Probing the Koran burning
Melvin sends us a link to a Washington Post article about the US military’s investigation of the Koran burnings in Afghanistan which resulted in the overblown riots there over the last several days;
Investigators appointed by Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, found that the soldiers removed the Korans from a prison located at Bagram air base after they were found to contain extremist messages.
The books were then placed in an office for safekeeping, according to the inquiry. But they were mistaken for garbage and taken to a landfill on the base.
Afghan employees identified the books as Korans just as their pages caught fire, a major desecration, according to Muslim teachings. The discovery led to a week of unprecedented tension between U.S. and Afghan military officials.
U.S. military officials said that although the five soldiers will be reprimanded, it’s unlikely that their names will be released or that their punishment will approach the seriousness of what some Afghans are demanding, including trial in an Afghan court.
“For the soldiers, it will be serious — they could lose rank. But you’re not going to see the kind of public trial that some here seem to want,” said one U.S. military official.
Yeah, I don’t think the military has the standing to punish those guys. I wouldn’t know a Koran if you hit me on the side of my head with it. The Afghans that were with them didn’t recognize them as Korans until they began to burn. When you send a private out to burn trash, they just burn trash, not pick through it.
I don’t see anyone getting upset at the little thugs who wrote in and thereby defacing the Korans in the first place. And how do you destroy a defaced Koran? I’m guessing that you burn it, and everyone I’ve talked to and heard agrees. That makes them experts, just by the virtue of my attention. What I know about a Koran would look like a BB in a thimble.
Nonetheless, if the Army raises a hand towards those troops, the entire leadership will be watching the troops draw themselves down.
Category: Military issues
They should do a survey and see if there are even 100 Afgans who can even read.
I don’t think there is even a charge they could hit them with. If it was me I would decline the NJP and demand a CM no matter what they tried to stick me with. Cause no way someone gets stuck with a charge over Joe accidentally burning something.
There’s always “failure to repair” whatever that means.
TSO – concur. I was talking to someone about the same COA yesterday; ask for the CM and have it go to the jury. I can’t imagine a group of soldiers on the panel finding anyone guilty in this instance.
This is so screwed up, there has to be someone willing to raise a stink about this. I guess it’s a good thing I never made it past sgt and I am medically out. There is no way I would let any of my guys take any punishment for this. If they are trying to find some pfc to pin this on that’s bs. Nobody did anything wrong except now the great one wants someone to pin it on. He should have never apologized in the first place…
Sensibilities have been offended, and by God (or Allah), someone’s gonna pay, guilty or not.
Amazing.
Exactly what UCMJ rule did they break? This stuff was not classified material so leaving it an office was ok, and the fact it was mistaken for trash was a simple mistake. If this goes beyond a verbal ass chewing then we all need to pack it in and cave to the lefties.
If anything on the cover of the book was in the chicken scratchings that passes for Arabic writing, how is anyone not familiar with those particular scratchings supposed to know what it is?
My question: WTF were they doing laying around in plain view in someone’s office in such a manner that they could be mistaken for trash? If they were being held for later analysis, they should have been safeguarded one helluva lot better than that. Ditto if they were being held for unobtrusive, private destruction. Even if the office was in a secure area, why weren’t they in a box marked appropriately (e.g., “ASK BEFORE REMOVING” or something similar)?
If anyone needs to catch heat here, IMO it certainly doesn’t seem to be the youngsters who did what they were told and took out the trash.
“…the entire leadership will be watching the troops draw themselves down.”
After the way this was handled, how could anything else possibly happen?
I’m certain someone within the good ol US Army will figure whose ass to kick…However long that takes.
This is the kind of shit that makes me wonder if I really want to join the military.
Sounds like a failure of NCOs and Officers to take the Qurans to S2 for DOCEX. Books filled with extremist messages and secret messages? Yeah let’s just put them in this room and lock it.
Exactly what UCMJ rule did they break?
I think that falls under Catch 22 (“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”). AKA the BOHICA article of the UCMJ.
[…] Probing the Koran burning […]
The officer in charge of the office is the one who should be punished –
Why didn’t the officer preserve the evidence of the criminal use of those books?
That officer allowed the information which could have been used against the prisoners and those outside the prison.
But the officer tossed it into the trash.
and now the enlisted will suffer…..
The koran is a fucking book. Fuck the koran, fuck mohammed, fuck the horse he was having bestial relations with. Fuck islam. We demand justice for US citizens that you assholes murdered over this.
Yeah, Art. 134 would be the likely choice, although if they really wanted to stretch they could go with an Art. 92, because I’m sure there’s a standing order somewhere that defacing or destroying Korans is a no-no.
It’s mind boggling, the brass gets it right with sgt gay boy and jam him, which I’m sure he liked. Then they pull this crap? They should give them a Meritorious Mast or the Army equivalent! Who really gives a rat’s ass what the sand monkeys think, although I’m not sure they can. Twelve died at their own hands? Too bad it wasn’t 12,000 or 12,000,000! Twelve million of them aren’t worth one American.
When someone defaces the American flag, or it becomes worn or damaged in some way, we burn it in a ceremony or manor which shows respect for what it is & was because of what it stood for. It’s about respect, we don’t just throw it in the trash. What is the difference between the Koran and a flag. It has a great amount of meaning to it’s believers. The christian world doesn’t believe it’s message, but we respect it as their version of a bible. Why then are they so pissed because desecrated Korans, remember they where written in by Muslims, where burned? That is a proper end to anything of faith or belief that has been damaged or defaced. Would it have pleased them more if they had just been thrown in the garbage? We didn’t feed them to pigs or anything like that which would show genuine hatred or disrespect. Flags are burned, bodies of our family members are burned, and Korans were burned. It’s what happens to things that reach an end of life or useful purpose. Why then do they go so overboard over this? This is why even Vlad Tepes, aka Count Dracula, Vlad the impaler, and the other names that were assigned to him came to be. He was fighting the Turk Ottoman Muslims that were trying to invade his country. Muslims do attack and kill, as directed in their Koran, anyone that is not like them. It has been this way throughout history and will never change. I don’t feel that Islam is a religion anymore because they have turned it into a terrorist organization. They all read, believe, and want to please the same god and follow his teachings from their holy Koran. You know, the one that tells them to kill all infidels. Infidels equal anyone that doesn’t think as they do, aka us. It won’t stop until we stop it. Back to the original issue, why did we apologize in the first place? They have been a disease for all of recorded history. You can’t reason, apologize, rehab, imprison,… Read more »