Bales sentenced; life without parole
Big week for the military justice system, huh? According to the Washington Post, SSG Robert Bales was sentenced this morning, too;
Bales did not recount specifics of the horrors in court when he testified Thursday or offer an explanation for the violence, but he described the killings as an “act of cowardice, behind a mask of fear, bulls— and bravado.”
“I’m truly, truly sorry to those people whose families got taken away,” he said in a mostly steady voice during questions from one of his lawyers. “I can’t comprehend their loss. I think about it every time I look at my kids.”
Of course, I figure that the perpetually outraged will find fault with the sentence, but the judge gave the harshest punishment he could under the circumstances.
Thanks to Chip for the link.
Category: Breaking News
May he burn in hell afterwards.
All this, and the latest edition of the Marine Corps Times covers an article about CMC (Gen Amos) and undue command influence in quite a few cases, most notably, the urination on Taliban. Time for a new Commandant, perhaps?
Should read “…urniation on deceased Taliban bodies”.
Mad dog. At least now he’s in a cage.
Bales gets life, F*ckstick Manning gets 35 years. I get that it’s murder and nothing about it was right but didn’t high treason warrant the death penalty not too long ago?
I’m not saying Bales didn’t get a punishment that fit his crime but doesn’t it seem like there’s somewhat of a double-standard here? (Answer: duh.)
my prayers are with the family of SSG Bales, especially his children who will grow up with out their father. i care not for an ounce of arab blood spilled. any of those that died at his hands, if they didnt want to kill americans, they would grow up to want to kill americans. but i find it a utter travesty to consider the loss that his family must now suffer
@6 Smitty, you and I are going to abso-fucking-lutely agree on this one….the only good muslims are dead ones…we do not and did not use anywhere near the number of high order detonations to turn both of those sh1tholes into burning rock piles with lots of crispy dead bodies….when your enemy sets the ROE to include women and children it’s wise to take notice and return the favor. We had no problem burning Jap and German kids to death with magnesium and napalm bombs….we should not be squeamish about this either…
@5 Matt, from the US Constitution: ” No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court”. I don’t believe Manning confessed in open court, nor could the Army find two witness to the act.
I think 35 years isn’t enough. It should be life without parole and then his rotting corpse be put on display to show others the penalty. But I am just a lowly cog of an officer in the machinations of the military.
@8
I like your style.
Smitty, VOV: cannot agree. What Bales did was cold-blooded murder of defenseless noncombatants.
The fact that other questionable deaths occurred during other wars is true. Regarding Bales, that’s also completely irrelevant.
What you are advocating here is called the “Johnny did it too!” defense. That’s a complete legal and moral non sequitur.
Past acts of others do not excuse or expunge Bales’ crimes here. He willfully chose to murder a number of defenseless noncombatant civilians by shooting them in the middle of the night in their homes, personally, while acting alone. He was not conducting any type of combat operation.
For that, he deserves death. He got life in prison without parole instead.
Any impact this causes to his family is regrettable. But that’s Bales’ doing – not the “system’s”.
im not justifying Bales’ acts, im just saying who cares. i figure if it worked for Hitlery when talking about dead Americans killed by these animals, it works for the animals killed by an American, “what difference does it make now?”
these “people”, and i use the term loosely, murder women and children with out discrimination on a regular basis; they throw acid in the faces of girls for imagined slights; and behead any American they are lucky enough to get their hands on. so who cares that an American snapped and shot a bunch of them, it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. in all actuality, they probably would have blown themselves up and killed many innocent people later down the road, so lets just call it a wash.
What really grinds my ass about this is that our Government kicked in the turbo and went full throttle in prosecuting Bales while they’ve dragged their asses in prosecuting Hasan and other muslims. It’s obvious that B. Hussein 0bama & Co. care far more about third world fleabag muslims than they do about American Citizens, and they put US Military Veterans at the bottom of their priority list!
Mixed emotions.
But the man crossed the line.
Tough.
He was held accountable. Life without Parole, or even the death penalty would have been fine with me. KSM and Hasan need to be held to the same standard and not handled with kid gloves.
Bales had a history of being a financial huckster before joining the Army, run ins with authority in Fort Lewis and scraps with civil authorities at least twice. He killed 4 women and 9 Children, including a 2 year old.
Hopefully he will be Chelsea Manning’s cellmate. If he snaps on Manning and wastes him, Manning will be dead and Bates can face the death penalty.
When a wolf disguises itself as a sheepdog or a sheepdog goes rabid, the rest of the sheepdogs only have one choice.
Actually, I cared when he pulled his stunt as I was just arriving in Kandahar at the time. Nice to travel around the already unfriendly natives after this guy gets them even more fired up. I’m wondering how many extra Green on Blues were triggered by this. No sympathy for this guy here.
@11… Who cares? I do.
Illegal day laborer kills a teenage girl by stabbing her 13 times and letting her bleed out and gets 49 years (1st degree murder). Another person just was sentenced to 22 years for killing his 18 yo girlfriend for her iPhone. And the list goes on.
Bales should have been granted a chance for parole.
I’m with Beretverde. I care. Bales’ murderous rampage of unarmed civilians marred the record of all who served honorably.
Those weren’t combatants. There is no evidence that they were even sympathetic to the Taliban.
Or as better said above by NR PAX: when a sheepdog turns rabid, or a wolf pulls on sheepdog’s clothing, it is the duty of the sheepdogs to remove him.
There is no Honor in killing children. There is no Honor in killing the unarmed.
And there is no room for murderers and rapists in Our Ranks.
@6 Have to agree with Hondo, but he was so diplomatic about it. I think you are a fool 🙂
Completely ignoring your bigotry, I’ll simply add that guys like Bales (murderers) cause endless amounts of trouble for professional soldiers.
Your generalizations of Arabs (which would barely register a line on the pie chart of Afghanistan) are disheartening. I recommend you educate yourself and direct your violent hatred somewhere more productive… Like your testicles.
My apologies to the regulars here because this reads like I’m trolling, but…
Shit, I guess I am trolling.
@ Smitty and VOV – I also agree completely. The people he killed are completely worthless human beings. When it first happened, I remember reading a report where it was stated he was upset about recent IED attacks in the area on his unit, but none of the locals would give any information on them. We had the exact same thing happen when I was in country in ’11. An IED goes off smack in the middle of a Goddamn village, and yet not one single local knows how it got there or who put it there, but you know with 100% certainty they’re lying through their fucking teeth (or tooth).
I can totally understand his frustration, and as far as the administration caring more about Afghan lives than GI’s, I would say they really don’t give a shit about either. They DO care about negative press stories, and dead Afghan “civilians” (I use that term very loosely) generate a lot more negative press than dead soldiers.
I think if he would have been tried by a panel of E-6 squad leaders who actually led missions outside the wire that came into IED contact regularly, I think he would have been found innocent.
@22 I pity your subordinates
How can anyone justify killing women and children by saying that because they belong to a certain religious group, it’s okay ? We fight tooth and nail to be MORE respectable than the people who plant bombs and IEDs and kill our troops and you want us to act like them ? At that point, we’re no different than they are. Because we do it wearing a uniform ?
I’m sure that 2 year old and the young girls he shot in the head were active in setting up IEDS.
I think the country and entire backwards ass fanatical Muslim doesn’t deserve a place among modern nations and we are wasting our time trying to build a civilized culture on a foundation of shit.
It’s not like the guy had a solid lead or reason to believe the two housing compounds he hit housed enemy combatants.I might even cut him some slack if he had went in and killed a dozen or so military aged males who had a weapons cached.
He simply got drunk, went out, looked those kids in the face and executed them.
Got to go with Hondo on this one. Bales brought dishonor and shame upon the uniform he wore, and slandered us all who have worn, or are wearing it.
He should be shot.
Non-combatants killed in cross fires, or bombing of cities like Dresden or Hiroshima, are the fortunes of war experienced during the prosecution of that war, win an eye toward victory. It happens. What Bales did was simple, cold-blooded murder.
I say again, he should be shot.
No excusing what the guy did. None. He probably deserves life with no possibility of parole.
Chelsea Ex-Manning deserves the same sentence.
i dont care to see a difference between arabs, turks, persians, etc. they are all the same scum that want to claim they are different but act the same. we fight tooth and nail to be honorable and be above these animals, but that is why we lose. we lost vietnam because we wouldnt resort to the same tactics and ROE as our enemies, iraq and afgan will go down as losses because we dont have the balls to do what is necessary. whan a muslim militant (read ‘arab’) killes a bunch of women and children, they brag about it and are held up as heroes to their people, because we hang ours out to dry when they do the same thing, they know our weakness. why do you think the arabs claim every time we have a mission that civilians were killed? it makes us the bad guys to our own people. they do the same thing and gain stronger support from theirs. end result, they win we lose. so yall can be all high and mighty about your moral supremacy, and i will attribute our lost wars to you. a few years back, a great officer, probably the only one the military had, sacrificed his military career to protect his soldiers. im pretty sure that is the first time in the history of the universe an officer has done that. LTC West put a loaded gun in the mouth of a man that he knew had information and told him he had 5 seconds to spill his guts or his brains would wall paper the room. instantly the man could speak english and spilled everything he knew, preventing numerous attacks on americans and saving the lives of many soldiers. LTC West should have been taken in the middle of baghadad and had a medal pinned on his chest in front of the whole arab world. it would have told them that we werent fucking around, and there wouldnt have been another attack in iraq until after we were long gone. instead, LTC West was crucified publicly, and forced… Read more »
Smitty: fella, you appear to be advocating condemning an entire ethnic group on the basis of the actions of a few individuals. You might want to look up the definitions of “pogrom” and “genocide” – as well as the history. Seems to me those unjustifiable and heinous crimes are precisely what you’re attempting to justify if not advocating outright.
The issue of whether such acts are permissible legally was definitively settled roughly 70 years ago, at Nuremberg and a few other places. Morally, the question was settled centuries earlier.
It’s a free country, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. That holds true even when the opinion is morally and legally wrong as well as bigoted and prejudiced.
If those statements above reflect your true thoughts, my advice to you is to take a good look in the mirror – then have a long talk with your Pastor or Priest.
@28.
The difference between man and animals is our ability to think and rationalize.
You need a reality check.
i am not condoning genocide, im simply saying that international laws be damned. if they refuse to follow them, why should we? it is costing us the wars. fuck the moral supremacy, lets focus on winning the damned war! lets play by the same ROE they use, none! ill accept my opinion is bigoted, but not prejudice. i do not pre judge anyone or anything. i have studied these people holy book, the teachings of their leaders, and the results of following their religion. my judgement is based in experience and knowledge. so i guess that would make me postjudiced. even now, muslims all over the middle east are attacking christians simply for believing differently then they do. egyptian churches are torched, little girls are murdered. just last week a 10 year old girl was coming home from church and was abducted and murdered. have we heard a word of condemnation for these attacks from the muslim world? how about these upstanding afganis? they are such great people arent they? oh, they have been silent? by my book, that is the same as condoning the attacks. they support attacks on christians, so now the shoe is on the other foot and its a heinous act? what bales did is no different than what these people celebrate happening to others, so by their own rules, Bales should have been made a hero. lets play by their rules and watch terrorism run to the hills faster than usain bolt. and as to PFM earlier, these people hate us and want us dead. from the time they are small children they are taught that we are evil and god wants them to kill us. this incident made no difference in green on blue attacks. every last one of those attackers wanted to kill us with out this incident or any other. ive been trying to find a video i saw on fox news the other day. a UN funded school in gaza teaching the evils of america and israel. that martyrdom is called for by alah, and it is the responsibility of these… Read more »
@30, GT, yes, and arabs can not rationalize, there fore are animals.
Be careful confusing Islam with Arabs.
And be careful using the term “Arab” with Middle Eastern Muslim.
they are not the same.
Using the term “Arab” as a generalization shows ignorance.
yeah, dont care. i intentionally call persians, turks, afganis, and the like arabs. it pisses them off. i know the difference in them, and in all honesty, there is none. they all hold to the same cultural beliefs and archaic codes that keep them locked in the stone age. Egypt has a chance to break out of that mold, we shall see how that works out.
@34.
Wow.
Then explain the Kurds.
the kurds are a fluke that some how managed to avoid being arabised. there is no explaining the kurds, they just are. its like explaining the platypus, you cant really explain where it came from or how it is what it is, ya just know its awesome.
@36.
What was your rank and MOS?
@30 I have a simple solution. You raise Bales’ kids. You’ll have a captive audience for your uneducated lectures on hatred and intolerance, and they’ll have a new father figure… Who is also a psychopath.
Lol sorry Green Thumb that last was @Smitty. Supposed to be @36
GT, the Kurds have been an autonomous independent people who separated themselves from the rest of that mess a very long time ago. They don’t like being lumped in with anyone, including the Turks.
Smitty: so, you’re openly advocating the Japanese Imperial Army approach we saw in China during World War II? Or the German approach during World War II when occupying territory in the Soviet Union?
Taking you at your word above, you’re literally advocating mass murder of innocent noncombatant civilians based on nothing more than location and ethnicity. You’re also advocating it indiscriminately, against persons who may not initially oppose US objectives. I can think of no better way to convert such individuals into supporters of our enemies.
In fact, we pursued shortsighted tactics in Vietnam which approached what you advocate – “free fire zones”, “search and destroy” missions with civilian villages as targets, confiscation of food stocks to prevent the VC from doing same, defoliation of cropland to force rural populations to the cities where they could be “controlled”. These tactics and related excesses almost certainly greatly contributed to the support the NVA and VC got in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Many South Vietnamese turned against the RVN and US for precisely those reasons.
Further: acts such as you advocate that deliberately target noncombatant civilians for death based on ethnicity or race are not military operations. Rather, they’re mass murder – plain and simple. And when directed against an identified civilian population or ethnic group by policy, such acts indeed meet the accepted definition of “genocide”.
Have you no shame? None at all?
Ex-PH2: the same is true of most of the peoples of central Asia. They’re Islamic (mostly Sunni, but some are Shia) – and are all independent-minded and mistrustful of outsiders. They’re non-Arab Muslims and proud of that fact. Most aren’t all that fond of their “Arab brethren” – or other “outsiders”, for that matter.
That’s largely due to history. In that region, one group has been conquering and ruling another for literally 3000+ years. If your group isn’t “top dog” locally, you’re generally not doing well at all.
That’s IMO one of the basic reasons Central Asia and much of the Middle East has never really progressed beyond the Middle Ages. They’re all IMO stuck in a tribal mentality, where no one outside one’s “tribe” is truly trusted.
The Caliphate (an Arab-led empire imposed during Islamization) and various successor regimes and empires imposed a degree of peace and internal tolerance in the region perforce. When that central/regional ruling authority vanished, tolerance by-and-large also vanished – and tribalism became again dominant.
Paradoxically, Afghanistan and Iran were among the last areas in that part of the world to succumb to this change. Until the early 1970s, Afghanistan was historically a largely tolerant, multi-ethnic society only loosely ruled by a central King. That changed with the early 1970s revolts. A similar thing happened in the 1970s in Iran, culminating with the Shah’s deposition. In both cases, fundamental Islam eventually took over – and imposed Draconian and intolerant regimes.
@40.
I know.
I spent along time around them.
Smitty…you’re so far off base on this one you’re not even on the same field; hell, not even the same fucking sport. What happened in Japan and Germany was also partly an issue with destroying their infrastructure to produce war machinery. The Afghans have no infrastructure to speak of. The civilians there are for the most part stuck in the middle: their allegiance, such as it is, will go to whoever is either giving them sustenance and/or holding a gun to their head at any given point.
Such is human nature. Always has been. And I challenge you to tell me Americans are any different in that regard. Only here it’s not always based on religion.
In a perfect world, Bales would be getting his dance card filled out for a date with the needle. But he’ll never breathe free air again, and I can live with that.
LZ, i am neither uneducated nor a psychopath, i am simply saying lets play their game. They attack and kill indiscriminately our women and children, and then we punish our own soldiers who do the same. they wanted this style of war, lets stop helping them win it. if women and children are fair game, then let them be fair game. when they stop attacking women and children, we can enforce the rules against such acts on our own members, until then, game the fuck on. hatred and intolerance are what our enemies teach their kids, and while you are trying to love your enemy to death, they are happy to kill you. so you can oppose my hatred and intolerance, but i will always hate those who wish me and mine ill, and will never tolerate the murder of americans. im glad you can, i hope you teach your kids to tolerate the murder of their countrymen and heroes too. dont worry, the hajis wont want to kill you if you turn your back on own countrymen, oh wait, yes they will. all the same, you can sit down and die wondering why they would hate you, ill accept that they hate all americans and fight for your right to be naive and stupid. the idea of “winning the hearts and minds” is beyond stupid. it ignores the very fabric of these peoples existence. they will always want us dead, instead of letting them have a chance to see their wish come true, lets fight the same way they do.
Hondo, i am not championing the cause of genocide at all, im simply saying lets play their game. they like these rules when it comes to our civilians dying, why is it such a bad thing for theirs? the only difference is that there is a 50/50 chance that the American civilians they kill supported them, there is near no chance that the afgani civilians we kill might support us.
Sparky, i dont know what germany and japan have to do with the price of tea in china, Hondo brought them up, not me. i neither support genocide, nor approve of its uses in the past. But as a man with hebrew blood, i refuse to be the victims of the next genocide and would rather it be my enemies then my people. the muslim world wants to kill us all, there is no point in denying that. do you think a single one of them sheds a single tear for any american that dies? why are we worried about their dead? since mid vietnam, it has been unPC for us to hate our enemies, now we pretend we are at war to help our enemies. we allow ourselves to be painted as the bad guys while walking on egg shells to be as nice as we can to the SOBs trying to kill us. im sick of that. im sick of american lives being thrown away because we want to win their fucking hearts and minds. if i wanted their hearts and minds, id cut them out my self. i would rather the entire world be lit aflame then see a single american soldier die. so you guys can go on acting all high and mighty because you think its evil that this man killed some civilians, and it is indeed an evil act, but how many of our civilians have those people killed? how many times has anyone in the muslim world spoken out against the terrorists attacks carried out against Americans? oh thats right, they had celebrations in the streets, burned our flags, and chanted allah ackbar.
so again i ask, who cares about a few dead afganis?
The guy killed sleeping women and children. There is no right in this situation. There is no excuse for these actions. We need to be better than the enemy we’re fighting, otherwise we have no moral ground to stand on.
Bales was a shithead before he joined the Army. Blaming anything other than him, such as PTS, malaria meds, stress, booze and drugs, is nothing short of bullshit.
And to the few who advocate for the deaths of all Muslim, you disgust me. Muslims saved my life in Iraq; they are not all bad people–especially the children and women.
I’m done. I’ll post again in a few months.
great story on fox about some of the villagers coming to the sentencing of SSG Bales. they are all bent out of shape that SSG Bales didnt receive the death penalty, but that is hardly surprising. what made me laugh pretty good, is the statement that America came to help them build their country but we havent done that. that’s odd, i thought we went there to woop the ever living dog shit out of the taliban and al qaida. they dont share our interests in eliminating terrorists, they love the terrorists. they just want American money and the summery execution of anyone that might hurt any past present or future taliban
Shepard, im not blaming his actions on anything. i simply dont care about them. i dont give 2 shits about the afganis that came to his sentencing, nor whether anyone that has ever spoken an ill word against America lives or dies. they want us dead to the last man woman and child, so im not going to lose sleep over a dozen or so of them dying. i am not advocating the death of all muslims, i just dont care if they live or die. i do not hate them, i am apathetic towards them.
what SSG Bales did was horrific, but still nothing compared to what these people do to each other on a daily basis or what they do to Americans every chance they get. at least SSG Bales didnt tie them up and make a video of him cutting their heads off slowly for their families to watch on evening news. Yall like to jump on Al and Jesse for their hypocrisy, how about the hypocrisy of the afganis and arabs? have you seen any of them speak out against the ‘green on blue’ attacks? hell no, they blame americans for the death of the poor defenseless suicide bomber.
GT, i just saw your post earlier, i was a 11B E-5.