lashed out to protect themselves. To me, their story encapsulates the impossible role we’ve asked U.S. soldiers to play in the reconstruction of this devastated country. They are part warrior, part general contractor, yet they are surrounded on all sides by a populace that wants nothing more than to kill or be rid of them.
The soldiers who have served at Hill’s side call him heroic. Others describe the career that the 30-year-old West Point graduate might have had if he and his men hadn’t apparently crossed the line one day last summer. Instead, I watched Hill fight for that career — and for his freedom — earlier this month in a conference room at Forward Operating Base Salerno, a large U.S. military base near the Afghan town of Khost, about 17 miles from the Afghan-Pakistani border.
As Hill tried to defend his actions at a military hearing, his soft voice filled the small, bare room: “Know that sifting through the charred and crumbling remains of fellow service members in order to identify their bodies, or picking up the pieces of another after this ghost-like enemy has hacked off his arms and cut out his heart . . . only for you to later find out that his fingers are being distributed downtown amongst the locals, can somehow make a commander more protective. “
It was against this “ghost-like enemy” that Hill, Scott and the rest of their unit were fighting at Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province, west of Kabul, where Hill’s company was the sole coalition force for miles around.
There are dozens of bases throughout the country like Airborne. They are full of soldiers who bear the dual and confounding burden of being both an army fighting the Taliban, with all the killing and dying that entails, and a corps of civil servants. They attend shuras (meetings with village leaders), construct roads and help train the Afghan police force. They are expected to work hand-in-glove with people who might have tea with them one moment and inform Taliban killers about U.S. troop movements the next. But talking with local leaders — even leaders who might be playing both sides — is the only way to begin progress toward building institutions in Afghanistan.
I traveled here to work as an embedded reporter with the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., about an hour from my home in Nashville. I’d planned on spending most of my time with the 101st as they engaged the Taliban on the Pakistan border.
But while waiting at FOB Salerno for a helicopter ride to a smaller base, I heard talk about Hill and the Article 32 inquiry he was about to face — the military justice version of a grand jury hearing. I learned that Hill and Scott could face life in prison if the matter proceeded to a court martial. Another half-dozen members of Hill’s company will soon have Article 32 hearings of their own. One soldier is already being held in a military jail in Kuwait for his role in the incident.
I decided to stay.
Hill’s path to the hearing room in Khost began, according to witness testimony, when he received reliable intelligence late last August that Taliban agents were working on his unit’s base, which is manned by no more than 200 coalition soldiers. One of these reported interlopers, a man identified only as “Noori,” was Hill’s personal interpreter. Two more purported Taliban informants were running the base’s small, locally owned coffee shop. The intelligence said that all three, as well as some others, were relaying information about U.S. troop movements and artillery positions to Taliban agents in Wardak, an area the size of Connecticut where Hill’s small company faced off against a large number of hostile locals.
The intelligence report detailing how these Afghan men were working with the Taliban is classified “top secret.” But an Army spokesman who has seen it said that the evidence against them was incontrovertible. “There was a legitimate report saying that [Hill's translator] was a bad guy and was sharing information with the Taliban,” said Marine Capt. Scott Miller, media liaison for the hearing. “He was providing information to recognized bad people.”
Upon receiving the intelligence report, Hill’s men immediately put the accused Afghans in plastic flex-cuffs and took them to the base’s coffee shop. The total number of detainees is disputed; some witnesses testified that there were as many as 25, while most others put the number closer to 12 or 13.
In a statement through his lawyer, Neal Puckett, Hill said that on a number of occasions, the intelligence that the alleged informants provided to the Taliban could have had deadly consequences for his men. In one case, he said, he confirmed that information had been leaked to enemy forces, warning them of a major U.S. operation against them hours before the mission was due to begin. Hill added that several improvised explosive devices had been planted on the planned route, although they were neutralized without injury to his soldiers. “It is without a doubt that the detainees we took, all twelve of them, were involved in providing early warning to the enemy that injured and or killed thirty of my men during our six months in Wardak,” Hill said in the statement.
U.S. forces detain Afghans for any number of reasons. But according to International Security and Assistance Force rules, by which all U.S. forces in Afghanistan must abide, these detentions can last no longer than 96 hours. The detainees must then be either released, handed over to Afghan security forces or formally arrested and placed in the custody of the unit’s commanding battalion. Once in battalion custody, detainees may can be questioned by trained military or intelligence interrogators.
Requests to send detainees to battalion are a routine matter. Over the past year, Hill’s company made at least 10 such requests, although none were approved, according to 1st Lt. Larry Kay, Hill’s executive officer. Kay, who is also facing charges related to the incident, added that other U.S. companies’ detainees are routinely accepted by battalion and blames the repeated denials on friction between Hill and his battalion command.
As the 96-hour window began to close last August, Kay made frantic calls to battalion headquarters, trying to secure the arrest of the detainees his men were holding. The detainees “knew who everyone [on FOB Airborne] was,” Kay said. “They knew where everyone slept, they knew where our artillery was placed, which then became the target of rocket attacks. . . . I didn’t want to let these guys go.” Kay said that his calls went unheeded.
Battalion commander Lt. Col. Tony DeMartino declined to discuss the specifics of the incident. He did say that generally, “We like to see the Afghans do the formal detainee process so that [the detainees] are in the Afghan chain of command.”
Worried about the safety of their men, Hill and Scott resorted to drastic measures. Though it is unclear exactly who initially planned to detain the Afghans, Hill acknowledges that the ultimate responsibility is his. “I did wrongfully discharge my weapon and I did fail to maintain control of the situation,” he said in his statement at the hearing.
According to testimony from a number of witnesses, it was Scott, the first sergeant, who began interrogating the bound detainees. He straddled their chests one at a time as they lay on the ground, pinning their shoulders with his knees and slapping their faces while shouting questions.
“My whole twenty-plus-year career in the military has been about taking care of soldiers,” Scott said after the hearing concluded. “I couldn’t let these men go just so that they could come back and kill some of my boys. It made no sense.”
At some point during the interrogation, a few of the detainees were blindfolded and taken to an area just outside the coffee shop. Then, according to many who testified at the hearing, Hill removed his 9mm pistol from a leather shoulder-holster and fired at least once into the ground, about 20 yards from the nearest detainee. Inside the coffee shop, after the shot rang out, Scott asked the other detainees, “Do you want to die like your friend?”
Through his attorney, Scott denied that he had said any such thing.
Witnesses testified that the detainees were eventually released into the custody of Afghan intelligence officials. DeMartino, the battalion commander, said that when Afghans are detained by coalition forces, they are generally kept in the custody of NATO forces or released. “Sometimes,” he said, “we’ll just release them, and we’ll ask [the Afghan police or intelligence agency] to give them a ride home.”
Before this group was handed over, a U.S. Army physician’s assistant examined the men. At the hearing, I heard him say that they were unharmed and in fine physical condition. Other testimony indicated that these alleged Taliban operatives are now walking free in Wardak — with full knowledge of the inner workings of FOB Airborne.
I was present for every unclassified minute of the Article 32 hearing. Prior to the incident last August, Hill was known as a promising young officer who had received a Bronze Star for valor and three Army commendation medals. He led his men through a bloody spring and summer of ambushes and IEDs. His company — D Company of the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment — numbered only about 100 men and suffered more than 30 casualties and at least two deaths. But their morale was high. “These guys wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Scott said of his men.
Scott also has an impressive résumé. Career military, he won a Bronze Star of his own for a combat jump into Panama in 1988 and fought for 15 hours straight during the 1991 Gulf War.
Watching the prosecution destroy the reputations of Scott and Hill was heartbreaking, tragic — and deeply conflicting. As an American who fiercely believes in the rule of law and due process, I understand that the actions of D Company are inexcusable. A mock execution, under almost any circumstance, is antithetical to the ideals and standards our nation aspires to.
And perhaps Hill’s superiors had good reason not to take these particular men into custody. Maybe they were on the radar of U.S. intelligence and taking them out of circulation might have meant losing valuable information.
But the soldiers of D Company felt that they were out of options.
I fear that this kind of story will repeat itself in other parts of Afghanistan again and again, if only because U.S. forces know that their enemy’s mission is clearer than their own.
“They’re Taliban,” one soldier said in response to a prosecutor’s question at the hearing. That soldier is facing charges of repeatedly hitting a detainee who bit him as he tried to put a gag into the man’s mouth. “If it was us, they’d cut our heads off, videotape it and put it on al-Jazeera for our families to see.”
“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” – Isaiah 6:8
Why would I start with a Biblical quote? First of all, to annoy hippies. Second, because we need to send all of us into Afghanistan, peform a “hands across the desert”, and purge Afghanistan of every Taliban and AQ terrorist we can find. I’m not talking purging in the detention facility or Gitmo sense. I’m talking shoot on sight. Just kill them all. This has got to stop:
A single-file line of school children walked past a military checkpoint Sunday as a bomb-loaded truck veered toward them and exploded, ending the lives of 14 young Afghans in a heartbreaking flash captured by a U.S. military security camera. The video shows an SUV slowly weaving through sandbag barriers at a military checkpoint just as a line of school children, most wearing white caps, comes into view.
This sickens me to the core. These people are barbarians and yet the extreme left in this country want us to bend over backwards to protect their “rights”. These people don’t deserve rights. These people don’t deserve life. These are the kinds of circumstances for which torture should not be authorized, but actively and publicly encouraged. Perhaps watching their fellow AQ and Taliban prisoners getting their fingernails pulled off one by one or hot pokers stuck through their eyeballs will convince the rest of them to keep their destructive tendencies aimed at people who can defend themselves. But, I know that it wouldn’t be terrorism if they did that.
- “Photos of the bombing’s aftermath showed bloodied text books lying on the ground beside small pairs of shoes. Afghan officials said the kids were attending a final day of class for the year to find out whether they would move up to the next grade … Dr. Abdul Rahman, a doctor at a hospital near the blast, said the children were aged 8 to 10.”
- “Students had gathered in the classrooms to receive end-of-year certificates and learn if they had passed on to the next grade, Asif Nang, spokesman for the Ministry of Education, said.”
- “More than 6,100 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count of figures from Western and Afghan officials.”
Warning, the following video is not graphic in the sense of blood, guts, and gore. However, it is difficult watch. This is the unfiltered video of the terrorist attack. Along the right side of the video, you’ll see the children walking home from school. The rest is self explanatory.
In my never-ending search to find the heroes among us, I present you with another great story.
Jason Harrington was having a tough day even before a roadside bomb blew his Humvee to pieces.
Moments earlier, the former New Cumberland resident, a specialist in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, had lost three buddies from his unit to another bomb.
So as the dust cleared from the deafening blast that wrecked his Humvee in Ramadi, Iraq, on Sept. 19, 2005, Harrington was determined not to lose any more.
He forgot about his own welfare and checked his fellow soldiers for injuries.
He fired back at the insurgents who had triggered the bomb and who set off another explosive that blasted the second Humvee in his patrol.
With the radios in both Humvees knocked out, Harrington grabbed a portable one to call for support and exposed himself to enemy fire to secure better reception.
And if that wasn’t enough, he joined a sweep to root out the insurgents who’d set up the ambush.
“I was just doing what I had to do,” said Harrington, 27, a 2000 Cedar Cliff High School graduate who lives in Lancaster. “I think any other soldier would have done the same thing.”
The Army begs to differ.
It will present Harrington with the Silver Star Medal, the nation’s third-highest award for bravery in combat, during a ceremony at 10 a.m. today at the Guard armory in Harrisburg.
Billboard.com and the US Army have teamed up to provide our service members with the gift of music. If you’re anything like me, you know the value of music. For a limited time, you can get two free digital downloads from Billboard.com by going to this website and using your .mil email account to register. A special PIN and related information on how to get the downloads of your choice will be emailed to that address within a few minutes. Enjoy your free music and Merry Christmas! But, hurry. This offer ends December 31st!!
Last week, pro-troop organization Move America Forward visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to spread some Christmas cheer to the troops stationed at the detention facility holding some of America’s most dangerous enemies.
Visiting the troops at Gitmo were Move America Forward Chairman, Melanie Morgan, Miss Florida 2007 Kylie Williams, acting MAF Executive Director Catherine Moy, Director of Operations Ryan Gill, and MAF Spokesperson and Gold Star mom Debbie Lee.
“I can assure you that these detainees… live in comfort,” Catherine Moy said of her first-hand account. “Even the most dangerous are given movie nights if they behave, and they get to sit on an overstuffed couch in a climate-controlled room. It is all too good for people who want to kill us.”
She initially felt as if she was somewhere other than the notorious detention center when she became aware that “They watch movies weekly, eat a menu of six different diets from which they choose, and they are given every consideration for their religion. The detainees at Guantanamo Bay are treated with kid gloves.”
But, she was quickly reminded why many of the men are being held at the center, when “one detainee made motions to me like he was cutting my throat. These are not nice characters. It is imperative that Guantanamo Bay Detention Center stay open, or we risk putting Americans and other innocents in danger.”
Delegates from Move America Forward (MAF), the nation’s largest pro-troop organization, were given access to visit the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center holding some of the world’s most lethal detainees (the word terrorist is not spoken inside the detention centers) yesterday. The delegation traveled to Cuba to conclude their nationwide tour to honor soldiers serving away from their loved ones this holiday season.
Soldiers at Guantanamo Bay told the MAF delegates that they are tired of hearing about the bad things politicians and the media say and write about them. It is frustrating and insulting, especially when they bend over backwards to ensure that the Geneva conventions are followed to the letter.
Gold Star Mom, Debbie Lee, whose son, Marc Alan Lee was the first Navy SEAL killed in Iraq, commented on her experiences inside the detention center; saying, “Today I looked my first terrorist in the eye. My visit to the detention center where the non-compliant worst offenders are kept revealed the dark depravity of their souls and hatred towards the ‘infidels.’”
Some of the facts about the detainees that have not been reported in the media include:
- There are three medical personnel (doctors, nurses) for every ONE detainee.
- Detainees get prayer rugs, prayer caps, prayer beads and brand new Korans. The guards may NEVER touch the Korans. Only a Muslim may deliver the books to the terrorists. If the terrorists are especially good, they get a fancier prayer rug.
- They get to choose from six meal plans, which include vegetarian, vegetarian with fish, and high fiber. They are allowed to ask for fresh fruit if their fruit is bruised.
- They get to take art classes and learn how to speak English. This keeps their minds busy so they don’t think of other things to do.
- They most violent and “non-compliant” prisoners stay in state-of-the-art quarters. They have air conditioning.
- They get to play games such as soccer, chess, checkers, and exercise on exercise machines. They have a foosball table, but all of the faces of the little plastic guys are cut off because they offend the terrorists – seeing them as “false idols,” which is against their religion, therefore the military removed to not offend them.
In the wake of Obama’s announcement to close Guantanamo Bay because of inhumane treatment, Moy commented, “The detainees here are given better medical care than our troops who are serving in Guantanamo Bay. It makes me wonder if President-elect Obama has ever been to the detainee centers or if he’s just listening to radicals who have never seen the prison with their own eyes.”
If you recall, this is the place that Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin described as being run by “Nazis, Soviets In their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot, or others that had no concern for human beings.” Or, how about this comment in the Congressional Record by Vermont U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy:
“Now that may sound like an experience from some oppressive and authoritarian regime, something that may have happened under the Taliban, something that Saddam Hussein might have ordered or in the fiction of Kafka.”
It is just disgusting what some American politicians are willing to say to appeal to the far left anti-military crowd in the United States. When terrorists decided to smash their TV and the TV room because a Palmolive soap commercial came on that revealed a woman’s arm, what do you think our response was? Yes, we got them a new flat screen TV – although this time it is encased in hard Plexiglas so they couldn’t destroy it again. Let me put it to you this way: if you children destroyed your family TV because they were mad about something, how long would it take for you to buy them a new one? Or, is a better question, how long will it be before they turn 21 and can buy their own?
This was a great story that I wanted to share with everyone. Our Vietnam Veterans never asked for much – just the love and gratitude of the country that sent them to war. Unfortunately, all they got was disdain and pain. Little by little, our country is making up for the way our Vietnam Veterans were treated and I like to share those stories.
Dennis Strianese isn’t sure exactly where he was in Vietnam the day he was wounded.
He was with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade somewhere west of Da Nang in May 1969 when the brigade got orders to take back an observation post that had been overrun by the North Vietnamese army.
Strianese, of Sykesville, was in the Army from 1968 until 1970, rising to the rank of Specialist Four.
His tour in Vietnam was a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the enemy, Strianese said. Mortar shells fell on their bases at night, and the days were full of snipers and firefights.
His unit began to come under heavy small arms fire as they approached the target, and it was attacked by rockets, Strianese said.
Strianese was hit with shrapnel in his back, head and arms and suffered a collapsed lung and a burst ear drum.
At the hospital where he was recovering from his wounds, he was told the unit had stumbled across four battalions, a ratio of about 1,600 North Vietnamese to 400 Americans.
His actions in the service earned Strianese a number of medals and awards. For some of them he got the actual medals, but for others he got only ribbons and not the medals he’d earned, he said.
Strianese told staff members of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett that he was missing medals while working with Bartlett’s office to clear up some red tape for a disability from his war injuries.
I am posting a little earlier than I normally do in the week. I wanted to start the week off on a good note, and wanted to share this while it’s still fresh news. I have been working on a piece addressing the Rand report that CJ wrote about two weeks ago. That is an issue worth revisiting and I have some encouraging news on the topic. However, today I am straying a little from my normal posting habits to share some other encouraging news.
Iraqi’s celebrated their first ever open and public Christmas in Baghdad.
I think in order to understand the significance of this celebration we need to consider that the Christian population was cut nearly in half after Saddam came into power (from 20% to 10%). Then after the first Gulf War and then the Iraqi invasion they dwindled down to just 4%. This drastic decline is often cited as a result of radicals and terrorist groups targeting Christians causing them to go into exile.
Is this a sign that Iraqi Christians can go home now? I don’t know. I hope for their sake it does. I know that this is an intended consequence of this war — that is tolerance and minorities openly celebrating their faith without fear of persecution or death from the government. One of President Bush’s principles through out this war has been that “religious tolerance offers a path to peace.” It most certainly had to be fought for, but this open celebration is just one of many such instances where we see that pathway to peace being tread. This trail to peace was not blazed by so called “peace activists.” This trail has been blazed by American Soldiers and Marines and our Allied Forces. Continue reading this post…
In May of last year, five men were charged with plotting to kill Soldiers and Civilians based at Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey. They are charged with conspiracy to murder military personnel and attempted murder. The trial ended five days ago and would you believe that jurors are still deliberating the case? I think I know why. Continue reading this post…
WWE Superstars go oversees to pay tribute and entertain our troops serving abroad, honoring them for their bravery and courage. Catch the premiere on December 20th at 9/8 C only on NBC.
