[Warning! THE PHOTOS ACCOMPANYING THE LINKED ROLLING STONES ARTICLE CONTAIN EXPLICIT IMAGES OF AN EXTREMELY VIOLENT NATURE]
Despite the best suppressive efforts of the army, some of the hundreds of photos of U.S. soldiers posing and preening near dead Afghan civilians have now been printed in Rolling Stone Magazine. This follows by several days the appearance of three of the photos in Der Speigel. Along with the photos comes a detailed report from Mark Boar, whose 2004 article told of the murder of Richard Davis by his comrades. That article became the basis of the film In the Valley of Elah.
The two scandals share a disturbing number of elements: drug use, bullying, loose-cannon brigade commanders, low standards for recruits, failed whistle blowing, and desperate appeals home from young men trying to find a way out alive. Both cases include young men diagnosed with PTSD and sent back into duty armed with fistfuls of pharmaceuticals, and in both cases, unusual circumstances caused the story to come to light, implying that plenty of these episodes go uninvestigated. In fact, after several days spent immersed in this dark content, the biggest question remains: just how common is this behavior? When we entrust our sons and daughters to the care of the military, what are the chances that we are condemning them to a ruthless, immoral environment defined by bullying, racism, drug use, and murder? How many good kids have made a choice among suicide (Alyssa Anderson), being murdered (Richard Davis), or committing a war crime (Adam Winfield)? We will never know the number.
Is it just a coincidence that the two cases I chose to study were so alike? It is more likely that these factors are common, and at least some of them are causative. Lady Libertine diaried this story on Friday. Please refer to that thorough report for the detailed account. The Rolling Stone article is also thorough. It contains the most detailed descriptions of the events anywhere yet published, but it also paints a different picture of the central characters than newspaper reports have offered. The Rolling Stone report downplays the attempts by Pfc. Adam Winfield to blow the whistle, short-changing, in my opinion, the significance of the heart-breaking Facebook chat between Adam and his father, Christopher Winfield. While every report I read focused on Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs as the primary psychopathic force, Boar takes more pains to describe Cpl. Jeremy Morlock as deeply troubled.
Morlock posing with an Afghan child. The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.
The information below comes from newspaper and internet accounts. If you become interested, reading the Rolling Stone article will give a different feel.
Five soldiers face court-martial for the murders. According to every report, the chief plotters were Gibbs and Morlock, who are charged with murder in all three incidents. Winfield, Pfc. Andrew Holmes, and Spc. Michael Wagnon are each charged with a different murder, each time acting under the direction of Gibbs and Morlock. There are other incidents in which civilians may have been killed, and there are several incidents of firing on unarmed civilians which did not result in injury.
On January 15, 2010, Gibbs, Morlock and Holmes staged the killing of Gil Mudin, a fifteen-year-old boy, in a field near his small village. Several children claimed to see the killing, and told soldiers who came to the scene. An old man also reported what he saw. The army reported the shooting as justified. A finger was kept as a trophy.
The February 14 Facebook chat between Winfield and his father following this murder has been published in Harpers [subscription] and on the front page of the September 19 WaPo. If you read little about this murder, I urge you to read the entire exchange, which is short, but long enough to break your heart:
c.w. [father]: Murder.
a.w.: Yeah, an innocent dude. They planned and went through with it. I knew about it. Didn’t believe they were going to do it. Then it happened. Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It’s OK with all of them pretty much. Except me. I want to do something about it. The only problem is I don’t feel safe here telling anyone. The guy who did it is the golden boy in the company who can never do anything wrong and it’s my word against theirs.
c.w.: Was it an Afghan they killed?
a.w.: Yes. Some innocent guy about my age just farming.
Later, Winfield wrote:
I think if I go to the chaplain I might be fine. But if I do this I want to be as far away from my platoon as I can. There’s a rumor going around that I’m going to talk and the threats are already coming my way.
Winfield has said that he was stopped by Gibbs as he was going to the chaplain. Either then or at another time, Gibbs told him:
I'm going to send you home by dropping a tow bar on you.
CNN
if he spoke to investigators. Gibbs told Morlock that he could kill Winfield by dropping a weight on his neck in the gym.
Christopher, Winfield's father, made several telephone calls that day, including a 12-minute conversation with Staff Sgt. James Michael Beck at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle. After months of stonewalling by the army, in the face of phone records and of the messages, the army finally acknowledged the existence of this conversation.
Beck told Army investigators he did not report the call to anyone or note it in a staff duty journal…
snip
"I assured the father that no chain of command in the Army would sanction or allow such activity and that if his son made the chain of command aware, that they would take care of him and the offending soldiers accordingly," Beck said.
source
According to Christopher Winfield, Beck also said his son should “keep his head down” and work it out after he got home. A couple of days after the chat, Winfield pleaded with his father to stop trying to notify anyone. Nothing I have read explains this change of heart. Boar tells a story about it, but it seems that he was speculating. It was a decision which will make an immense difference in Winfield’s life.
If Beck or any of the other people the elder Winfield contacted that day had taken action, it would have saved the lives of at least two Afghanis. Winfield and Wagnon would not now be facing murder charges. One thing the army expended a lot of energy doing, once the case broke, was destroying every copy of the photos they could find.
On February 22, Gibbs and Morlock included Wagnon in their crime. The victim was Marach Agha, whose relatives called "a deeply religious man" who had never learned to use a firearm. Finally, on May 2, Winfield was brought into the circle of killers, victimizing a peaceful cleric, Mullah Allah Dad with Gibbs and Morlock. Winfield told investigators, “He seemed friendly, he didn't seem to have any animosity towards us.”
This last killing caused more wide-spread outrage among Afghanis, with complaints being registered more forcefully. Still, the army did not respond. In general, response by everyone who learned of the numerous, often obvious, indications of these war crimes was to assist in covering them up. But something finally went wrong. A new arrival in the unit, Pfc. Justin Stoner, complained of hashish smoking in his space. Word got back to the unit that he had complained, and he received a severe beating from six soldiers. After the beating, Gibbs threw two human fingers on the floor, saying, “You don’t want to end up like these people.” Fearing for his life, Stoner reported the killings and an investigation finally began.
I will write about the circumstances of the detention and trial tomorrow. For now, I just want to comment on the odd fact that Morlock testified first, openly telling the entire story, and thus his sentence of 24 years will likely be the lightest of those accused. He testified against the others and will eligible to get out in fifteen years. [Correction: "...will receive 352 days off of his sentence for time served and could be eligible for parole in about seven years, said his lead attorney, Frank Spinner. He will be dishonorably discharged as part of his sentence."]
Meanwhile, Winfield was threatened by Holmes if he talked about him on the stand. When he reported this, Winfield was placed in severely restricted solitary confinement “for his own protection”. Solitary became so unbearable that he asked to be taken out, preferring confinement with the man who had threatened him over being alone in solitary. (Apologists for solitary, please consider that fact for a moment.) Can the army really not come up with another solution to the conditions of Winfield’s confinement?
My guess is that the army is hoping to portray Winfield as just another criminal in order to minimize its embarrassment from having ignored his warning. In any case, something is strange about this handling. And btw, while Gibbs and Morlock were supposed to be in solitary, isolated from each other, they were exchanging notes.
The other major case Boar investigated involved the murder of Richard Davis after his return with his unit from Iraq. His account appeared in Playboy magazine in 2004. If you are interested in details of his death and the making of the Elah, visit The Richard Davis for Peace website
Like Winfield, Davis was bullied by members of his unit. In his last telephone conversation with his father, from Iraq on May 23, 2003, Richard said
Dad, I'm not safe anywhere I go, I can't trust anybody and I don't have a safe place to lay my head.
Lanny Davis, Richard’s father said
My son was such a confident man. But he had to fight two sets of people; the Iraqis, and his eventual murderers.
Jacob Burgoyne, one of his murderers, had bullied David constantly.
Fellow infantryman Matt Thompson served with Richard's platoon in Iraq: "To tell you the truth, Richard was picked on, but everyone was picked on by somebody. Everyone didn't like someone;
Burgoyne also bragged about killing innocent civilians, including women, children, and old men. Both Burgoyne and Morlock had been diagnosed with PTSD and given strong medications.
When Richard's platoon was in Kuwait, ready to be sent back to the US, Burgoyne attempted suicide. Army doctors reportedly examined him and said he was suffering from PTSD and should not be allowed near a weapon. But, trumpeted as a battle hero by his commanders, he was released and rejoined his comrades. Soon afterwards, Richard Davis was murdered.
Speaking of battle heroes, here’s Spc. Adam Kelly, who served with Winfield
Gibbs is very well-liked in the platoon by his seniors, peers and subordinates alike. [He’s] one of the best NCOs I've ever had the pleasure of working with in my military career. I believe that because of his experience, more people came back alive and uninjured than would have without him having been part of the platoon.
Winfield takes a different view:
He likes to kill things. He is pretty much evil incarnate. I mean, I have never met a man who can go from one minute joking around, then mindless killings. I mean, he likes to kill things.
Stoner said of Gibbs
I believe he has no regard for any life in general. I have watched him slaughter animals with his M4 and finding it amusing is just completely wrong.
I am saddened to report to my military friends that, the next time I hear a glowing report of a soldier, I will wonder if he is another Gibbs.
Gibbs joined Winfield’s unit in November 2009, fresh from a stint on the personal security detail of Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, the head of 5th Stryker Combat Brigade. Tunnell was what some reports termed “controversial”. This meant that he openly sneered at COINTEL (counter intelligence) tactics being practiced in Afghanistan on the basis of the learning experience with the counterinsurgency in Iraq. The old-school commander barred his officers from even mentioning the term and told shocked U.S. and NATO officials that he was uninterested in winning the trust of the Afghan people.
Tunnell:
Some of you might think I'm here to play this COIN [counterintelligence] game and just pussyfoot with the enemy. But that's not what I'm doing.
WaPo
The brigade motto was “Strike and Destroy”. By contrast, official guidelines said, “Protecting people is the mission. The conflict will not be won by destroying the enemy."
There are similar stories about the commander of Davis’ company, Lieutenant Colonel John Charlton. In making a documentary of Davis’ story, Cilla McCain is focusing on Charlton, who was investigated for killing prisoners in Baghdad.
McCain:
… He has been described as a 'loose cannon'; indeed, Charlton's favourite motto was, “There's enough glory for everyone.” It sounds good for the movies, but that's not the way battles are fought – you are creating an atmosphere. I believe those two prisoners he shot weren't the only ones. I have been told that.
The interrogations of Morlock and of Winfield can be viewed on the CNN website. The only reason I can think of to watch them is to see young men who describe horrendous events in which they participated without a hint of emotion, a flat monotone no matter the topic. What is war doing to these young men?
The same phenomenon was mentioned with respect to two of the men involved in the Fort Carson murders. That case also involved PTSD and pharmaceuticals. Detective Derek Graham, describing the behavior of Bastien, an Iraq veteran now serving time for several random, senseless murders around Fort Carson:
"I thought, 'Shit, what else did you do?'" Graham recalls. "I started listing other cold cases that happened near his apartment, like the Orrenmaa shooting. Then I threw the Ham stabbing at him as well. He's like, 'Oh, yeah, we did that.' He was very cold and matter-of-fact." Bastien not only failed to show remorse for the crimes, he failed to grasp the punishment he faced for having committed them. "What are my chances of getting away with this?" he asked detectives, just before he was locked up in jail.
source
Bresseler is another of the Fort Carson killers:
Bressler speaks in the same quiet, calm voice whether he's talking about learning handball in prison or the stabbing of Erica Ham, an assault he claims he did not even participate in.
Adam Winfield in Facebook chat with his father:
a.w.: Well, it was two guys who did it, actually killed the dude. But the whole platoon knew about it for the most part. I think our platoon leader doesn’t know and maybe like two dudes. Everyone just wants to kill people at any cost. They don’t care. The Army is full of a bunch of scumbags I realized.
Why are not officers being held responsible for the conditions that were allowed to prevail for months, conditions involving drugs, bullying, and war crimes? What is no one being held responsible for assisting in covering up these war crimes? How wide-spread are these conditions? Thomas Ricks has called for an Truth Commission on Afghani War Crimes.
Adam Winfield can be supported with prayers, donations, and comments on his Facebook page. They ask that participation there be free of politics.