Pentagon Recommends Combat Zone Pay Cut For Enlisted Troops! Are You Kidding Me? That Is Wrong!

Choosing to cut Combat Zone Pay for Enlisted Soldiers who already earn way too little for their Duty, is just plain WRONG!

Such a Pay cut will cause many Military Families to be Financially Deprived, go Hungry & some to be Evicted or Suffer Foreclosures.

Congress Needs to get its Act together because America's Enlisted Troops deserve a Pay Increase NOT a Severe Pay Cut.

Especially NOT a Pay Cut that will Adversely Impact the Families of Enlisted Troops.

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Review recommends combat pay be based on level of danger

The days of American troops living on luxurious bases, hanging out at the coffee shop, attending dance parties and still earning full combat pay may be coming to an end.

The Pentagon is considering changes to combat pay that could result in a tiered system, based on how much danger the service member is actually in.

The new recommendations come from an independent review ordered by President Barack Obama in 2010, the Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation.

The review concluded that "the relationship between combat compensation and the degree of danger to which a member is exposed has eroded."

In fact, the reviewers found evidence that troops exposed to the most danger in many cases were receiving the smallest benefit.

"Linking reward to risk is the principal justification for combat compensation," the review stated.

A major problem with the current combat pay system is its relationship to the IRS tax code.

Service members in combat zones are allowed to exclude income for tax purposes. The report found that junior members, especially those with with families, have little income and pay little in income taxes. Therefore, income exclusion gives them very little benefit.

More senior enlisted troops can exclude their income and receive a greater tax benefit. Officers can exclude nearly $7,800 a month during the time they are deployed to a combat zone.

The report concluded that this exclusion gives the greatest benefit to more highly ranked service members, even though they may be much farther from actual danger than lower-ranking troops.

The report recommends that combat pay be restructured "so that those who are exposed to the greatest danger receive higher compensation, regardless of grade." It recommends replacing the income exclusion with a tax credit.

The reviewers also recommend increasing "hostile fire pay" so that it surpasses "imminent danger pay." Both award troops $225 a month, but "hostile fire" indicates an area where troops could be exposed to enemy fire, whereas "imminent danger" is simply presence in a combat zone.

As part of its findings, the report cited a 2011 opinion piece in the Washington Post in which Capt. Michael Cummings wrote, "I didn't deserve my combat pay."

Cummings described the living conditions at Victory Base Complex in Iraq, "The water was always warm. The chow hall had a Caesar salad bar, a sandwich bar, an ice cream freezer, and shrimp & steak Fridays. My personal room had a working air conditioning unit and internet connection.

VBC hosted multiple PXs, coffee shops and nightly dance parties. I could buy pillows, microwaves, televisions or any video game."

Defense Department officials are still reviewing the results and have yet to make final decisions on whether to adopt the changes.

Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said, "We'll review the QRMC recommendations. The recommendations do not convey the department's official position but rather provide alternatives for the department to consider."

Nations such as Japan, Germany and Australia already have a risk-based tier system of pay.


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Chris Hayes Denies Fallen Soldiers Are Heroes; What The???

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CHRIS HAYES UNCOMFORTABLE WITH CALLING TROOPS 'HEROES;' QUITE COMFORTABLE EXERCISING RIGHTS THEY PROTECT

Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.”

Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not.

First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of "Lock Up."

Care about Chris Hayes’s comfort level? They don’t even know this leftist twerp exists.

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military. And it’s not much.

So what did he say? Mediaite provides a transcript of his weaselly insights:
I feel… uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.

Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that.

But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.
No maybe about it, Chris. I love the “rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war” part – he sounds like one of my commie grad students trying to impress credulous freshman girls after a choom session in the quad.

But Chris Hayes seems to cultivate a more hipster vibe – no ponytail for him, but I’ll bet that lurking under his blazer is a really cool tat that signals to the world he’s edgy.

And what’s edgier than taking on our troops? After all, at least until the next election, they are “our” troops. Even most progressives – quite willing to diss our troops before while Bush was president -- are on message these days.

After all, it’s kinda hard to shout about warmongering, baby-killing imperialists when the guy commanding them is your own guy.

I greatly enjoy watching progressives seethe as they are forced, for the sake of appearances, to pretend to support our troops. You know it’s killing them.

But it’s the progressives’ own doing – their sickening performance following the Vietnam War, where they figuratively and literally spit on our troops – so disgusted decent Americans of all political stripes that to do anything but treat our troops with the utmost respect is to draw near-universal contempt and scorn from across the mainstream political spectrum.

So, the real problem for Chris Hayes is that he actually said what he thinks.

He thinks our soldiers are suckers and fools at best, brutal sociopaths at worst.

At a minimum, he feels that honoring those who died for this country might encourage people to see that actually defending our country is a good thing. He’s not quite ready to make that leap; after all, most progressives are ambivalent about this whole “America” concept, if not actively opposed to it.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but when progressives attempt it, it’s comedy gold.

So, like so many other useless progressive fops who glide from cocktail party to panel discussion, Chris Hayes continues to push his progressive vision of collectivist serfdom from behind the unbreachable wall of American warriors.

He has not stood with them and, in fact, is unworthy of doing so. He is a parasite taking sustenance from the exertions of better men and women.

And even if those men and women know who Chris Hayes is, they wouldn’t give a half damn about what he thinks. They don’t do it for him.



MSNBC host Chris Hayes says he has trouble calling fallen soldiers 'heroes,’ sparks controversy

An MSNBC host is dodging attacks after arguing he was “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers “heroes.”

Chris Hayes made the remark on Sunday, the eve of Memorial Day, on his show, “Up With Chris Hayes.”

“I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war,” Hayes said.

He added that “there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers,” but that “it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic.”

On Monday, a top veterans group called for Hayes to apologize.

“Chris Hayes’ recent remarks on MSNBC regarding our fallen service members are reprehensible and disgusting,” said Richard DeNoyer, National Commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars, to FOX News.

“His words reflect his obvious disregard for the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have paid the ultimate price while defending our nation. His insipid statement is particularly callous because it comes at a time when our entire nation pauses to reflect and honor the memory of our nations’ fallen heroes.”

Online, critics were no less harsh.

“Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote,” wrote Breitbart’s Kurt Schlichter.

Schlichter accused Hayes of making the comment to prove he’s “edgy.”

“And what’s edgier than taking on our troops?”

Political pundit Ann Coulter mocked Hayes on Twitter:

“Chris Hayes ‘Uncomfortable’ Calling Fallen Military ‘Heroes’ – Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate,” she wrote.

The only defense of Hayes’ comment appeared to come from Hayes himself.

The host took to Twitter to urge followers to watch the entire hour of the show before jumping to conclusions. He also directed them to another one of his show’s segments, in which he discusses how the relationship most Americans have to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, for the most part, abstract.


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Sources: Breitbart.com, CBS News, MSNBC, NBC, NY Daily News, Google Maps

Veterans Suicide Numbers Increase, Yet Congress Ignores This Epidemic: PTSD (Videos)

The V.A.’s Shameful Betrayal

THE Department of Veterans Affairs, already under enormous strain from the aging of the Vietnam generation, the end of the Iraq war and the continuing return of combat troops from Afghanistan, announced in April that it would increase its mental health staff by about 10 percent. But too many veterans waging a lonely and emotional struggle to resume a normal life continue to find the agency a source of disappointment rather than healing.

The new hiring is intended to address the infuriating delay veterans face in getting appointments. The V.A. says it tries to complete full mental health evaluations within 14 days of an initial screening. But a review by the department’s inspector general found that schedulers were entering misleading information into their computer system. They were recording the next available appointment date as the patient’s desired appointment date. As a result, a veteran who might have had to wait weeks for an appointment would appear in the computer system as having been seen “without a wait.” That allowed the agency to claim that the two-week target was being reached in 95 percent of cases, when the real rate was 49 percent. The rest waited an average of 50 days.

As a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I found that news maddening. While the schedulers played games with the numbers, veterans were dealing with mental wounds so serious that getting proper attention at the right time might have made the difference between life and death. Even worse was that the V.A. had failed twice before to change; the inspector general found similar problems in 2005 and in 2007. This suggests a systematic misrepresentation of data and an unwillingness to stop it.

Unfortunately, the problem goes even deeper. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of veterans who are struggling with post-combat mental health issues who never ask the V.A. for help. Some, hamstrung by fear of stigma, are too proud or too ashamed to ask for help. Others don’t ask because they’ve heard too many stories from peers who have received poor care or been ignored.

I have close friends who could no longer drive because of their lingering fears of roadside bombs. Others had gone to the V.A. because they had suicidal thoughts, only to receive a preliminary screening, a pat on the back, a prescription for antidepressants — and a follow-up appointment for several months later.

I’ve had my own struggle: in 2001 I was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan, and in 2003 took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq. Since coming home, I’ve had my mind hijacked by visions of the corpses of children, their eyes blackened, at the side of the road. I recall carrying the coffins of fallen brothers. I remember losing friends who probably knew exactly what was happening to them, as they bled out on the side of a dusty road in Iraq.

And I’ve felt the shame of having suicidal feelings. Like many others, I chose to hide them. Yet, even in the darkest days of my own post-traumatic stress, when I was considering choosing between making my suicide look like an accident or taking a swan dive off some beautiful bridge, I never considered going to the V.A. for help.

My image of the V.A., formed while I was on active duty, was of an ineffective, uncaring institution. Tales circulated among my fellow Marines of its institutional indifference, and those impressions were confirmed when I left Iraq for home. At Camp Pendleton, Calif., a woman with a cold, unfeeling manner assembled us for a PowerPoint presentation and pointed us to brochures — nothing more, no welcoming sign of warmth or empathy for the jumble of emotions we were feeling. Her remoteness spoke volumes to me of what I might expect at home.

To regain veterans’ trust, the V.A. must change its organization and culture, not just hire more people. First, its leadership must be held accountable for employees’ behavior, and anyone caught entering misleading data should be fired. The agency must reach out, with public awareness campaigns and with warmth, to veterans who may be suffering in silence. It must help reduce the social stigma that attaches to the mental health issues the veterans face.

Dedicated V.A. personnel run a suicide-prevention hot line, but it is only a temporary salve for emergencies. One impressive and highly effective alternative to the V.A.’s traditional treatment process is the Wounded Warrior Project’s Combat Stress Recovery Program, which emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships, goal-setting and outdoor, rehabilitative retreats and seeks to avoid the stigma associated with traditional treatment.

What this generation of veterans needs from the V.A. is a recognition that when the color of life has faded to gray, you need to talk to someone about it today, not weeks or months from now. We need America to acknowledge what war does to the young men and women who fight it and to share the message that dragged me out of the darkness: It’s O.K. if you’re not O.K.



U.S. must address suicides by Military Veterans

As we recall those who gave their lives for our freedoms on this Memorial Day, here’s something to consider: More veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have died by their own hand than died from enemy fire.

The shocking statistic comes straight from the Department of Veterans Affairs: 18 military veterans commit suicide every day. The youngest, between the ages of 17 and 24, are four times more likely to kill themselves than older veterans. To make the numbers even more agonizing, the men and women who fight for our freedoms have never been more isolated from their countrymen: less than 1 percent of the population has served in the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s an unacceptable state of affairs. “We don’t do a good job of understanding the reality of their lives and connecting them to services they need,” said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. More than half the people who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have been part-time warriors, returning to jobs as teachers, construction workers, police and firefighters.

“You’re plucked from civilian life, go into war zone, then you get a 30-day transition back to your regular job,” Andrews said. “That’s not a lot of time to find out about programs to deal with problems, like stress. We need to figure out better ways to get them plugged into services.”

About 17 percent of homeless people are veterans. Others have returned home and devolved into drug addiction or erupted into violence. You’d think the Veterans Administration would figure out how to deliver the best mental health care to these veterans, and fast.

But just last month, a report by the administration’s inspector general revealed disarray and disorganization in exactly this department: The VA did not provide timely mental health evaluations and existing patients often waited more than two weeks for treatment. VA officials say they are hiring 1,900 more mental health specialists and support staff to strengthen its mental health network.

But local initiatives and outreach are crucial, too. Gov. Chris Christie already has announced that the recently closed Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital will be transformed into a 100-bed transitional facility for homeless veterans. Andrews said county offices in New Jersey, most of which have a veterans office, distribute information at street fairs and other local events. “Stand Downs” — where veterans volunteer to help connect other veterans to drug rehab, jobs and housing — also have been effective. But more needs to be done.

A fitting Memorial Day tribute will be honoring those who died for their country and recommitting ourselves to the well-being of those veterans who, invisibly, struggle quietly among us.



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Pentagon Spending vs Congress: Broken Gov't & War Funding

Congress Wars: Battle for the defense budget

In what is shaping up to be a classic congressional right vs. left fight over defense and war funding, both the House and Senate are gearing up to battle over some expected and not-so-expected items in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill, showing its hand to members of the House of Representatives on what it felt should be authorized for military spending.

The act authorizes spending limits and sets defense policy, but it does not actually appropriate the funds.

The committee version must still pass a full Senate vote. The House signed off on its bill this month. While a date has yet to be announced, both the final House and Senate versions will go through extensive negotiations to hammer out a final version of the legislation, expected in the fall.

Both bills have numerous amendments that will be debated and fought over in the coming months. Keep an eye on these five if you like political fireworks.

Clash of the cash

The first battle will come as no surprise, as the House and Senate versions put out two totally different bottom lines for Pentagon funding. The Democrat-run Senate version, announced Thursday, gives the military $631.4 billion under the president's trimmed-down Pentagon budget. It received full bipartisan support with a unanimous vote to pass it out of the committee.

But the House version passed this month comes in at $642.5 billion. Although it does not seem to be much more than the Senate version, it is over the president's Pentagon budget request, and it triggered a veto threat by the White House.

The measure adds $4 billion to the Pentagon budget, which is already targeted for almost $500 billion in cuts over the next 10 years to help reduce the nation's deficit.

Missile mess

Within the House version is a hotly debated missile defense shield for the East Coast of the United States.

The bill obligates $100 million to plan for the system, which is to be fully established by 2015. The cost of the entire system will be well into the billions.

Proponents, like Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, an ardent missile defense backer, say there is a need for the shield to protect against threats from Russia or Iran.

But House Democrats and Pentagon leaders who are against the plan say there is no threat to the eastern seaboard.

"Today's threats do not require an East Coast missile field, and we do not have plans to do so," Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told Congress this year.

On Thursday, the Senate chose not to put money toward the plan and instead called for a study on the missile plan, which U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, called the "East Coast fantasy 'Star Wars' base."

Combat for all

Another key item to watch for is how both sides address an amendment in the Senate version that would allow women in the U.S. military to fight alongside their male counterparts on the front lines of war.

The provision, added to the bill last week by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, orders the Pentagon to devise a plan to let women have an active combat role on the battlefield. As of now, the Pentagon bars women from joining the ranks of front-line combat troops.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that it was relaxing parts of the policy of barring women from direct combat positions. Gillibrand's provision would direct the Pentagon to develop plans to remove all of the regulations and open every combat position to female troops.

While the House National Defense Authorization Act does not have a similar provision, there is a separate bill pending in the House of Representatives that could be added to the final version of the bill when both sides come to the negotiating table.

"Though the Pentagon has taken some small steps to remove restrictions on female service, they have not yet made a real commitment to a formal repeal. It's time to do what is right and recognize these women for what they do every day in Afghanistan and around the world," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-California, who introduced the bill in the House.

Abortion debate

What is sure to be a hot-button issue in the coming months is a provision in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, lifting the ban on the Department of Defense paying for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

The measure was added by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and had bipartisan support in the committee.

"This is about equity," Shaheen said. "Civilian women who depend on the federal government for health insurance - whether they are postal workers or Medicaid recipients - have the right to access affordable abortion care if they are sexually assaulted. It is only fair that the thousands of brave women in uniform fighting to protect our freedoms are treated the same."

"It is an outrage and a national security risk that the women in our military do not have the same basic protections for reproductive health care as women across the U.S.," said Gillibrand, a co-sponsor of the amendment.

Quietly, staffers on the Hill say they fully expect fight between the left and right, especially with some members who face re-election in the fall.

But officials familiar with the issue on the Hill say it may not be an issue at all come negotiation time.

"It's a perennial issue. Almost every year, a similar provision is added, and every time it gets eliminated somewhere in the negotiation process," according to one Hill aide who was not authorized to speak ahead of the negotiations.

The problem with Pakistan

In one of the more unusual pieces of the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act, senators agreed to withhold Pakistan's part of a $1.75 billion aid package because of outrage over the imprisonment of a Pakistani doctor who helped with U.S. efforts to pinpoint Osama bin Laden in last year's deadly raid as well as the continued closure of NATO supply routes into and out of Afghanistan.

The provision calls for the aid package to be conditional on Defense Secretary Leon Panetta certifying that Pakistan opens the supply lines, no longer detains Dr. Shakil Afridi and is not supporting terrorist groups.

On Thursday, another bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee also withheld aid to Pakistan for similar reasons.

When asked whether there was a coordinated effort on the Hill to punish Pakistan through legislation, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said there was not, but there was a lot of anger on the Hill over these issues.

"What it shows is a common outrage, a common response to just about every place you can look," Levin said.

The House bill passed before the outrage in Congress erupted over Pakistan, so it does not contain any similar language.

So as Congress rages about Pakistan this week, it will be interesting to see whether that momentum holds and the Senate Armed Services Committee language stays in the final version of the bill, expected to be voted on by both chambers later this year.


Sources: CNN, Russia Today, Youtube

Obama Announces 2013 U.S. Troop Withdrawal At NATO Summit (Videos)

NATO accepts Obama timetable to end war in Afghanistan by 2014

NATO leaders signed off Monday on President Barack Obama's exit strategy from Afghanistan that calls for an end to combat operations next year and the withdrawal of the U.S.-led international military force by the end of 2014.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters at the conclusion of a two-day summit of the alliance leaders that the plan calls for handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2013, then withdrawing foreign forces the following year.

After that, a new and different NATO mission will advise, train and assist the expected 350,000-strong Afghanistan force, Rasmussen said.

The second day of their two-day summit focused on Afghanistan, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the heads of other countries contributing to the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force also in attendance.

Obama wanted NATO to commit to long-range support for Afghanistan, and Rasmussen said the alliance would support Afghan forces after the combat mission ends.

"Today we reaffirmed our strong commitment to support their training, equipping, financing and capability development in the years to come," Rasmussen said, adding it will be a "new mission with a new role for NATO," not "ISAF with a different name."

Rasmussen confirmed that some NATO members have agreed to contribute money for the $4 billion a year needed to help fund the Afghanistan security forces after the NATO mission ends, but said the summit was never intended to secure that funding.

While the Afghanistan force is expected to number 350,000 in 2014, Rasmussen said the size would likely decrease in future years depending on the security situation on the ground and other factors.

He also said he expected an agreement soon for Pakistan to reopen its border with Afghanistan to military shipments of departing NATO forces, which would resolve a sticky issue in planning the withdrawal of foreign forces.

"So far, the closure of the transit routes has not had a major impact on our operations," Rasmussen said, but added the transit routes were very important and that he expected their reopening "in the very near future."

Pakistan closed the ground routes after a NATO airstrike in November killed two dozen of its soldiers. NATO insists the incident was an accident. Obama offered his condolences but refused to apologize.

The United States and Pakistan have not come to an agreement on the price of opening the supply lines, according to senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Without a deal, the officials said Obama would not meet with President Asif Ali Zardari at the summit. However, Obama and Zardari had a brief conversation Monday morning on the sidelines of the NATO session, according to two administration officials.

When asked about turning over security responsibility to Afghan forces next year, Rasmussen denied it was an acceleration of the transition, saying the plan all along was to withdraw troops in 2014 after shifting the lead security role to Afghan forces.

"It has been within our road map right from the outset," he said.
Protesters conducted more peaceful demonstrations such as sit-ins Monday after clashes with police on Sunday, the first day of the summit.

Earlier Monday, Obama told the dozens of heads of state in attendance that the goal is to "responsibly bring this war to an end" in the next 19 months.

He cited a recent strategic partnership agreement he signed with Karzai as a step toward ensuring that "as Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone."

Obama made clear Sunday as the summit opened that he expects the NATO nations and their strategic partners to agree to the withdrawal plan, while assuring Karzai that the 28-nation NATO would not abandon the country.

"Just as we have sacrificed together for our common security, we will stand together united in our determination to complete this mission," Obama said at the start of the summit .

Obama and Karzai, who met a day ahead of Monday's NATO talks on Afghanistan, both agreed that the end of the war was close.

Following their meeting, Obama said the transition of the NATO-led force from a combat role to one of support of Afghan forces paints "a vision post-2014 in which we have ended our combat role, the Afghan war as we understand it is over."

Karzai reiterated his commitment to the timetable, "so that Afghanistan is no longer a burden on the shoulder of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and our other allies.

"Afghanistan, indeed, Mr. President, as you very rightly put it, is looking forward to an end to this war, and a transformational decade," he said.

Under Obama's plan, reminiscent of the Iraq withdrawal, security for Afghanistan would transition to Afghan forces by the middle of next year. NATO troops would then remain in training and advisory role to help beef up Afghan forces until their withdrawal at the end of 2014, followed by the new mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan forces.

A small contingent of British forces could remain after NATO forces leave in 2014, a senior British official said.

A senior U.S. official said the United Kingdom may keep some troops in Afghanistan post-2014 for counterterrorism purposes. Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

"I don't want to understate the challenge that we have ahead of us. The Taliban is a resilient and capable opponent," Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of ISAF troops, said Sunday.

"We fully expect that combat is going to continue" as troops are gradually withdrawn over the next 2 ½ years."

As expected, France's new president, Francois Hollande, announced the withdrawal of French combat troops from Afghanistan by year's end. As part of ISAF, French trainers will remain.

A Taliban spokesman called on NATO nations to follow France's lead.

"We call upon all the other NATO member countries to avoid working for the political interests of American officials and answer the call of your own people by immediately removing all your troops from Afghanistan," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement.



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Robert Bales Charged With 17 Counts Of Murder: PTSD & The U.C.M.J. ("War On Trial")

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is being Charged with 17 Counts of Murder on Friday.
Before everyone gets all riled up please remember Bales is Still a Soldier under UCMJ Law (Uniform Military Code Of Justice).
The Legal System is completely different under the UCMJ.
First there is a Court Martial, then he still has the right to Legal Counsel & an Investigation.
Next where is the Evidence?
There were NO Autopsies because the Alleged Victims were Buried Immediately according to Muslim Law.
on top of all that, Bales had PTSD, Serious Mental Health Issues yet the Army continued to Deploy him to a Combat Zone, thus Bales can't even be Discharged right now.
Higher Standard My Foot!
The Man had a Brain Injury, was Mentally & Physically Stressed Out!
The Army knew this Man had Serious Mental & Health Issues yet they continued to Deploy him to a War that America should have been out of long ago.
So Even if its Fast-Tracked it may take Years to Prosecute because this is NOT a Civilian Case!
So everyone needs to Calm Down.
The U.S. Military does NOT treat its Soldiers like Trash when they get into Legal Trouble.
Especially when they have Served for Several Years as a Good Soldier when On-Duty.
His Military Record is Outstanding even if his Personal life was a little messed up.
So everyone needs to just calm down.
Let's focus on getting Out of Afghanistan NOW to prevent other Tragedies like this from occurring.



Bales to be charged with murder in Afghan killings


Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder in connection with a shooting spree in an Afghan village that left women and children dead and severely tested U.S.-Afghan relations, a U.S. official said.

The official declined to be identified because the charges have not been publicly released yet.

Bales will also face six counts of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated assault, as well as dereliction of duty and other violations of military law, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified U.S official.

Bales is being held in a solitary cell in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The charges are to be read to him today.

Bales, who was on his fourth combat tour, allegedly sneaked from his military outpost in Kandahar province at 3 a.m. March 11 and walked to two villages where he shot, stabbed and burned villagers, including nine children.

The military originally said Bales was suspected in the killing of 16 Afghan villagers, but changed that Thursday to 17, raising the number of adults by one but without explaining why.

The massacre followed the accidental burnings of Qurans at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, which touched off waves of deadly rioting. No one has suggested a motive for the shootings, but the massacre has highlighted the issues of combat stress and frequent deployments.

Bales, 38, joined the Army on Nov. 8, 2001, two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Friends say he was driven by patriotism, but Bales' financial businesses had gone bust, and regulators were investigating him for allegedly bilking an Ohio couple of their retirement savings.

He deployed three times to Iraq before Afghanistan. During his second deployment, he fought in Najaf to recover a downed helicopter. His platoon leader praised him, and in a newspaper article, Bales recalled it as one of his proudest moments. He arrived in Afghanistan in December. His unit provided security at a small outpost.

Two days before the killings, one of Bales' fellow soldiers lost a leg after stepping on a mine, said John Henry Browne, Bales' civilian attorney. Bales also suffered a minor head injury in 2010 as a passenger in a Humvee that flipped, Browne said. "I'm not putting the war on trial, but the war is on trial," Browne said.


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Robert Bales Does Not Remember Afghan Shootings; Still Deeply Concerned About His Unit

Under the UCMJ, Prosecuting Bales could take Years. Its NO easy process! Especially when a Soldier is Mentally & Physically Diminished.


Lawyer: Bales wasn't drunk and can't remember


The defense of accused murderer Sgt. Robert Bales began Monday when he spent more than seven hours with three of his lawyers, including defense attorney John Henry Browne.

At their meeting, Bales did not confess to the crime.

"He has no memory of ... he has an early memory of that evening and he has a later memory of that, but he doesn't have memory of the evening in between.," Browne said.

Witnesses describe Bales as going deliberately from room to room in several houses while killing people, not in some kind of berserk attack. Browne said that despite the descriptions of his apparently deliberate actions, Bales remembers none of what happened.

Browne also said reports of his being drunk that night were not really true.

"He said he had a couple sips of something but he didn't have a full drink," and therefore he wasn't drunk, Browne said.

Bales told Browne he was in shock.

"He's fixated on the troops left on the ground and what they're accusing him of and how that might have negative ramifications on his friends and compatriots. And he's concerned that there would be retaliation that would be caused by what people think he's done," Browne said.

Bales apparently is eager to get his wife and children on the phone.

"He loves them dearly and he is very interested in talking to them," Browne said.

Browne said he will not seek an insanity defense, rather one of "diminished capacity," like some sort of an emotional breakdown.

Bales is expected to be charged with 16 counts of murder by the end of the week.


The Military Path to Justice Could Be Lengthy


Staff Sgt. Robert Bales has yet to be formally accused of the act that the Army suspects him of committing: the nighttime massacre of 16 Afghan civilians in a village a mile from his post.

But once preliminary charges are announced, as early as this week, the military justice system will proceed deliberately, regardless of the enormity of the charges and the international repercussions of the acts involved.

It is a system devised to be flexible enough to be convened on a battlefield, and broad enough to deal with anything from theft and insubordination to atrocity. Experts agree there will be no quick resolution in this case, especially if the charges carry the death penalty, which Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said last week “could be a consideration” in the case.

That, said John Galligan, a military lawyer in private practice in Texas, would mean “it’s going to take several years.”

Many of the early details provided by military sources about the rampage have not been confirmed, and the case could founder in the courtroom on questions of evidence collected under difficult conditions thousands of miles away, potentially with few of the safeguards that courts in both the military and civilian worlds rely on when it comes to building a trustworthy account.

To Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, there is still too much to learn for easy conclusions to be drawn. “The narrative has not yet emerged,” he said.

One thing, however, is now certain: Sergeant Bales’s court-martial will be held in the United States. The military on Monday released the transcript of a briefing Sunday with Afghan journalists in which an American official said the case will be heard “somewhere in the United States.” The location, the official said, has not been determined, and witnesses may be flown over from Afghanistan. American service members are not subject to the Afghan criminal justice system, under a longstanding “status of forces agreement” between the United States and the Afghan government.

Sergeant Bales, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., met with his defense team for the first time on Monday, in a session lasting several hours. His lawyer, John Henry Browne, told The Associated Press that his client’s recall of that night was patchy.

“He has some memory of some things that happened that night,” Mr. Browne said. “He has some memories of before the incident and he has some memories of after the incident. In between, very little.”

Mr. Browne told CBS News his client said that he had not been drunk, and that he had only had “a couple of sips of something.”

Unless a plea deal is struck, the outcome is anything but certain. The Army prosecuted 44 soldiers for murder or manslaughter of civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan from 2001 to 2011; 30 were convicted of some form of homicide, 6 were convicted of other offenses and 8 were acquitted. No one has been executed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice since 1961.

Gathering evidence and securing the cooperation of witnesses can be bedeviling in far-flung places, and contributed to the collapse of the prosecutions against Marines linked to the killings of 24 men, women and children in the Iraqi city of Haditha. Charges were dropped against most of the Marines who were tried in that case. In another case — the murders of three Afghan civilians in the Maiwand District in Kandahar Province in 2010 by a rogue “kill team” from Sergeant Bales’s base, Lewis-McChord —11 of the 12 soldiers tried were convicted.

The procedures to come are well defined by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Courts-Martial. The rules require a preliminary charging statement to be issued within days of a soldier being put behind bars. That is followed in coming months by a proceeding known as an Article 32 pretrial hearing, where prosecutors will present their evidence for convening a formal court-martial, leading to a recommendation from the presiding officer to higher command authority as to whether to hold a court-martial.

Only after the Article 32 hearing will the determination as to whether to seek the death penalty be announced. The court-martial would then go forward in two stages, one to establish guilt or innocence, and a second to determine sentencing.

Some of the elements of courts-martial differ from trials in the civilian realm. The military justice system does not allow a guilty plea in a death penalty case, but it does allow pleas that will lead to a lesser punishment. A determination of guilt or innocence, and the decision to sentence the defendant to death, must be unanimous.

If the supporting facts that underlie the accusations against Sergeant Bales are borne out and the military seeks the death penalty, much of the work of his legal team will shift to keeping him off death row. In speaking with reporters since the March 11 killings, Mr. Browne has discussed his client’s four combat deployments and suggested that Sergeant Bales could have been suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of concussive brain injury.

The military justice system does have the equivalent of the insanity defense, known as lack of mental responsibility, for which the standard of proof is very high. Mr. Fidell said such a defense is rarely successful, though “it could help soften the blow in terms of avoiding the death penalty.”

In the interview with CBS, Mr. Browne said he would not pursue the insanity defense, but would argue that his client had diminished capacity — apparently in an effort to seek mitigation of any punishment.

One issue that could loom large in the case is the risk that statements by those higher in the chain of command can have a prejudicial effect on members of the court-martial, a problem known as unlawful command influence. Among other statements, President Obama has called the killings “tragic and shocking,” and called President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan last week to pledge that the United States would “get the facts as quickly as possible and to hold accountable anyone responsible.”

Mr. Panetta has called the killings a “criminal act.” When asked whether there was a confession, said, “I suspect that that was the case.”

Jack B. Zimmermann, the co-chairman of the Military Law Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that in high-profile cases, military and civilian leaders were under tremendous pressure to issue statements. “Unfortunately, people in the secretary of defense’s position are caught between the political requirement to make some kind of statement and the danger of what we call unlawful command influence,” said Mr. Zimmermann, a retired Marine colonel. “Somebody should tell him to shut up.”

To James D. Culp, a military lawyer in Austin, Tex., the only question is one of degree. “Is there command influence in the case?” he said. “Undoubtedly. Does it rise to the level of unlawful command influence? We’ll see.” Mr. Fidell, however, noted that while unlawful command influence is often referred to as “the mortal enemy of military justice,” it is “very rare for a case to be set aside” on those grounds.

This court-martial will be closely watched around the world, and that will undoubtedly complicate the prosecution, said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

“Every high-profile case, civilian or military,” he said, “takes on dimensions and dynamics that are less familiar and less predictable because there are often interests, both expressed and implied, that transcend resolving this individual case justly. Everything that happens in this case is going to have direct international echoes in terms of the ongoing war effort.”

“Let me put it this way,” he said, “I’m real glad I’m not involved — on either side.”


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Robert Bales: Small Town Patriot To Deranged, Alleged Killer; (PTSD) War Is Hell!

At Home, Asking How ‘Our Bobby’ Became War Crime Suspect


He was not the star, just a well-regarded young man who seemed to try to do the right thing. That was Robert Bales, “our Bobby,” friends said.

He was a busy, popular kid, but he made time for the autistic man down the block. Other neighborhood boys admired him. As a high school linebacker, he was good enough to be captain, but also gracious enough to help a more talented player take over his starting position. It was good for the team, he said.

That solid-guy reputation followed him into the Army infantry. He joined at the relatively seasoned age of 27, just a few weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and became respected for his maturity and calm, including in battle. “He was a damn good leader and a damn good soldier,” said Zachary Parsons, who served with Staff Sergeant Bales in Iraq in 2007.

So when many of his old neighbors from Norwood, Ohio, and former battalion mates from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State heard the news that Sergeant Bales had been accused of coldbloodedly shooting to death 16 Afghan civilians on March 11, nine of them children, they were not simply shocked. They grieved.

Michelle Caddell, 48, who knew Sergeant Bales when he was growing up, watched a video clip of the news over and over and over again, mesmerized by disbelief. “I wanted to see, maybe, a different face,” she said, fighting back tears. “Because that’s not our Bobby. Something horrible, horrible had to happen to him.”

Friends, relatives and his lawyer say they have an idea of what that horrible thing was: war.

Three deployments in Iraq, where he saw heavy fighting, and a fourth in Afghanistan, where he went reluctantly, left him struggling financially, in danger of losing his home.

And there were more direct impacts. During his deployments, Sergeant Bales, 38, lost part of a foot and injured his head, saw fellow soldiers badly wounded, picked up the bodies of dead Iraqis, was treated for mild traumatic brain injury and possibly developed post-traumatic stress disorder, his lawyer and military officials said.

But there are also glimpses of a darkness in his personal life. Sergeant Bales’s past includes an arrest on a misdemeanor charge of assault on a woman, which was dropped after he completed anger-management counseling; an accident in which he overturned his car, something he attributed to falling asleep at the wheel; and an accumulation of rejections and disappointments.

A year ago, according to a blog written by his wife, he was denied a promotion to sergeant first class, a rank that would have brought not just added responsibility and respect but also money at a time when his finances seemed stretched.

Neighbors remember him, in between earlier deployments, as a gung-ho solider, eager to get back to the fight. But that seemed to have changed.

He trained to become a recruiter, a job that would have allowed him to skip Afghanistan, but the Army kept him in the infantry. And though he felt that his injuries were significant enough to keep him out of combat, his lawyer said, Army doctors said he was fit to deploy.

Weeks later, he arrived in one of the roughest precincts of Afghanistan.

A long legal process — starting with the formal filing of charges in the coming weeks and ending, most likely, in a court-martial — will sort out whether Sergeant Bales was guilty of atrocities and may shed light on which, if any, of these factors played a role.

From dozens of interviews with lawyers, friends and military officials, competing legal narratives are already starting to emerge.

A military official, speaking anonymously, has said Sergeant Bales had marital problems, felt stressed by the Afghanistan deployment and snapped after drinking alcohol before the shootings.

Sergeant Bales’s lawyers contend that he had a solid marriage and no drinking problems. If he cracked, they said, it was because he probably had P.T.S.D. that the Army failed to diagnose, had been dispatched to a war he did not want to fight and had seen a friend gravely wounded just before the killings.

Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired brigadier general who was an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that after a decade of combat, where hundreds of thousands of troops have sustained traumatic brain injury and P.T.S.D., those syndromes by themselves seem inadequate to explain how a seemingly normal and widely admired sergeant might have single-handedly committed one of the worst war crimes of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

With his multiple deployments and wounds, Dr. Xenakis said, Sergeant Bales seems emblematic of bigger problems: an overstretched military battered by 11 years of combat; failures by the military to properly identify and treat its weary, suffering troops; and the thin line dividing “normal” behavior in war from what later is deemed “snapping.”

“This is equivalent to what My Lai did to reveal all the problems with the conduct of the Vietnam War,” Dr. Xenakis said. “The Army will want to say that soldiers who commit crimes are rogues, that they are individual, isolated cases. But they are not.”

Inspirational Teenager

Sergeant Bales grew up in Norwood, a modest suburb of Cincinnati, the youngest of five boys who lived in a two-story brick home still known as “the Bales house,” though no Baleses live in it anymore. The family was that well known, and that well liked.

“They’re down-home country,” Ms. Caddell said.

Mr. Bales was a gregarious, chatty, engaged teenager who played football and threw himself into an array of clubs and activities, including theater. In his yearbook, he signed the football team photo with a nickname, “Doom,” and is listed on the “senior superlatives” page as one of the best dancers in his class.

“He’s one of those kids you remember,” said David C. Griffel, the principal of Norwood High School when Mr. Bales attended. “A real extrovert.”

Mr. Bales was a leader on the football team, a feisty middle linebacker who was not big but strong, able to bench press 300 pounds. But in his junior year, a freshman star named Marc Edwards arrived, and the coach wanted the newcomer to be the starting middle linebacker. There might have been an unpleasant rivalry, but instead Mr. Bales shared tips on the position.

“He got the idea in that situation that Marc was going to be better for the team,” said Aaron M. Smith, the author of a book about Mr. Edwards.

Mr. Edwards was surprised by Mr. Bales’s generosity. “He credited Bob Bales with teaching him what leadership meant, and how to handle a situation that doesn’t favor you,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Edwards went on to be named Ohio’s “Mr. Football” for 1992 and to play for Notre Dame, the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns, the New England Patriots, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Chicago Bears.

Mr. Bales was enrolled in the College of Mount St. Joseph in 1991 and 1992. He attended Ohio State University from 1993 until 1996, declaring an economics major, according to Jim Lynch, a university spokesman. It is not clear why he left, Mr. Lynch said.

Details about Mr. Bales’s life during the next several years are sketchy. Friends and his lawyer said he had worked in financial services in Columbus, Ohio, then started an investment business with his brother Mark. No sign remains of their Spartina Investments at the modest office building where they leased space in Doral, Fla., a few blocks west of Miami International Airport and south of the Doral Golf Resort and Spa.

By November 2001, he had joined the Army.

“It wasn’t really anger when he joined,” said Michael Blevins, 35, a childhood friend. “It was — they had hurt something,” he added, referring to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

Ms. Caddell said that she had worried about his decision, but that he had assured her, “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” The decision made sense to Ms. Caddell’s son Mark, who had idolized Mr. Bales since he was a toddler.

He has to join, Ms. Caddell recalled her son saying. “He takes care of everybody.”

Introduction to Warfare

After basic training, Sergeant Bales was assigned to what was then known as Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, which would become the Army’s Western deployment hub for the wars. For the next 11 years, he would spend his career with the Second Battalion, Third Infantry Regiment in a Stryker brigade.

In 2002, the criminal assault occurred in a Tacoma-area hotel room, but he paid his fine and completed court-mandated anger-management counseling, court records show.

Not long after, he married Karilyn Primeau, a woman he had met online, his lawyer said, and they went on to have two children, a daughter named Quincy and a son named Bobby.

The Third Brigade deployed to northern Iraq from November 2003 to November 2004, a time when the country was quickly devolving into looting, insurgency and chaos. But it was Sergeant Bales’s second tour, from June 2006 into September 2007, that was particularly eventful.

By then, Iraq was in the throes of sectarian civil war, and American troops were dying at a rate of about 80 a month. David Hardt, a Third Brigade soldier who wrote a blog about the deployment, said that the enemy had almost always been invisible and that soldiers had grown bitterly frustrated at their inability to fight back.

“You sort of got used to seeing dead bodies, seeing things blow up in front of you,” said Mr. Hardt, who did not know Sergeant Bales but was in Iraq at the same time. “We wanted to get insurgents, but it’s so rare that we succeeded.”

In one extraordinary battle in January 2007, however, Sergeant Bales’s battalion encountered as many as 600 Shiite militia fighters while trying to recover a downed Apache helicopter in Najaf. In a pitched two-day battle that included airstrikes and mortar exchanges, the American forces claimed to have killed 250 enemy fighters while losing none of their own.

“The cool part about this was, World War II-style, you dug in,” Sergeant Bales, then a team leader, was quoted as saying in a recounting of the battle by the Fort Lewis newspaper. “You’re taking a shovel and digging as fast as you can.”

“I’ve never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day,” he added.

Somewhere during that deployment, Sergeant Bales injured his foot, though his lawyer said he did not know how. The Army has declined to provide details about the sergeant’s record.

But the injury did not seem significant enough to remove him from Iraq, and he seems to have finished the tour, which was extended to 15 months from 12 in what became known as the surge.

Mr. Hardt said most soldiers he knew were angry about the extension because they were exhausted by the continuous fighting and the threats of roadside bombs. But if Sergeant Bales was upset, he did not seem to complain. When he returned to the Tacoma area, he was limping, neighbors said, but also working hard to rehabilitate his foot because he wanted to return to full duty.

“He was a gung-ho Army guy,” said Tim Burgess, 59, a retired trucker and warehouse worker who lived next door to Sergeant Bales at the time. “He still wanted to see action even though he had been wounded.”

Neighbors remembered his wife as an avid bicyclist but not particularly sociable. Records show that she worked as a project manager at now-defunct Washington Mutual, then became an associate technical project manager at Amaxra, a business communications company in Redmond.

Sergeant Bales was home for nearly two years after his second deployment. Mrs. Bales, also an avid blogger, cheerfully recounted baking cookies, reading books and visiting her parents in Bellingham with their daughter.

By August 2009, he was gone again. It was a quieter tour, with more nation building than combat. In a Facebook exchange with a childhood friend, Steven Berling, Sergeant Bales called the deployment “boring” and “pretty dumb,” then lamented the lack of fighting.

“Giving money to Hagji instead of bullets just don’t seem right,” he wrote, apparently misspelling Hajji, a term used by soldiers, often pejoratively, in referring to Arab people.

Financial and Career Setbacks

About the time Sergeant Bales was preparing to deploy in 2009, the Baleses were having financial problems, records show.

Early in their relationship, they had lived in a house in Auburn, between Seattle and Tacoma, that Mrs. Bales had owned before they were together. According to records, they received a notice of a trustee sale in mid-2009. The couple, who had moved out by then, had missed $17,000 in payments and owed a total of $195,000 to the bank.

A trustee auction was scheduled for October 2009, while Sergeant Bales was in Iraq, but the auction was postponed three times and then called off in early 2010 for reasons that are unclear.

Robert Baggett, president of the neighborhood’s Riverpark Estates Homeowners Association, said the Baleses had stopped paying their annual association dues of about $120 at least two years ago.

The house, which for a while was occupied by renters whose noise drew complaints from neighbors, has been vacant for about 18 months and is now filthy and in disrepair. “We are parking cars there to keep it looking like it is occupied so no homeless move in,” Mr. Baggett said.

The Baleses bought their two-story house in Lake Tapps, east of Tacoma, in 2005, records show. But just three days before the shootings in Afghanistan, Mrs. Bales told a real estate agent, Phillip Rodocker, that she wanted to sell the house because they were financially stretched. The house is listed for sale at $229,000, about $50,000 less than what the family paid for it.

Asked about the mortgage problems, Sergeant Bales’s lawyer, John Henry Browne, said, “There are no financial pressures on the family right now other than the normal ones that are experienced by the 99 percenters.”

Last March, Mrs. Bales wrote on her blog that her husband had not gotten the hoped-for promotion to sergeant first class, which would have raised his pay by about $370 a month and made him eligible to be the senior noncommissioned officer for a platoon.

(He was also paid an extra $400 a month during his deployments.) The promotion probably would have also given him some peace of mind about his Army career, which was nearly halfway to the 20 years needed for retirement with pay.

Though “sad and disappointed” by the news, Mrs. Bales said she was also relieved. “We can finally move on to the next phase of our lives,” she wrote.

The Final Deployment

That next phase, the Baleses hoped, would take them to Germany, Italy or Hawaii. But the Army did not move Sergeant Bales from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Nor did it allow him to become a recruiter, though he was in training for the job. Instead, he was told he would go with the Third Brigade to Afghanistan in December.

“He was not happy about it,” Mr. Browne said, but took his orders like a professional soldier.

Before deploying, Sergeant Bales would have undergone physical exams, including on his foot, and a computer-based survey for traumatic brain injury intended to measure attention, memory and thinking ability. The survey is not well regarded among many specialists, but it remains the Army’s chief screening tool for traumatic brain injury. Sergeant Bales was declared fit to deploy.

Little is known about his time in Afghanistan, other than that he and others in his battalion were assigned to work alongside Army Special Forces soldiers in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, a longtime hotbed of Taliban activity that has grown more secure in recent years. Sergeant Bales would probably have provided security for the Green Berets while they carried out night raids, built relations with village leaders and organized local militias.

A Green Beret who has spent time in Panjwai in the past year said the combat outpost would have been relatively small, protected by dirt-filled containers known as Hesco barriers, with guard towers and perhaps a blimp with a high-powered camera capable of capturing images more than a mile away. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, for Sergeant Bales to slip away at night unnoticed, as the Army says he did.

Supervision in the outpost might also have been more lax than at larger bases, which could explain the presence of alcohol. Sergeant Bales might have even been among the more senior noncommissioned officers on his team. Special Forces teams typically have 12 members, sometimes fewer, and Sergeant Bales’s unit might have been as small as a platoon of two dozen soldiers.

Many younger soldiers consider such assignments exciting and more fulfilling, though they are also potentially more dangerous. But Mr. Browne said Sergeant Bales had considered the posting “grueling,” noting that the soldiers lived in metal cargo containers.

“It was very tough and rustic,” the lawyer said.

About a week ago, Mr. Browne said, Sergeant Bales saw a friend lose a leg to a buried mine. Soon after, according to Mr. Browne, he sent his wife a short message: “Hard day for the good guys.”

About a day later, Army officials said, Sergeant Bales walked out of the outpost and headed toward the nearby village.


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