US Navy Seal on trial for War Crimes

neckbeardthethird

neckbeardthethird

neckbeardthethird

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Navy SEAL Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher is accused of a variety of war crimes ranging from using a knife to kill a teenage Islamic State prisoner in Iraq to murdering numerous civilians including a young girl and elderly lady as well as having a hard-on for firing rockets into civilian areas for entertainment.

He was reported to the authorities by his fellow Navy SEALS who claim to have witnessed him committing numerous war crimes. He denies their claims and says they are trying to set him up.

I personally find it hard to believe fellow Navy SEALS would accuse someone of crimes this serious just because they didn't like him.​

You can read more details about the case here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gallagher_(soldier)#Criminal_allegations

Trump is apparently considering pardoning him if he is found guilty and the conservative media in the US has been trying to sell the story of him being a victim in all this, particularly focussing on the murder of the Islamic state prisoner as that's a lot easier to sell as being 'ok'. They have purposely under-reported the more shocking accusations of him murdering innocent civilians.

What are GD's thoughts on this? Should he be jailed if found guilty? Should he pardoned because war is war? The general perception in conservative America seems to be that he should be pardoned if found guilty and that he's actually a war hero.

edit: why is some of the text in this post black? I've got no formatting anywhere in the post :confused:
 
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Roar87 said:
He should definitely be jailed if he's guilty, what Conservative media is saying otherwise, do you have any links?
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Pete Hegseth @ Fox recently said this after news broke of a possible pardon.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous place on earth with a job to defend and made tough calls on a moment’s notice. To the people in middle America, who respect the troops and the tough calls they make, they’re going to love this. These are the good guys. These are the war fighters.”

Hegseth has also been privately lobbying Trump on behalf of the family to get a pardon sorted if he's found guilty.

https://twitter.com/PeteHegseth/status/1130650077326970881

Watch some of the Fox videos on youtube about the case, they try and push the American hero angle and like to leave out the accusations of him murdering civilians. There was an article in the Federalist about how no one can judge him until they've been in a war themselves... which sort of sounds legit until you realise that the vast majority of troops don't intentionally kill civilians and furthermore the people who initially judged him, were his fellow SEALS.

There seems to be a sustained attempt to try and rationalise the crimes he's been accused of. Fox viewers (maybe not all of them, but id wager a lot of them) have already come to the conclusion he is innocent, and even if he's found guilty they want him pardoned... that's partly because of how the story has been framed by the media.

It's entirely expected though... all media frames stories the way their viewers want to see them. Conservative Americans love their troops, I don't criticise them for that but when they love them so much that they'd pardon them of war crimes then we've definitely gone into crazy town.
 
jsmoke said:
Jesse Ventura criticised the Iraq war and was smeared by the seal community so it does happen.
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I can't remember exactly but wasn't that just a few of them slagging him off after he sued Chris Kyles wife ?

If so there is a big difference between that and this...
  • According to Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) files, a member of Gallagher’s unit — Alpha Platoon, SEAL Team 7 — is expected to shed light on Gallagher having previously confessed to killing four women.
  • According to court documents, two other SEALs have told investigators that Gallagher had spoken about killing “10-20 people a day or 150-200 people on deployment.”
  • Another sniper is planning to tell the court that Gallagher claimed that “he averaged three kills a day over 80 days.”
  • According to the SEAL community, Gallagher tried to cover up allegations with threats. These threats included the murdering of witnesses and attempting to blacklist whistleblowers in the special warfare community and ruin their careers.
  • In total, seven fellow SEALs came forward to their troop commander to call for a formal investigation of Gallagher. They claim the troop commander warned them that speaking out could cost them their careers.
That's some pretty bold stuff to fabricate and to then lie under oath about it as well. I guess it's possible but lord knows what he's done to make 7 SEALS hate him so much they are willing to make all this up.

Should be noted there is no physical evidence, the case will be mostly focussed around witness testimony.
 
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Bit of a twist in the trial

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/20/us/eddie-gallagher-navy-seal-trial/index.html


Chuk_Chuk said:
The article I found said that this was from two anonymous source and they stated this would happen on memorial day (30th May) along with other solder who had been charged with war crimes

Considering that trump didn't pardon anyone on memorial day I think we might be getting played here
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Can you pardon someone whilst they are awaiting trial and have yet to be convicted?

edit: Yes you can, although it's apparently not been utilised this way since the Nixon era.
 
ianh said:
From my understanding of this so far there's basically 2 groups of "witnesses" to this event -

Group A - Some SEAL's who didn't like the accused due to previous severe personality clashes.
Group B - Some SEAL's who were friends of the accused.

and a court case where both groups A & B are giving different versions of the same event, neither denying it took place but just different versions.

It's no wonder that with zero physical/forensic evidence, only statements to go on and a prosecutor who was fired for malice during the case (spying on the defence team and overly aggressive attitude to the case), this courts martial is turning into a farce with no real outcome other than a dismissal of all murder charges likely (unless something drastic changes) as statements by both sides mean that the "beyond all reasonable doubt" level needed for a guilty verdict can't be had.

He may still get charged with lesser offenses and his military career is over regardless but I just can't see a "guilty of murder" verdict based on "he said/she said".
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It seems the Navy SEALs reputation (as an organisation) is going to take a bit of a battering regardless of how the trial turns out, they are meant to be elite honorable men but if your summary is accurate then one group is definitely lying under oath. I still can't get my head around how anyone could try to get a man jailed for life just because they didn't like his style of leadership but I guess anything is possible.
 
Pretty predictable outcome, especially as they never had any serious hope of convicting him for the stuff he allegedly did to civilians. So what happens to the SEALS who accused him ? Presumably their careers are over now, still can't get my head around a group of SEALS lying under oath & risking ruining their own careers just because they didn't like his gruff leadership style (as the defence claimed)... how much of a sociopath do you have to be to do that ? It's not like it was just one of them either.
 
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