MILITARY JUSTICE OR KANGAROO COURT?

Why didn't they just say "no"? I was an enlisted man. When you say "no" in the service you can be shipped to Alaska in your underwear in 12 hours; find yourself the only human on an island outpost; or be sent to a hell hole like Panama, which may not be hell but you can see it very clearly from there. An enlisted man can face phony charges(Link to what happened to a sergeant who "ratted" this week), be dishonorably discharged (death to employment future), be confined to base or quarters for months, fined pay AND allowances, and end your promotional future. Unless you are told you can disobey what you consider to be an unlawful order, and those unlawful orders are spelled out to you, saying "no" is not something any enlisted man is likely to do. Particularly immature and untrained enlisted men.

Some of the guys are older, not teens, and many of them saw the "wrong" in what was going on and took their complaints to command level. But it takes a level of maturity and time in service to know what you can safely do. The Abu Grahib T-1 situation was clearly a command failure because nobody felt they could come forward. The charges will examine if butt fucking prisoners with dicks and night sticks weren't obviously illegal orders. Similarly if beating hooded prisoners with fists was a lawful order. I think this will be what the case ultimately comes down to. Were you actually ordered to butt fuck or beat prisoners? What do you think would have happened to you had you refused?

A courts martial is a set up for a trip to a bad place. You really need to know your way around on that one. Since a couple of sergeants have already plead guilty we can figure these long time enlistees knew all their rights and were "flipped" by the Army. You always need a good lawyer, and one who has the balls to stand up to generals and admirals sitting as jury. I was stationed at an overseas location where a Navy hating Marine captain we all called "Captain Blood" took every Navy courts martial case he could and beat most of them. The Navy hated him and he hated the Navy but since the people sitting in judgement there were also Navy you know that the guy could bring facts and testimony into a case like nobody else.

I was once stationed in a "forward" area. Nobody could pull overnight passes without a special signed card by our commanding officer. I forged our commanding officer's signature every afternoon on passes; signatures that were absolutely perfect. The guy knew what was happening but couldn't stop it. To make a long story short I was brought up on charges of black marketing laundry stolen from a laundry (something so dumb I can't tell you; like I'm carrying ten pounds of laundry out the main gate every night). The mere mention of Captain Blood's name ended everything. When they tried to bring me up to commanding officer discipline I demanded a courts martial again and everything vanished. However, since the actions against me were obviously aimed at my expertise at forging the commanding officer's signature, I did reduce my forgery volume in order to stay out of the stockade. So one could say "mission accomplished" so far as brass was concerned.

The UCMJ is not a civilian court. The Military knows everything about everybody from personnel records before the "trial" begins. Any outside "expert testimony" or civilian witnesses are completely vetted by the court before anybody can testify. This makes the proceeding very brief compared to civilian courts. "Captain Blood" was very good at disproving the accuracy of personnel files. The disproving always meant that the other officers who allowed the inaccurate reports to enter a personnel file would become involved to the detriment of their own fitness reports and future promotion prospects. The UCMJ has now been the law for more than fifty years and the kinks have been removed, it is highly unlikely that inaccurate personnel folders can be brought in or that someone will commit perjury. Lawyer "tricks" cannot happen. You won't see an OJ case in the Military. You have to fight a case on the facts, not temporary insanity or some such shit. It is now very very tough to beat a courts martial. Will these proceedings allow the "following orders" defense? We will see. When everybody says that the enlisted ranks were untrained, these lawyers will bring up the facts that none of them were told the differences between lawful and unlawful orders and what they could do when given an unlawful order. Might or might not work.

Add here: article 134 is a blanket charge of things that make the army/navy look bad. It is an almost impossible charge to beat. It's going to boil down to orders and following same.