SEAL Murders ISIS fighter, Holds Ceremony on Scene
In the PSYOP community, a joke goes around about how a PSYOP team could “Go rogue”. Psychological Operations teams are attached to units to provide PSYOP support to the unit’s commander. Not permanently assigned, they could fall though the cracks if they don’t keep engaged. Of course, this doesn’t involve violations of war crimes, laws, or regulations. The team just “does its own thing”. Not encouraged.
What’s definitely frowned upon is going rogue with regards to violating the rules of land warfare. In this situation, we have a Navy SEAL who murdered an ISIS combatant, then conducted an enlistment ceremony in the area.
Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher would’ve been eligible to retire, from active duty, next year. Instead, he’s looking at another future. From NBC San Diego:
U.S. Navy prosecutors accuse Gallagher of premeditated murder for the stabbing death of an injured ISIS fighter who they estimate was about 15 years old.
And
On Wednesday, the Navy outlined its evidence including cell phone photos that show Gallagher holding the severed head of the fighter during a reenlistment ceremony.
According to the article, Gallagher was ranked as number one SEAL chief, his platoon was also ranked as number one. He once had the option to either retire proudly, or continue his service facing better opportunities than others.
Underneath the high praises; however, those who served with him associated him with poor judgement. This includes shooting into Iraqi civilians.
The New York Times was graphic with its description:
But now, less than a year later, Special Operations Chief Gallagher, 39, is locked in the brig, facing charges that during that same deployment — his eighth — he shot indiscriminately at civilians, killed a teenage Islamic State fighter with a handmade custom blade, and then performed his re-enlistment ceremony posing with the teenager’s bloody corpse in front of an American flag.
Navy SEALs who were with him reported the things that he did, to include:
* Being reckless
* Being bloodthirsty
* Firing into crowds of noncombatants
* Shooting a walking girl
* Shooting an old man
* Threatening to kill those that intended to report these events
It got to the point that his own team members messed with his weapon’s accuracy. They also benefited civilians with warning shoots to give them a chance to escape. His actions took away from efforts needed to engage the enemy.
You could read more here and over here. Good reads. The above photo is from the New York Times.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Isis, Navy, WTF?
Wow. Just wow.
Our boy here has gone up the Nung River about 75 klicks above the Do Lung Bridge.
You have a right to kill me but you don’t have a right to judge me…
They may have the right to kill him but if the charges are proven he will likely spend the rest of his life in a concrete closet.
He can be roomies with Bickle and Seerden. Not sure if it is strange so many operators are going to PYITP or to be expected.
It’s quote from Marlon Brando’s Col Kurtz character in Apocalypse Now when he faced Martin Sheen.
Yeah, based on mine I assumed. But no one dispatched a Delta guy to do him in so he sits in the brig sorting his thoughts. It might have gone better for him the other way.
Not to condone what he has done….but…he was sent over there EIGHT TIMES? hell that would screw up anyones head imho!
Holy moly.
If al this is true…I ditto MSG Eric. Wonder how much of the trial will be made public.
Quietly give him a medal and medical retirement because the powers that be should have recognized eight tours is about 5 too many. Then there are the other NCO’s on his team who had a responsibility to speak up but failed to do so. These guys go through hell and not some mamsey-pamsey desk jockey is going to prosecute. Command obviously liked the results his team produced and now they will turn their back on him.
With all due respect, a medal and medical? YGBFSM. Sorry, there’s playing by their rules, and there is going beyond the line. Killing a presumably unarmed prisoner to get a gee-whiz re-up ceremony photo-op is ‘way over the line.
There is a huge difference between ‘shit happens’ in war and ‘MAKING shit happen’ by unnecessarily killing prisoners, decapitating bodies for juvenile pictures, etc. If he only gets a BCD and avoids time in eastern Kansas. he’s lucky.
LOL…You have to be shitting me…
Yep, war is hell.
And he reenlisted for it.
Lock him up.
Eight deployments fighting against others who threw away the rules of the Geneva Convention from the start. All people have a breaking point especially when they are restricted in their dealings with enemy forces. Lt Cally broke in VN and were many others who might have that were not reported, when you impose these no fire zones like we had in which you had to go through all of the chains of commands before you could defend your position while under attack, kind of seems senseless to even be there.
To be fair, William Calley was apparently considered a piece of shit before My Lai, and he hadn’t been there that long. He never should have been in charge of anything. IIRC, one of the major contributing factors to that incident was the death of the platoon sergeant who normally kept Calley in line several days prior.
Valley was considered unfit to be an infantry officer by several of his Tac officers at OCS, but the Army needed 2LT’s.
Calley–damned auto-correct.
Agree. One of his NCO’s should have shot the sonovabitch.
.” Lt Cally broke in VN ”
BS. He was just an $%&*(. And so was his Company Commander who stood by as it was happening and his Bn. CO who tried to cover it up.
” no fire zones like we had in which you had to go through all of the chains of commands before you could defend your position while under attack,”
I will cut you some slack and just say that that is just an exaggeration.
Thanks tim for your statement pertaining to the no fire zones as your thoughts, glad you were there and know all about the way it was.
What kind of fucked up unit were you in where you couldn’t defend a position under attack? I understand restrictions on rocket, direct air, and artillery but are you telling me that you couldn’t fire your rifles even if you were being hit?
‘
This is the kind of thing you just really hope isn’t true. What an asshole.
Let me see: someone who may or may not be a good field operator (I have no reference other than the article) seemingly goes off the rails in a combat zone, does unacceptable things.
BUT — there IS such a thing as recognizing when someone is out of control in any environment, and can be told to stand down, even if he is the senior in the group. If these charges against him are true, then his team should have either brought it up before he did any more damage, or stopped him in locus.
The unfortunate side of this is that the NYT, in its hellbent gallop to make everything not liberal the act of demons, is doing its best to erode whatever respect Anericans have for the military with this news. I would expect no less of them.
The NYT is doing its best to erode respect for the military by reporting on the same thing the Navy Times, Task And Purpose, and a little site called This Ain’t Hell are all also reporting on?
If anyone is eroding respect for the military, it’s either Gallagher (if the allegations are true) or the other SEALs who his defense claims are making up stories because they’re disgruntled (if the allegations are false). The only way the NYT is responsible is if they’re inventing false stories of their own accord.
You progs love to defend your agitprop media.
So a SEAL is accused of, among other things, knifing a guy in the neck as medics are working to save him, bragging about it, posing next to the body for re-enlistment, and then tried to cover all this up, and even if that’s untrue, we’ve got other SEALs making up some pretty severe charges about the guy… but it’s the NYT reporting on it that’s bad.
Got it.
The NYT has well and truly earned it’s fish-wrap reputation. It is -clearly- not on anyone’s side but it’s own, and most assuredly not on -ours-
You waste your breath defending that wretched wreck. They still cherish their Pullitzer for denying the Holodomoor, kissing Stalin’s ass.
They haven’t improved since then.
To this day they still kiss his ass by proudly displaying that -obscenity-, standing on 15 million Ukrainian corpses to do it.
If offered the NYT free, I would buy another paper to line my cat’s litter box.
This! In spades. The NY Slimes is still proud of Durante’s lies and Soviet propaganda .
Perhaps you’ve been living in isolation on an unused and deserted island since WWII, but the NYT has been doing its best to erode respect for all things conservative for – oh, let me see – at LEAST two years now, and more likely going back to the 1960s during the time when making the troops into murdering bastards was the Order of the Day.
Ditto, WaPo, Time, and other publications.
How about a Navy Times article which also says that his platoon leader is undergoing an article 32 investigation for covering up war crimes? And you forget NBC, the first link.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/10/23/second-seal-arrested-in-war-crimes-probe/
Sounds like he went full Col Kurtz. If he did all that, he should definitely be sent to Leavenworth for his remaining days.
I will agree with the others here and say this is also a symptom of a failure of command. The ops tempo of the spec ops units has just been over the top. This guy did 8 tours in the last 17 years? So he was at war roughly half (probably more) of his career?
Knowing that one battle can be enough or too much, do SEALS do a 6 month rotation if there is anything like a “standard” rotation for them?
Maybe they are deployed however long it takes to complete a mission?
I’ve read that 3 combat tours of 1 year each is an unofficial limit for regular troops. And of course there are those who end up doing more than 3.
I can sort of understand the other SEALs attitude. This Chief was the corporate knowledge for the Team, and held in great respect by Os and Es alike as The Go To Guy. He had been there and done that for so long his word was law, and none would consider questioning his judgement. He likely started going off the rails a while ago, but no one dared to confront him about it. And that’s the crime. It took something of this magnitude before any action was taken, and now any good he may have done in the past will be erased by his recent actions. This was preventable if someone had stepped up; that no one did is a shame.
Having his reenlistment videoed with the db, severed head shows he was not mentally well.
Exactly how I feel, AW1Ed. If his team had dropped a few hints their Chief was fixing to have a mental rotor burst, he’d be retired, under therapy, and enjoying his family’s company. This isn’t going to end well for anyone.
Has a Negan sort of psycho vibe to him eh?
He was being pretty lenient by Negan standards. He took the top off of that haji’s shit, not the standard 50%.
He can hang right next to these guys.
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=82905
And everyone in his chain of command, and every subordinate that stood by and watched this shut happen, allowed this shit to happen, and participated in this shit needs to pack their shit and find a new line of work.
NO JOKE!! There should be Psych assessments of every S.F, soldier when they get back from rotation on a job. The signs are always there and don’t go away, and can’t be hidden. A good Psychologist, can recognise them in the first 10 minutes of a conversation.
Better then a loose cannon risking every ones safety and life.
Jeez. I was going to make light hearted comments until I read the story.
That guy is a permanent danger to anyone who gets within spitting distance.
He had to have started out with something in his make-up that would have made it easier for him to wind up this way; there were men who went through the entire Second World War and didn’t come out this messed up.
When your own team says fuck you. Well, then, fuck you.
Funny, having done a little searching to time served in combat the results from the one survey I found states that the average time served by an individual in WWII was 10 days a year whereas in Vietnam 240 days in a year, this guy had 8 tours of duty in a war zone, can somewhat understand the possibility of his going around the bend. I also realize that like VN children are used to fight the war as well as women,of course there has been instances of men over there wearing women’s clothing to do attacks as well as a disguise to flee the country and enter others.
I do not condone his or Lt Calleys behavior but all people have a breaking point, if it were not true then there would be no what is now called PTSD from wars as well as suicide from memories that reoccur all too often that push them over that edge.
Strip his cloths from him, tie his hand behind his back, and drop him into a village where he shot at woman and children. Let’s see how long this fucking piece of shit lasts.
Just what are your qualifications to make such a statement. How much behind the lines SF time? How much time in combat? How many deployments where you went outside the wire?
Letting things like this slide, covering up things like this, is how you get the SEALs disbanded. Or, so gelded as to render them moot.
again, the Kratman warning: we will come to resemble our enemy.
More of this will surface. The fucktards who build their careers by destroying our military and our culture will certainly exploit these obscene antics. Our foreign adversaries will -happily- exploit the fools who help them.
When the axe falls on this one, we are likely to lose capability.
And ultimately, it will turn on the decision of our nation, again, to fight “nice”, thus endlessly.
And who always seems to want us to fight ” nice”? Hmmmm.
Stuff like this will -always- happen. War is monstrous, and does no good for the souls tasked to wage it. The trick is to win, and -promptly- before this crap comes out, or before it becomes too frequent.
Go in whole hog, no holds barred, crush them utterly, and -leave-. By the time the ugly surfaces, it is too late for opponents to exploit, and easy enough to help or prosecute the culprits as required.
No more “nice”. It isn’t. It is a recipe for endless war, not victorious war.
Which is the fucking point. Again.
I hate this. 8 tours? I’m not surprised he went full retard. Neither am I justifying it. I’m thinking his attorney will play the mental health angle. They will bring out their psychiatrist(s) as will, probably, the prosecution. I don’t see how the defense can be anything other than he has loose screws. No other way to justify it or even explain it. I feel for this warrior. Wonder what he was like on earlier tours? Hard to believe tours 1 through 7 involved behavior such as this.
8 tours? I feel for him, I really do, but I also feel for any he harmed by shooting at them without provocation. How else can his attorney try to save him for prison, not to mention his career? Man, this sucks.
something got broken this guy. to go from #1 to #0 is a long fall. 8 deployments not sure of who the enemy is, because it really is everyone.being encourage to kill the bad guys but only ones that fit our bad guy profile… i have to think that it was lack guidance from higher, you can delegate authority but never responsibility. yes he has to own up to the things he has done, but at the same time i know what it is like to want to mow down a whole village with the 240 gathered around the Humvee that was just blown up. they were all complicit, they all knew who planted and detonated the IED but the ROE said nope. lucky for me i had a driver who knew me well enough to pull me off the gun before anything happened. the fact that i wanted to to do it scared the hell out of me, i deployed again 3 more times to Iraq but as a medic, not as infantry because once you lose that part of yourself there is no way to get it back . like the song says its easy to take “one step over the line” .
There has never been a war in which this type of thing has not happened. If he was operating in a morality-free zone after far too many deployments, then his team let him down by not stepping in, as a group, and doing everything and anything to help him. Knocking his rifle off zero is not it. Firing warning shots is not it. I hope that he has a fantastic defense and that he gets the help he quite obviously needs.
Some of you are a fucking disgrace already convicting him based on hearsay click bait.
Total fucking disgrace.
Let’s fight an endless war, let’s make everyone who participates in the fighting a hero. Let’s take some of those heroes and make them super special heroes. Let’s put them in environments where their enemy has no real morality regarding their own people never mind those perceived as enemies, and let’s allow our guys to serve multiple deployments due to a massive lack of manpower for an endless war and let’s sit back and see what happens….
Wanna bet we won’t like some of what happens when the guys we made out to be heroes turn out to be as bad as the people we’re fighting? Or worse in some cases?
Does anyone want to explain what freedoms are being protected by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Does anyone want to pretend that those societies will become staunch allies to bring global peace and stability to the world?
At what point will we admit we made a massive mistake in the Middle East and we’re doing nothing but wasting lives and money for absolutely no gain except to the MIC?
Am I supposed to be outraged by this guy’s actions? But pretend that we’re good people because we’ve been fighting the good fight for seventeen years? There’s no good fight in Afghanistan, there’s only a fight. Nothing we do short of killing them all (still not a bad idea) ends the shit hole that is Afghanistan. We’ve done nothing good to stabilize the region and make those nations allies. We’ve accomplished nothing to end the violence in the region.
All we’ve done is enter into a conflict we refuse to end, refuse to win, and refuse to recognize as a massive, expensive, failure.
But yeah this guy is the worst, fuck him let him hang so we can all sleep better at night by slapping a band aid on a sucking chest wound.
And who wins? Big Business? Politicians and their votes? Manufacturers of war equipment? Damned sure not the American Public that supplies the young men and women to be butchered over there!
Get us, get all of us the F out of these sh%&hole countries. Been there way yonder too long with no true objective. We got OBL, let’s bring everybody home. NOW!
OBL? is the O Be One Looney? must be ! 😉 lol