Lt. Col. Allen West

[bodypilot90 0]

November 3, 2003

Now let's see if I get this straight. An officer whose Tikrit-based troops have come under attack from Saddam loyalists becomes aware that an Iraqi detainee has information about a planned ambush of his Soldiers, but the prisoner isn't being cooperative.

The officer then goes to interrogate the detainee -- an Iraqi police officer, by the way -- and in the course of questioning, fires his weapon as a way of making the point that he's serious about obtaining straight answers.

The detainee then tells the truth. The ambush is averted, and Soldiers' lives are saved.

The officer is then:

A: given a commendation.

B: promoted to full colonel for showing initiative under pressure and loyalty to his troops.

C: told to resign his commission immediately or face a court martial.

The correct answer, I'm sorry to have to report, is "C."

Lt. Col. Alan B. West, who aggressively interrogated an Iraqi detainee so that he could prevent an ambush and save his Soldiers lives, is being charged with aggravated assault by his unit's JAG officer.

According to published reports, Lt. Col West allowed two of his Soldiers to "physically agress" the prisoner (an act for which they were later fined), and then West brandished his pistol and fired two shots to scare the man into talking.

For this, the Judge Advocate General's office wants to end his 19-year career and possibly send him to prison for eight years. Meanwhile, idiot officers who get their men killed are being given medals and promotions, and generals who have never come under fire are putting themselves in for Silver Stars.

General Schoomaker, this is madness -- and you have to put a full stop to it right now.

Because this is what happens when lawyers, not shooters, run the military.

This is what happens in the politically correct world in which a secretary of the army (Togo West) hires a consultant who actually drafts a report stating that the Army needs to become less aggressive and more in touch with its feminine side.

This is what happens when the Army culture replaces risk-taking and initiative with hundreds of pages of rules and regulations that hamper war-fighting, degrade unit integrity, and place inane limits on how Soldiers can or cannot conduct themselves in battle.

This is what happens when managers and systems analysts replace Warriors in the command structure.

This is what happens when somewhere along the chain of command, the idea that war is about killing people and breaking things gets completely lost. This is what happens when the Army forgets the words of General George S. Patton, Jr.: "We must be eager to kill, to inflict on the enemy -- the hated enemy -- wounds, death, and destruction."

Now, I'm not in favor of hooking prisoners up to field telephones -- although it has certainly happened in the past. Nor am I in favor of taking the Argentine approach to interrogation, i.e., tossing one prisoner out of a chopper 10,000 feet above the South Atlantic and then posing the question to the second prisoner in the chopper.

Moreover, Lt. Col West's actions came nowhere close to anything that can be called torture. Aggressive? Obviously. Outside the box? Absolutely. But aren't those qualities precisely the qualities we want in our officers?

Because if I were a Soldier serving under West's command, I'd say HOOAH, Colonel, and follow him to hell. Why? Because Lt. Col. West demonstrated something that far too few of today's officers are willing to demonstrate to their men and women: loyalty DOWN the chain of command.

Lt. Col. West put his Soldiers' lives above his own career. That sort of behavior deserves to be praised and rewarded, not given eight years and a dishonorable discharge.

http://www.military.com/NewContent?file=Weisman_110303

[Tonto 1]

Pipe.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[bodypilot90 0]

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Pipe.

sorry, don't follow that.

[Tonto 1]

Oxford Dictionary

pipe nTube through which something can flow; tube by which sound is produced, (pl.) Bagpipes; narrow tube with a bowl at one end for smoking tobacco. -v.t. convey through pipe(s); transmit (music etc.) by wire or cable; play (music) on pipe(s), lead by sounding pipe(s); utter in a shrill voice; ornament with piping.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Tailgate 0]

Clauswitz was quoted as saying "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means"

Unfortunately in todays climate this carries the baggage that the politicians and the "politically correct" force on our soldiers.

I have a feeling that if I had the fortune to served under the Lt. Col I would have gladly followed him anywhere. I can not say that about many of the politicians that hamstring the military.

If the Colonel had not discovered the ambush the he would have probably been roasted for not interrogating the prisoner more vigorously.

Catch 22 sucks.

( I'm sorry was I ranting)

_________________________________________________
Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to man- Sam Walter Foss

[bodypilot90 0]

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I have a feeling that if I had the fortune to served under the Lt. Col I would have gladly followed him anywhere. I can not say that about many of the politicians that hamstring the military.

One of the great things about my years in the military is the some of the people I came in contact with in my units. While I had not served under him, I have had the honor of served under people like him. And I have decided to do what I can to help him

if you would like to help

http://capwiz.com/military/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=3994841

[turtlespeed 212]

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Pipe.

t

How does a pipe have anything to do with an individual that did the right thing.

And for those that are about to disagree with the content of this thread, I surely hope it was noone you knew that was about to be ambushed, because as few and far between as this individual surfaces, they could likely be in that circumstance again.

And I hope that the people that you know, that were under his command don't find another prisoner with information about an ambush . . . I'm sure you would miss them after they die.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[Tonto 1]

Aggressive interrogation?

"Klaus Barbie: women testify of torture at his hands
from the Saturday, March 23, 1987 issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer

LYON, France--In 1944, when she was 13, Simone Lagrange testified yesterday, Klaus Barbie gave her a smile as thin as a knife blade, then hit her in the face as he cuddled a cat at the Gestapo headquarters in Lyon.
Lise Lesevre, 86, said Barbie tortured her for nine days in 1944, beating her, nearly drowning her in a bathtub and finally breaking one of her vertebrae with a spiked ball.

Ennat Leger, now 92, said Barbie "had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure."

The three women were among seven people who took the witness stand yesterday to testify against Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in London during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.

Barbie, 73, is on trial in Lyon, accused of torturing Jews and members of the French Resistance and deporting them to Nazi death camps.

But he did not hear their testimony because he has refused to attend the courtroom sessions since the second day of the trial, as he may do under French law.

He has, however, denied the accusations against him and has contended that his 1983 extradition from Bolivia to France was illegal.

Several of the seven witnesses yesterday sobbed as they told of arrest, torture, rail convoys to the Drancy collection center near Paris and on to concentration camps.

They depicted Barbie as a harsh, sadistic officer ready to resort to any cruelty to extract information.

Lagrange, her voice breaking, recalled the arrest of her father, mother and herself on June 6, 1944, the day Allied troops landed in Normandy to drive back the Germans.

Denounced by a French neighbor as Jews and Resistance fighters, Lagrange and her parents were taken to Gestapo headquarters where a man, dressed in gray and caressing a cat, said Simone was pretty.

"I was a little girl, and wasn't afraid of him, with his little cat. And he didn't look like the typical tall, blond SS officer we were told to beware of," she said.

The man, whom she identified as Barbie, asked her terrified parents for the addresses of their two younger children.

"When we said we did not know, he pulled my hair, hit me, the first time in my life I was slapped," she said.

During the following week, the man hauled her out of a prison cell each day, beating and punching at her open wounds in an effort to obtain the information.

"He always came with his thin smile like a knife blade," she said. "Then he smashed my face. That lasted seven days."

Later that month, Simone and her mother were put aboard a sealed train for the Auschwitz concentration camp on a horror ride "which turned us into different people" and that still gave her nightmares 40 years later.

From Auschwitz, where her mother was gassed, the inmates were marched to Ravensbruck, where only 2,000 of the 25,000 people who began the march arrived alive. On the way, Simone saw her father marching in another convoy.

"A German officer told me to embrace him. As we were about to meet, they shot him in the head," she said. "It wasn't Barbie who pulled the trigger, but it was him who sent us there."

Ennat Leger, who lost her sight at Ravensbruck after her arrest, was hoisted to the witness stand in her wheelchair by four policemen.

She was a Resistance fighter nearly 50 years old when she was arrested in 1944, she said, and Barbie and his men "were savages, brutal savages, who struck, struck and struck again."

"Have you heard of the Gestapo kitchens?," she quoted him as saying, in an allusion to the torture chambers.

Lise Lesevre, frail and upright despite her 86 years, described the defendant as "Barbie the savage," saying she recognized him decades later because of his "pale eyes, extraordinarily mobile, like those of an animal in a cage."

Lesevre, who belonged to a resistance group, said the Gestapo arrested her on March 13, 1944, while she was carrying a letter intended for a Resistance leader code-named Didier.

She said Barbie spent almost three weeks trying to learn if Lesevre was Didier, and if not, who was. She was interrogated for 19 days, she said, and tortured on nine of them.

First she was hung up by hand cuffs with spikes inside them and beaten with a rubber bar by Barbie and his men. "Who is Didier, where is Didier?" were Barbie's main questions, she said.

Next was the bathtub torture. She said she was ordered to strip naked and get into a tub filled with freezing water. Her legs were tied to a bar across the tub and Barbie yanked a chain attached to the bar to pull her underwater.

"During the bathtub torture, in the presence of Barbie, I wanted to drink to drown myself quickly. But I wasn't able to do it. I didn't say anything.

"After 19 days of interrogation, they put me in a cell. They would carry by the bodies of tortured people. With the point of a boot, Barbie would turn their heads to look at their faces, and if he saw someone he believed to be a Jew, he would crush it with his heel," she said.

"It was a beast, not a man," she said. "It was terror. He took pleasure in it."

During her last interrogation, she said, Barbie ordered her to lie flat on a chair and struck her on the back with a spiked ball attached to a chain. It broke a vertebrae, and she still suffers.

"He told me, 'I admire you, but in the end everybody talks.'" But she never did, and she heard Barbie say finally, "Liquidate her. I don't want to see her anymore."

She was condemned to death by a German military tribunal for "terrorism" but was placed in the wrong cell and deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she survived the war. Her husband and son did not. She said they were both deported to their deaths by Barbie.

Lesevre said she identified Barbie in February in a face-to-face confrontation at St. Joseph Prison, where he is being held. "

I guess it's all just a matter of degree between members of the same club.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Flygator 0]

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Lt. Col. West put his Soldiers' lives above his own career. That sort of behavior deserves to be praised and rewarded, not given eight years and a dishonorable discharge.

uuuuwah!!!

The secret to life is not arriving at the grave in a well preserved body but sliding in sideways completely worn out yelling "holy crap" what a ride!!!

[Tailgate 0]

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if you would like to help

Done and Done ( or if you prefer HUA)

_________________________________________________
Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to man- Sam Walter Foss

[bodypilot90 0]

what's your point.

[Tonto 1]

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what's your point.

He's a torturer. The rest is a matter of degree.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[PhillyKev 0]

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what's your point.

Where's the line and who draws it?

[bodypilot90 0]

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Where's the line and who draws it?

ok, the shit head didn't have any physical damage, missing body parts, cuts or even a bruise. so WTF is your problem with it. Had your son or daughter been in that unit I'm sure you would have a different point of view. This man is clearly a hero.

[airtwardo 6]

I wonder...

Which form of interrogation trooper Jessica
would have preferred if given a choice...

A couple of rounds fired as an attention getter...

Or

Being raped repeatedly...

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[PhillyKev 0]

So you're drawing the line? There are lines drawn, for very good reasons and this man crossed them.

[bodypilot90 0]

yea being raped is so much better

[PhillyKev 0]

Oh yeah....2 wrongs make a right, I forgot. Actually, I forgot that in 3rd grade, when I developed morals regarding how I treat other human beings. Morals that I don't compromise when it's convenient or expeditious.

[turtlespeed 212]

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Quote

what's your point.

He's a torturer. The rest is a matter of degree.

t

Troll!

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[freeflir29 0]

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There are lines drawn, for very good reasons and this man crossed them.

Hmmm...doesn't sound like you have ever been through a SERE course. Unfortunately there is a line drawn at using a weapon to intimidate a prisoner. There was a very similar case in Bosnia some years ago. A LT. got in trouble for threatening a prisoner with his 9MM. Not saying I agree with it...I mean...it's just another form of psychological intimidation used to get answers. As long as he didn't actually shoot him I don't see a problem.

[airtwardo 6]

Unfortunately it appears as though the lines were
drawn once again by armchair quarterbacks
not familiar with the realities of a war zone.

Lest we forget that it IS STILL a war zone.

This bile was plotting to take American lives...
of this there is no question...

If I truly believe it would save even one soldiers life...

I would be hooking up the DC generator to his nuts to separate him from the information.

How many Vietnam era soldiers...
and civilian 'Company' men for that matter,
were chastised for their part in the many
one way helicopter interrogation rides?

Calley was even pardoned!

Put in perspective...
Not long ago some NYC cops got
nailed for using a broomstick to sodomize
a U.S. CIVILIAN...during questioning...

They were rightfully punished, but there wasn't near
the uproar from the press that this WAR ZONE incident is causing.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[turtlespeed 212]

Ok, so if he hadn't done that and his division was walking into the ambush, what would his MORAL crime being for not doing what he did and as a result spared the lives of those that were about to become victims? Why don't you ask the parents and family of the ones that were spared the ambush, ask them what is right and wrong.

Then ask yourself. . .if that was you that were about to be ambushed, or if you were th OIC - what would would you do to keep your friends and family from dying.

Example of a liberal in the same situation! - Oh, pleeth mithter, could you tell us where the bad guys are? No, okie dokie, well, here, have my gun and just shoot me CAUSE I"M TOO FUCKING STUPID TO BE HERE!

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[jraf 0]

Dude, like who cares. He'll find a different job

jraf

Me Jungleman! Me have large Babalui.
Muff #3275

[flyinryan 0]

Actually she herself has said she was NEVER raped. It is interesting to read HER accounts and opinion of the ordeal, very enligtening.

BASE 853

[bodypilot90 0]

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Troll!

even worse a south african troll