Murder Gang Collected Fingers of Each Victim to Make Necklace

[Louis VI the Fat]

Specialist Jeremy M. Morlock and four other American soldiers from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division are accused in the killings of three innocent Afghan civilians in 2010. Specialist Morlock faces a court-martial and a possible death sentence. He pleaded guilty in March, 2011 to three charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault and other charges.

According to the allegations, Specialist Morlock and other members of the self-designated “Kill Team,” consumed with drug use, randomly chose unarmed Afghan civilians and made a sport of killing them with grenades and guns.

Specialist Morlock, who is accused in all three deaths, has signed a detailed confession as part of his effort to avoid a life sentence, and is seeking a sentence of 24 years.
Others in the unit failed to report the abuses out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander, according to testimony in a military court in September, 2010. Specialist Morlock, who grew up in Wasilla, Alaska, appeared in court but did not testify.

The case came to light after one of the soldiers informed military investigators about the killings; he was then beaten so severely by other members of the unit for betraying them that he had to be hospitalized.
The five soldiers are accused of possessing dismembered body parts, including fingers and a skull, and collecting photographs of dead Afghans, some showing soldiers posing along with the dead. As many as 70 images are believed to be in evidence.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...ock/index.html

Phooey....

The United States and NATO are concerned that reactions could be intense to the publication of images documenting killings committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan. The images appeared in the most recent edition of SPIEGEL, which hit the newsstands on Monday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already telephoned with her Afghan counterpart to discuss the situation. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has likewise made contact with officials in Kabul. The case threatens to strain already fragile US-Afghan relations at a time when the two countries are negotiating over the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan. In a statement released by Colonel Thomas Collins, the US Army, which is currently preparing a court martial to try a total of 12 suspects in connection with the killings, apologized for the suffering the photos have caused.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...752310,00.html

Are these soldiers not screened? Not kept a close watch on? The army is to murderers what a boy's choir is to a priest. It is a candyshop, where you can live your sadistic dreams with impunity. An army attracts Hannibal Lectors like flies. They must not be unleashed upon a civilian population.


Also, what's in the water in Wasilla?

[PanzerJaeger]

Such acts are, unfortunately, characteristic of nearly every guerilla war in which soldiers have a lot of contact with civilians. Any group of thousands of people will have some sadists, and giving them guns and virtually unlimited power will bring those tendencies to the surface. What makes these pictures particularly damaging is not the acts themselves, but the fact that the US counter-insurgency strategy is a major departure from the old school, focusing on winning over the civilian population.

There will be a lot said about what war does to poor young boys. However, it seems that this particular squad was rotten from the top down. They were just bad people and grim fate seems to have brought them together in such a way that all codes of common decency were ignored. Much like a public lynching or gang rape, once a group acceptance of violence against innocents is established, all inhibitions are thrown to the wind and the volume, intensity, and sheer gruesome nature of the acts grows. Oversight of such a squad is difficult when the NCO is the lead co-conspirator.

Of course, in bracing for the wave of anti-Americanism that will undoubtedly flow from these incidents, it should be noted that unlike some other conflicts where such actions were state sponsored counter-insurgency measures, these were isolated incidents committed by men who were immediately arrested when their heinous acts came to light. That's really all the US can do at this point - apologize profusely, pay off the victim's families, and send these guys to jail.

Also, what's in the water in Wasilla?

I was hoping you could shed some light on that.

[Brenus]

PJ, we know that colonialism was not built on democratic values...
And these were not the worst in the Colonial time (read about the African Colonisation and the Infernal Columns)

[Louis VI the Fat]

Also, what's in the water in Wasilla?

I was hoping you could shed some light on that.

We shall always top you guys for police and army brutality.

But we don't manage such a multitude of 'Hollywood villain' like cartoon characters coming from a single village of ten thousand:

Sarah and Todd Palin, Jeremy Morlock's family, and more secrets from Wasilla revealed


The main part of the events have to do with the Palins and the Morlocks, two families who are very close to each other. The children grew up and played together, they went to school with each other, they had sleepovers at each other's houses, the kids had Sarah Palin's cellphone number saved and some of the adults have known each other for more than 30 years. The association of the families is very, very tight.

If you think you recognize this name: I am talking about the family of Jeremy Morlock, the soldier from Wasilla who was recently arrested for being under suspicion of murder, while being on duty in Afghanistan.

http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/...-morlocks.html

[HoreTore]

Hit the knee-caps of every officer above these fellows with a baseball bat. Hard.

One of the most important roles of an officer is to ensure that those below behaves like they should. In this case, I think it's fair to say they haven't done their jobs.

But I suspect that, like Abu Ghraib, the lowly "doers" will get the punishment, while the incompetent "enablers" in the ranks above gets another medal.

[Dâriûsh]

But we don't manage such a multitude of 'Hollywood villain' like cartoon characters coming from a single village of ten thousand:

Ack, what a crude article.

I think it is in poor taste to try to connect Palin and this nutjob.

[Sarmatian]

Since The Hague tribunal decided that even presidents can be charged and convicted based on command responsibility, I expect to see Obama in Hague soon. Okay, maybe not Obama, but some high-ups from the Pentagon.

Since this is the American army, this will be filed under isolated incident number 2,435,853,114 during legal democratization of Afghanistan.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Yes, I am that cynical :D

[rory_20_uk]

I would rather the sadists and other nut jobs are in the Army - preferably stationed overseas - than in Blightly. People have all sorts of reasons for joining the army. Some are noble, some aren't. Not only is it impossible to know who the bad apples are after being placed in a warzone - but also there is something of a shortage of those willing to get shot at for not great salaries.

How, exactly, are officers supposed to ensure that every single person under their command isn't doing this? By the time you get to a captain they've what? 100 men under their command. Assuming the offenders don't wear their momentoes openly, does the captain have to search every man daily just to be on the safe side? I pity the poor Major who has to check several hundred sets of equipment - just in case every junior is an enabler. How will he manage to do his job when he's got to tour the front line going through kitbags?

The Poor President has to check over a million. That will require some sort of rota to manage that task. Perhaps he might delegate it? AHA!!! passing the buck eh? FACILITATOR!!!!

As PJ implies, there are no perfect troops, no perfect army. The only way to ensure no problems is for no action to be taken - which in itself is apparently a cynical crime against humanity. If you want no medical errors, probably best to shut down all hospitals - just to be on the safe side.

[Greyblades]

he was then beaten so severely by other members of the unit for betraying them that he had to be hospitalized.
After making an accusal that could result in the death peanalty what the heck was he doing anywhere near that unit?

[HoreTore]

Rory, the chain of command fixes your issues.

The captain will have a few Liutenants to check on, the luitants have a few sergeants to check on, etc etc. If everyone ensures that those immediatly below them do their jobs, everything will be swell.

A colonel doesn't supervise individual soldiers. But he supervises the guy who supervises the guy who... You get the picture.

[rory_20_uk]

Rory, the chain of command fixes your issues.

The captain will have a few Liutenants to check on, the luitants have a few sergeants to check on, etc etc. If everyone ensures that those immediatly below them do their jobs, everything will be swell.

A colonel doesn't supervise individual soldiers. But he supervises the guy who supervises the guy who... You get the picture.

So... that is why the low level grunts get blamed - as they are responsible whereas the seniors expect them to do their jobs. Even then, a leutenant probably has several sargents beneath him, who probably gets feedback from the corporals.

If you try to blame higher up the tree, what is the point of these ranks?

[HoreTore]

So... that is why the low level grunts get blamed - as they are responsible whereas the seniors expect them to do their jobs. Even then, a leutenant probably has several sargents beneath him, who probably gets feedback from the corporals.

If you try to blame higher up the tree, what is the point of these ranks?

The Captain's job is to ensure that those immediatly below him does their jobs. If they don't, he's not doing his job. If you don't do your job, you get punished.

[rory_20_uk]

And if the Captain is not doing his job, that is the fault of the Major for not doing his job. So, to ensure the Leutenants are doing their job the Captain will have to review most of what they do - to be sure and so on and so on. Back to the president doing checkups in the field to ensure that no mistakes are being made.

You can't have it both ways. You either trust the lower ranks to do their jobs and blame them for not doing so, or have it that every senior spends a lot of their time overseeing every junior rank as any failing is directly attributable to them not doing their job as a junior is failing to be detected.

[Shibumi]

A lot can be said about the wisdom of our mission in Afghanistan and the various strategies that we have persued, but no one can question the intentions of our soldiers.

You guys represent the best of America, and I hope for those little girl's sake that you can achieve at least a measure of success over there.

What he said.

[Scienter]

24 years in jail isn't long enough for this guy.

[Strike For The South]

Vuk would toattly beat this gang up

I dont care if the have automatic weapons

[Centurion1]

yeah he would actually. and he would do it wearing glasses.

Seriously,

every single army in the world has atrocities. people arent perfect and while screening medically is good it can only do so much.

[HoreTore]

And if the Captain is not doing his job, that is the fault of the Major for not doing his job. So, to ensure the Leutenants are doing their job the Captain will have to review most of what they do - to be sure and so on and so on. Back to the president doing checkups in the field to ensure that no mistakes are being made.

You can't have it both ways. You either trust the lower ranks to do their jobs and blame them for not doing so, or have it that every senior spends a lot of their time overseeing every junior rank as any failing is directly attributable to them not doing their job as a junior is failing to be detected.

Yes, all the ranks above are responsible to some degree, which was what I was saying originally.

Obviously though, the burden of responsibility decreases as you get further away from the act, so the major shouldn't be hit as hard in the knee-caps as the sergeant.

Edit: and officers do spend a lot of their time checking what the guys under him does.... If there's one thing the army isn't afraid of, it's micro-management.

And to put it in another context:

Imagine that you're the major stockholder in a company. You hire a CEO, and gives him objectives that he has to accomplish. Two years later, you review his performance, and come to the conclusion that he hasn't reached them. Can he then blame it all on marketing not doing their job, for example? I'd say he will get the boot for not having reached his objectives, or in other words, he hasn't done his job, even though it was marketing who actually performed like hillbillies. It was his job to reach the objectives, and ensure that those below reached them.

[Brenus]

double posting, sorry

[Brenus]

Hold on! Officers are not unaware of what happened on the battlefields, most certainly at the Company/Battalion echelon. My captains used to speak of my platoon leaders or me and others sarges of the company.
It happened because they allowed the permissive atmosphere allowing this type of crimes to settle.
I can’t speak for the US Army regulations, but in the French Army we have lectures and courses about Geneva Conventions and War Crimes. Mutilation of dead bodies is illegal in all societies (except doctors and scientists). Crimes are not legal, even in the army.
And it is in fact illegal to follow illegal orders.

As NCO you control you soldiers or you change job. And in fact, it is easy. You show example. If one soldier do something wrong, even if by mistake, you disapprove. 9 on 10 it works as your soldiers trust you. Show moral certitudes and the soldiers will follow you.

[drone]

Obviously though, the burden of responsibility decreases as you get further away from the act, so the major shouldn't be hit as hard in the knee-caps as the sergeant.

The Sergeant needs more than a knee-capping.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...bbs/index.html
Not familiar with the latest military organization, but I assume Gibbs was in charge of the squad the 4 others were in, and hence could isolate and plan their actions. It's likely that other squads in the platoon had an inkling, but the first-hand knowledge would have been contained (with non-participants threatened).

[Major Robert Dump]

jUST ONCE...JUST ONCE....i wish the military would give someone the death penalty over stuff like this. Be it the guys in Iraq who gang raped a 13 year old and killed her family or these buffoons, such acts only give legitamcy to the enemy and ultimately get more troops killed. In Iraq, half a dozen retaliation assaults with US casualties could be attributed to the 13 year old incident,and of course none of the US dead had anything to do with the sparking incident. Soldiers will die because of this.

[Crazed Rabbit]

We shall always top you guys for police and army brutality.

But we don't manage such a multitude of 'Hollywood villain' like cartoon characters coming from a single village of ten thousand:

You're right, that blogger is cartoonishly stupid.

As for this - disgusting. Life sentences aren't enough.

CR

[Louis VI the Fat]

I think it is in poor taste to try to connect Palin and this nutjob.

Not at all. It is not about blaming Palin, but about wondering what culture breeds these people.

Palin herself is only tenuously connected to any members of this group. The connection is rather that the same culture has bred both a Sarah Palin and this murderer, Morlock. It is the militia / gun / jingoism / racist / small town culture of an American conservative backwater.

These people are pallin around with one another, they are part of / closely related to partaking members / influenced by a subculture that is considered extremist elsewhere, but which is pretty much mainstream locally. Another pall of Sarah:

The annual Bear Paw Festival held every summer in Eagle River, Alaska, is better known for its pie-eating contests, carnival rides and dog-owner lookalike fashion shows than for controversial displays of right-wing militancy.

But last summer, as Tea Party Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Joe Miller shook hands on the sidelines of the Bear Paw parade rout, he was trailed by his campaign Humvee and roughly a dozen supporters wearing Miller campaign t-shirts and openly armed with semi-automatic pistols and AR-15 assault rifles.

The gun-toting Miller supporters included participants in the Southcentral Alaska division of the Second Amendment Task Force, a combative anti-gun control group founded in Fairbanks in April 2009 by Francis "Schaeffer" Cox, the militia leader arrested earlier this month along with four militia compatriots for conspiring to murder State Troopers, a federal judge and an IRS agent, among other serious crimes including the illegal possession of heavy machine guns, silencers and explosives.

At the time of last summer's Bear Paw festival, Cox was in the midst of a two-year radicalization process during which he transformed himself from a Ron Paul campaign worker, Tea Party activist and libertarian philosopher operating on the fringes of mainstream politics into a hard-core militia extremist, steeped in paranoia, who disavowed entirely the political process in favor of armed conflict and revolution, including allegedly the targeted killings of law enforcement officers and public officials.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103230032

The culture is extremist, gun-toting, autistically nationalist. Mind that radicalisation is not limited to Muslims, or religions, or brown people. It takes a thousand extremists to breed one terrorist, just like one terrorist means there likely are a thousand radicalised supporters. In the local bars, people joke about what Morlock set out to do for real, that is, to go kill the brown mulsims and hack off their fingers for trophies.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Teh gore picture removed on request.

Pictures of the incidents can be seen in the Der Spiegel report in the OP.
Most disturbing picture of Palin and Morlock here:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://img815.imageshack.us/img815/...emymorlock.jpg

Palin and Morlock, the two Wasilla trophy hunters. What is mere shared aesthetical tradtition, and what is a stepping stone, an escalation, a simmering urge bred and pampered and cultivated?

[Strike For The South]

Well maybe if our president wasn't black these good, god fearing white people wouldn't have to committ these atrocities

[PanzerJaeger]

What he said.

I'm glad you've come to agree, and choose not to allow isolated and statistically insignificant incidents to influence your opinions of entire organizations. I'm impressed by your maturity.

[Shibumi]

Well maybe if our president wasn't black these good, god fearing white people wouldn't have to committ these atrocities

That statement comes off as rather.. Not thought through.


Louis VI the fat, I kind of agree with your point. That picture is just disgusting by the way.

[rory_20_uk]

And to put it in another context:

Imagine that you're the major stockholder in a company. You hire a CEO, and gives him objectives that he has to accomplish. Two years later, you review his performance, and come to the conclusion that he hasn't reached them. Can he then blame it all on marketing not doing their job, for example? I'd say he will get the boot for not having reached his objectives, or in other words, he hasn't done his job, even though it was marketing who actually performed like hillbillies. It was his job to reach the objectives, and ensure that those below reached them.

Imgine the CEO asked Marketing to perform a new campaign which they performed extremely well and met the objectives the CEO had outlined.

It was later found that some of the Marketeers had being doing lines of cocaine in the toilets, which is a direct breach of company proceedure.

Would the CEO be fired, since the Marketeers are accomplishing the campaign and breaching standing orders?

[HoreTore]

Imgine the CEO asked Marketing to perform a new campaign which they performed extremely well and met the objectives the CEO had outlined.

It was later found that some of the Marketeers had being doing lines of cocaine in the toilets, which is a direct breach of company proceedure.

Would the CEO be fired, since the Marketeers are accomplishing the campaign and breaching standing orders?

If one of the CEO's main objectives was to ensure that there was no drug abuse in the company, yup, he would be fired.

Just like one of the main objectives of every officer is to ensure that the ROE is followed.

[rory_20_uk]

And since no CEO ever has that remit as they're, y'know the Chief Executive Officer and not the Head Drug Enforcer...

If an employee committed murder in his lunchbreak? Fire the CEO then?

It just gets more and more facile.