Joe Chamblin wins another one
HMC Ret sends a link to the news that former Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Joe Chamblin who lost his job as a sniper when someone posted a video of his team urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters has won another court battle;
The United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals decided today it would not reconsider its November decision in the case of former Staff Sgt. Joe Chamblin, according to documents reviewed by Military.com.
Chamblin was one of a handful of Marine Corps scout snipers filmed urinating on Taliban corpses during a 2011 deployment to Afghanistan. The video spurred outrage when it was uploaded to YouTube in early 2012.
In total, eight Marines would face punishment in the fallout. Chamblin was sentenced in December 2012 to 30 days’ confinement and demoted to sergeant for his participation, a sentence that would ultimately spell the end of his Marine Corps career.
But in November, five years after the initial sentence, NMCCA found that then-Commandant Gen. James Amos had taken a number of steps that would erode the public’s trust in the fairness of Chamblin’s trial.
General Amos was found to have used his influence to “crush” Marines involved in the incident.
According to sworn testimony from then-Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who was initially appointed to oversee the sniper prosecutions, Amos met with him and told him the defendants needed to be “crushed” for their actions.
Waldhauser said he did not plan to send all of the Marines to general court-martial, and Amos allegedly told Waldhauser he could have him removed from his oversight role. Shortly thereafter, Waldhauser was replaced by another general.
According to Waldhauser, Amos said at the time that he had “crossed the line” in his previous conversation and was removing Waldhauser as a remedy.
According to the article, the Government has two months to decide whether or not to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
Category: Marine Corps
So, will he be reinstated?
So when does Amos have to face the music for his long list of disgraceful fuckery?
Gosh, could that be command influence? Nah, he’s a General! They don’t do stuff like that!
Tough case. In my opinion, Chamblin deserved everything he got. Desecration of corpses is a war crime, and he knew it. But Amos was a dumbass, so it is all undone.
Fuck you.
“Desecration”
You spelled blessing wrong.
Blue6 is perfect for you since the sixth letter of the alphabet is ‘F’
So good job you Blue Fucking Falcon
They shoulda shit on em too
Pissing on dead people is not a crime at all. They are in the exact same condition they were before they were pissed on. No one took their ears. At best it is a violation of article 134. And that should have been for the stupidity of filming and releasing it to the world, not pissing on illegal combatants. And that very rarely rises to the level of a court martial. It could have been handled at office hours, and no need for an incompetent airwinger to get involved.
Bullseye.
Concur.
Nobody ever talks about how the taliban MFers had hung body parts of KIA Marines from trees within LOS of our outpost.
Nobody talks about one of the decorated FR/SS members of the same team who eventually committed suicide over his treatment by his beloved USMC.
A lot of ‘friendlies’ need to be beaten to within a cunt hair of a coma over their conduct in this case. They sold their honor cheap in the name of political correctness and bundled a bunch of real Warriors with their honor in the bargain.
Concur.
With any luck, Amos will choke on a chicken bone.
Posting to youtube, though …
Snowflakes like ole BlueF thinks Combat is organized and civilized when it’s anything BUT.
They shoulda fed their corpses to stray dogs
I like the way you think.
*PTUI*
You give a Combat Enemy worse than what he gives you, vultures and maggots gotta eat too, piss on those goatfuckers.
Stupid leftard pussies like BlueF think we win wars against savages by treating their corpses with extra special respect. I say pissing on a few enemy dead is pretty mild in the brutal history of warfare, especially in the ones fought by crazed muzzies. War crime, my ass.
Chamblin didn’t win anything….he lost his career. The court righted a wrong but the damage is done.
Desecration of a corpse is a war crime. He was punished. As the NCOIC he bore the brunt of the punishment for his actions and judgement. However General Amos over stepped his role and issued undue influence into the court proceedings. That in and of itself is a violation of UCMJ. The Marine NCOIC noticed this and used it. The point is this two wrongs don’t make a right. Plus urinating on some Taliban donkey fuckers. It’s not like they beheaded them and left the bodies out in the sun to rot.
Reprisals are recognized by the laws and customs of war.
The other side does -not- respect out dead. We can legitimately reprise in kind. This distasteful incident should have been declared as such, and misled for maximum propaganda value.
No one posting on this forum is active/stupid enough to actually believe that the -Taliban- are lawful combatants with full protection of the laws and customs of war. They are not. Treating them as such is part of the reason we have had such a hard time defeating them.
Pretend all you want, that by acting nice we can civilize savages and barbarians. It doesn’t work that way, when the barbarians chose savagery, and like it that way.
If we are too squeamish to deal with barbarians as they are, then we should at least have the courtesy to our own men to handle things administratively and discreetly when the pointy-end of the spear gets real with the savages.
Because loyalty to your own is a key custom of war, and some folks who ought to know better have forgotten it. Those Marines acted foolishly in airing laundry. Their misdeed was in acting stupidly with a camera, not with their bladders.
Are we there to -win-, to -defeat- the enemy? If so, we -have- to deal with the enemy as it is, as must be done to -defeat- it, doing whatever nasty it takes to -win- against -barbarians-.
If those sanctimonious barbarian pissants missed descrating one of our fallen men, it is because they overlooked the corpse. Kipling wrote about it, and he wasn’t -original- in describing their vile habits.
Fight the enemy that -is-, not the one you wish them to be.
Be -loyal- to our own.
Otherwise, by what fucking moral authority do we keep feeding good men to the grinder?
Agree with every word.
Reprisals are legal under the law of war, but only when specifically authorized at the highest level, that is CINC or POTUS. This was not a reprisal. No one in a position to order a reprisal would ever authorize something like this. If our troops don’t have military discipline, which includes obeying orders and complying with the law of war they were trained on, and everyone in the military gets law of war training, we have a mob, not a military force.
Which “law of war” gives any kind of protection to an unlawful combatant? Which convention, and which article of that convention? Curious to know.
Okay dude, show me where in the law of land warfare it says no pissing on dead people, or anything close to it. Show me anything in the law of war, which there is no such thing by the way, or the Geneva accords it says no pissing on dead people. It isn’t there either.
BTW, under the current Geneva accords, illegal combatants have NO rights under it, and can legally be executed upon capture. Were it not for our bullshit Law of Land Warfare, we could be doing that and Gitmo would not be necessary in the first place.
Your statement on “highest” is probably false. Commanders have fairly wide authority. Do your homework.
And it -was- a reprisal. Ask the ones who did it. It was payback.
If you won’t cover your men’s -minor- indiscretions, by what moral right do you command?
Warfighters reprise. They have since the first organized spear-chucking. What fool thinks this is not true? What fool gives an order that is -certain- to be disobeyed?
Sorry, but I disagree. The whole point of this war is that we’re supposed to be the good guys, better than the goat fuckers. What’s the point of fighting them if we stoop to their level? Yes, pissing on them is not the same as parading mutilated bodyparts through the streets. But we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, IMO.
I don’t think there is anything disloyal about not desecrating the enemy’s corpses, but I understand the urge to do so. It IS hard to endure the many injustices and abhorrent acts they have and continue to inflict upon on us. But we can’t claim moral superiority if we retaliate with the same barbarism. We should use lethal force, yes, but no more violence than is necessary. I think Nietzsche said it best:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
A monster would be one who fights to -lose-, throwing away the lives of his men by pretending there is -anything- civilized in -war-m
There isn’t.
There can be -restraint-, but war is ultimately savage barbarism. You -must- overmatch the enemy to -win-.
So yes, we will and must do distasteful things to make the enemy -quit-. Otherwise, genocide would be the only path to victory.
The men -will- reprise. You as leader either order it or cover it with post hoc orders. To pretend this isn’t normal is -folly-.
-why- do the Afghans routinely mutilate corpses? If you don’t know, how can you say it is not acceptable for us to do so?
-why- do they do it? You never bothered to ask that, eh? It is intentional, and serves a purpose.
And I missed the glaring turd in your argument.
The purpose of war is to -win-. If you are not prepared to -win-, then you have -zero- moral grounds to do all that horrific shit that winning takes.
Go stand in front of your men. Tell them proudly that if it takes losing to stay true to your code, that you will lose with pride.
Please.
Then stay well the heck out of grenade effective range from anyone else.
It’s easy to do scapegoating, especially when you think there will be no backdraft from it.
Not forgiving the jarheads for what they did, because they should have had better sense than to record it.
Both parties were/are wrong, but Amos knew better. He’s on a lower level than the jarheads were.
“Not forgiving the jarheads for what they did, because they should have had better sense than to record it.”
This!
What is interesting to me is that no officer is responsible for anything in this sad affair. That is the way things always work, isn’t it?
No Commander was derelict in command, no platoon leader failed to lead and direct, no staff officer failed in their roles as advisors and experts.
Nope, it was all some rogue Staff Sergeant no one knew about and no officer attempted to lead.
Next, you’ll be saying there ought to be accountability. Not in the CYA military, jockeying for their next career enhancing move.The story of Esau and Isaac springs to mind.
for 24 years, I was told and taught that “leaders are responsible for the actions of their subordinates, good and bad”. So SSG Chamblin should have been held accountable, although I disagree with the sentence. HOWEVER, comma, dot dot dot… Famous Amos and the officers that supported and acted on his demand that these Marines be “crushed” need to be held accountable and have their peepees wacked for their actions as well. Alas, I may as well wish for peace in the middle east. It’s just as likely to happen.
They should have more than their peepees wacked, they should all be emasculated.
They are clearly not men, so what use do they have for it?
Yep.
Several officers had their promotions delayed, and also had to fight for their careers. The only reason more didn’t burn was that the first officer in the chain of command was a former USMC Commandant’s son.
Amos also showed some favoritism by lifting the hold on that officer’s promotion while not doing so for other officers/Senior NCOs’.
All around this was a pretty sad affair.
My guess is that Chamblin, will be given credit for “times served” and retire as E-7 or E-8.
Arent you supposed to wash the dead? They got caught during the rinse cycle 😉
Prolly made those expired goat-fuckers smell better.
They were Taliban! Who fuckin cares??? Feed em to hogs
Nobody cares. Problem is, it’s illegal to do that. We’re supposed to be better than that.
We are better. But the two years I served in Korea we’re so “much better’ than the KPA that we not only had the (IMHO stupid) red crosses on our helicopters, but we had three huge vertical stripes on said Dustoff birds to satisfy North Korea (and so the dudes manning their triple A batteries would have a bigger aiming point)
Compared to say…. ‘ killing everyone over ten’ in P.I. or Jap trophy skulls from WW2, pissing on a dead haj is the jaywalking of war crimes.
More importantly will Amos be reduced in rank and shone the door? Anyone that decides politics is more important than the men and women under him has no place in a xhain of command
Amos retired from active duty on 01 December 2014, so he’s pretty much untouchable.
Disagree on that AW1. He, like all retirees, are subject to recall. Of course it won’t happen but that cocksucker should be recalled and demoted.
https://www.caaflog.com/2017/12/21/the-army-takes-a-retired-general-officer-to-court-martial/
Not unless he resigned his commission. If he didn’t he is still on inactive duty subject to involuntary recall. They could call him back and hammer him. They won’t but it would send a hell of a message to the politicians in uniform if they did.
When I started my 37 year career back in 1970, I worked with a number of WW2 Vets who were in their mid 40’s at the time and the stories they told me were worse than the above whiz job on the corpse. The thing about the WW2 days were that there were no one with movie cameras taking pics of members doing things they should not be doing except for the camera men that were there but the cameras were usually turned off. Some of the guys had their own cameras and I saw dead German soldiers tied on the hoods of jeeps like one would tie a deer up on the car. A lot of shit went on back then. Now everyone has a camera on their cell phone, so a word of caution.
In the 90’s there was a substandard Officer Candidate who was Dropped from OCS because he couldn’t cut he mustard.
He was called “Kato” by his Sergeant Instructors so he sued the USMC and after the case was settled in his favor he was GIVEN the rank of Captain in the Reserves and awarded Back Pay and damages.
Perhaps this Marine should be reenstated and promoted to the rank his peers has attained in that time ( Probably E-8) and given back pay,,,
How is it a “crime” to piss on a corpse, but not to shred it with HE and shrapnel, then incinerate it with WP?
Despite the insults, I am about as far from a liberal as you can get. Pissing on corpses is a crime. That’s why this guy was convicted, and the appeals court didn’t reverse because it was not a criminal offense, but because Amos fucked up. As far as fighting to win, yeah, of course, I agree. Someone explain to me how pissing on a corpse helps us win? And yes, the law of war gives some protections to everyone on the battlefield, even unlawful combatants. No, you can’t just execute them on the spot if they are captured, and you can’t slowly feed them into a wood chipper either. Well, I guess you can, but if you get caught, be prepared to pay the price.
Don’t give a rat’s ass if you are liberal, conservative, or confused. Where are you getting that it is illegal to piss on corpses? Distasteful, certainly, but illegal? Not really.
Yes, you can simply execute on the spot each and every enemy combatant who is not playing by the Geneva Conventions rules. Yep. Ya can. We just elect to not do so as much as possible. We elect to afford them something like those protections but we are under no obligation to do so.
Look it up.
Blue-Foo, I take it you’ve never participated in Combat Operations other than a Stateside FTX, let alone ever been deployed to the Middle East. You remind me of a CO we got rid of over there.
If I remember right, to be recognized as a belligerent actor in combat and receive the protections of the Geneva Convention, you’re required to have some sort of uniform. Even just an arm band.
If you don’t, you’re a spy, saboteur, or common criminal and can be executed out of hand by the on scene commander.
Branch policy forbids this, of course, but the rules say you can.
The law of land warfare does, the Geneva accords don’t. There is no such thing as the law of war. We are stuck with the law of land warfare, simply because we have this bullshit idea that if we always take the moral high road the world will love us. The Current Geneva accords specifically states that illegal combatants have no protections under that treatise. It also specifically identifies the requirements to be a lawful combatant, none of which the enemy terrorists adhere to. The reason those Marines were convicted is because Amos illegally inserted himself into the prosecution by making those statements, and the officers in question acted in accordance with his wishes until there was some blowback on it. Had there not been illegal command interference and influence, this would easily have been handled at unit level office hours proceedings.
The actual, versus any legal definition of desecration: Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful, contemptuous, or destructive treatment of that which is held to be sacred or holy by a group or individual.
Since the terrorists don’t have any regard for life, and the interpretation must come from THEIR regard of it, not ours, there was no crime. Fuck your opinion, it doesn’t count.
Yeah, what Steve said. (Wish I’d read your response prior to answering above.)
Well, my opinion counts as much as yours.
Really? Thanks for admitting that it is of no more importance than anyone else’s.
Wow Blue-foo, that’s what we hear from millenial snowflakes!
Easily proven false.
How many people here value your opinion at all? Versus, say Mr Sharkman or our host Jonn.
Your opinion doesn’t count if you cannot support it, or persuade anyone to value it.
You get the respect you earn, not what you demand.
Just saying….good thing there were not cell phones/cameras during Nam. Especially after we lost a bunch of Marines to bouncing Betty mines in one day and captured some VC right after that.
I’m gonna leave this here as a bookend. As a general rule, anytime someone mentions the “law of war” you can assume the following: 1) they understand very little about LAW. 2) they understand very little about WAR. 3) One and two not withstanding they are confused simpletons.
There is also a good chance that commentator LCPL Nelson has a tattoo of a stick figure riding a bicycle. Mostly because the world of guys outside the wire is exceedingly small. I may be wrong.