US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1972

On December 29 2019 09:59 iamthedave wrote:


Didn't the institution in question find this 'man' guilty, and then Trump stepped in to pardon him?

Seems you're having to stretch a bit on this one.

In addition to being found innocent on the first-degree murder charge, Chief Gallagher was also found not guilty of attempted murder of Iraqi civilians and of obstruction of justice. The only thing he was convicted of was posing in a photo with the dead captive's body. For that, he was demoted one rank. He will serve no further jail time.

...he was acquitted six of the seven charges, and all six were the most serious charges,

On December 29 2019 17:52 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's not about what it does in effect but about what it means and what message it sends. Now a psychopathic muslim killer denounced as a freaking evil monster by his own men is hailed as a "great guy" by the POTUS

Future psychos will know Trump has their back as long as they have a pics wearing a maga cap on their instagram accounts, and the moral norms of the USA keep sinking to their lowest levels in decades. It stinks from across the atlantic.

On December 29 2019 15:57 GreenHorizons wrote:

They found him "innocent" (pretty sure that should be "not guilty") too.



www.pbs.org

The prosecution only wanted to reduce him in rank from an E7 to an E6 and the jury went a step further suggesting he spend 4 months in confinement, for which he was going to get "time served" and walk free anyway.

Think it's a pretty safe bet he was allowed to get off for killing the little girl almost a decade ago because of the same system that went on to allow him to practically get away with these war crimes (whether Trump stepped in or not).

So no, I'd not say I was having to stretch on this one.

To be clear, all Trump's pardon did was prevent the demotion of a single rank and pardon him for taking the picture (which was probably the least bad war crime he committed).

On December 29 2019 20:07 iamthedave wrote:


Oh my bad. I thought he'd been found guilty. Hence the pardon. Should have figured really. Military 'justice' at work.

On December 29 2019 18:18 GreenHorizons wrote:


Why wouldn't it be about "what it does"?

Kinda like Trump, the issue the system had was his being so brazen and leaving such undeniable evidence of his guilt of horrific crimes it can't/won't hold him accountable for. Not the horrific war crimes for which he was acquitted without Trump's help.

If anything Trump's intervention drew attention to what would otherwise have been status quo allowing of war crimes by our top tier military forces.

On December 30 2019 01:53 Biff The Understudy wrote:

So instead of "military justice sucks and it's outrageous", we get "military justice not only sucks but the POTUS himself actively and publicly support a kid murdering psychopath because said psycho supports him", and it's an improvement.

Ok then. Thanks Trump for drawing attention to the problem

On December 30 2019 05:02 Stratos_speAr wrote:


This ridiculously egregious distortion of the facts just further highlights why you're so biased and untrustworthy.

The trial fell apart because Trump repeatedly interfered with the military justice process, which then allowed Gallagher and his team to (most likely) tamper with witnesses, resulting in a key witness completely torpedoing the prosecution's case on the stand.

Furthermore, the damn Secretary of the Navy was forced to resign because the flag officer in charge of the SEALs was going to kick Gallagher out of the SEALs and SECNAV wouldn't stop it. Again, this was due to Trump's intervention.

Even after the military justice process was fucked up by Trump, the Navy still tried to kick him out of the SEALs and strip him of his rank of Chief. Neither of these are trivial in any way. The Navy JAG Corps was going to eviscerate this dude until 1) one lawyer did something stupid and 2) Trump gained a hard-on for war criminals.

The entire process has been disastrous for good order and discipline, with huge swaths of service members wondering if anything about their chain of command and justice system can be trusted.

I'd advise you to stop talking out of your ass about military matters. It's insulting and makes you look like a tool.

On December 30 2019 06:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:


This comment just further cements your ignorance and arrogance.

I didn't speculate on him being potentially demoted further than you suggested. Being demoted from E-7 to E-6 is being demoted from Chief Petty Officer (E-7) to Petty Officer 1st Class (E-6). This is a significant demotion. This is also standard knowledge if you took any attempt to educate yourself on the topic.

Furthermore, none of it was speculation. I countered your lazy analysis of the Navy's attempt to punish him by showing that 1) They tried to lock this guy up for a long time for being a war criminal, 2) their inability to do so was in no small part due to Trump, and 3) even after that attempt failed, they still attempted to punish him, but were again stopped by Trump and the Secretary of the Navy (the 4th ranking member of the Navy chain of command and the leader of the entire Department of the Navy) lost his job because of it.

You've really become as bad as Danglars and xDaunt, just on the opposite side of the spectrum.

On December 30 2019 07:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:


Getting kicked out the SEALs isn't a demotion. Demotion only applies to rank, and being a SEAL isn't a rank. SECDEF was also "asked" to resign because he refused to put a stop to the administrative action against Gallagher. Keep trying to distort the truth though. Your fragile world view would fall apart if you didn't.

You're also just shifting the goal posts in typical fashion when you're caught talking out of your ass. No one is going to pretend the military doesn't have its problems with criminal justice, but pretending that the Navy didn't try to prosecute him and trivializing the role that Trump had in him not being punished is just as bad as trivializing and equivocating the two political parties like they do they exact same thing. Coincidentally, you tend to do the latter all the time, and it's why no one can discuss things with you in good faith; you lack the integrity to uphold a meaningful conversation about any of these topics.

Like I said, you would do best to limit how much you talk about the military, because you consistently demonstrate your complete ignorance on the subject.

On December 30 2019 07:56 GreenHorizons wrote:

lmao I think the parsing between kicking him out of the SEALs (but not the navy) and pointing to the severity of going from e7 to e6 (as the harsh version) and Trump preventing that as some egregious intervention is something your proximity to the military and political tendencies are obscuring.

I didn't pretend the Navy didn't try to prosecute or "trivialize" Trump's role, but it's been greatly exaggerated in people's minds. I pointed out that even without Trump this guy was getting a slap on the wrist for taking pictures and sharing not the war crimes he committed. Nothing you say refutes that, though I you have made a (futile imo) argument about the severity of potentially getting kicked out of the SEALs and going from e7 to e6.

The reason neoliberals have a hard time engaging these topics isn't because to those to their left aren't engaging in good faith, but because they can't defend their positions from the left without the moral superiority they lord over those to their right.

In this example, you're struggling because you have to try to maintain that the Navy's obviously abhorrent acceptance of war criminals is acceptable because Trump is worse to someone who is merely pointing out that even if Trump didn't interfere at all, the guy was getting a slap on the wrist for his war crimes.

So you have to argue that his demotion and getting booted out (of the SEALs not the Navy) was somehow not letting him off easy for murdering children and taking sadistic photos of it.

The trial fell apart because Trump repeatedly interfered with the military justice process, which then allowed Gallagher and his team to (most likely) tamper with witnesses, resulting in a key witness completely torpedoing the prosecution's case on the stand.

On December 30 2019 08:09 Howie_Dewitt wrote:

Didn't Stratos_speAr write this fragment to explain why the demotion was from E7 to E6, or am I not understanding this?



If this is true and what I understand it to be, the alleged interference here is separate to the pardoning of Gallagher after the trial. I'm no military expert, or even a soldier, but this seems to indicate two separate interventions.

On December 30 2019 09:28 Stratos_speAr wrote:


It's hilarious that you constantly harp on others for failing to understand your oh-so-deep and intellectual viewpoints and yet you lack basic reading comprehension.

I pointed out that the Navy tried to prosecute this guy and get him convicted for murder. This would have resulted in him being demoted from E-7 to E-1, getting a Dishonorable Discharge, and being thrown in military prison for a good chunk of the rest of his life. I then pointed out that Trump's interference was a not-insignificant contribution to the fact that his trial collapsed. Then, after being screwed over by a combination of an incompetent prosecutor and the Commander-In-Chief's exceptionally unethical actions, the Navy still tried to punish this guy extra-judicially.

The problem is that you skipped the entire part where the Navy tried to throw this guy in jail for most of the rest of his life and pretended that the extra-judicial punishment was the only thing they attempted to do.

Come back when you can learn to read. Also, if you fail this badly at understanding other people's points, you should probably stuff it the next time you want to talk down to people when they "don't get" your point.



Yes, there were multiple separate instances of Trump interfering with the entire process, both during and after the trial. The demotion from E-7 to E-6 was an attempt at administrative punishment after failing to convict.

In the interviews, the platoon members told investigators that they tried repeatedly to report what they saw but no action was taken. In April 2018, they went outside the SEALs to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and Gallagher was arrested a few months later.

On December 30 2019 11:16 Stratos_speAr wrote:


You're making the presumption about the little girl, not me. It's a common mistake that you make. I didn't say anything about that, and it is yet another example of you demonstrating your inability to properly understand other's points despite whining about people "not getting" yours.

The other SEALs having to go outside of the SEALs chain of command to report this isn't lost at all. That's the entire point. The military isn't monolithic when it comes to these issues. Individual commands are just that; individual. They are insular and the chain of command at any given command has extraordinary power over their service members. They can be corrupt, have their own agenda, or anything else just like any equivalent in the civilian sector. That's why the legal component of any service branch is separate from any particular unit's chain of command.